by Gerald Warner
CLIMATE change is real and it is happening very fast. The climate of
opinion, that is, regarding the rapidly imploding fantasies of the global
warming alarmists.
After a decade in which sane commentators have been angered and frustrated
by the purblind adherence to the warmist superstition by followers of the
Al Gore cult – prominent among them our own esteemed First Minister and
President for Life Designate – the whole climate change scam has finally
degenerated into a joke, provoking widespread derision.
That has not deterred the climate Gnostics, sustained by their mystical
insight into inner truths hidden from sceptics (“deniers” in their language
of anathema) and, increasingly, from scientists who have not taken the IPCC
shilling. The cultists can rely on the support of politicians since
non-existent global warming furnishes the pretext for all-too-existent and
exorbitant taxes, which is what the whole myth is all about. Thus, during
discussion of the recent floods in the Commons last week, David Cameron was
prompted by the Liberal Democrat MP Tim Farron to attribute the problem to
climate change. The Prime Minister dutifully replied: “Colleagues across
the House can argue about whether that is linked to climate change or not.
I very much suspect that it is.”
That statement was overdue as it was seven weeks since he had been reported
as telling his colleagues “We have to get rid of the green crap”, an
exceptionally long period for Dave to entertain a consistent opinion.
Unfortunately, Owen Paterson, the Environment Secretary, refused to
endorse his leader’s view. Then the Meteorological Office intervened to
contradict Dave: “At the moment there’s no evidence to suggest that these
storms are more intense because of climate change.” That was a significant
development because formerly the Met Office could be counted upon to
support climate alarmism. Clearly it is now conscious of reputational
damage and is hedging its bets.
It is not alone. Very subtly, unobtrusively, other institutions and
individuals are backing away from the discredited orthodoxy of warmism. The
process began some time ago when the Royal Society declared its switch to a
more neutral stance in the climate debate. Scientists not committed to the
cause by financial considerations are growing aware that the imposture is
disintegrating so fast it could achieve Piltdown status within their own
career spans. It is a measure of the bogus nature of the alleged climate
crisis that the last time warming occurred there was a majority Tory
government in office under John Major (“Oh, yes!”).
Recently the collapse of the scam has accelerated. The Christmas holiday
period was enlivened by the hilarious pantomime “Anthropogenic Global
Warming On Ice”, when 52 AGW believers led by Professor Chris Turney
embarked on the Russian ship Akademik Shokalsky to study the melting of
Antarctic ice. In reality, as they would have known before they set out if
they had read Nasa reports, Antarctic sea ice is currently at its largest
extent since records began: 19.5 million square kilometres. Their ship
became embedded in the ice, as did the Chinese icebreaker sent to rescue
them. When their situation became potentially life-threatening, these
pioneering climate change gurus experienced the humiliation of having to
rely on the leading climate sceptic Anthony Watts and his colleagues for
accurate Antarctic weather information to facilitate their rescue by
helicopter.
Meanwhile, the United States was in the grip of a “polar vortex”, with
temperatures in all 50 states below freezing and a low of –43C recorded in
one area. The Niagara Falls froze into stalactites of ice. This was hailed
by True Believers as conclusive evidence of global warming – after all,
everything is. As a Greenpeace activist famously expressed it: “Global
warming can mean colder.” A heatwave, a flood, a drought, a blizzard, an
away win by Partick Thistle – all will be determinedly conscripted as
“evidence” of man-made climate change. These people are beyond help. The
climate imposture is doomed to end not with a bang but a belly-laugh.
What is totally unamusing, however, is the harm these fanatics and
complicit politicians have done, raping the landscape with their hideous
wind turbines and imposing crippling taxes. Fuel poverty is killing the
elderly. Every winter more people die of hypothermia in Scotland than in
Finland. Although the climate madness will have the most lethal
consequences in the developing world, it also threatens to impoverish
Europe. A government study has shown the lifetime cost of meeting
“renewables” targets across the EU will be £290 billion, more than a
quarter of which will be contributed by the UK. Denmark already has the
dubious distinction of being the first country where green taxes account
for more than 50 per cent of an electricity bill. It is not global warming
that is killing us but its deranged disciples.
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