To win the climate debate, we must use the same tools that were used to defeat science and common sense

One of the reasons conservatives have steadily lost power to the left over the past 50 years is because we have not made a proper study of the tools used against us. In an effort to help correct this situation, this is part one of a three-part series that will examine what happened and how we can effectively fight back in the climate change debate.

What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.

So begins "The Purpose," the first chapter in "Rules for Radicals – A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals." Written in 1971 by Chicago-based community organizer Saul D. Alinsky, Rules for Radicals showed leftists, then on the outside of most institutions looking in but wanting very much to run the show, how to acquire the power to control society.

And, boy, did they ever take Alinsky's rules seriously. In many ways, it became the "progressive" Bible, guiding their actions as they fought tooth and nail for decades until today the left control vast swaths of our universities, schools, corporations, governments, churches and of course mainstream media. Even before Rules was published, Hillary Clinton recognized the importance of Alinsky's work writing about his methods in her undergraduate thesis at Wellesley College, a private women's liberal arts college in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Her 1969 thesis was titled "There Is Only the Fight: An Analysis of the Alinsky Model" and, after interviewing him, examined his approach and its effectiveness in creating social change. Interestingly, Wellesley sealed Clinton's thesis at her request during Bill Clinton's presidency.

Today, the roles are reversed from when Alinsky wrote Rules and it is conservatives who are now on the outside looking in at woke institutions that control much of our every day lives. Universities are especially infected.If conservatives are to stand any chance of getting back in charge of our schools and the rest of society, then we must learn how we lost control in the first place. And one of the best places to start is to carefully read Rules for Radicals in its entirety. It can be read online for free at Rules For Radicals : Saul Alinsky : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.

One of Alinsky's rules that conservatives should take particularly seriously is Rule #4:

Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules.

So, what are the contents of the "book of rules" of progressives when it comes to climate change and energy? Well, generally speaking, they want everyone to at least think they support:

• The science promoted by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
• Social justice: caring for the poor, the elderly and those who are disadvantaged in society
• Protection of wildlife and the environment
• Tolerance of alternative lifestyles & opinions
• Rejection of authority & absolutism

But their blind adherence to the hypothesis that our use of hydrocarbon fuels - coal, oil and natural gas - is causing a climate emergency and only a massive energy transition to so-called green energy will save the planet actually results in a situation where all of these worthy objectives are in fact violated.

Alarmists' fears about increasing floods, extreme rainfall, heat waves, intense storms and forest fires are not supported by the UN IPCC. In particular, Working Group 1 of the Sixth Assessment Report had "low confidence in the direction of change" of most of the climate impacts that most excite activists, sensational media, and politicians, namely precipitation, drought, fire weather, cyclones, and hurricanes, snow and ice, sea levels, coastal erosion, and ocean acidity, you name it. Generally, it also has "low confidence" that a wider range of detrimental climate impacts will occur beyond 2050, except under "worst case" scenarios.