Uncommon Commentary #421: Alarmists Might Say "Keep Your Pause to Yourself!"

In the late 1980’s and the 1990’s, when global-warming hysteria was young, my position on the subject was that it was entirely appropriate to carry out research on whether catastrophic, anthropogenic “climate change” (to use the term that adherents of the global-warmist religion now prefer) is taking place, but that there was no cause for panic.  By now, however, those who want to find real evidence of such an apocalypse have had over a quarter of a century in which to do so—And the burden of proof is on them, not on the skeptics, because it’s the former who demand that we cope with this putative threat through radical action, which would both eliminate millions of jobs in the fossil-fuel industries and raise energy costs for consumers (and because long-term variation in world temperatures is natural, as anyone who has ever heard of the Ice Ages of the Pleistocene Epoch ought to know)—and they haven’t found it, although they talk as if they had.  It’s ironic that Al Gory, President Obombast, &c. habitually apply the word "deniers" to anyone who does not follow them obsequiously in this regard, since it's actually they who have taken on the rôle of obscurantist as they wilfully ignore the "pause" in warming (1998-present, which means that its inception actually predates Gory’s launching of his anti-“global-warming” crusade) and other evidence that discredits the alarmist position.  As you like to say, Al, “the debate is over”, and you’ve lost!