These people seem to operate under the maxims of another great man, who said, "Never give a sucker an even break." It seems increasingly obvious that they are trying to play us for suckers because so many of their climate-panic claims end up being wrong, and people are getting wise. 

An editorial at the great website Issues & Insights presents some interesting data.

The end is near. That’s what we’ve been told since the beginning. The doomsdayers have cited a variety of cataclysms that will do us in, from asteroids to resource exhaustion to a dying sun. But they all have one thing in common: So far, they’ve all been wrong. Same with the climate alarmists. And the public is catching on.

A study, published by the Stanford University School of Sustainability, no less, found that “resistance to climate action has become a global movement that strengthens after governments implement climate-related policies.”

“We found that counter climate change organizations tend to emerge after pro-environmental policies are institutionalized in government,” said the study’s senior author.

That is, of course, because every social movement progresses to the point of absurdity. Big social movements can't admit victory; that's why, decades after legal racial discrimination was eliminated (rightly) in the United States, there are still racial grievance-mongers and hustlers shouting about the need for "reparations," among other things, in compensation for a slavery system that no person living today was subjected to. It's the same here; those of us who remember the environment in the late '60s and '70s remember litter along roadways, we remember smog alerts in our major cities, and we remember rivers you couldn't eat the fish out of due to toxic pollution. That is, if the river wasn't actually on fire.

All of that is over. The environmental movement that began in the '60s achieved its goals. But there's a lot of money in activism, so they've gone on to start preaching climate change.

People are catching on. And part of the reason for that is that the predictions of the climate scolds are so often wrong, and predictability, by the way, is a key test of a scientific theory.

Of course they do. As our friends at the Committee to Unleash Prosperity observed, this has happened “maybe because the war on fossil fuels has deindustrialized Germany and many other European nations. Maybe it’s because green energy is so much more expensive to produce. Maybe because the biggest polluters like China have done nothing.”

Let’s add another “maybe.” The resistance is likely also based on a growing skepticism. We have been bombarded by global warming scare stories for more than three decades and yet we’re still here. No matter how much the alarmists cheat, lie, obfuscate and bully, it’s obvious that the entire narrative is based on assumptions, speculation and political ideology. Every claim they make can be easily refuted. To name a few, which we’ll call the big three:

First, the tools used for measurement: Long-range climate studies, using things like ice core, lake varves (annual layers of sediment that form in bodies of water), and tree ring data, only reveal broad trends, not specific temperatures:

We just lived through the hottest year/month/week/day on record. This is meaningless. Hottest compared to what? The only reliable measure we have is from satellite readings that go back to only 1979 and they show nothing to get worked up about. 

And the predictions of the climate scolds? They are increasingly revealed as being Chicken Little-style histrionics that just don't develop.

The experts, using their climate models, tell us that we’re headed toward disaster. Steve Koonin, who is no Republican operative nor corporate shill but a Massachusetts Institute of Technology- and CalTech-educated physicist and Obama appointee, has pointed out that results produced by models “generally don’t much look like the climate system we observe.” 

Finally, the scolds don't seem to understand the scientific method, the tentative nature of science, and the importance of free, unfettered discussion of the data, undeterred by any agenda; for them, it's all about the agenda, and they squash dissent when they can. That's not science. That's polemics.

There’s a scientific consensus that man is overheating his planet. Science does not work by consensus. The idea was invented. There are skeptics in the climate science field, and not just 3% (as is often claimed, based on spurious data), and their work is important, even though they’ve been professionally and socially shunned, vilified and attacked for daring to buck the narrative.

You can't keep this going forever. And the scolds are now losing ground.

See Related: People Are Getting Wise to the Net Zero Scam

The Problem With Wind Power: Appeasing Climate Scolds May Be Hazardous to Your Health

The primary reason, though, is almost certainly this: Everywhere these "green" sustainable energy schemes are put in place, the cost of energy and, therefore, the cost of everything goes up. Energy at all levels costs more and is less reliable. Giant, ugly windmills litter the landscape, solar panels sprout up everywhere, and traditional fossil-fuel plants are still required to pick up the slack when the sun isn't shining or when the day is still.  

People notice this.

The scolds also vehemently oppose the one actual solution to what they claim is the problem. There is one truly clean, emissions-free energy source that has vastly higher energy density than traditional fossil fuels: Nuclear power.

People notice this.

And, most of all, too many of the scolds, like John Kerry, he of the private jets, he of the tax-dodging Rhode Island yacht docking, talk a lot of talk but don't walk the walk. 

People notice this.

Most of all, people want prosperity. That requires cheap, reliable energy.

And, as I've always said and will go on saying: Yes, the climate changes. It always has, and it always will. Through most of the planet's history, it's been warmer than it is now. Humans do have an effect, but that effect can be dwarfed by one good volcano. It's not worth surrendering our modern, comfortable, technological lifestyle.

That's what people are noticing most.