My link to the unthreaded article no longer works. Here is the posting.
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Posted on the Guardian, but probably imminently to be deleted, so here it is for posterity!

what actions are they they going to take that will make a difference

Actually, the politicians are acting quite responsibly by their lights. They are determined to take no action to reduce emissions, because the action required is politically impossible in democracies. But they are also determined not to incur the opprobrium of being seen as that dreaded thing 'a denier'.

They have therefore drawn the only possible conclusion: say one thing, and do another. Agree that there is a great and urgent problem, agree that 97% of scientists think so, then adopt lots of resolutions, proclaim the problem solved, shake hands, congratulate the hosts, and go home to token gestures and otherwise business as usual.

For the rest of us, what are we to think? The mania is on its last gasp, thank goodness.

We will have another ten or twenty years of rising emissions and no material warming. It will become apparent that the climate was not well understood by the Prophet Arrhenius nor by the modellers of the late 20C. The seas will not rise any faster than they have for centuries, extreme weather events will be no more common, droughts and floods will happen as they always have, largely influenced by local land management policies, and there will be some desertification caused by this, as well as some recoveries from it.

At some point in the next 20 years we will get a better understanding of climate mechanisms and particularly feedbacks and discover that CO2 is not a control knob for the planet. Historians will look back on Paris and smile at the idea that politicians pretended to really believe they could control the planets climate to within 0.5C.

But what will happen to the believers as this unfolds? You need to read 'When Prophecy Fails' to understand. The less events in the world confirm their apocalyptic expectations of imminent disaster, the more strongly they will believe, and the more ferociously they will attack the sceptics. The more they will feel they are a misunderstood group who are the only ones with the key to salvation of the human race on Earth. The more they will attribute all kinds of dishonest motivated reasoning and corruption as the reasons why the rest of the world does not share their views.

Within their own grouping, the apocalyptic vision will become more and more extreme. As the planet fails to warm, we will, paradoxically, see cries from the laity that warming this century will be 8-10 degrees. Sea level rises of several metres this century will be forecast. Those within the movement who are more moderate will be expelled.

As the scientific consensus moves towards the view that emissions are not a serious problem, more studies will be produced for the faithful showing that if you torture the numbers enough, 97% of those that really count are believers.

Eventually the warmists will turn into just another rather weird splinter group like the various Trotskyite sects. But this will probably take another 30 or so years.

If you want a real life case study, not only 'When Prophecy Fails', but also read up on the history of the Jehovah's Witnesses. They have prophesied the end of the world repeatedly. It never has happened as forecast. But that has not discouraged them in the least. The failure of the planet to warm will not discourage the warmists, either.

Dec 13, 2015 at 8:04 AM Charles Corday