I am not trying to twist the IPCC’s meaning. It clearly acknowledges that an acceleration (and a slight acceleration at that) in global warming is not certain and if it occurs at all, it will not be solely due to human activities
The Green Terror grips Canada. Everyone can agree that environmental pollution should be combated and everyone can agree that maximum vigilance should be exercised to deduce what climate changes are occurring and to determine the appropriate response.
But in enunciating these unexceptionable points and stopping there, I lay myself open to immense obloquy as a climate denier, though I am not denying anything for which there is evidence. Historians of the future will wring their hands in wonderment that we have succumbed to a cultic madness, and elevated its most strident or spectacular espousers to a position of totalitarian intellectual authority.
Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old Swedish schoolgirl, tours the world like an atheistic St. Joan of Arc, high priestess of the evangelizing religion of climatism, transmitting her Revelations. She is actually preaching from the latest report of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a group that has had serious intermittent problems of credibility, with dire predictions that have simply not come to pass.
Ms. Thunberg’s message is that we, the adults of the world, have betrayed the youth by destroying their future through climate negligence. The image of the innocent child is powerful, and she carries it off very professionally.
And the Apocalypse is the time-honoured climax of terror. The crusade includes elements of repentance and sacrifice, and the ideal standard is the pristine Earth, before any human spoliation. It is quick to identify and scourge heretics. And like most such movements, it becomes more thunderously prophetic and vengeful, adding the moral terror of damnation to the conjured threat of the Apocalypse, especially as the apocalypse doesn’t seem to be getting closer.
For the rest of this column: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/conrad-black-the-ipcc-isnt-quite-as-apocalyptic-as-greta-thunberg