Immerse yourself in the Democratic Party/Mainstream Media/Manhattan bubble, and you almost certainly have the impression that all is going swimmingly in the ongoing battle to "save the planet" by forcing others to use less energy (while you fly around on your private jet).  Hey, everybody agrees that "climate change" is the hugest, most existential problem the world has ever faced!  And also everybody in the world just agreed to the big Paris non-treaty!  Here is Obama in the State of the Union last month:

“Look, if anybody still wants to dispute the science around climate change, have at it,” Obama said. “You’ll be pretty lonely, because you’ll be debating our military, most of America’s business leaders, the majority of the American people, almost the entire scientific community and 200 nations around the world who agree it’s a problem and intend to solve it.”       

And any mainstream media outlet worth its salt publishes multiple articles every month on why it's the "hottest [something] ever" and shaming anyone who dares to disagree.  So, is anything changing, particularly on the political front?

I would say that the first fissures on the political front had appeared as early as 2009, when the President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus was quoted as saying that "Global warming is a politician's myth."  But, you say, the Czech Republic is a tiny country.  Well, next came India.  Nobody could call them tiny.  The new Prime Minister Narendra Modi, elected in 2014, started talking about India's "right to growth" -- unsubtle code for a plan to use a lot more energy from the cheapest sources available (otherwise known as coal).  In May 2015 the Guardian quoted Prakash Javadekar, Indian Minister of Environment and Forests, as follows:

Our emissions will grow because we are not developed and we have a right, every person on this Earth has a right, to develop. If today the world is 0.8C warmer [than it was in pre-industrial times], it is not my fault.    

Now we're not talking fissures, but big cracks.  An article just yesterday in the increasingly appalling Scientific American asserts that "India is becoming increasingly anti-science."   Well, guys, since when is saying "we have a right to develop" "anti-science"?  Do you really think that you can shame India into keeping a billion or so people in abject poverty in order to stroke your precious Western environmental sensibilities (while you yourself continue to fly around on your private jet)?  I for one would not see India backing down any time soon.

And now how about the latest news out of Australia?  Today's Sydney Morning Herald reports that the organization known as CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization) has announced some 350 upcoming layoffs due to government budget cuts, with the layoffs apparently including most or all of those dedicated to researching issues of the climate.  The Herald quotes what it calls "one senior research scientist" as saying "Climate will be all gone, basically."  OK, I'm sure he's exaggerating, but it's still the first sign anywhere of a serious cutback on the government-funded climate parasites.  Well, boys, you said the science was "settled," so what's the need to spend billions on further research?

And meanwhile, has anything changed in the United States?  Consider this:  four years ago I went to a fundraiser for Romney, and was appalled to hear him blathering on about how seriously he took climate change and how he was somehow going to save the planet as President.  And before him, McCain in 2008 had equally drunk the Kool-Aid.  Today?  It's becoming increasingly likely that the Republican candidate is going to be one of the three of Trump, Cruz and Rubio -- and all three of them have said, at the least, that they are not going to allow the American economy to be damaged by the futile crusade to restrict carbon emissions.  For example, here is Marco Rubio in response to a question from Jake Tapper of CNN at the September 16 debate:

We're not going to make America a harder place to create jobs in order to pursue policies that will do absolutely nothing, nothing to change our climate.

Cruz went so far as to organize a big hearing in the Senate back in December at which a number of dissenters from the climate orthodoxy got to present some real evidence.  And Trump?  He has famously tweeted that climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese to put American manufacturers out of business.

So here in the bubble, it may seem to the New York Times and the rest of the Manhattanites that not much has changed.  But then, we have long known that they are not very good at getting outside and observing what is going on.