Ice Returns To Antarctica - When The Climate Change Spoof Has To Be Reset

Pally Minnick was a longtime social justice advocate who earned his spurs in the civil rights movement, graduated to women's and gay rights, and finally turned to global warming or, as he and his colleagues preferred, climate change. 

He had become as passionate and determined a soldier in the war against the warming of the planet as he had against racism and white privilege, homophobia, and the continued oppression of women. Climate change was the existential crisis that spelled planetary doom, an event from which there was no recovery, the end of the human race. 

It wasn't that he forgot the black man, just that others had rightly picked up the cudgel.  Blackness was a black affair, and he knew that eventually the movement would turn 'for the ghetto' to 'from the ghetto'. 

'Uncle Toms', shouted LaShonda Evans, co-founder of BLM, apostasy to older liberals like Pally who had revered Martin and Ralph; but he was included in her rage. 'No Whites Need Apply' was the sign pasted in large letters over the doorway to BLM organizational headquarters, a ratty building far east of Florida Avenue guarded by two shaved-headed, blinged, and pimped out brothers.  Pally knew when he was not wanted, but continued to defend the black man nonetheless. 

This excerpt from a speech at Duke University in 2023 perhaps best expresses Pally's advocacy:

The black man, native of the primeval forest, attuned to far more subtle rhythms than the white man ever could, direct descendent of Lucy, the mother of the human race, anointed future of the world, and the harbinger of halcyon times, would soon be replaced at the top of the human pyramid where he belongs

 

Despite the corruption and miasmic poverty, disease, and tribalism of Africa; and despite the persistent drug-addled, crime-ridden, pestilential dysfunction of the inner city, Pally never lost his faith in the black man.  That beneficent, simple faith was an inspiration even to those progressive colleagues who had given up on the black man.  If sixty years of civil rights, bending over backwards, affirmative action and DEI had done nothing to positively affect the ghetto, they said, then it was time to pull the plug. Only Pally's passion kept them from doing so. 

Far be it from Pally to pull any progressive plug.  He still had indomitable faith in instrumental justice, and this one particular aspect of the agenda might have failed only due to white indifference, systemic racism, and a lack of racial polity.  

When the leaders of BLM were all hauled into court on charges of fraud, embezzlement, and tax evasion, the meme around conservative and even some progressive quarters was 'I told you so', but not ones to disparage anything black, progressives held their tongues and pretended ignorance. 'They meant well', said Pally, 'but only lost their bearings'. 

Since women had long ago broken through the glass ceiling, and gay boys from the Castro now ruled the roost, there was only one cause left to fight for - climate change.  Not only was it dangerously imminent, but by its very nature was bigger than any racial or ethnic group; and so, ipso facto, it was the cause of causes. 

 

There was nothing incidental about climate change.  Every tropical storm, every hurricane, every tornado, every New England thunderstorm was a harbinger of worse things to come; and when winters turned cold, Pally and his associates leveled charges against the polluters, the carbon mavens, the foolish millions keeping the lights on and the thermostat turned up.  

'The melting of the polar ice caps', Pally said, 'a result of the warming planet, has caused the amount of cold water to increase in the Atlantic, thereby dropping air temperatures in New England'.  When blizzards blanketed Colorado with unheard of amounts of snow and temperatures dropped to lows never before recorded, Pally was quick to point out that high-level disturbances over the Southern Cone, caused by increased carbon admissions in Santiago and Buenos Aires, were at fault, altering the jet stream, and pulling arctic air from Canada. 

 

The whole kit and kaboodle was due to climate change, and capitalism was the root of it all.  'There, I said it', Pally thought.  It's now out in the open, the true, fundamental reason why disaster is at our doorstep. Wall Street, greedy money brokers, shysters, conmen, and corporate thieves are all colluding to destroy the planet. 

Yet it was hard to convince the fat, happy, complaisant, ignorant voters who simply went on their pedestrian business.  After decades of predicting doom and gloom, nothing much had happened.  A few hot spells here and there, nothing more than a steamy Washington summer.  A few cold snaps, but Boston had suffered far worse.  The Atlantic was lapping up on Florida beaches pretty much like before, and the hurricane season in the last few years had been as benign as it had ever been. 

