For a long time it has been obvious to me, and to any thinking person, that the climate apocalypse scare would sooner or later collapse of its own absurdity. But how? And when?
During the past couple of weeks I have noted a few markers. Maybe you have noted others. Here are a few.
The latest of the big annual UN climate conferences, known as “COP” (Conference of Parties), this one number 30, took place this year in Belem, Brazil, from November 10 to 21. These COPs are the events where big international compacts have been agreed to that have supposedly committed the world to a rapid phase-out of fossil fuels, let alone to massive “climate” payments from the rich to the poor countries. It was at COP 21 in 2015 where the gigantic Paris Agreement was reached, supposedly committing all countries to big reductions of greenhouse gas emissions.
Well, were you even aware that this year’s COP 30 happened? In a piece today for the Civitas Institute, Steven Hayward notes that not one of the American television networks sent reporters to this year’s event. Coverage in the American print and online media was also dramatically reduced. Hayward writes, “A few reporters at the conference filed stories wondering whether this would be the last COP meeting.” The U.S. federal government did not send any representatives at all. Heads of state from China and India also skipped this Conference. Those two countries, which are the largest in the world by population, are in the process of rapid economic development based on energy from fossil fuels. They are not about to make any commitments to slow down that development, let alone stop it.
Also noted by Hayward in the same piece: growing troubles for the environmental groups promoting the climate apocalypse scare. The Sierra Club is in the middle of what might well be called an implosion. The New York Times reported the story on November 7. Excerpt:
The Sierra Club calls itself the “largest and most influential grass roots environmental organization in the country.” But it is in the middle of an implosion — left weakened, distracted and divided just as environmental protections are under assault by the Trump administration. The group has lost 60 percent of the four million members and supporters it counted in 2019. It has held three rounds of employee layoffs since 2022, trying to climb out of a $40 million projected budget deficit. . . . [T]his year, as the Trump administration returned better organized and better prepared than in its first term, the Sierra Club was the opposite. While Mr. Trump boosted coal power, canceled wind farms and rolled back pollution limits, the club was consumed by internal chaos, culminating when the board fired its executive director, Ben Jealous, a former president of the N.A.A.C.P.
And then there is 350.org. This organization is the baby of uber-climate-activist Bill McKibben, with the “350” supposedly designating some limit of ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere that must never be exceeded, or else . . . something may happen that they think is really, really scary. (The current level of CO2 in the atmosphere is approximately 424 ppm.). On November 13, even as COP 30 was going on, 350.org “suspended operations.” From Politico, November 13:
Environmental group 350.org, which spearheaded the movement to block the Keystone XL oil pipeline, will “temporarily suspend programming” in the U.S. and other countries amid funding woes, according to a letter obtained on Thursday by POLITICO. . . . The letter to outside organizations from Executive Director Anne Jellema said 350.org had suffered a 25 percent drop in income for its 2025 and 2026 fiscal years, compelling it to halt operations. The group will keep three U.S. staff members in hopes of reviving operations in the future.
How about the idea that use of fossil fuels was going to peak and then start going down as “renewable” wind and solar took over? That idea was always absurd. Big subsidies for wind and solar may enable those essentially useless energy sources to expand, but nothing about that prevents the continued parallel expansion of market-driven investments in hydrocarbons. Nevertheless the (largely clueless) International Energy Agency bought into the “peak oil” nonsense for years. A few days ago, the IEA reversed course and returned to reality. From Yahoo Finance, November 22:
The International Energy Agency (IEA) predicted in 2023 that the global peak in oil demand would likely take place by 2030, as governments worldwide introduced plans for a green transition and fossil fuel companies began to diversify their portfolios to include renewable alternatives. However, this month, the IEA has backtracked on this prediction, stating that oil demand could continue growing through to 2050. This reflects a U-turn by many countries on climate commitments and by oil and gas companies on energy diversification efforts.
Even at the Krazy Klimate Konference that I attended last week, the signs of a change of course were there to be observed, if not stated aloud. Sponsors of the Konference included National Grid and Williams Companies. National Grid is a UK-based entity that plays some role in running the UK grid; however, its name is misleading as to what it does in the U.S. The UK entity has purchased several utilities in the northeast U.S. One of those is the former Brooklyn Union Gas, a supplier of natural gas via pipelines in Brooklyn and Queens in New York City. Thus National Grid’s New York City business is threatened by the electrification mandates sought to be imposed by New York State and City. Meanwhile, Williams Companies is a pipeline developer that has been trying for many years to build a natural gas pipeline across New York Bay, over obstruction by the State government. The pipeline finally got approved a couple of weeks ago.
