Scouring of the climate skeptics
“We must, indeed, all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
— The essence of politics, attributed to both Franklin and loyalist Richard Penn.
Obama strove, with mixed results, to be a conciliator and unifier of America. Clinton will instead strive, as the Clinton’s always have, to crush their political foes. The climate skeptics have earned a spot near the top of that list.
Skeptics are vulnerable to retaliation due to their disorganization and disunity (unlike the climate activists), their epistemic closure (reliance on communication in a closed network of websites), and their association with the far-right (self-isolation rather than coalition-building). Historians might conclude that they bloomed with the “pause” and wilted as warming resumed (climate change in the mid- and late-21st century will determine who was correct, although that’s politically irrelevant in our time).
They hope for rescue by global cooling (perhaps a strong La Nina) and President Trump. Neither of those seems likely (see pp24-25 for the current forecast of a weak La Nina). They might find the results unpleasant.
