The Dutch Have Taken Holland
Douglas Wilson
I noticed the other day — as who could not? — that our president was
gathered with a bunch of world leaders in Paris, in order to deliver a
solemn warning to the world. This message, brought to us by our global
elites, was that we should let our global elites intervene to save us
all. It was kind of convenient because they were all present at the
conference already.I wrote the following in 2007, and have had no reasons since that time to in any way alter or diminish or refine or hedge my skepticism about climate change. But let us not dither with words like skepticism. I am as much of a denier as ever, and I think the whole charade is beyond funny. Let us call me a climate-derider.
We are ostensibly dealing with a rise of
greenhouse gases, but what we are really dealing with is an explosion of
statist and bureaucratic gases. All the problems that we are supposed
to be having with global warming are problems that can only be “solved”
by handing enormous power over to the state, or some international
ganglion of states. The statists are swarming, shrieking at the rest of
us. The debate is over, you idiot. To press the question any further is
treason said one of our pointy-headed solons the other day.
But there are three questions that still
need to be answered, maybe four. Okay, four questions need to be
answered before we resolve to do a blessed thing. The first question is
this: is global warming actually happening? Second, if it is, is man
causing it? Third, if it is happening, do we have any reason to suppose
that the effects of it would be bad for us? And last, if it is actually
happening, and it is bad, would the current proposals do anything to
halt it?
I answer the questions thusly. One,
maybe. These things cycle. Medieval Warming Period, and then the Little
Ice Age, and now this. So maybe. Second, no. Our contributions to global
CO2 come in around a whopping three percent of the total. And maybe CO2
isn’t the culprit in the first place. Maybe increased solar activity is
doing it. That a possibility? Third, why the nightmare scenarios?
Suppose this means that all our oranges will be the size of grapefruit
now? And the melting ice caps might provide drinking water for LA and
Phoenix. Why didn’t all the catastrophic AlGorithms happen during the
Medieval Warming Period? And last, no. Even if the blinkered Kyoto
Protocols were all implemented, it would make virtually no difference.
In the meantime, remember this. Greenhouse gases may or may not be your friend. But the statists never are.
Climate change is a sham. The science behind climate change is as dark as the inside of a nut. Climate change is an ersatz science, and therefore one that exudes dubiosity. The logical rigor of the climate change community has almost reached the levels of a ruminating cow staring at a turnip. Thus it is that I find myself in an imperfect sympathy with those whose solutions are all goose-steppy. The case for climate change has come unstuck, and it came unstuck as soon as somebody looked at it. I have seen all our important leaders fly to important places in their important jets, in order to plead with me to drive my fifteen-year-old truck a little bit less, and so it is that I, with more of a jubilant demeanor than was strictly speaking necessary, give them the old razz. When I say that our world leaders are a motley collection of statist perishers, I am being careful to use that noun in its deeper sense. When they propose things for all of us to do, I give all those proposals the cold storage eye. And if they keep this up, we will shortly descend to personalities.
Weather changes! Give us power! A storm happened! Make that plenipotentiary powers! A storm didn’t happen! We must act now! The Dutch have taken Holland!
But then, as if these ridiculosities were not enough of a wheeze, we must now add this. Climate change causes terrorism. We fight the terrorists by fighting climate change. When we opt out of having the hotel wash our towels every day, we are letting Abdul the bombmaker know that we are not going to let him take away our liberties. We are going to let somebody else do that.
We are a planet full of tall Dufflepuds. Water is powerful wet stuff.
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