The Devil of Delusion Does Dubai

If, dear reader, you see today’s collective ambition to control the Earth’s climate as more about religion – Faith, Hope and Charity – and less about science and reason, you will not be surprised by the appearance of an intriguing new structure (below) at the 28^th UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of Parties (COP) in Dubai, United Arab Emirates: the Faith Pavilion.

At a time when most religions have turned a shade of Green, only a heretic or fossil-fuel shill would question this recent UN  Environment Programme (UNEP) claim: “Faith-based organizations (FBOs) and religious leaders are essential to the fight against climate change and to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the goals of the Paris Agreement”.  

Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel. — Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary, 1911 edition

UNEP has been especially active in this space, launching a “robust COP28 preparation process” in January this year. It included a Faith for Earth Initiative and created an Interfaith Coordination Group on Climate Change. UNEP, and indeed the UN itself, is determined not only to ensure national governments, citizens and even children embrace “climate change” (CC) as this century’s new religion, but also to devise clever ways to get the guilt-ridden developed world to monetise it.

Religion and spirituality hold tremendous wisdom for the protection and conservation of our earth, inspiring both religious and secular actors to advocate for stronger political will and lead by example. Find out why faith and environment matters.  

A three-pronged approach drives this Initiative: Strengthening partnership with faith-based organization’s leadership for policy impact; greening faith-based organization’s investments, operations and assets; and establishing an accessible knowledge-based support system using faith scripts and scientific evidence. — UNEP, 2023

Last century we had Soviet Man, Pol Pot, Mao’s Red Guard and so on. This century we have Net Zero, Extinction Rebellion, millions of other anti-“carbon” fanatics and climate catastrophists, and Minister welcome-to-another-country Bowen.

Three years ago, UNEP and the Parliament of the World’s Religions released a book, Faith for Earth — A Call for Action. Launched during a Faith for Nature Global Conference on October 8, 2020 in Skálhol, Iceland, it was promoted as

a comprehensive overview of the faith traditions and scientific findings that underpin the understandings and reflections of world religions concerning environmental sustainability. It includes clear statements from sacred scripts and faith leaders.

As for the twenty-eighth annual COP, delegate Nick O’Malley, National Environment and Climate Editor for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, noted that:

All this schmoozing is accelerating faster than climate change itself as the COP explodes in size. The first COP, held in Berlin in 1995, had just under 4000 delegates. At the blockbuster talks in Glasgow two years ago, 120 world leaders attended alongside 40,000 other registered participants. About 50,000 people gathered in Egypt last year.

This year, 100,000 are registered to attend, including about 3000 online. How many will eventually show up is yet unknown, but the sheer size of the event is prompting criticism in some quarters.

One of them was WA billionaire Andrew Forrest. He arrived on the Green Pioneer, a ship converted to run on green ammonia. However, it was not allowed into Dubai harbor, or indeed any other major port. The vessel is currently running on hydro-treated vegetable oil.

He is on a mission to make green ammonia the fuel of choice for ocean going cargo ships. “If it was powered by fuels which are going to destroy this planet, destroy the future of your own children — diesel, bunker sea oil — then it’s ‘come on in, the water’s fine!’” he said. “‘Oh, no, a pollution-free ship? Stop right there, don’t come in!’” — Andrew Forrest goes on the offensive at COP28, December 8, 2023

His company, Fortescue Metals Group, describes itself as the “world’s No 1 integrated green technology energy and metals company”. Its target: to eliminate all its emissions by 2030. Fortescue just published an open letter to “world leaders”. Signed by 60 scientists, it argued there is a “scientific consensus that rising humidity and heat pose a serious and growing threat to humanity,” especially in the heavily populated tropics and subtropics.

Over 3 billion people are exposed now. The time for excuses and prevarication is over. We have the solutions to phase out fossil fuel, and this is where we must go. If you say you can’t, then maybe you’re right — you can’t. But now’s the time for you to leave the stage and bring on someone who will.  — Andrew Forrest, December 8, 2023

Andrew Forrest clearly still believes in miracles, as indeed he did when he launched Fortescue two decades ago. The Miracle of Minderoo – or Forrest’s Kawasaki Moment – was revealed publicly in a speech given to the WA Pastoralists & Graziers Association in September 2012: “One of the reasons I became a Christian.”

