“Momentous social movements begin to die the moment adherents figure out their leaders don’t believe what they say”, By Doug Sheridan

“ For three decades you were labeled a crank and a “climate denier” if you didn’t embrace the belief that life on earth faces imminent extinction from “global warming” and, later, “climate change.”

Martin Swaim writes in the WSJ, momentous social movements begin to die the moment adherents figure out their leaders don’t believe what they say. For three decades you were labeled a crank and a “climate denier” if you didn’t embrace the belief that life on earth faces imminent extinction from “global warming” and, later, “climate change.”

The notion that climate ideology was alarmist should have been obvious. For many, it was. The conclusions of genuine scientific inquiry rarely reinforce the social and political biases of power brokers and influencers, but climate science did exactly that. Science purported to discover foreboding trends in inscrutable data and assured us the only way to arrest them was to do what our liberal cultural elites wanted to do anyway—amass political and economic power in the hands of credentialed technocrats, supposedly for the good of all.

The ordinary person, though lacking familiarity with the latest peer-reviewed science, wasn’t wrong to regard the whole business with skepticism. Their suspicions were further aroused by contemplating the sheer immensity of the data required to confirm the conclusions asserted by climate science and its media champions. And how were scientists really so confident they knew what political and economic measures would mitigate the theoretical apocalypse they inferred from these mountains of data?

What has finally convinced ordinary people that the doomsayers are wrong isn’t any interpretation of the climate figures. It is the palpable sense that very few of the doomsayers actually believe what they say.

To wit, why aren’t moguls and corporate execs who claim to be unnerved by the predictions of climate science giving up their carbon-heavy lifestyles? If progressive VIPs in media, politics and entertainment believe sea levels are ready to rise precipitously, why do they keep buying properties in Martha’s Vineyard, Bar Harbor, Provincetown, Santa Monica and Malibu?

The climate lobby can wave aside these questions if it wishes but appeals to reports and studies weigh little against the appearance of such insincerity. If activists predicting global mayhem really believe what they predict, they would favor an instant transition to zero-emission nuclear power. But they mostly don’t.

Climate catastrophism has begun to die... the victim of its apostles’ unbelief.

Our Take 1: The post-Paris Agreement rush to view all decisions through a climate-change lens was always destined to backfire. No group had a bigger hand in it than the scientific community. Instead of staying in their lane, they tried to dictate policy on the economy, energy, society, etc. But they lack the expertise and license to do so—and the public know it.

Take 2: Too naïve to know liberal politicians and the media deceived them into twisting truth, scientists have lost the public's trust. Sadly, it may take a generation for the field to recover, if it even can.