In the realm of the climate scare, the cognitive dissonance has reached almost impossible levels. Just a few days ago I took note of ever increasing focus by environmental NGOs on promoting the climate scare even as the green energy schemes, offered as salvation from the apocalypse, experience soaring costs and pervasive financial collapse. But those are just a couple of pieces of the crazy mess. Everywhere you look, our overlords are doubling down on end-of-days climate propaganda while reality just refuses to cooperate. We have truly reached peak absurdity.

In the category of the overlords doubling down on climate propaganda, you can’t top the new Fifth National Climate Assessment just out (November 14) from from something called the U.S. Global Change Research Program. Have you heard of the USGCRP? It’s some kind of consortium of every U.S. government agency and department that touches on the “climate” issue in any way. Here is a picture of their logo:

It’s the Department of Agriculture, Department of Commerce, Department of Defense, Department of Energy, Department of Health & Human Services, Department of Homeland Security, Department of the Interior, Department of State, Department of Transportation, Environmental Protection Agency, NASA, the National Science Foundation, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Agency for International Development. Fourteen of them in total. All speaking with one voice.

All to support the greatest and hugest honey pot ever devised to provide essentially infinite funding to grow the bureaucracies in completely futile efforts supposedly to change the weather, but which will never be measurable, never have any real effect, and will have no possibility of accountability.

The text of the Assessment consists of endlessly repeated claims of impending disaster without any scientific backup to enable an intelligent reader to evaluate whether there is anything to this. Here are just a few quotes to give you a sense of what you are dealing with:

The Fifth National Climate Assessment is the US Government’s preeminent report on climate change impacts, risks, and responses.

It’s “preeminent,” so I guess you must obey, peasant.

The effects of human-caused climate change are already far-reaching and worsening across every region of the United States. Rapidly reducing greenhouse gas emissions can limit future warming and associated increases in many risks. . . . [W]ithout deeper cuts in global net greenhouse gas emissions and accelerated adaptation efforts, severe climate risks to the United States will continue to grow. . . . The more the planet warms, the greater the impacts. Without rapid and deep reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions from human activities, the risks of accelerating sea level rise, intensifying extreme weather, and other harmful climate impacts will continue to grow. Each additional increment of warming is expected to lead to more damage and greater economic losses.

But don’t worry, we can all be saved by following the dictates and mandates of our lords and masters throughout the federal bureaucracies:

[R]apid emissions cuts are expected to have immediate health and economic benefits . . . . At the national scale, the benefits of deep emissions cuts for current and future generations are expected to far outweigh the costs.

And on and on and on.

Back to the real world. From an Indian source called Live Mint, November 13:

New Delhi: The Union coal ministry on Monday announced plans to increase India's coal production to 1.404 billion tonne by 2027, with an eye to further boost it to 1.577 billion tonne by 2030. Current domestic production hovers around one billion tonne annually. This increase in output aims to ensure ample supply of domestic coal to India's thermal power plants, which are essential for the country's growing energy needs.

That would represent about a 60% increase in coal production and consumption over the next seven years. Here is a chart of trends to date and plans through 2030:

Hey, the Indians think that if we can have air conditioning, they should have it too.

And don’t think China is any different. From Foreign Policy, November 12:

In April 2021, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged to “strictly control coal-fired power generation projects” in China. Since then, government permits for new coal power plants have soared. According to analysis of Global Energy Monitor data, in the two years before Xi’s pledge, the government approved 127 plants, collectively capable of producing 54 gigawatts of coal power. In the two years after, that number rose to 182 plants, with 131 gigawatts of coal power. In short, China’s new coal power capacity has more than doubled.

Is it possible for the cognitive dissonance to get any greater? I don’t see how. But then, I also thought that before this latest round of craziness.