The more Pally and his colleagues hammered on about climate change, the more Americans snickered at the folly and happily went back to brats-and-beer on the patio. Coastal cities like New York and Miami drew up plans for anticipated naturally-occurring, cyclical changes in sea levels - Venice-like canals, extended wetlands, stilted skyscrapers, and solar-powered central air.  The architectural and city planning designs were so appealing, that municipal officials looked forward to an increase in 'tropical tourism'. 

 

Farmers, by now used to genetically modified crops and, given their productivity, dismissed No GMO criticisms and pursued the new Green Revolution.  If cyclical weather changes increased temperatures, they were ready.  No need to move from the Sacramento Valley to Saskatchewan. 

The same genetic engineering would enable human beings to adapt to whatever cyclical changes might occur.  The race had always been adaptable, ingenious, and responsive. 

'Adaptability', Pally noted. 'We never considered that'; but that was the fly in the ointment. However, if he started hammering away at the flighty notions of 'Venice in New York', it might pique interest, deter the movement from its founding principles. 'Disaster no matter what...unless', had been the catchy phrase thought up by the admen at Bernstein, Abbot, and Parker, and it still had salience.  Why change a horse in midstream?

Then came the news that Antarctic ice had increased by millions of tons in the past year, and scientific projections indicated the likely continuation of the trend.  Of course scientists firmly embedded in the Armageddon camp dismissed this as 'a temporary phenomenon', and that the heating of the planet would quickly return to unsustainably high levels; but the news was disturbing if only from a public relations point of view.  No contrary news was good news, and it must be countered and countered immediately. 

'Stargazing', said Pally to a large group of Duke students gathered for Climate Day - A Day of Protest' organized by his associates. 'Fanciful, dreamy, storybook notions', he went on as images of dry, cracked cornfields, smokestacks, lakebeds, and wilted wheat flashed on the screen behind him. 'Don't be fooled by the febrile, deep state ignorance of Donald Trump'.  This was the hole card, the one that always won the trick.  If nothing else worked to reenergize climate supporters, this would. 

'You don't believe that 'scientists'...Here Pally snickered at the idea of Trump's faux researchers...'actually discovered new evidence of global cooling, do you?  You know who was behind the charade, the fake news, the cooked books, the lies and misinformation, don't you?'.  The crowd got to their feet and jeered and booed at the thought of their arrogant, dismissive President. 

But the damage was done.  These were independent NASA satellite images that were unchallenged as to veracity, resolution, and accuracy.  Whaling away at Trump might not cut the mustard this time. 

Thanks to Pally's now ingrained, inherent, permanent belief in progressivism, no evidence, no scientific finding, no meteorological data, no presumptions, inferences or conclusions countering received wisdom were given any thought let alone credence.

But the news kept coming, the variability of climate effects were repeatedly highlighted, the likelihood of long-term natural cyclical events was increasing in probability, and the ability of human beings to ingeniously adapt to these variations more than ever recognized. 

Pally, however, kept up his harangues, the increasing claims of doom, and the virulent hostility to anyone who disagreed with his vision of a dismal future. He became obsessed with 'the truth', saw himself as a Cassandra, a voice crying in the wilderness, a latter day prophet, a savior. 

It was then that his wife Polly - an unfortunate name, given Pally's - suggested that they retire and move to Florida, a distasteful, horrific thought.  Not only was it run by a fascist governor and his SS thugs, but it meant giving up the ship when it was foundering and most needed his captaincy. No, Pally said.  Not now, not ever. 

But it wasn't long that such a fevered, hysterical life began to take its toll.  He was becoming confused, inarticulate, so much so that all that remained was a wild look in his eyes.  

This is what happens to true believers, old Yale classmates said, especially when they tread in swampy waters - an apt metaphor when they thought of Pally in retirement getting bitten by a water moccasin or eaten by an alligator in globally warming Florida waters.