Forrest “found God” in sand hills on his family’s Pilbara sheep station as a nine-year-old. While riding a trail-bike one afternoon some distance from Minderoo homestead, on a whim he threw the bike’s keys over his shoulder to see if he could find them. According to Andrew Burrell, his (unauthorised) biographer:

…as he now relates the story, he couldn’t find the keys despite several hours of frantic searching and was preparing to brave the elements as sunset approached. As a last resort, he decided to pray. Miraculously, they turned up right in front of his eyes.

He saw them “between a little petrol overflow and the bike’s carburettor” when he finished praying. 

Now there’s not a snowflake’s chance in hell that I threw them there; I threw them over my shoulder. So I just thought okay, that’s cool, we’re showing off a little here, God. That’s a very obvious sign, I won’t ever test you again – and I haven’t.

The Almighty works in many strange ways, so it would be presumptuous to claim knowledge of His Purpose.  But Forrest’s Kawasaki Moment may have a deeper significance: an early sign of intercession by Saint Peter at the beginning of his journey from spinifex to spire to billionaire and COP28. When in the Vatican, he would have noticed that the coat of arms of the Holy See and Vatican City State include an image of crossed keys, keys of the office of Saint Peter and the Kingdom of Heaven.

On March 17, 2014, the Official Vatican Network announced that “representatives of the Catholic, Anglican and Muslim worlds” had gathered “for the first time ever” in the Vatican press office to launch Forrest’s Global Freedom Network, aimed at eradicating human trafficking by the end of the decade. The agreement was signed (below) by Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo on behalf of Pope Francis, New Zealand Archbishop David Moxon, representing the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Holy See,  Dr Mahmoud Azab, representing Cairo’s Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, one of the most important centres of Sunni Islam — and Forrest.

In the Gospel of Matthew 16:19, Jesus says to Peter, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” In this case, the phrase “loosed on earth” could refer to the millions of tonnes of high-grade Proterozoic iron ore Forrest is excavating from the Pilbara; and “loosed in heaven” to the philanthropic ventures he is funding out of his loose change.

Whatever the case, our Man of Minderoo’s prodigious generosity surely moves him ever closer to becoming at least an official Servant of God. According to one anonymous source, nihil obstat (if nothing stands in the way), there is more than a snowflake’s chance in hydrogen – or ammonia – Hell he could become Australia’s second saint one day – after St Mary of the Cross MacKillop.

So much for Faith. As for Hope, Arthur Schopenhauer defined it as “the confusion of our desire for something with its probability”, such as wanting a Goldilocks climate for everyone everywhere and forever (or waiting for the day, decades hence, of the last gasp COP).

Hope is to confuse the desire that something should occur with the probability that it will. Perhaps no man is free from this folly of the heart, which deranges the intellect’s correct estimation of probability to such a degree as to make him think the event quite possible, even if the chances are only a thousand to one. And still, an unexpected misfortune is like a speedy death-stroke; while a hope that is always frustrated, and yet springs into life again, is like death by slow torture. — Dr John Messery: Summary of Schopenhauer on Hope: From “Psychological Observations”

And Charity? It is the legendary pot of gold at the end of the climate rainbow. Not content with one vehicle, with the now (USD)$13 billion Green Climate Fund, COP28 has voted itself what it hopes will be another big cash cow. Indeed, as if by magic, the UN announced it had breakthrough deal on a Loss and Damage Fund on the very first day.

Delegates meeting in Dubai agreed Thursday on the operationalization of a fund that would help compensate vulnerable countries coping with loss and damage caused by climate change, a major breakthrough on the first day of this year’s UN climate conference.

On X (formerly Twitter), UN Secretary-General António Guterres also welcomed the agreement to operationalize the fund calling it an essential tool to deliver climate justice.