Anyway, the Krazy Klimate Konference had made slots for speakers from both National Grid and Williams Companies. The scheduled speaker from National Grid — its New York President, Sally Librera — did not show up, for unexplained reasons. The representative from Williams Companies, Liz Bowman, did show up and spoke. She talked proudly about the contribution of her company’s project to New York energy affordability and security, although never mentioning the contradiction between what Williams was doing versus the ambitions of all the crazy climate activists. While never stated explicitly, this was a big change from two years ago.
May the climate apocalypse continue to fade slowly into the rear view mirror.
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The Green Blob has a worse track record than some Millenarian preachers.
The Green Blob are Millenarian preachers…
not to mention losing the ultimate climate grifter and BFF with Epstein, Bill Gates – once you have lost Gates the battle is over
While it’s nice that all the supposed implosions are happening, I can’t help feeling that if Democratics win back control of the administration in the US, it will all ramp right back up. There’s too much at stake for these doomsayers (not climate, but money, control, and their stated goal of de-industrialization of the West) for them to go quietly.
Beat me to it.
The Dems have gone full looney tunes socialist/communism on the “this time will be different” theory and if given power they will plunge everyone back into equal misery.
The moderates Dems have lost. They need to desert and form their own party.
The moderate Dem’s need to vote Republican.
There are too many idiots who vote Dem because their parents voted Dem and their grandparents voted Dem. They don’t even consider the candidate or the issues, they’re not even aware. Splitting the party would make them choose.
And they vote Dem because they’ve contracted TDS.
A very good point, but needlessly specific.
«There are too many idiots who vote because their parents voted and their grandparents voted». See? Much better.
Moderate Republicans are known as RINOs and they are very bit as bad as Democrats on climate issues. Besides Trump and his cabinet, can you name a single Republican who has decried Climate Alarmunism? They’re as much on the take as Dems from shady solar/wind shysters and adverse to bad mouthing the graft. If not for Trump the collapse of COP, Nut Zero, and the climate con would not be happening.
‘…Ben Jealous, a former president of the N.A.A.C.P.’
What an appropriate name for what Lenin referred to as a useful idiot!
Son of the late He B. Jealous.
His mother was Gwyn Withenvy.
I’ll get my coat.
🙂
She was known for her synonym roll recipe.
The above comments were posted immediately after the commenters quaffed down 2 morning grande coffees each.
☕️☕️🥛🥛😵💫😵💫
The True Believers of the High Church of Climastrology; Apocalyptic, will continue to practice their fanatical religion even as their followers and donations plummet!
Like the whirling dervishes, they will continue to spin around in circles, much like their preferred power source; slaughtering birds, bats, and other living things. They even appear to be taking a page from the Hashishim Handbook; happily threatening to kill those who disagree, while puffing away vapidly on their medicinal Muse!
Follow the money……down.
Following the money leads to high-energy consumption interests such as data centers and AI. The Big Bucks Boys can no longer pretend that sunbeams and breezes can feed their fortunes.
Winning is fun. We can only hope it continues!
And we have recordings and press releases from the COP meetings to terminate the careers of the political elite losers.
And I hope and feel certain that WUWT helped push things along, to aid in the demise of the climate industrial complex.
So much success, I’m getting slightly dizzy with all the wonderful news.
They may try, but they’ll never turn this spigot back on. What started as a tragedy has turned into the theater of the absurd. The scam has been outed and too many people will remember the folly for “them” to try and revive it again. What is disturbing is in the end politics/economics won …. not science. Those who controlled the narrative and the media almost won.
Two words… Ed Miliband.
He is a true believer- and in post.
“Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming is dead.
Not from new data; the old data never supported it.
It survived 35 years as equal parts political weapon and secular apocalypse cult.
Future generations will study CAGW the way we study tulip mania or witch trials: ‘How did they believe this?’”
If we’re lucky AI models will be cleaned of advocacy rubbish by then to remind us of how climate cycles were banned during that dark ages of science under that high priest Nobel laureate Al Gore.
Ideally, enough AI hubs will be up and running that their owners will ensure that there is no return to the renewables folly.
Please note that Climate Change is the stated problem, Net Zero is the stated solution. The fact that Net Zero is totally impracticable does not mean that CC is wrong (even thoug it is). Having started to kill Net Zero, we must ramp up the efforts to show that CC is rubbish.
Because if the voters still believe in CC, they’ll vote for the Dems, who by then will have a “better” solution.
