“Next week, I will be joining President Hollande and world leaders in Paris for the global climate conference,” President Obama said ahead of the event that began this week. “What a powerful rebuke to the terrorists it will be, when the world stands as one and shows that we will not be deterred from building a better future for our children.”

One could hardly blame the leadership of the Islamic State if they had a hearty laugh at this peculiar response to its attacks on Paris last month. The same could be said about the multiple instances in which Obama and high-ranking members of his administration have asserted that climate change poses a greater national security threat than terrorism, or is, as Secretary of State John Kerry once put it, “the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction.”