Global Warming Alarmist Rhetoric, Propaganda and Dishonesty Heats Up in Paris

Published December 5, 2015

The global warming alarmist rhetoric, propaganda, and dishonesty now on display every day first approached their current all-time high levels in January 2015—soon after the COP-20 meeting in Lima, Peru—and they have been undergoing a sustained crescendo ever since, driven in equal proportions by environmental non-government organizations and their radical supporters, pusillanimous politicians, and determinedly ignorant media reporters.

The mainstream media is determined to prevent dissident and independent scientific voices from being heard. Nearly all major media outlets have promoted an almost continuous stream of outright scientific lies as they rush to conform to the politically correct and unscientific climate consensus position. With nary an independent scientist or commentator to be heard, the censorship desired by many mainstream media outlets is complete.

Meanwhile, Paris is plastered with politically correct billboards, posters, and video displays toeing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change propaganda line, and a major “display village” of acceptable energy and climate projects is under construction in front of Paris’ City Hall.

In another meticulously planned and expensively deployed stunt, carousels of fixed bicycles, large hamster-wheel treadmills, and banks of swings have been installed in several places on the Champs Elysees—whereby members of the public can run, pedal, or swing their hearts out to ensure a nearby lighted pole glows. This effort is allegedly “helping to power the Champs-Élysées,” but these publicity stunts do no such thing.

No trick has been overlooked, including the provision of small bicycles made available for children. As soon as the exhibit opened, the display predictably drew clusters of participants and onlookers.

One bright spot in all this idiocy is some of the global warming activists have received their comeuppance from the police. They were told not to organize demonstrations and that there would be “zero tolerance.” So what did they do? They organized a demonstration and then acted with quasi-innocent surprise when they were dealt with firmly by security forces.

I was walking past Notre-Dame Cathedral at the time the police confronted the protestors, and I witnessed no fewer than 30 nose-to-tail police vans, which must have represented well over 100 riot-equipped police, rushing to deal with the demonstration in La Place de la Republique. In addition, more than 100 (I kid you not) police motorcycles were lined up and ready for instant action, parked in lines outside what appeared to be a police or government building adjacent to the cathedral. The usual tourist crowd outside the cathedral was being quietly minded by a sprinkling of troops in full combat regalia carrying automatic weapons. Troops were also evident on all the other public squares and in public transportation centers.

France appears to be taking security very seriously, and it will be a foolish activist who steps out of line from now on.

If only French politicians—and the leaders of other nations—would apply the rigor they have to security to their reasoning about climate issues, they would have been able to avoid the Paris pantomime that is now underway and also avert the immoral waste of trillions of dollars on a completely unobtainable and unnecessary cause.

Pity the world’s poor—partly at the mistaken behest of the pope—because it is they who continue to carry the opportunity cost of these malignant and brutally expensive climate misadventures.

Robert M. Carter, a paleogeologist, is emeritus fellow of the Institute of Public Affairs in Australia and author of Climate Change: The Counter Consensus and Why Scientists Disagree about Global Warming. He is part of a contingent of climate realists, led by The Heartland Institute, that has traveled to Paris for COP-21.

[Originally published at CNS News]