Did you notice Greta Thunberg smiling in her photo op with Prince Charles at the climate hysteria summit in Davos?  Or maybe she was laughing...after all, the Prince of Wales did have a smirk on his face.  Had he told young Greta a joke, perhaps?  I must admit I was shocked — I thought she knew only how to frown or scowl.

YouTube screen grab (cropped).

Maybe Charles surprised Greta with a real knee-slapper.  Maybe he told her a joke about how it was such a pleasant surprise to meet her and how he coincidentally happened to be in the same neighborhood after flying 16,000 miles and using three private jets plus a helicopter to get there.  Maybe Bonnie Prince Chuck said something like this:

You know, I just consumed the equivalent of a ten-year carbon footprint for an average wanker like that awful climate-denying John Leonard in just a couple of days. Nevertheless, I feel really good about myself because I'm showing the common people (excluding you dear Greta, of course) how much I really care for the environment. My personal convenience is more important than any damage my privileged travel might add to our dirty air. And if that doesn't cause my critics to pipe down, I'll remind that I drove (or was chauffeured) the last few miles to the summit in an electric Jaguar. It's good to be the (future) King.

Probably not, though, in case microphones were near enough to eavesdrop.

But stranger things have happened.

Why shouldn't we heed precious Greta's apocalyptic warnings?  Besides the fact that these dire predictions of imminent doom and gloom date have been routinely repackaged and resold to the general public over the six decades that have elapsed since my birth, are there any good reasons to question whether the sky is really falling?

First, we had the "global cooling" scare, followed by global warming, acid rain, until finally the panic-mongers stumbled onto the perfect term: who can deny that our climate abruptly changes?  After all, it happens every three months like clockwork and has since the year of my birth and many before that...we used to just call the phenomena "seasons."  One very good reason we might want to reconsider buying the bridge to dystopia that young Greta is offering for sale is the excellent work of renowned climate experts such as Dr. Fred Singer, easily found in the archives here at American Thinker.

I know...it's a tough call to choose between the opinions of an angry seventeen-year-old know-it-all "climate activist" and an expert in atmospheric and space physicist with decades of experience like Dr. Singer (more than ninety years of experience observing and studying our environment.)  However, considering that Greta was asked to speak to the U.N. about the dangers of climate change and the global elitists at Davos and Dr. Singer was not invited (to the best of my knowledge), I think it's safe to assume that Greta's opinion should carry more weight, right?  

On social media, I often follow my sarcasm, even when it practically drips from my words, with a special HTML-like notation of for the benefit of the humor-impaired liberal who might happen to read it.

Or perhaps Greta is smiling because she knows it's only a matter of time before some major publisher offers her an absurd amount of money in the form of a book advance to write her autobiography, without bothering to find out if she can even write a coherent sentence.  It seems a reasonable conclusion, considering the fact that Greta has apparently dropped out of high school to travel the world in order to protest world travel.  She might still be ignorant, but that doesn't mean she's dumb.

Considering the fact that the disgraced former FBI director James Comey managed to land a seven- or eight-figure book deal to write a book about a subject he knows nothing about (leadership), she may take consolation from the sad fact that an author with the right last name might not even need enough talent or intelligence to spell "CAT" if you spotted him the "C" and the "A," as Ed "Too Tall" Jones famously once joked about Terry Bradshaw prior to a Super Bowl.

As long as the publisher believes that enough public interest will be generated by the credited author's last name to warrant paying out the book advance, actual writing talent is optional.  The publisher probably doesn't even care to know the real author's true identity.  More than a decade ago, Jack Cashill brilliantly made the case that Barack Obama didn't even write the most famous of his two autobiographies, Dreams from My Father, here at American Thinker.  It's all about the Benjamins, baby — isn't that right, Rep. Tlaib?

Before the reader assumes that my cynical sarcasm is born of jealousy, please let me assure you that conservatives don't believe that only a privileged few can nibble at the economic pie.  Any future success Ms. Thunberg might have as a writer would not necessarily come at my expense...unless she gains political power in addition to income.

No. I am not jealous of a seventeen-year-old child. In all honesty, I feel a little bit sorry for her because adults who should know better are exploiting her, using a child with a bit of a handicap (autism) as their shield against any criticism (forget about fairness) of their radical policies communicated through this angry child's absurd demands, which include the immediate end of all investment in fossil fuels. Shortly thereafter she advocated a return to the medical practice of using leeches to treat illness instead of medicines.

Heck, if your last name is Kardashian, you don't even need to worry about knowing how to spell cat -- you can just take a picture or a selfie with one and call it a day.  Remember is assumed to be superfluous here at American Thinker.

No. I'm not jealous of Greta Thunberg. I don't want to hobnob with Prince Charles or address the United Nations to lecture them on climate change. I can only think of one thing young Greta Thunberg has that I would also like to have myself: her publicist.

John Leonard writes novels, books, and occasional articles or blogs for American Thinker. You may follow him on Facebook or his website (and blog, which includes the AT "rejected" pieces) at southernprose.com.