Rajendra Pachauri—chairman of the IPCC, railway engineer, and the man who penned these words, “Sanjay saw a shapely dark-skinned girl lying on Vinay’s bed. He was overcome by a lust that he had never known before…He removed his clothes and began to feel Sajni’s body, caressing her voluptuous breasts”—is on his heels (flats, presumably).
First was climategate—pow!—then came revelations of the tarting up of the melting Himalayan glaciers—bam!—then it turned out that money changed hands—sock!—then we learned the Amazon’s jungle situation is not desperate as claimed—wham!—then it was revealed Pachauri has a penchant for penning porn—fwap!—then…
One more blow (keep it out of the gutter!) and our esteemed IPCC chair will be out. Actually, the Guardian has reported Pachauri has received a “fresh blow” after “he failed to get the backing of the British government.”
And that is how it usually starts. Resignations, I mean. If Pachauri was, say, an employee of NASA or the UK Met Office, he would already have been booted, forced out and left to spend the remainder of his days writing things like this: “Sandy, I’ve learned something for the first time today. You are absolutely superb after meditation. Why don’t we make love every time immediately after you have meditated?”
But our man works for the UN where, we have speculated, scandal is so endemic that it must be mandatory. Another skeleton, perhaps two, will have to be found before sufficient pressure exists for Pachauri to go. Given the pace of recent revelations, this should not take too long.
And when he goes, there will be a celebration among skeptics, who will have the feeling of something done, something accomplished. Joy will make a brief appearance.
But keep the celebration short. The UN is like the Borg. As one apparatchik-drone falls, another rises immediately to take its place. The replacement will just as relentlessly, though perhaps with a short-lived smile upon his face, tout the “seriousness” of global warming. Resistance is useless. You will be assimilated.
The 2007 IPCC document reported that there was a “90% chance” that humans were causing the observed warming. In the manner of sports fanatics, this “90%” was everywhere changed to “110%”—anything less implied squeamishness and lack of team spirit—but if it turns out that it should have been “30%” or even “10%”, the public presence of global warming will not go away.
Like a glacier flowing down a hill, money moves slowly. Apply the heat and the flow increases, but, as we all know by now, not by that much. The mass of money devoted to global warming is humongous. Even if the supply of fresh coin is cut off, it will take years and years for the current source to deplete itself. And since the amount of money directly and positively correlates with the level of public “awareness”, it will be a long time before memories fade.
Take scientists working in the field. Their grants run anywhere from two to five years. That money won’t be revoked and will be spent. Research will still be conducted, reports and papers will still be written. Continuation grants will be submitted—universities lust for the overhead dollars that are tacked onto these grants and cannot live without them.
Too, plenty of papers are present in the pipeline. Depending on the journal, these can take a year to appear. The next IPCC report will invariably say that “it’s worse than we thought” but for not yet awhile. It will suggest more money be spent.
And how often do you hear of a scientist changing his mind? We all remember the words of Max Planck: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”
The NGOs who currently bask in the warming will not go gentle into that good night. They will not suffer their funding to be cut off. Look for them to increase the frequency of their missives. Negative adjective use in their ads will rise by 42% a year. Tempers will flare, even as the sun does not (who doesn’t love a bad pun?).
Politicians, always the quickest to discern the zeitgeist and sniff out trends, while they might deemphasize “climate change” will shift their rhetoric to “environmental justice.”
In five words, global warming is big business. It is too big to fail.
Have you noticed? The proponents of AGW are not the beautiful people. They are not even the plain people. They are, sad to say and even sadder to observe, the butt-ugly people.
This is so true and obvious, and yet nobody mentions it, out of politeness I suppose, but really when has politeness been part of this debate? Let’s call a spade a spade, and a goat a goat.
Rajendra resembles a goat, Algore a fatted hog, Hansen a toad, etc. And the women of AGW? Not going to be featured in Playboy, I can tell you that. Maybe in Field and Steam.
So when Raj spills his fantasies on the world, you can be assured they are fantasies. Ditto the rest of them. In fact, the entire AGW fantasy is rooted in deep sexual frustration, pathological feelings of sexual inadequacy.
Somebody should do a study, The Psychology of Apocalypsism. It’s Freudian, and not in a healthy way.
