Melanie Phillips writes:

A new book, Die Kalte Sonne [The Cold Sun], written by Prof Dr Fritz Vahrenholt and geologist/paleontologist Dr. Sebastian Lüning, has caused a sensation even in advance of its official publication yesterday. For Prof. Vahrenholt, a renewable energy expert, was one of the fathers of the modern German green movement and believed everything preached by the IPCC. But … he is now a far sadder and wiser man:

Doubt came two years ago when he was an expert reviewer of an IPCC report on renewable energy. “I discovered numerous errors and asked myself if the other IPCC reports on climate were similarly sloppy.”

In his book he explains how he dug into the IPCC climate report and was horrified by what he had found. Then add the 10 years of stagnant temperatures, failed predictions, Climategate e-mails, and discussions he had with dozens of other skeptical elite scientists. That was more than enough. … “I couldn’t take it any more. I had to write this book.”’

She concludes:

How could so many apparently sane and sensible people have departed so comprehensively from reason over the anthropogenic global warming scam and to have placed such blind faith in renewable energy sources? Several immediate reasons come to mind – indeed, I have enumerated them on many occasions – such as the brainwashing grip of environmental ideology, the western retreat from reason and truth, the manipulation of grant-funding, the intimidation of rigorous scientists, and the fact that so many [scientists] have sloppily endorsed AGW theory without bothering to look at how the IPCC actually reached its bogus conclusions.

But the deeper question still remains. What is it in the psyche of the western mind that has caused so many people not only to be seduced by a set of obvious myths and fallacies over AGW theory but to be utterly resistant to every scrap of evidence … that showed they were totally out to lunch?

(The same question could be asked of people who believe in God or gods.)

John Hinderaker at PowerLine quotes Melanie Phillips and comments:

One by one, the more honest of the scientists who fell for the anthropogenic global warming hoax are confessing their error. …

I would add, with respect to the IPCC reports, that they are not only sloppy but contradictory. If someone tells you he agrees with the IPCC report, you should ask him, Which one?

And this is also from PowerLine, by Steven Hayward:

As John [Hinderaker] noted here Tuesday, and I have noted several times over the last few weeks, the climate campaign is suffering body blows on an almost daily basis. The latest is the report, based on new and more comprehensive satellite data, that the ice melt in the Himalayas has been nil — zip, zilch, nada — over the last ten years.

Here’s how the left-wing [AGW-promoting] Guardian newspaper in Britain reports it:

“The world’s greatest snow-capped peaks, which run in a chain from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, have lost no ice over the last decade, new research shows. The discovery has stunned scientists, who had believed that around 50bn tonnes of meltwater were being shed each year and not being replaced by new snowfall. The study is the first to survey all the world’s icecaps and glaciers and was made possible by the use of satellite data. Overall, the contribution of melting ice outside the two largest caps – Greenland and Antarctica – is much less than previously estimated, with the lack of ice loss in the Himalayas and the other high peaks of Asia responsible for most of the discrepancy.” …

It’s fun watching these guys fall on their face in real time. The whole circus is falling apart much faster than I expected. I can tell you that around Washington the whole climate change angle is slowly being dropped from conversation … It’s almost like talking with normal people again.

Post Script: Go here to read about the work of  the  Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark, who holds that the central factor regulating Earth’s climate is the the intensity of solar radiation.