Rex Murphy: The High Church of Global Warming - Priceless

Rex Murphy, National Post

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, right, walks with advisors at
the Paris climate conference

As this edition of the Post hits the stands, the great Conclave of Catastrophists in Paris will have concluded. The last goose will gladly have surrendered its swollen liver — foie gras does not come without exertion — to the last epicure environmentalist. We have been told that the French did not stint on lending all the arts of its fabled cuisine to assist the Great Deliberators. State dinners took on something of the largesse and abundance last recorded by Gibbon in his descriptions of the Emperor Heliogabalus, who is reputed to have served up the tongues of hummingbirds, peacock brains and mice sauteed in honey, to the jaded appetites of his decadent court.

The reference here to far earlier times is not accidental or flip. Just as in the early centuries of Christianity, when the patristic Fathers struggled with various heresies and sought to stabilize the dogmas of the then-nascent Faith, held their great Councils to parse the finer points of esoteric doctrine, the Parisian analogue gave itself over to even more subtle ruminations: whether, for example, it was best to “commit” to ensuring the planet’s temperature doesn’t rise more than 1.5 degrees by the year 2100, or whether it was best merely to hold the thermometer to a more expansive two degrees.

How much mental energy must have been expanded over that winsome 0.5 degrees, 80 years down the road? The subtleties involved, the logical intricacies deployed, would have outpaced Aquinas and sent poor Augustine to bed early with a migraine. However, the modern monks of the High Church of Global Warming have resources that the early philosophers and theologians could not even dream of — they have computer models that dance in the direction wished of them.

Paris climate talks enter overtime as diplomats clash over cost of fighting global warming
And when what they deliciously refer to as the “settled science” does not serve their needs, they have always about them the ancient texts of Earth in the Balance by Reverend Al Gore, or the early press releases of the Dun Scotus of Global Warming, Cardinal Emeritus George Monbiot.

And where the scholiasts of old, wrestling with imperfect transcriptions and dubious translations of Holy Scripture had only prayer to guide them on the knotty questions of global warming — such as how many polar bears can dance on the edge of an ice floe — the priests of Climatology can always consult the Oracles of Greenpeace and the Sierra Club; or when in deeper need — say on the relationship between the decline of the coral reefs and bovine flatulence — refer to the obiter dicta of Bishops Tutu or Suzuki, on which matters such authorities speak with a Truth beside which that of Scripture is a mere contrail.

Not having been in Paris myself, I cannot speak of how they marked the end of their tormented consultations, whether they wafted a few puffs of invisible carbon dioxide over the steeple of the Eiffel Tower, or burnt a few outdated physics texts to mark the beginning of the new era their meeting signified. But they surely could not have ended without pointing to the example — the evidence-based example I should stress — of what happens when governments take the Dogma of New Green seriously.

If one wishes to learn the true value of what a commitment

 to the New Learning actually involved, then Ontario is both laboratory and experiment

The experience of Ontario, as underscored by the very timely report of its auditor general — released as the great Throng was chewing over these very questions — had to have been an inspiration and a comfort. For Ontario provides, as it were, a case-study of what happens to reason and policy when a government truly gives itself over to the new Meditations. Ontario as all the world knows went Green with fervour, with former premier Dalton McGuinty and his successor, Premier Kathleen Wynne, fancying themselves something of the Copernicus and Tycho Brahe of the New Green Learning. And was it not learned from the auditor general that their great dive into a solar and wind powered future has cost the innocent citizens of Ontario a mere $37 billion more than it should have, which could give rise to another, extra $133 billion by 2032?

If one wishes to learn the true value of what a commitment to the New Learning actually involved, then Ontario is both laboratory and experiment. By what fraction of a degree did the world’s temperature actually lower itself — was it 0.01 per cent, 0.001 per cent or any fractional mite in between? — for that $37 billion?

Could it even be — Heresy of Heresies — that maybe the global temperature moved not at all, or — Good Gore, save us — went upwards? We cannot know, for it is the nature of this subject that substantive answers are never possible nor welcome. When dealing with the “airy subtleties” of the new Faith, we must settle for ignorance, but as long as it is for the Great Cause, as long as 50,000 can jet to Paris, Rio or Beijing annually, who cares that we have no certainty? As long as the faith holds, there is no call for certainties.