Unfortunately, yes. When the choice is to learn from the past or to be smug about imaginary superiority, the crowd goes for smugness every time. And an old thimble-rig works perfectly, all it takes replacing containers and rebranding it as “cup-rig”.
Amen. It is about time. Isn’t it also true the investment companies are getting out of the renewable energy portfolios? Kind of like rats jumping ship.
The House of Cards is starting to crumble.
It wasn’t merely bad science; it was perfect politics: an invisible threat, infinite price tag, global jurisdiction, permanent emergency.
The greatest blank cheque ever written to technocracy.
Future historians will just call it what it was: the longest-running con of the modern era.
Or scam or hoax. They might even quote Trump’s UN speach.
The climate apocalypse was always psychotic paranoid delusion. It’s a demonstration of how gullible and easily manipulated humans are. That is the biggest threat to freedom.
“ and to any thinking person “
A minority, then!
“For a long time it has been obvious to me, and to any thinking person, that the climate apocalypse scare would sooner or later collapse of its own absurdity. But how? And when?”
Inshallah
When you list the signs of the demise of the climate scam don’t froget these. Election of Trump, appointment of Chris Wright as head of DOE and apex was Trumps speach to the UN.
By their own admissions by the original conspirators, the climate stuff was always just a plank to use for platforming useful idiots who already shared or were readily recruited to the “WORLD GOVERNANCE” agenda.
Too clever by half, and ending in failure & retreat just like all such similar “cunning plans” worthy of Baldrick’s astonishing intellect.
Extracting a comment from the MC version of this Francis Menton article:
SD Kanyr on Manhattan Contrarian said: “Not too many moons ago the renewables crowd promised pollution free, low cost electricity 24/7/365. In the private sector, it is common to build demonstration plants to prove out new technology, design, costs, etc. before large scale investment. I have watched hundreds of billions of subsidies poured into wind and solar. I have not found one demonstration project to show that renewables with energy storage can provide cost effective electricity. Can anyone identify somewhere on planet earth where renewable plus energy storage is providing cost effective electricity?”
My response on the MC blog to SD Kanyr was this:
Wind and solar + battery RE feasibility demonstrations of the kind Francis Menton is advocating depend upon the presence of large volumes of energy storage for demonstration success.
On the other hand, wind and solar advocates say that the wind is always blowing somewhere, the sun is always shining somewhere, and so we don’t need ultra-huge volumes of battery storage to create a mostly renewable energy power grid for the United States.
But if you live in a place where the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining; e.g., in a place like upstate New York in January, then where specifically are those ‘somewheres’ where the wind is always blowing and the sun is always shining, at least during daylight hours? How does that wind and solar-generated electricity get transmitted from that ‘somewhere’ way over there to this ‘somewhere’ right over here?
The problem with doing a feasibility demonstration based on Mark Jacobsen’s vision for a nationwide wind & solar power grid — one which doesn’t rely on ultra-huge volumes of battery storage — is that for an electricity grid in a nation as large as the United States, the RE infrastructure must be rapidly installed everywhere in every state and region, all at the same time and at that same rapid pace.
The technical feasibility of a Jacobsen Vision Grid (JVG) — not the economic feasibility — can be demonstrated on paper with an RE engineering-level feasibility design for the entire United States as a whole, based on an assumption that fossil and nuclear generation in the US can be rapidly phased out in a decade or less.
Pencil-whipping such an ‘all-of-the-nation’ RE engineering feasibility design for the US as a whole would require enormously optimistic assumptions concerning project cost and schedule.
The reason we haven’t seen a detailed RE engineering feasibility design of this kind is that it would expose the enormous upfront costs and enormous project risks of getting from here to there while doing all the project work rapidly and simultaneously everywhere in every state and region, all at the same time.
Very good.
Very nice Francis, people are slowly waking up. It’s a good thing.
During the past couple of weeks I have noted a few markers. Maybe you have noted others.
Coming thick and fast now after the absence of any offshore wind tenderers to try and get around the onshore pushback-
Farmers outraged after wind turbines forced on their land are riddled with asbestos
Catch22 for the watermelons having trained everyone to be NIMBYs with development and the environment and the fickles need plenty of it.
Here lies an ideology, based on lies and fed by crooks, charlatans and those unable or unwilling to think for themselves.Supporters claimed they were “saving the planet” while those opposed called it “The greatest Con of all time”. It turned out the detractors were right. Let this serve as a lesson to the future of mankind: Beware of false ideologies. They are dangerous to Truth, Science, and all Mankind.
Climate Change is just a Pet Rock fad on steroids.