I&I Editorial

The face of the global warming scare was once that of Al Gore. Now that face belongs to a 16-year-old girl who’s being treated as a prophetess. It’s hard to conceive of a world gone more mad.

Greta Thunberg has been thrust into the spotlight, tagged as the child who will lead us away from our inevitable climate disaster — if only we let her. Adults hang on her words, regard her as an omniscient oracle, insist that we are in the presence of our savior.

Thunberg’s “voice lets us know we’re in disavowal, and that we’d better wake up. Then it tells us, clear as anything, how to do this,” says Ali Smith, a Scottish author who writes for The Guardian.

But then if that voice had instead been telling us capitalism has lifted more than a billion out of poverty, Thunberg would have no forum. Though true, it doesn’t fit the narrative.

Because her message does fit, this child mystic of Sweden has been allowed to speak at the Davos economic conference, in Britain’s Parliament, and at a United Nations convention. She’s inspired a global school walkout and protested in front of Sweden’s legislature when she should have been in school. The kids at Vox have declared that when watching Thunberg speak, “it’s hard not to think of Cassandra, the brash young warrior of Greek myth who beseeched Apollo for the gift of prophecy.”

The more reasonable among us see a young lady who’s being exploited by an intractable, alarmist movement and a set of parents craving, what, relevance maybe.

The Voxers are correct though in observing that “Thunberg’s fearless rhetoric has proven to be enormously influential.” And therein is the problem.

The story says Thunberg arrived at her activism on her own, first hearing about global warming at 8, then becoming depressed at 11, ostensibly because the world wasn’t responding to global warming adequately enough to suit her. But she’s no priestess ordained by the Almighty, just a vessel used to repeat global warming propaganda. She’s a human shield held up to protect the disseminators of junk science, radicals determined to take over the global economy, and an assortment of angry agitators.

When Thunberg says “we need to rapidly remove all fossil fuels from our everyday life and leave them in the ground,” that “we must remember that this is above all an emergency — not primarily an opportunity to create new green economic growth. We need a whole new way of thinking,” she is doing nothing more than following the alarmist handbook. There’s no revelation there, no new words from Heaven. Just the tired, unoriginal rhetoric we’ve endured for years.

We’re not saying Thunberg is an actor who’s been handed a script. She is clearly a willing participant. But to demand that her warnings are to be heeded because she is some sort of young savant who cannot be challenged is truly asinine.

Of course Thunberg, her handlers, and fanatic followers will count our commentary as an attack on her. It’s a cheap way to deflect and invalidate legitimate criticism. In fact, they’ve even dared doubters to speak. In The Guardian’s recent fawning coverage, Thunberg said “I think that as long as they go after me personally with insults and conspiracy theories then that is good. It proves that they don’t have any arguments.”

Actually, skeptics and lukewarmers, even the “deniers,” have arguments. And they are compelling.

To start with, the temperature record is unreliable. This blogger has it exactly right when he says: “The thermometer network is made up of a patchwork of non-research quality instruments that were never made to monitor long-term temperature changes to tenths or hundredths of a degree, and the huge data voids around the world are either ignored or in-filled with fictitious data.”

The data used to reach the “consensus” that man’s fossil fuel habits are causing the planet to overheat have been doctored.

The models on which the entire edifice is built have been consistently wrong.

Predictions that storms would become more common and more destructive have also been wrong.

Those pushing the hardest for extreme measures to “fight” global warming have been hiding their true agenda, which is to dismantle and replace capitalism. Some are even suggesting that the “fight” is an opening to establish authoritarian control.

Earth’s climate has always changed and nothing is occurring today outside of the historical variability.

Carbon dioxide, a weak greenhouse gas, is one of many variables that affect climate.

Science does not work on “consensus,” nor is it ever “settled.”

Claims that 97% of scientists agree that man is causing climate change have been debunked.

Man’s use of fossil fuels has yielded unprecedented human progress.

We could carry on for a while longer, but we don’t want to test readers’ patience. Those who want to dig further can continue at University of Alabama-Huntsville climate scientist Roy Spencer’s global warming skepticism for dummies page and the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s policymaker’s guide to climate change.

It’s unlikely to happen, but every adult who has placed Thunberg on a pedestal should be embarrassed for taking seriously what is so plainly a stunt, for so obviously trying to signal their moral superiority over the unbelieving rubes, for flattering themselves as sages who recognize greatness. They should be ashamed for hitching themselves to the operators who are cashing in on the girl. They should be held to account for failing, or refusing, to recognize they are giving life to a cult, one that a mentally healthy society would have already turned back.

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