There seems to have been something missing from the just concluded Glasgow Conference: seriousness.  You can stage only so much political theater before the audience realizes that it's just play-acting.  Even the highest-ranking representative of the United States was unable to stay awake during the presentations.  Whoever coined the phrase "virtue-signaling" should get a Nobel Prize...but I'm sure he won't.

In addition to monetary inflation, we are now compelled to suffer through word inflation.  "Crisis" is the word.  "Climate crisis" is apparently everywhere — in the sky, in the oceans, yadda, yadda.  And yet, the weather seems pretty normal — nothing to get excited about.  This constant drumbeat of histrionic fear-mongering has by now lost much of its impact, yet they just can't stop badgering us with their nonsense.  One would expect that last winter's extraordinary cold spell that hit Texas and some of the rest of the Old South would've dampened the zeal of the climate activists.  But no such luck.

Another word that has had its meaning distorted is "science."  I learned the scientific method in grade school.  First, you have a hypothesis, sort of an educated guess.  After some due diligence, it can become a theory — as long as it doesn't early on appear to be totally bogus.  Then, after much more work and peer review, it can be established as a principle.  Even then, some principles will still eventually crash and burn.  A friend who used to teach zoology at a major university once complained to me that students have difficulty grasping the continuing presence of the unknown.  They somehow expected to find valid answers to all questions.  He would tell them that that's why there's still research going on at universities and elsewhere.  Professors and graduate students are still writing dissertations and uncovering new knowledge, which often leads to even more unanswered questions.

Just to inject a little perspective into all of this, we are living in an interstitial warm period that is formally known as the Holocene.  It began about 10,000 years ago, which is fairly recent for geological time.  The previous ice age was called the Pleistocene, and it lasted 2.5 million years.  There were some warm periods during the Pleistocene, as there have also been a few cold periods during the Holocene.  Specifically why this happens is still anybody's guess.

On top of it all, the proposed solutions to this, at best, theoretical problem are mostly pointless, if not gratuitously harmful.  All that electric cars can offer is to further increase demand on the electrical grid, 80% of which is supplied by fossil fuels and uranium.  The typical gas tank holds a lot more energy than a lithium battery and is much quicker to "recharge."  Europeans, in their obsession with "renewables," are importing gobs of scrap wood from North America to use as boiler fuel for electrical generation.  Fortunately, since digital imaging has drastically reduced the demand for paper, there are plenty of available trees.  The utopian paradise of Berkeley, California has adopted a "point of sale" ordinance requiring home sellers to upgrade their properties to state-of-the-art energy efficiency.  The obligation can be passed onto the new owner, but only once.  Either way, it's a serious financial hit, since a lot of Berkeley's housing stock is from the early 20th century or even older.  This all brings to mind my virtual bumper sticker: "We May Not Be Able to Save the Planet — But We Can at Least Lower the Quality of Life."

As this is being written, the Glasgow tent is being folded.  The big news is that they backed away from "pledging" to eliminate coal as an energy source in favor of just reducing dependence on it.  India is being pilloried as the villain in this move, but China had to have been quietly applauding.  The head of the United Dictatorships...er, I mean United Nations, António Guterres, went beyond "crisis" and referred to a "climate catastrophe."  Outside Glasgow, they were rolling in the aisles.

Image via Pxhere.

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