Fear and loathing at DJI

Mostly just loathing, though. A deep-seeded resentment that one little movie was able to boot the climate charlatans who for decades now have offered "the other side" of the "climate debate" from the media.

The media will be tempted to blur the fact that his medal, which Mr. Gore will collect on Monday in Oslo, isn't for "science." In fact, a Nobel has never been awarded for the science of global warming. Even Svante Arrhenius, who first described the "greenhouse" effect, won his for something else in 1903. Yet now one has been awarded for promoting belief in manmade global warming as a crisis.

Like a pouty little child on a wild-west reality show: that isn't even a real gold star!

Here's exactly the problem that availability cascades pose: What if the heads being counted to certify an alleged "consensus" arrived at their positions by counting heads?

MEMEMEMEME...I can't hear you!

Now let's suppose a most improbable, rhapsodic lobbying success for Mr. Gore, Mr. Khosla and folks on their side of the table--say, a government mandate to replace half the gasoline consumed in the U.S. with a carbon-neutral alternative. This would represent a monumental, $400 billion-a-year business opportunity for the green energy lobby. The impact on global carbon emissions? Four percent--less than China's predicted emissions growth over the next three or four years.

Four Hundred Billion? Why that would bring our twelve trillion dollar economy to its knees! The socialist enviro-whackos would have succeeded where the commies failed: destruction of the very pillars of our society! We can't let the evil ones win. We must...hype the consequences of lowered emissions!

Public opinion cascades are powerful but also fragile--liable to be overturned in an instant when new information comes along. The current age of global warming politics will certainly end with a whimper once a few consecutive years of cooling are recorded. Why should we expect such cooling? Because the forces that caused warming and cooling in the past, before the advent of industrial civilization, are still at work.

No, this wouldn't prove or disprove a human role in warming, only that climate is variable and subject to complicated influences. But it would also eliminate the large incentive for politicians to traffic in doom-laden predictions--because such predictions would no longer command media assent and would cease to function as levers to redistribute resources.

Mr. Gore would have to find a new job.

I'm sure they're holding their breath for that pony.