Save the one more important than all the rest: the idea that the vastly imperfect governments of this world, who between them cannot guarantee anything six months out, can speak with serene confidence on the Whole Atmosphere of our Great Dynamic Planet nearly 100 years from now?

I do not wish to end on a cynical turn here. There has been on undeniable improvement wrought from this great Conclave. St. Leonardo di Caprio, patron spirit of The Yachts of the Monaco Basin, learned for the first time this week that there is such a thing as a chinook. So we now know that there is a least one fact in that well-photographed head of his, and that probably makes it superior to many of those other heads that met so urgently in Paris.

National Post

Controversial UN Climate Panel Chief in the Spotlight Again - Steps Down

NEW DELHI: Rajendra Pachauri, industrial engineer-turned head of the UN’s climate science panel and one-off sex novel author, who stepped down as the head of the UN’s climate science panel, is no stranger to accolades — nor to controversy.

At his peak, the now 74-year-old Indian accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the policy-shaping body he heads, and was showered with national honours and honorary doctorates.

On Tuesday he stood down as head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) following allegations that he sexually harassed a 29-year-old woman researcher from the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), the Delhi think tank he heads.

The allegations had forced the bearded father-of-three, who denies any wrongdoing, to pull out of a four-day conference at a highly sensitive time, with the global community preparing to ink a planet rescue pact in December.

Rajendra Pachauri - IPCC head steps down

That deal will be largely informed by the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, a summary of the latest climate science.

It warns that on current greenhouse gas-emission trends the world is on track for double the UN goal of limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), resulting in devastating floods, droughts and rises in sea level.

Pachauri, a vocal advocate of tough action against global warming, has had many career ups and downs, and this is not the first time he has faced public scrutiny.

He had to weather calls for his resignation after gross errors were found in a landmark IPCC report, and faced widespread ridicule for an attempt at erotic literature.

In 2007 he held aloft the Nobel jointly awarded to the IPCC under his chairmanship, and to former US vice president-turned climate campaigner Al Gore.

That was instead of giving it to Irena Sendlar (right) the brilliant and courageous, young, Polish woman who rescued 2500 Jewish babies and children from Nazi Warsaw's ghetto at great risk. And, indeed, had both of her legs broken by the Gestapo when she was finally caught.
But what's 2500 lives compared to some shaky science by a man of questionable integrity and a politician.

But three years later Pachauri was mired in controversy when errors were found in the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report.

An erroneous claim that Himalayan glaciers could be lost by 2035 was allegedly taken from a press article instead of a scientific study. Or maybe he got it from Al Gore??!!

Pachauri refused to accept personal responsibility for the error and rejected pressure to step down, claiming “ideologically-driven posturing” was behind attacks on the IPCC.

An international review at the time called for fundamental reforms at the IPCC, including an overhaul of the post of chairman which Pachauri first took up in 2002.

Some critics have questioned where his loyalties lay, given his business dealings with carbon trading companies.

According to a CV on the TERI website, Pachauri had during his IPCC tenure also served on the boards of India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corporation and natural gas company GAIL. No conflict there...Pfft!

Educated in Britain and the United States, where he earned doctorates in industrial engineering and economics, Pachauri is a sustainable development veteran.

But his critics, who once included Gore, stress that he has no science qualifications.

An avid cricket fan and vegetarian, Pachauri has said his focus on the health of our planet came from his childhood in India’s Himalayan foothills — not far from some of the glaciers that have since blemished his career.

“It was so beautiful and unpolluted when I was a child,” he told AFP in 2007. “One saw the beauty of nature at its most pristine. It gets into your soul and you don’t lose that.”

Having penned more than 130 academic papers and nearly 27 books, mainly related to energy and the environment, Pachauri generated warming of a different kind when he tried his hand at creative writing with the 2010 novel Return to Almora.

The offering is laced with steamy references to the sexual urges of protagonist Sanjay Nath who, like Pachauri, studied engineering.

He has hinted that the book, which interweaves themes of reincarnation with breathless accounts of Nath’s carnal prowess, may be based on his own life.

His very appointment was controversial. Pachauri was regarded as a compromise candidate to replace the outspoken British-American scientist Bob Watson whom sources claimed was forced out by the climate-sceptic Bush administration.

Pachauri’s second consecutive six-year term as IPCC chairman had been due to end in October, just weeks before the Paris conference.

The IPCC said vice-chair Esmail Al Gizouli would take over as acting chair.