If you thought the Great War, Stalin’s Purges or the Holocaust were bad, think Again. They pale in comparison with climate change, which the United Nations has dubbed “the greatest threat we have ever faced.”

Climate alarmists often fail to see the irony behind their own hyperbole. The more hysterical their claims become, the more average, thinking citizens grow skeptical of whether things could really be as bad as certain environmentalists contend.

Climate change is the greatest threat we’ve ever faced –but we’re making progress together. And nature itself can help landscapes adapt to and mitigate climate change. via @nature_org https://t.co/VrA6fzJrBV pic.twitter.com/hi9EeNcRTg — UN Environment (@UNEP) February 15, 2018

To justify its breathless panic, the UN Environmental Program quotes one Justin Adams as saying that “the science tells us we have no time to waste.”

Where, one may rightly wonder, did “the science” tell us this? What does “the science” use as a mouthpiece? The more closely one looks, the more “the science” begins to resemble an exasperated little man behind a curtain talking into a microphone and pulling on levers to blow out steam.

Science, unlike “the science,” is an incredibly useful thing. When acknowledging their proper bounds—what they can and cannot tell us—scientists propel beneficial progress in areas as diverse as medicine, astrophysics and marine biology.

When they begin to play the prophet, however, predicting events two hundred years in the future that their own colleagues recognize as groundless, they quickly lose the already precarious trust of a doubting public.

In the 2800-word article accompanying the UN tweet, we read:

Climate-related disasters are getting worse; the ocean is losing fish and gaining plastic; urban pollution is at a choking point; drinking water is drying up; the world’s big cats are nearing extinction and some think coral reefs may not be far behind—troubling given this is also the International Year of the Reef.

Even with its grammatical irregularities, that is quite a packed paragraph of panic. Climate alarmists complain when skeptics refer to their forecasts as “doomsday scenarios,” but it’s difficult to describe them any other way.

What the rambling, 12-point article proves to be, is an extended fundraising letter. Once they have utterly terrified their readers concerning the impending environmental apocalypse, the UN climate team tells them all they need is more money and they will be able to solve all their problems.

The hubris behind such a statement is itself a little jarring, but the notion that CO2—to quote one wag—is just a climate “control knob” that we can adjust at will, is offensively simplistic. And funding more climate meetings so that activists can jet around the world in fossil-fuel propelled aircraft to concoct plans to hobble the energy industry seems the epitome of foolishness.

Thankfully, and in no small part due to the exaggeration of climate alarmists and their predictions, climate skeptics are gaining the day.

You can only be told so many times that the sky is falling before shrugging your shoulders, smiling and wishing Chicken Little a nice day.

Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter Follow @tdwilliamsrome