A main reason why climate change is a low and diminishing concern - along with green goobledygook in general - is that alarmists and advocates are so obviously nonsensical, an embarrassment.

Global warming is causing more than 300,000 deaths and about $125 billion in economic losses each year, according to a report by the Global Humanitarian Forum, an organization led by Kofi Annan . . .

Roger A. Pielke Jr., a political scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who studies disaster trends, said the forum’s report was “a methodological embarrassment” because there was no way to distinguish deaths or economic losses related to human-driven global warming amid the much larger losses resulting from the growth in populations and economic development in vulnerable regions. Dr. Pielke said that “climate change is an important problem requiring our utmost attention.” But the report, he said, “will harm the cause for action on both climate change and disasters because it is so deeply flawed.” . .

The report appeared aimed at world leaders, who will meet in Copenhagen in December to negotiate a new international climate treaty.

In a press release describing the report, Mr. Annan stressed the need for the negotiations to focus on increasing the flow of money from rich to poor regions to help reduce their vulnerability to climate hazards while still curbing the emissions of the heat-trapping gases linked to global warming. . .

Jeffrey D. Sachs, an economist, was one of 12 experts who vetted the report for the forum. He acknowledged that some of the report’s conclusions were oversimplified. Still, he said, he endorsed the report’s message

Climate change is being used by every sort of rent seeking hustler to advance agendas - pet concerns and personal advancement. It is no wonder that people are turning off and suspecting, if not concluding, that the problem itself is exaggerated or invented. Only the most gullible authoritarians now support such efforts, but there are a lot of them still.

That doesn't mean that there are no real concerns, it just means that the issue has been hijacked by sleazy political operators who want to capture funding streams. Meanwhile, nothing useful is being done about climate change itself, but the December party in Copenhagen should be a high point in the holiday social calendar for the rich and sleazy set.

Update:

See A Methodological Embarrassment for a fuller discussion.