I meant Field and Stream. Or Bovine World. But seriously, there is some kind of neurotic pathology going on with people who contend the End is Nigh.
Uncle Mike,
Field and Steam? Freudian slip! Freudian slip!
I like Field and Steam better. But my local newstand has stopped carrying it. I can still get all the copies of Field and Stream that I want, but I get tired of looking at the pictures of Al Gore, Michael Mann, Gavin Schmidt, and Raj Pachauri. Phewww!
@Mike D: Are you suggesting a AGW Calender?
I thought Sarah Palin already had pictures in field and stream. Those other people wouldn’t stand a chance unless field and stream has an affirmative action program or an ugly contest.
I don’t want you to be right. The business-as-usual scenario does not sit well with me. AGW was a terrific fraud that sucked up uncountable dollars and precious time (not only of the so-called scientists, non-scientist academics and policymakers, K-12 teachers, and politicians, but also the media, and unwitting public). I want to see some contrition and maybe a few tears, and a few more resignations. I would love to see grants/contracts pulled if methods are suspect and results are fraudulent, especially if we are talking about the public till (this doesn’t have to happen immediately, but at the stage where yearly funding is awarded). I would love to hear some apologies. I would love the Nobel committee to revoke the IPCC’s prize. (I envision a special ceremony where everyone has to turn in their lapel pins.)
After being told for years and years, by so-called friends, family members, and co-workers that I am some kind of special fool for not buying whole-cloth what the warmers were selling, I think I should get something, even if just a little satisfaction. With your scenario, there is none.
The local public TV channel has been running video-taped lectures by AGW alarmists. They are not only plug ugly people — they are hysterical crazies. There has got to be some psychological connection there, a pathology if you will.
So when Rajendra pens a bodice-ripper, I have to think it’s not merely about making some coin on the side. He’s displaying some classic animal behavior: beta-male.
Is apocalypsism an emergent behavior of those who are losers in the great Darwinian passion play? Their DNA is not getting replicated, so they kind of go off the deep end?
A good analysis and sadly very true.
Politicians, always the quickest to discern the zeitgeist and sniff out trends, while they might deemphasize “climate change†will shift their rhetoric to “environmental justice.â€
If you want to know how far greenies have gone in capturing the warming debate listen to this:
Politicians, always the quickest to discern the zeitgeist and sniff out trends, while they might deemphasize “climate change†will shift their rhetoric to “environmental justice.â€
Leave aside that the guy believes in AGW, he really lays in to greenies who don’t care about curing warming but just want something to beat us all up with.
When I first read about Pachauri’s steamy novel I imagined warming, writhing bodies encouraged by his writing creating ever more heat to fuel climate change and wondered if someone would report him for ‘incitement to warming’ then I woke up and realised that is only 2010 and the Climate Police don’t have that legislation in their notebooks (yet).
Of course ‘Reframing’ is already happening.
“….by advocating that climate change should not be defined as a pollution problem that requires additional regulation but as an energy problem that provides an opportunity for growing the economy and creating jobs around clean technology. This reframing moves the debate beyond a narrow constituency of environmental advocates and opens the doors for a broader climate movement that includes labor, business leaders, and the investor class. The frame was a major emphasis by both presidential candidates in the past election, is emphasized in Al Gore’s “Repower America†television ads, and continues to be a dominant focus of the Obama administration.”
Quote from Matthew C. Nisbet here: http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/is_there_a_better_word_for_doom/
Arrghh – save us!
Dream on, Katie, as if a gigantic “mea culpa” moment could ever occur. Public schools are still, today, indoctrinating that “religion” in Kindergardeners. Matt is right:
. It will be at least four generations before some type of tipping point is reached, I fear, and in the meantime we will all continue to be ridiculed as “deniers”. It’s the scientific method, you know.
What does Mike D. have against outdoor magazines? Methinks he confuses an interest in the ability to find food and sustenance in the wild with the art of tastefully applying cosmetics.
WAY too negative, brother. The average person is way smarter than even you think. The play is done, the scam is over, if only because of the financial crisis.
“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.†Years ago I read about a paper where someone looked into the evidence for Planck’s Pontification, and found that he was wrong. Those must have been the days when scepticism was allowed.