Excerpt: There was a time, and how recent it seems, especially to nostalgic COP junkies, when the climate world gathering at their meetings really believing they were going to save humanity from the dreaded carbon pollution. Why, as recently as COP21 in Paris in 2015 the assembled politicians set pseudo-targets for GHG emission reductions that would supposedly have held the global temperature rise from "pre-industrial" times to 1.5C. And yes, at Baku they still had 1.5C in the Soviet-style slogans on the walls (as in "Mobilizing funds and enabling action to keep 1.5°C Within Reach") But 1.5C never was within reach. As we pointed out years ago, the same computer models that claimed man-made emissions were causing an RCP8.5-level heating catastrophe also said if everyone did meet their Paris targets it would change the temperature in 2100 by roughly 1/10 of a degree, hardly worth getting excited over, let alone bankrupted. But one thing we learned at Baku was that if we got a nickel for every time we thought "told you so" we wouldn't have to ask for donations ever again.