Aspiring apparatchiks of the coming world dictatorship, tiring of the hopeless race against facts in their anti-industrial carbon dioxide hoax, have finally given up the pretense of science in favor of pure, old-fashioned doomsday preaching.  Having been outlasted by reality in the pseudo-science of "global cooling," undone once again in the pseudo-science of "global warming," and ultimately laughed off the stage in the unfalsifiable quackery of "global climate change," it is apparently time at last for the advocates of tyranny in the name of Gaia to play their last card: global mass hysteria.

Consider a recent New York Times editorial by James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and adjunct professor at -- where else? -- Columbia University, the headquarters of the U.S. East-Coast wing of the global socialist movement.  The article is an assault on the Canadian oil sands project, and a plea to the Obama administration to do something to stop the Canadian government from allowing wealth and jobs to be created. 

Hansen's diatribe -- I choose that word merely as a literal description of the article, which bears no resemblance to an argument -- is noteworthy on three fronts: (1) its tone of angry defiance, suggestive of a man whose instinct, in the face of rational defeat, is to say, "Damn all of you!"; (2) Hansen's attempt to use the Times' friendly confines to double down on the projections of his discredited climate models, without compunction at having no remaining grounds for his claims; and (3) the straightforwardness with which his proposed course of action on this issue proclaims the real, but hitherto half-concealed, purpose of the global climate fraud -- namely, a government takeover of the world economy by means of a proletarian uprising against the "capitalists."

Consider Hansen's opening statement.  After years of basing everything on climate modelling, in which he himself was a pioneer, Hansen is now prepared to jettison all that -- as indeed he must -- by dismissing the core of climate modelling -- i.e., prediction -- in favor of the bald assertion that "[g]lobal warming isn't a prediction.  It is happening."

Is it happening?  Not according to Hansen's British counterpart, Phil Jones of East Anglia University (of "Climategate" fame), who in 2010, when asked whether he agreed that there has been "no statistically-significant" warming since 1995, pathetically conceded, "Yes, but only just."  (To paraphrase, "I'm wrong -- but barely!")  And not -- as Timothy Birdnow recently detailed at American Thinker -- according to James Lovelock, popular climate alarmist and inventor of the Gaia Hypothesis, who recently acknowledged that "we don't know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago." 

In other words, even some of the most prominent advocates of "hiding the decline" have finally been forced by inescapable facts to come out of the closet and confess what many honest scientists have been saying for years -- namely, that global temperatures simply aren't following the primary rule programmed into the computer models -- namely, that increased CO₂ equals increased rates of warming. 

James Hansen, however, is sticking to his guns.  In fact, he's coming out all guns a-blazing.

Canada's tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with bitumen, contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now.  That level of heat-trapping gases would assure that the disintegration of the ice sheets would accelerate out of control.  Sea levels would rise and destroy coastal cities.  Global temperatures would become intolerable.  Twenty to 50 percent of the planet's species would be driven to extinction. Civilization would be at risk.

First of all, this wild guess in the form of an authoritative conclusion is explicitly predicated on the full exploitation of all the oil in the tar sands.  Who is proposing to extract (and burn) all of it?  And how long would that take? 

Assuming this were to happen, and CO₂ "eventually" reached levels comparable to the Pliocene epoch, when, exactly, would sea levels reach Pliocene heights?  How does one quantify statements such as "disintegration of the ice sheets would accelerate out of control"?  What does "out of control" mean?  Who controls such things now?  Is Hansen saying that people in coastal cities would suddenly wake up one morning to find themselves in an octopus's garden? 

Yes, that is precisely what he is saying.  For he is no longer engaged in pseudo-science; he is simply screaming, "We're all gonna die!  Run for the hills!"  In his actual words: "If this sounds apocalyptic, it is."

Given the obvious boon to plant life that such an enormous boost in CO₂ might entail, the fact that Hansen provides no evidence that the Pliocene epoch was characterized by a widespread reduction in life forms, and the fact that modern technology would make a voluntary migration of mankind to more tolerable -- and at present largely uninhabited -- climatic regions relatively easy, it is, on its face, unclear why Hansen is so "apocalyptic" about these projected changes, even assuming, charitably, that he isn't talking through his hat.

Why, then, is this alleged man of science speaking so incautiously?  For a reason made all too apparent by his proposed solution to all of this, his policy advice to President Obama: palliate the masses with widescale wealth redistribution.  Seeing that his project of decades -- and with it the "global governance" dreams of leftists like Al Gore and Herman Van Rompuy -- is crumbling in the face of growing public skepticism, he, along with others, is refusing to go down without one last desperate fear-mongering swing.  If the climate frauds can get the policy action they want now, it will no longer matter, five years hence, whether there is anything left of the theory underpinning their ruse. 

