By Selwyn Duke

"I was born with a chronic
anxiety about the weather," said John Burroughs in 1877.  Today, anxiety about the weather is more
common than ever, although it’s not inborn but cultivated in schoolrooms,
through television sets and by lying, rapacious ex-vice presidents.  And I have anxiety about the weather, too —
especially when it’s being used to promote a destructive agenda.

This brings us to Climategate, the
scandal everyone is talking about and that inspired British journalist James
Delingpole to write
“it's [the climate con is] all unravelling now.”  I only wish I could be so optimistic.  Sure, we have the smoking gun of the hacked
emails from the University of East Anglia, which provide evidence that we “deniers”
were only denying a lie.  And the
erstwhile head of its Climatic Research Unit, Phil Jones — a con man with a
science degree if ever there were one — had to resign in disgrace.  But don’t for a moment confuse a smoking gun
with a coup de grace, or being sacrificed for the team with waving the white
flag.  I say this because I long ago realized
something about man’s nature, something that may sound like a gross
exaggeration: If a person has a strong enough vested interest in believing
2+2=5, he will surely insist it is so — in the face of all evidence to the
contrary.  But before I talk about who
the real deniers are and what is being denied, let’s discuss the ugly reality
reaffirmed by Climategate.

Here is the lowdown in a
nutshell: Governments have used billions of dollars of our money to fund
fraudulent science, which, in turn, is used to justify policy that would steal
untold billions more from us through taxation and the handicapping of the
private sector.  This will, of course,
stifle the creation of wealth, but it will also be a transfer of it.  But this would not be so much from the rich
to the poor; it would be from the poor and middle class to the rich and
well-connected.  Carbon-credit con men
such as Al Gore will add to their many millions, while subtracting from the
many millions some of the latter’s few dollars. 
It would move us toward a situation in which we’d have two Americas, as
John Edwards might say.  One would be a
lying, covetous ruling class of John Edwardses. 
The other would be the masses, who would be perpetually mired in
serfdom. 

Yet defeating the climate con
won’t be easy, because it isn’t just money that drives the con men.  In fact, many of them are so married the
climate con that they have become one with their misguided notions.  Call it the Zen of Being Wrong.     

One reason not to do wrong is
that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.  Obviously, Bill Clinton, John Edwards and
Tiger Woods would never have felt the urge to lie about their affairs if they
had never had affairs.  Of course, the
lying was immoral, but this is how one sin leads to another.  A transgression leads to a lie, which leads
to a full-blown cover-up, etc.  And the
deeper you dig that hole, the harder and more painful it is to climb out of it.

In the case of the climate con artists,
the pain would be great and the price steep. 
Their creed has been likened to a religion, and in many ways it is.  They aren’t global-warming theorists.

They are global-warming
fundamentalists. 

They have invested so much of
their time, energy, emotion, ego and reputations in the climate con that to relinquish
it would be to relinquish themselves; to call it a lie is to call their lives a
lie.  It’s just a bit like asking a
Jihadist to give up Islam.  These are not
people who subscribe to AGW theory; they have submitted to it.

Then you have those who are
using this religion to make money — and they and the true believers are often
one and the same.  These are the
carbon-credit capitalists, the green-technology givers and greenback grabbers.   

And we have to add to this the
fact that all these people had become science’s Torquemadas, inquisitors bent
on stifling inquisitiveness.  Al Gore
told us “The debate is over” as he and his co-religionists strove to root out
heresy and sought to destroy the “deniers.” 
Thus, they have no reason to expect mercy.  Surrender is simply not an option.

So forget about icebergs; the
meltdown the climate con artists fear is that of their reputations, egos,
finances and faith.  Scientists or not,
to admit error is not merely the alteration of a hypothesis to them; it is the
loss of religion and meaning, the end of empire, the fall of Rome.  It is complete and utter personal
destruction.

Yet destruction is precisely
what the climate-change con men would visit on the economies of nations in
their delusional grip.  Other lands, such
as China and India, will never yield to such insanity.  They may pay lip service to it, though,
especially if doing so will encourage us to more thoroughly handicap
ourselves.  Then they can laugh and rise
to prominence while we become the most recent great civilization to descend
into backwater status.

As I write this, the
climate-change con artists are meeting in Copenhagen, where useful-idiot
communists are protesting in the streets while their standard bearers,
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Zimbabwean strongman Robert Mugabe and
Bolivian President Evo Morales are railing
against free markets and beating the red drum. Do you really think these
folks care about the environment? The green that really concerns them is your
money — and I do mean your money.
Because if there is an “international” agreement to fight the phantom of
climate change, you can bet your depreciating bottom dollar that we Americans
will pay the freight. We are, after all, the world’s biggest energy suckers.

The question is, are we just
the world’s biggest suckers?

Chavez, Mugabe and China are
betting yes. And if we want to make fools out of them, we’ll cause radical
climate change — to the political climate in Washington in 2010. It’s probably
our last chance to prove who the fools really are.

                        © 2009 Selwyn Duke — All Rights Reserved