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Magnum PI’s Hawaiian estate is no more.

The 1980s TV icon was “partly” purchased by the Obamas in 2015 through a close friend.

Otherwise known as The Anderson – or Robin Masters – Estate, the Spanish architectural wonder was torn down in 2018.

Despite suspicions that cultural and heritage preservation laws were bypassed to benefit the Obamas, neglect and disrepair were cited as reasons for the demolition.

Notably, at the time, the Obama White House distanced itself from the purchase, denying their involvement.

This wasn’t completely true.

Recent reports have confirmed that Magnum’s pad will be replaced by a mansion built for the Obamas. (See here, here and here.)

The only piece from the original TV series to remain is the sea wall, which Obama insists on keeping, even though environmentalists want it gone.

Activists are concerned the walls contribute to erosion.

Double Standards

This is newsworthy because it raises three questions.

For one, a classic piece of pop-cultural architecture, including its gardens – much loved by Higgins and fans of the series – are now just dirt.

Secondly, Barack has been barracking for the “climate crisis cult” about global warming (now upgraded to global boiling) and rising sea levels for the better part of a decade.

Yet, he’s bought the Magnum estate, then demolished it, and is now building a mansion on the site, right next to the ocean.

Third, how is this mansion consistent with Obama Inc.’s convert, pay a tax, or die climate change activism?

Having just finished reading Unsettled?, I think Steven E. Koonin’s 2021 masterpiece pins down the answer.

Koonin, who was former Undersecretary for Science in the Obama administration, highlights the overall hypocrisy of Climate Catastrophism Incorporated.

Although Koonin is on the Left politically, he’s on the level scientifically.

I won’t smother this brief review with cliches.

Suffice to say, Koonin’s ideas on adaptation to both natural climate change and an anthropogenically impacted environment are worth noting.

The distinction between natural and man-made matters.

Contrary to popular propaganda, he states, the “experts” don’t have a consensus on the climate.

Additionally, they don’t actually know how much of what is promoted fanatically as climate change is natural or man-made.

What they do know, Koonin said, is that the Earth appears to have warmed slightly.

This data does not support a carbon-tax-ourselves-into-poverty, extinction-level event.

Neither does the data suggest we should be making governments so they can avoid writing the Earth’s obituary.

It is true there’s a lot of CO2 being produced, and it’s due to fossil fuel dependency.

However, Koonin said, there’s little evidence CO2 is the climate nemesis, activists, the media, and politicians make it out to be.

Most of ‘today’s CO2 is natural,’ he explained.

While Koonin concedes the importance of shifting from fossil fuels to more sustainable energy production, he’s no fool.

There is, he argued bluntly, no way the “Net Zero” 2015 Paris Climate targets can be met.

They’re unrealistic, and in many respects, unnecessary.

With the economic bloc known as BRICS – made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – building big using coal, “net zero” by mid-century is a pipe dream.

Other developing nations also need coal.

Adding to ‘net zero’ pie-in-the-sky delusions of grandeur is the so-called “renewable revolution.”

The theory was that developed nations would contribute $100 billion by 2020 to developing nations, to ween them off fossil fuels.

Yet, by 2020, only $10 billion had been committed.

Simplistic Politics

The climate is complex, and so is the data, Koonin states.

There’s a difference between “climate change” and “changing climate”.

Throwing slogans at solutions to perceived problems is more about placating a political agenda, than presenting honest data about the climate.

For example, climate science is too complex for big media’s “if it bleeds, it leads” 24-hour news cycle.

Weather presenters painting weather maps in red, then selling a “heatwave” that barely registered as hot 10 years ago, correlate to the false climate consensus narratives.

This kind of news reporting, Koonin states, rests on ‘unsupported hyperbole.’

‘Popular perception about climate and energy is very different from what the science says.’

‘Broadcast media,’ Koonin remarked, ‘is poorly suited to cover climate science, because their stories are brief and tuned to sound bites.’

More to the point, the climate computer modelling media relies upon to push a clearly manipulative agenda, is notoriously sketchy.

It’s ‘too easy to cook the books,’ he argued.

‘There’s a lot to fret about in the climate modelling business.’

Computer models produce what they’re programmed to eat.

As Jonathan Higgins might say, “Init purgamentum, exit purgamentum” – garbage in, garbage out.

More noteworthy are Koonin’s clarifications on the science; as well as how that science is being manipulated, misrepresented, and misread.

Big government and big media are largely responsible for misrepresenting the science.

This is because, he argues, climate catastrophising comes with big dollars, and a ton of votes attached.

‘Enshrining a certain scientific viewpoint as an inviable consensus is hardly the role of government,’ Koonin warned.

In other words, we’re being duped by grifters when it comes to climate catastrophism.

Unsettled?’s big takeaway is Koonin warning that the science is being misconstrued, and those behind it are putting big profits before those they see as the “little” people.

‘Major decisions made without full knowledge of what the science says (and doesn’t say),’ he wrote, ‘or, even worse, on the basis of misinformation, are much less likely to lead to positive outcomes.’

‘COVID-19 offered a sobering illustration of this, and it’s as true for climate and energy as it is for pandemics,’ Koonin concluded.

We all should be listening.

As for the former president’s mansion, and me mourning the destruction of Magnum PI’s piece of 80s pop-cultural history?

Barack building a mansion by the sea, while barracking on about a ‘climate crisis’, is Obama telling you not to believe him.

So, don’t!

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Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.