He didn’t mention his own contributions to this outcome, intervening in the early Obama years to turn climate policy into an excuse for protectionist pork barrel, with no real effect on climate. Nor his green hyperventilation that guaranteed real climate action would become a polarizing dead letter.
The climate press proved the point, amid his Devos Vaudeville act, by collapsing critically in front of a newly-released “Harvard” study sponsored by the activists at the Rockefeller Family Fund allegedly revealing that Exxon 40 years ago predicted today’s warming with astonishing accuracy.
In fact, ExxonMobil’s results were identical to those of other scientists because it collaborated with them. Its findings weren’t hidden “behind closed doors,” as one report alleged. They were published in peer-reviewed journals. Rather blatantly, to get to its desired result, the study had to attribute to Exxon outside research that its scientists merely reported.
Studies like this one sponsored by Rockefeller and served up by provocateurs at the Harvard history department and Germany’s PIK – Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research exist to exploit media shallowness. They wouldn’t exist otherwise.
No matter. After 40 years, the IPCC has made real progress on the uncertainty puzzle, narrowing the consensus range of likely climate outcomes—thus reducing the estimated risk of worst-case warming. The upshot is that it significantly uprates the likelihood that human society will weather the expected changes handily. This is progress.
In the meantime, though, thanks to Rockefeller, Gore and others, we ended up with bad policy—spending trillions to have no effect on climate. Our obsessive focus on green energy subsidies pleases many constituents but incentivizes more energy consumption overall. The human appetite for energy, after all, is limitless if the price is right.
To Sum It Up 1: Climate policy is effectively over and that’s probably fine. The energy machine will certainly incorporate new technologies, including renewables. There won’t be a major shift in emissions from the path they would have taken anyway.
To Sum It Up 2: Gore will continue his angry prophet act. Politics will continue to fuel a pork scramble. The climate press will continue to crank out its compliant drivel. And humanity will adapt to the climate it gets, which the best current guess says will probably be another 1 to 2 C warmer over the next century.
