Skepticism about climate change dogma is reaching a generational peak.
One of the reasons is that climate change alarmists stubbornly refuse to live as if they believe a single word of what they’re saying. The size of their carbon footprints is staggering. Just look at all the fossil fuels they burn to attend entirely unnecessary “climate conferences.”
Yes, these conferences are unnecessary.
It’s 2015. We have incredibly advanced telecommuting systems. All of the political and scientific work behind a climate conference is performed using such global computer networking, long before the conference is held. Climate confabs are an excuse for politicians to soak their taxpayers for luxury junkets to exotic vacation destinations, where they stay in five-star hotels and dine on the finest gourmet foods.
(Lunch at the Paris climate conference on Monday, according to Politico: special turnip soup, scallops in a climate-symbolic “modern” sauce, stuffed celery confit with veined spinach cream, and then a trilogy of freshwater trout roe caviar, vegetable jelly, and coltsfoot, plus Reblochon au jus scented with myyrh, caraway wood, and a salad of wild undergrowth and tree beans. And yes, of course there will be dessert – citrus compote and light cream with praline.)
Climate conferences are pricey photo ops with no valid purpose beyond influencing media coverage, a fact the grandees at the Paris event have emphasized with their insulting blather about how holding the conference will somehow “rebuke” the Islamic State.
The hilariously obvious truth that no one attending the event actually believes the apocalyptic predictions they dump on their constituents makes these conferences into the equivalent of a “safari” at Disney World – a chance to laugh, hang out with friends, and enjoy a little shiver of play-acting fear as animatronic wild animals lunge at your robot-piloted jungle cruise boat.
Of course, the international elites attending these conferences don’t want anyone measuring their Godzilla-sized carbon footprints. That would be “cynical,” to use President Obama’s new favorite word for informed skeptics. When you hear a big-spending politician rail against “cynicism,” it’s a good idea to grab your wallet, put on your green eyeshade, and start adding up their expenses. For socialists, cost-benefit analysis is the most wretched form of cynicism.
So how much carbon are these climate junketeers burning? The jet set loves to lecture the rest of us about how air travel is the worst source of carbon pollution, but apparently their airborne emissions don’t count, sort of like how everything we eat at Thanksgiving dinner is calorie-free because it’s a magical holiday.
A 2013 analysis at the New York Times described air travel as “the most serious environmental sin” committed by the Little People. “One round-trip flight from New York to Europe or to San Francisco creates a warming effect equivalent to 2 or 3 tons of carbon dioxide per person,” the NYT estimated. “The average American generates about 19 tons of carbon dioxide a year; the average European, 10.”
President Obama swanned off to Paris on the most fabulous private jet in the world, Air Force One, which burns about 5 gallons of jet fuel for every mile it covers. Aviation fuel supposedly releases about 21 pounds of carbon into the atmosphere per gallon, which means President Obama’s 7,656-mile round-trip to Paris will burn 38,280 gallons of fuel, and fart a whopping 803,880 pounds of carbon into the biosphere.
And he’s just one of 150 world leaders attending the conference, many of them bringing entourages that will require more than one plane. Many big-money private interests will attend as well – the climate-industrial complex is one of the richest industries on Earth, even though it doesn’t actually produce anything. The World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this year seems like a roughly comparable event, and it drew 1,700 private aircraft.
They don’t tool around in Chevy Volts when they hit the ground, either. President Obama’s absurdly bloated motorcade, larger than anything fielded by actual crowned royals from nations that still have monarchies, involves dozens of gas-guzzling limousines and SUVs. Some observers report seeing Obama roll with no less than 45 large vehicles in his motorcade. His obnoxious royal presence causes massive traffic jams everywhere he goes, making innocent motorists accessories in his carbon crimes.
The White House severely dislikes answering questions about the President’s carbon footprint, especially his motorcade, so it’s hard to get a definitive answer about how much fuel his ground transportation consumes. When White House reporters raised the subject at the beginning of Obama’s presidency, the response from U.S. climate negotiators included some hysterically funny muttering about “electric vehicle motorcades.” Needless to say, that hasn’t happened, and it never will.
Throw in all of the other world leaders rolling through Paris in their considerably smaller, but still impressive, limousine-and-SUV caravans, and we’re talking about a lot of carbon pumped out for a week of glorified press conferences.
Then there’s the carbon footprint of the massive demonstrations rocking France at the moment, inspired partly by the government imposing restrictions on public protests after the recent terrorist massacre. One clash between police and rioters on Sunday destroyed a memorial to the victims of the Islamic State’s attack on Paris.
Doubtless everyone dining at the climate confab would say, around mouthfuls of scallops and Reblochon au jus scented with myyrh, that holding their five-star shindig in the face of protests and threats is a major point of the exercise this year. That doesn’t change the fact that a vast amount of motor fuel will be burned, and electric power consumed, to handle the entirely predictable strife surrounding a showboating event.
It’s not easy to calculate the total carbon footprint of such an event, especially since so many of the attendees are extremely reluctant to discuss their personal impact on Mother Earth, but Wired took a stab at it, and came up with an estimate of fifty thousand total attendees at the Paris talks, traveling an average of 9,000 miles round-trip apiece, burning 27 million gallons of jet fuel along the way. Adding in sundry ground emissions, the total carbon footprint works out to 300,000 tons of CO2, or over 23,000 times the carbon emissions of an average American for an entire year.
But none of that is supposed to matter, because the Angry Sky Gods allow their high priests and faithful worshipers a special dispensation to spew as much pollution as they want, especially during religious services.
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