Hansen's proposal:

We should impose a gradually rising carbon fee, collected from fossil fuel companies, then distribute 100 percent of the collections to all Americans on a per-capita basis every month. The government would not get a penny. This market-based approach would stimulate innovation, jobs and economic growth, avoid enlarging government or having it pick winners or losers. Most Americans, except the heaviest energy users, would get more back than they paid in increased prices.

"We should impose a fee."  A fee is a charge for service.  But those paying the fee proposed here would be receiving no service -- on the contrary, they would be having their source of income, and those of their thousands of employees, destroyed.  So why should they choose to pay this fee?  Naturally, they would not "choose" it.  That is why "we" should "impose" it on them.  An imposed fee?  That is a euphemism for one of two things: theft, if the fee is imposed privately, or a tax, if imposed by the government.  Presumably, Hansen intends the latter, in which case "we" might generously be interpreted as "we voters," although it is more likely that what he had in mind was something like "we power brokers, we the elite, we who control things." 

So a new tax -- a tax imposed exclusively on the fossil fuel industry, and then "distributed" to "all Americans on a per-capita basis every month."  Tax certain people, and hand the money directly to other people.  Hansen conveniently leaves the prefix "re-" off the word "distribute," so the little people won't notice what he is really driving at. 

But the best part of this "fee" which will be "distributed" to "all Americans" is the next part: "The government would not get a penny."  So when the government collects taxes, and then spends the revenue on redistribution of wealth, this does not constitute the government "getting a penny."  If I rob a bank and distribute the cash among my friends, this no longer counts as my having acquired money illegitimately from the bank.  Money-laundering made easy!  Feel better now?  When tax dollars are used to subsidize other people's lives, this is, according to Columbia University professor Hansen, a "market-based approach." 

Further, following the fairness doctrine of the post-partisan president, this "market-based approach" even-handedly avoids having the government "pick winners or losers."  What about all those people working in the fossil fuel industry, or related fields, you say?  Well, they were picked as losers by Gaia -- the government had nothing to do with it.

And don't forget the best part: "Most Americans, except the heaviest energy users, would get more back than they paid in increased prices."

In other words, this demolition of the fuel industry will obviously lead to vast price increases -- not to mention scarcity and subsequent price increases in all other areas of the economy -- but these will be offset for "most Americans, except the heaviest energy users," by the direct transfer of "fees" from the fuel companies to your pocket.  Or it will be offset until the money from those companies dries up, which, under such a "market-based approach," should probably be about six weeks.  By then, certainly, those imposed "distributions" will have "stimulated" enough "innovation" in alternative energy to get everyone off those over-priced fossil fuels anyway, right? 

The general outline of Hansen's modest proposal: the drivers of industrial society and modern technology, along with the wealthy in general ("the heaviest energy users"), shall be wiped out, with the spoils redistributed among the masses in an effort to solidify the support of these "beneficiaries" long enough to complete the "fundamental transformation" of America and the rest of civilization.  Needless to say, a few "heavy energy users" will be spared; these are the global elitists themselves, who always have a built-in work-around plan for such eventualities.  (In this case, however, they may be over-estimating what connections can do for you -- complete civilizational ruin tends to "accelerate out of control," if you will.)

Think, finally, of what Hansen is asking of those who would receive these "distributed" "fees" -- i.e., "all Americans."  He is banking everything on the idea that the majority of people would shamelessly accept the premise that private companies with hundreds of thousands of employees supporting millions of family members should directly hand them a portion of their revenues for no reason other than as punishment for producing CO₂.  If his presumption is correct -- it may well be -- the battle for liberty has already been lost.

Forget Hansen's scare tactics -- he has officially forsaken semi-rational argument, so there is no reason to pay attention to his claims.  Focus instead on his practical proposal.  Shout it from the rooftops, in fact.  If fear is to be used as a political weapon, then let's give everyone something really scary to think about. 

This famous global warming "theorist" has laid everything on the table: he is proposing the direct confiscation of legally earned wealth for the express purpose of temporarily offsetting the hardships that will result from destroying the industrial economy. 

And when the destruction is complete, and the confiscated wealth has dried up?  Well, then of course Hansen, Obama, and the rest of the redistributionist planet-savers have a plan for restoring the liberty that had to be suspended temporarily in Gaia's name -- wouldn't you think?