The fund has been a long-standing demand of developing nations on the frontlines of climate change coping with the cost of the devastation caused by ever-increasing extreme weather events such as drought, floods, and rising seas.

Not so long ago, the most controversial challenge for climate researchers was how to distinguish natural variability in global and regional weather from so-called “human-induced climate change.” Easy. Just cry “climate justice” and blame the developed world, – especially countries mining, consuming and exporting nasty “fossil-fuels” (oil, gas and coal) – for all the “ever-increasing extreme weather events such as drought, floods, and rising seas”. A market of “debt for climate” swaps must be just around the corner.

Meanwhile, on December 8, 2023, Minister Bowen gave us another lesson in how to use public money creatively: a Pacific Resilience Facility. Bogus “climate change” claims are being used here to buy defence alliances, gain Australian entry visas and so on.

Australia will contribute the foundational $100 million to the Pacific Resilience Facility (PRF). The PRF is the first Pacific-led, owned and managed community resilience financing facility. It will provide grants for climate adaptation, disaster preparedness, nature-based solutions and projects which respond to loss and damage.

Climate change is the single greatest threat to the livelihoods, security and wellbeing of climate vulnerable countries and regions, including the peoples of the Pacific.

The single greatest threat to the peoples of the world, especially Africa, surely is not climate change but the elephant in the greenhouse, population growth. According to the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs on 15 November last year, the global population reached eight billion people. It is likely to exceed nine billion around 2037, and 10 billion around 2058. But that’s another story.

Dear reader, I hope I have convinced you that of all the miseries and calamities in our age of false facts, the most insidious is proliferation of the climate-change religion. This new black art has deceived many credulous minds and academies. The climate change agenda satisfies its desire for domination in several ways: It is economical with the truth, so easily corrupts the language and logic of enquiry that has driven the growth of knowledge for centuries. It is a master of obfuscation on a grand scale. It promulgates pernicious beliefs and apocalyptic prophecies. It falsely claims infallible insight into the forces that drive our planet’s weather and climate.

By such mischief does the Church of Climate Change extend its unholy empire. It now has followers everywhere, from the highest office in the Vatican to the lowest carbon cowboy. All are keen to conjure riches out of thin air, marvelling at their good fortune. Such is the greed and gullibility of humankind. Some of its dubious prognostications owe their existence to a prejudicial weighing of natural phenomena and other forms of trickery; some to frequent and unwise intercourse with atmospheric diviners who have sworn allegiance to the warming creed.

Fortunately, a time of reckoning is approaching. For having set their course by the compass of human folly, these self-styled guardians of Gaia are about to be shipwrecked on reefs of avarice or sucked into whirlpools of doubt, the inevitable consequence of their hubris.

Many also are being waylaid by their sluggishness of mind and slow understanding. It is here the Devil of  Delusion looks for his prey, especially in our academies. Hiding under a cloak of authority, he hunts there for persons of mental sloth who believe the first thing whispered in their ears. He does not care whether they been led astray by poverty or despair, by some slight or injury, by petty resentment of one kind and other, or by an insatiable desire for wealth or fame. Malevolence and mischief are everywhere. So it is easy for him to urge them on, moulding them to embrace every plan he suggests, however fanciful; seducing them with clever promises – about how a Garden of Eden climate can be conjured that will be just right for everyone everywhere and forever, how the vagaries of weather can be mastered, how people can harness energy from the sun and wind at the flick of a horse’s tail, how a glorious utopia awaits them and so on – if only they swear allegiance to him.

As you have seen, the climate change religion works in many subtle and pervasive ways. Fortunately, frank and fearless enquiry can still reveal to the world the great duplicity that has been hidden from it for too long.

Indeed, among the countless blessings that God daily confers on the sceptical, this is the most particular: the power to discover the craftiness and trickery of our enemies, in both the visible and invisible realms. So that, recognising their stratagems, we may counteract them for the benefit of all humankind.

Here endeth the lesson. Amen.