- Satire-

“I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity” -- Edgar Allen Poe

 Once upon a late-night dreary, as I typed a complex query,

Plotting climate response to rising atmospheric CO2,

While I coded, fingers flying, I heard a tone of notifying,

As of something signifying, a message awaits; a Facetime invite too,                     

“It’s some texter,” I thought -- no doubt somebody I knew.

But then up scrolled these words … “How Dare You?”

YouTube screen grab

Oh, distinctly I remember,  just months before the U.N. COP26 Conference in November;

When warmists will gather in Scotland, to sound their alarms and pervert peer-review.

But the challenge had caught my eye, so “Accept” was my reply.

Thus, my midnight caller I might identify — And as the image came into view,

I recognized the young and scowling maiden whom I instinctively eschew.

Have you, perchance, guessed who?

I recall her cries of Sea Level Rise, and other daft green bromides,

Meant to scare us — fill us with fantastic terrors we never knew.

People suffering and crying --- People starving, People dying,

 “We need climate justice” applying for “our living Planet” is expiring -- gone askew,

  “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood” too. 

And to this she added “How Dare You?”

Presently my resolve grew stronger, hesitating then no longer,

“Young lady,” said I, “clearly your edification I must imbue.”

“For in truth the energy progress you scorn, has lifted and saved so many forlorn,

From poverty, famine and freezing-cold-born -- and eradicated diseases too.

So I scarce was sure I heard your screed — your truly childish point of view.

Please allow me to enlighten you.”

Deep into that scowling image peering, long I sat there reasoning, jeering,

Doubting more with every word this media darling possessed the slightest clue.

When asked she knew not of the Hockey Stick, was oblivious to Mike’s Nature Trick,

Thought “Hide the Decline” [PDF] meant a stock downtick and Climategate a bugaboo.

But what’s a girl who thinks the Mediaeval Warm Period not for polite conversation to do?

When I tried to explain, she this time SCREAMED: “HOW DARE YOU?”

My attention back to my Droid-Phone turning, my temper, not the planet, burning,

Soon again I heard her bumper-sticker platitudes – ever louder did they spew.  

“Surely,” said I, “you know Arctic waters won’t be ice-free, and ‘entire ecosystems’ won’t collapse, not really.”

“They’ll be no greed-triggered mass extinctions you see, notwithstanding your quixotic retinue.

And clearly you miscomprehend the actual mechanics of the ‘tipping points’ and ‘feedback loops’ you repeatedly misconstrue.

So I must enquire -- Who coached you?”

I had heard her petulant demands, and the condescending reprimands,

Like “You are failing us” and “We'll be watching you.”

Not the least humility made her; not a minute stopped or stayed her.

And the “Science” she espoused was chaotic, as though issued from out of the blue.

So the time had come for this catch-phrase-spouting juvenile to learn a thing or two,

“I’ll volunteer here -- How do you do?”

And so this amusing girl did beguile, my glum fancy into smile,

By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance she’d renew,

“You speak of a carbon budget, but how can you possibly judge it?

When even the IPCC must fudge it whenever climate sensitivity’s their purview

And I dare you now to tell me -- to climate, exactly what Solar variations, volcanic eruptions and ocean circulations do.”

This, of course, she could not construe.

Much I marveled this ungainly, teen to hear discourse so plainly,

Though her answers little meaning — little relevancy grew.

She said that she, instead, “should be in school” -- do I seem so much the bloody fool?

I surmise it there she was given fuel, to ignore PDO, AMO, TSI and CRU,

And conflate anthropogenic forcing with natural variability too.

To her educators, I query: Just where the Hell were you?

But my visitor scowling surly, on that little screen spoke burly,

Those three words, as if her soul with those three words she did renew,

Nothing farther then she uttered — not another word was stuttered —

Till I scarcely more than muttered “What if nascent Sunspots counted just a few?

Would the freeze of a modern Grand Solar Minimum warrant your further review?”

From my phone I thought I heard her ask, “Nathan who?”

Startled at the stillness broken, by simple reply so repetitively spoken,

“Doubtless,” said I, “what you utter betrays no logical breakthrough”

Taught by some alarmist master, to whom unmerciful disaster,

Followed fast and followed faster, till the forewarnings one burden might pursue.

Till the screams of her alarm that melancholy burden knew

Of  ”How — How Dare You?”

But the Swede was still beguiling, my stern fancy into smiling,

As I linked a chart which plotted interglacial global cooling over the past 10,000-years into view,

When she conflated carbon sinking, I corrected with further linking

Fancy unto fancy thinking, what this misguided messenger actually knew,

What this childish, naive, arrogant, scowling pre-programmed purveyor of doom-untrue,

Meant in repeatedly demanding, “How Dare You?”

This I sat engaged in guessing, for a moment not a syllable expressing,

To the child whose fiery words to me are so much intellectual residue.

This and more I sat aligning, along with volcanic activity declining,

With every cloud, a silver lining, and a feedback designation so long overdue,

To compute any anthropogenic warming signal, these and PDO must receive their due.

Concepts, I’m sure, my visitor never knew.

Then, it seemed, the mood grew dire, heated by an unseen fire,

She said, the plan to cut emissions in half in 10 years simply won’t do,

There’s only a 50/50 chance, of curbing a 1 ½ degree Celsius advance,

And I tell you at first glance, the specter of “irreversible chain reactions” you’ll rue.

What’s more, a 50% risk is simply not acceptable, as it is we who’ll bear what comes due,

You must halt, not lower, all emissions, that’s what we demand of you!

“That’s Insane!” screamed I, “you Prophet of Doom!  — Luddite in a savior costume,”

You preach that "buying and building things” triggered a “climate crisis” – you knew,

What’s more --  you’d physically confound, our means to pump oil from the ground,

That same ground your fatuous “flight shaming” would tether all the world’s aircraft to.

Without first replacing petrol and planes with viable options -- established or new.

Seems the cure is worse than the disease -- with the likes of you.

“Stepford-Posterchild!  Calibrated courier of mistruth!”  — shepherding to ruin today’s woke youth,

Youth who cry when eating meat; need “trigger warnings,” “support animals” and “safe spaces” too,

You’ve dropped out of school, to wage your weekly battle against fossil fuel,

But you’re a child – a fool, claiming “carbon-selfish” adults purloined your dreams and the future you’re “entitled” to.

Yet it’s your generation most demanding those gadgets and gizmos from which “greenhouse gases” spew,

So why on Earth would any sane grownup even listen to you?

Be these words our sign of ending, this call — I’m recommending,

Go back to your strikes and speeches which invite your magazine covers;  your TV shows too.

But to persuade me, you were unable, with your data -- off the floor of a stable,

And your sinister scheme to disable, this fossil-fuel-driven economy from which our amazingly prosperous culture grew.

So before you lead the charge, to impose on this world of ours -- needless suffering and incessant ado.

Remember, should you “choose to fail us” – burn down the house and then assail us -- it is we who will never forgive you. 

So if the stark-Raving, to whom you preach, or any others, within your reach,

Believe your horrifying “house on fire” warnings loom true,

And should enough comport the seeming, of your apocalyptic dreaming,

The resulting regulatory scheming, might very well our societal framework undo,

And the world would fade to a blacker black than mankind ever knew.  And the impacts on climate – None or very, very few.

So -- to you who control this misguided teen, I fervently implore -- Hur vagar du?