Even in Dubai, the Great Pyramid of Capitalism decrees that a few at the top will be able to afford artificial life support, while the workers who built paradise self-deport or die.

It's not hard to understand how they sold climate denial to a population that's also overwhelmingly religious and believes in ghosts and that Jesus rode a dinosaur and a rising tide lifts all boats.

Harder to explain actions of the elite that manipulated the useful idiots. Short term gain obviously pulls one way, but I'd also expect the new aristocrats to be thinking in dynastic terms. Won't they think of the heirs?

I'm afraid there are no answers to that question that don't sound crazy-eyed paranoid.

You know, RL, the fact that we've drifted into pure politics, and ought to move to Current Events, suggests a new rule for Space/Science: Climate change denial is a political rather than scientific position, and all such assertions belong on Current Events. All hail the trial balloon?