Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse

Who started this ruinous climate nonsense? Maurice Strong and even Margaret Thatcher have been implicated. And surely arch villain George Soros, if not Moriarty himself, had a hand. It’s a mystery steeped in an enigma. Let’s go to “denialist” Professor Göran Ahlgren of the Stockholm Initiative for a plausible account. The seeds were planted, he claims, during a brain-storm sessions in a Swedish sauna between Olof Palme and his tennis partner, Bert Bolin, a climatologist. Palme went on to become the Swedish prime minister. A decade later, in 1988, Bolin created and headed the IPCC.

It is too good not to be true. It must be true. Undoubtedly, a Swedish sauna is the ideal place to discover global warming. And, indeed, to have visions, which Herr Bolin duly did as he drifted off in the heat and steam. He awoke a changed man, determined to change the world. In the fullness of his imagination, and subsequently in  the flesh, he gathered before him a multitude at UN headquarters.

“Lyssna!”, he said in his native tongue (meaning ‘Hearken!’) before continuing in English.

“An avenging angel has chosen me to carry his message. ‘Lo,’ he said unto me, ‘beware the black stuff.’

Silence ensued. Murmurs of doubt could be heard rippling throughout the multitude.

“No! No! It’s true, I tell you, and you will all henceforth have great power over the minions.”

This immediately convinced them.

“‘Ye must act now, lest ye be all burnt to crisps’,” the angel said to me.

“‘But what shall we do?’ I cried out to him, to prevent this most terrible of fates.”

“Ye must build great edifices to make sea water potable.”

“‘Potable?’ I queried him.”

“‘Drinkable, Swedish dummy’, he replied gruffly. ‘But, ye must not run them, he warned, they are sacrificial offerings to be maintained chaste into perpetuity at great cost.’

“‘Will this be enough?’ I asked.”

“‘Nay, not nearly’,” he replied with a great and powerful voice. ‘Ye must get the Chinese to build great bladed towers which ye must then strew across landscapes as foul sores to thy sight. These will be a penance for thy evil ways.'”

“‘But what have we done to bring down such wrath upon us’, I asked the avenging angel.”

“Ye have burnt the black stuff, which was ever intended to be left buried under the earth till the end of time.”

“‘But we didn’t know you see’, I said, as I threw myself on his mercy. But he’d have none of it, however much I grovelled and pleaded.”

“‘Squirm away, ye malevolent worm; ye burner of the black stuff’,” he said, very angrily. ‘Verily your comeuppance is at hand.’ He added with a smirk, ‘..and don’t interrupt me before I’ve finished telling thee of the punishments to be meted out.’

“‘Ye must also get the Chinese to manufacture millions, nay billions, of square shiny panels to catch the sun. These ye must put in thy fields, not otherwise occupied by the great bladed towers, and on top of thy roofs. Yea, till every roof is covered. And, by the way, doubt thee not, ye must demolish those evil satanic stations which burn the black stuff that was meant to be forever in the ground.’

“‘But how shall we keep the lights on’, I asked, as meekly as I could to forestall his anger.”

“‘When the wind blows and the sun shines ye shall have light, for I am merciful. Also, ye have permission to contract a prophet at enormous public expense, one called by the name Elon Musk, so ye won’t have difficulty finding him, to build bank after bank of black batteries to catch power made by the wind and sun. And and one called Malcolm, who ye can find in Point Piper, who knows the secret of driving water uphill so that it can pour down again. These things will provide feeble power in the dead of night and on still and cloudy days. Lo, as I said, I am merciful,’ the avenging angel finally said to me, before fading away in the sauna’s steam as though he’d never been.”

Bolin thus charged the UN multitude to go out and spread the word. And it was done. Apostles emerged across the globe. One called Gore, one Flannery, another Stern, so many of them – all mercilessly scolding sceptics with enormous righteousness. Failure to recant bringing the odious branding of “denier” before the terrible fate of being cast into the putrid pit.

Literally, a new dark age is dawning. But at least people won’t be burnt to crisps. Though I am not so sure? Australian thermal coal exports were circa 200 million tonnes in 2017 versus 100 million tons fifteen years earlier in 2002.

Someone, I guess, must be burning the black stuff still, even if we’re not. We might be all diddled, dashed and done after all, despite the best efforts of Herr Bolin and his apostles. Ye Gads!