Eulogy?
Thoughts on the death of this particular incarnation of "climate science": In the hours before his seizure at the Hôtel de Ville, Maximilian Robespierre was either shot by Charles-André Merda or shot himself in a suicide attempt. In either case, his jaw was left in tatters which, as one might imagine, greatly reduced the prospects that his legendary skill at oration would moderate his increasingly dire predicament. Indeed, he was, of course, eventually executed.
To give the blade of the guillotine an unobstructed fall, the executioner tore away the paper bandage that had been holding his jaw together.... Animal screams of pain escaped, silenced only by the falling blade."1
Given recent rumors that one of the cabal's own at University of East Anglia may have leaked the now famous "CRU emails," this bit of history occurred to me as an apt comparison. That this might be a self-inflicted wound would be an irony too sublimely cruel not to delight in as a guilty pleasure.
How even more deliciously ironic would it be if, in their lustful, Dr. Hendronsian2 self-aggrandizing rush to be the first to save the planet from the Neomalthusian horrors of free market economies, Phil Jones and Keith Briffa have stunted the world into inaction and indecision by disastrously overplaying their hand and, in the unlikely event that the Earth's climate is in fact characterized by unchecked positive feedback systems, thus doomed the human race.
The schadenfreude gripped cynic absolutely delights at the possibilities (before returning to weightier matters within the realm of her control).
Despite a plethora of frantic, even crazed apologetics (careers, lives and billions in grant money are, after all, at stake) the wound, like Robespierre's, may ultimately prove fatal. Further utterances of support from climate scientists have been neatly reduced to animal screams of pain. Correct or not, nothing proponents of catastrophic global warming say carries much weight just now. The recent shot to the jaw has crippled their legendary skill at oration and the mob, now deprived of the safe comfort of conformity, has quite mercurially turned on them. He who builds on the people....
Still, just now, we have but torn Robespierre's bandage. The gathering crowd around the scaffold eagerly and with great apprehension now awaits the application of the blade.
- 1. Schama, Simon, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution, 1990.
- 2. Those finem respice readers who have not yet availed themselves of a viewing of Rudolph Maté's 1951 classic "When Worlds Collide" (soon returning to a theater near you as a Stephen Sommers monstrosity- who funds these projects?) would do well to treat themselves to a late night showing. While the reverse ski ramp rocket launcher is a "must see," it is the parallels to the present farce that are too perfect to be entirely accidental. To wit: "David Randall is a carefree ladies man and skilled pilot who finds he has been let in on the greatest and most terrible secret in the world when he is paid to deliver some mysterious pictures from one eminent astronomer to another. The recipient, Dr. Hendron, confirms the awful findings of the sender: the planet [Bellus] will collide with Earth and wipe out all of humanity. Despite widespread disbelief [the scene at the United Nations is cut right out of Gore b-roll] two philanthropists give Dr. Hendron some of the money he needs to build a rocket ship that will, at least theoretically, take them to Zyra, which may or may not be habitable for humans. The rest of the money comes from Sydney Stanton, a wheelchair-bound old man, who insists he come along, despite the severe limitations on the number of passengers and amount of cargo. Meanwhile, as doomsday approaches, Randall is surprised to find himself in a love triangle with Dr. Hendron's daughter and her fiancé. Humanity is in peril, and only a modern-day Noah's ark, and the continued need of a man for a woman, can save it." Is perhaps Al Gore playing the real life version of David Randall? If so we can only hope that, like Richard Derr, who played Randall in the original, Gore will eventually "move into character work and spend the remainder of his career in atmospheric authoritarian roles on film and TV," saving the joy of modern day renditions of programs like Barnaby Jones, Mannix, Starsky and Hutch, and, of course Cannon for the next generation before moving into a vaguely successful streak of real-estate speculation in California. One wonders who is playing the wheelchair-bound Sydney Stanton in today's real-life version.
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