Let’s be blunt. Forty years of global warming hysteria never has been about the globe getting warmer, or saving the planet. It’s always been about control and money. Their control. Your money. If you need to be told who “they” are, you haven’t been paying attention.

They are a cabal of intertwined common interests that include government regulators who stand to gain power, financial opportunists who stand to profit and ideologues whose mission is to separate you from your money, and from control over your lives. They are socialists or progressives. They like to be called “environmentalists,” tarring the reputation of an otherwise well-intentioned group.

“That’s alarmism!” you might protest. Yours truly will grant this much. It is alarming.

But alarmism would be excessive or exaggerated.

Understand that the scaling back of the world’s industrial output would have to return us to the technological status of the 1800s to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to levels that these people say are necessary. If you prefer shoveling horse manure to plugging in your TV, that approach may be for you. Most people probably consider such a change to be – alarming.

A compliant mainstream media, which never views a progressive movement with a critical eye, is about to treat us to another furious round of headlines as the real alarmists gather this month in Paris to concoct a scheme to “save” you from global warming. Scratch the surface of this international divide-up-the-booty gathering, and you will see that, even if all their schemes, regulations, taxes, penalties and wealth redistributions are enacted, there’s no guarantee the Earth’s temperature will be affected at all. That’s a pretty costly gamble.

As Christopher Booker of the U.K.’s Sunday Telegraph reports, schemers convening in Paris have three goals: 1) to collectively reduce emissions worldwide by imposing costly regulations and banning cost-effective alternatives (aka big government); 2) to take money from some to give to others to pay for this (aka socialism); and 3) to impose costs on those unwilling to pay up, which is to say, big government and socialism.

Who’s the alarmist now?

As wisdom instructs, know them by their fruits.

Exhibit No. 1: Al Gore says climate change is making people dumber. If there’s a relationship between climate and being dim-witted, at least get the cause and effect in the proper sequence. Gore’s statement certainly is dumb.

But did high temperatures make him dumb? In 1992, Gore famously informed us, “A zebra does not change its spots.” That was when temperatures actually were rising. But Gore continued saying dumb things over the past 20 years even as temperatures haven’t risen. It appears Fahrenheit fluctuations aren’t the cause of Al’s dumbness.

As for who are the alarmists, let readers decide. Critics of the global warming cabal point to scientific measurements of temperature, sea levels, hurricanes, tornadoes and wildfires to demonstrate that our current age is nothing spectacular, and even relatively comfortable by historical standards.

But agitators like Gore make unsubstantiated claims, as he did in 2008, asserting, “The entire North ‘polarized’ cap will disappear in five years.” Oops. Didn’t happen. In 2007 Gore claimed the Arctic’s summer ice could “completely disappear” by 2013 because of global warming. Wrong again.

If this sky-is-falling, we-can-fix-it method of operation seems familiar, it’s because socialists, progressives and communists have used it for decades. When their predictions of dystopia or utopia fail to materialize, as always happens, they insist their schemes still can prevent the one or bring on the other if only they have more time, more control and more money. Guess who they want to control and whose money they want?

Then there’s the inconvenient truth that CO2 has not been definitively linked to rising temperatures, best illustrated by temperatures not budging for nearly two decades even as CO2 emissions rose to Industrial Age highs, flatly contradicting warmists’ computer predictions.

“What has happened in the past 10 years is that the discrepancies between what’s observed and what’s predicted have become much stronger,” says Freeman Dyson, a theoretical physicist and recipient of many international awards for scientific work, who also happens to be an Obama-supporting Democrat. “It’s clear now the models are wrong, but it wasn’t so clear 10 years ago.”

Before you buy into the real alarmists’ propaganda, ask what it will cost you and whether you will be in control. It seems some big players intend to game the system to ensure they profit, while endorsing pain for others.

The Sunday Telegraph’s Booker reports that China, the world’s largest CO2 emitter, plans to double its emissions by 2030, building 363 more coal-fired power plants. India, the third-largest emitter, plans to triple emissions, and fourth-largest emitter Russia plans to increase emissions by 38 percent over 2012 levels, which may have something to do with President Vladimir Putin calling the climate scare a fraud designed to restrain industrial development in countries like his.