“Despite mounting climate impacts and radio silence from politicians, media and other important players, the panelists were hopeful that climate change will soon earn the attention it deserves.” (World Resources Institute, 2016)

Just prior to the 2016 election (which Hillary was going to win, of course), a group of leading climate alarmists opined about why they were losing in the court of public opinion. “If Climate Change Is the Existential Crisis of Our Age, Why Isn’t it Getting More Attention?” by Sarah Parsons of World Resources Institute (October 28, 2016) is reprinted below (with yellow headings inserted). My final comment follows.

Sarah Parsons asks “What Gives” about the “existential crisis” that received very little attention in the Presidential election.

The evidence is everywhere. Drought dries up farmland from California to the Sahel.…

“Joe Romm’s for-the-moment, repeated exaggerations (“stunning” for the liked; “heads exploding” for the disliked) grew tiresome. Crying wolf for so long resulted in laryngitis, message-wise.”

Nothing is forever. But if the “indispensible blog” for climate alarmism/forced energy transformation (per Thomas Friedman) is shut down in an age of virtually unlimited green funding and rampant climate media alarm, then something seems amiss.

With its last post dated September 5th, there is no new content at ClimateProgress (2006–2019).

Maybe, just maybe, the creeds of the founder/leader of Climate Progress (2006–2019) grew tiresome and turned off the incremental audience the site was intended to influence. Joe Romm, after all, was only for the hardcore, although MasterResource tracked him closely as a leading scribe of modern Malthusian angst.

“Front Page Live”

Joe Romm is not gone.…

“We created a way of raising standards of living that we can’t possibly pass on to our children. It has to collapse, unless adults stand up and say, ‘This is a Ponzi scheme. We have not generated real wealth, and we are destroying a livable climate.’” (Joe Romm, quoted in Thomas Friedman, Is the Inflection Point Near?, New York Times, March 7, 2009)

“Is there any more single-minded, simple pleasure than viewing with alarm? At times it is even better than sex.” (Kenneth Boulding (1970), p. 160. [1]

Are free-market optimists the dumb ones who jump off tall buildings and report that everything is fine, even breezy, on the way down? Or are those who fear, rant, and make this analogy bungee-jumping with reality?

The optimists have been jumping off buildings ever since Robert Thomas Malthus’s An Essay on Population was published in 1798–and not hitting the ground.…

“With the very unique situation of CO2 (a global externality of positives and negatives), government mitigation is doomed to fail. Sooner or later, you will have to admit that politics failed, that fossil fuels were just too good given the alternatives of non-use, renewables, nuclear.” (Bradley to Dessler #1, August 3, 2019)

“We have not only market failure but also analytical failure (imperfect you, me, others) and government failure, which is magnified by 190 or so governments.” (Bradley to Dessler #2, August 3, 2019)

I have been critical of Texas A&M climatologist and Green New Dealer Andrew Dessler for some time now. He is far too certain about climate doom (“climate dystopia,” to use his term) and refuses to see the risks in climate policy, not only physical climate change.…