Doomed Planet

Still Taking Water in the Alarmist Archipelago

Some years ago I wrote a review for Quadrant of Rupert Darwall’s excellent book The Age of Global Warming: A History. The book was a history of how the theory of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) had come to be accepted science, accepted policy and accepted popular belief all over the globe.

My conclusion was that the period of writing would in the future come to be seen as the end of global warming as a ruling ideology.  This would occur despite the efforts of global warming believers, who would never go away but would simply come to be seen as an irrelevance.

Six years on, it is now clear I was both right and wrong.  The believers have decidedly not gone away, indeed they prosecute the climate wars ever more intensely.  But they clearly are not yet an irrelevance, a spent force.  On the contrary, their efforts indeed continue to bear much fruit. They occupy the commanding heights of government bureaucracies, academia, mainstream media, supranational bodies, corporations and the indoctrinated minds of schoolchildren.  Their theories have divided conservative parties across the West, especially in Australia.  They have achieved the unbelievable outcome of getting left-of-centre parties once owned by the working class to adopt, holus bolus, policies which massively disadvantage and impoverish those parties’ once principal constituents. The climateers have managed this despite the fact that what they propose as theory is embarrassing nonsense, actually gibberish, and can be seen to be such by a reasonable person after a single minute’s reflection.

The argument for “climate action” so widely embraced is based on a handful of highly questionable empirical propositions linked by such non sequiturs as would be immediately apparent to any Logic 101 student. The CAWG position is, essentially, that one, the earth is warming; two, that this is recent and considerable; three, that it is largely caused by human activity; four, that it is dangerous; five, that we (humans) can do something about it; six, we humans should do something about it; and seven, we must mitigate rather than adapt.

Every one of these propositions is open to massive conjecture.  To take just the first and second – that the earth is warming considerably – Anthony Watts of WUWT fame and Jennifer Marohasy, closer to home, have demonstrated time and again the tricks performed in the measurement of temperatures, the re-positioning of weather stations into areas exposed to urban heat islands and the re-jigging of raw data to achieve apparent warming. The whole shebang is held together by mathematical computer models, not by verifiable, readily replicable (therefore testable) empirical data.  CAGW attempts to explain a highly complex, dynamic, uncertain, multi-dimensional natural systems through simple models that make a mockery of the dynamism and complexity of nature.

In short, CAGW is a scam, a confidence trick.  (This, of course, is well known to Quadrant readers and therefore hardly worth repeating).  Yet ….  yet it has cost the world trillions of whatever currency you care to measure these things in, deaths aplenty, human misery, multi-country energy poverty and endless wasted time in government activity, funding applications and media column inches.  And it continues.

Certainly, I was correct back in 2013 to recognise the coming end of popular belief in CAGW.  A recent Google survey confirms that very few people now rate climate change as a serious concern.  Indeed they are utterly bored by it.  So do many other polls. And yet, despite the public’s waning interest, most governments continue to force on their populations costly, often dangerous policies which literally hose up public money against the wall.  Very, very few seem to have the stomach to push back in a big way, despite some recent tiptoeing away from CAGW policies on a range of fronts.  And if some governments (including China), are continuing to build coal fired power stations – indeed, with Aussie coal – most in the West continues to gallop along to the latest COP in order to sign up to more massive wastes of taxpayer dollars.

How did the alarmists pull off the scam? One of the more useful concepts of modern public policy theory is that of the “policy community”, a loose network of actors who share interests and/or beliefs and who together form coalitions, both formal and informal, that end up driving policy outcomes.  This explanation utterly conforms with Niall Ferguson’s recent work on networks in his book, The Square and the Tower. This is, in effect, how they did it.  How they pulled it off. 

It need not be a conspiracy theory, nor involve a Trojan horse, setting out to achieve the real end game of world government, nor even (quite plausibly) a concerted set of actions by the renewables industry to get customers to buy their products via government subsidy and coercion.  They found in many organisations a willingness to succumb in order to virtue-signal to their constituencies, of course.  This, it may be argued, has enabled the whole thing to continue on endlessly.

But who are “they”?  The “they” turns out to be at least eight nodes of a network of true, or maybe, “flag-of-convenience” CAGW believers.  Each node has its own compelling reasons for perpetuating the scam.  Together they form perhaps the most powerful network in human history.  Identifying who they are and revealing the nature of their skin in the game might help climate sceptics and conservatives to isolate and name the perpetrators and to begin to craft strategies to wear down the alarmists and to negate their advantages in achieving their public policy objectives.  Even if we already know that it is the spinelessness and idiocy of governments and the craven virtue-signalling of corporates and corporate imitators (like universities) that enable the scam to continue.

The first node consists of bona fide greenies, political activists who in the late 1980s finally found a cause so big, so scary and so compelling that would bring along whole populations, and therefore, governments to the green-left, post-Berlin Wall cause. These are the true believers, the anchor tenants of the movement and the puppeteers-in-chief.

The second node consists of grant troughing academics who have built careers and empires on the back of CAGW.  Third rate researchers who need Australian Research Council funding to extend their short term contracts at often tinpot universities have turned in droves to tacking the magic phrase “… and climate change” onto the end of whatever their grant application topics happen to be, in order to get the brownie points.  And the grants over which their corporate chiefs salivate.  This dovetails nicely with their vice-chancellors’ desires to be seen to be supporting “sustainability”, that specious ideology that actually pre-dates climate change but which in climate change found its ultimate weapon.  These researchers may or may not be true believing activists, but clearly their career interests have coincided with the political aims of the activists.

Then there are the climate change money makers.  These corporates sensed money making opportunities very early, and have built mega fortunes on the back of the big scare.  No prizes for guessing the scammer-in-chief.  These types endlessly spruik “the low carbon economy” while building giant mansions, often by the rising seas.  They also seem to fly a lot.  It is easy to excoriate them for their hypocrisy, but they care about this charge not a jot.  They infiltrate political parties like the NSW Liberal Party, scam pre-selections, bully ministers and run lobbying companies that represent “clean” energy financial interests.  They get governments to subsidise renewables because they need to do this in order to make money.  (Interestingly, the level of use of renewables globally is now around 14% of all energy sources, a mere single percentage point higher it was than 50 years ago.  So from a market capture perspective, the renewables-climate scam actually hasn’t worked.  But the costs to taxpayers have been, and still are, terrible).

Then, of course there are the woke corporates who do not necessarily benefit directly from the clean energy scam, but who virtue-signal lamentably in order to please (mainly millennial) customers.

Next are the globalist, supranational bureaucrats who live and work in Brussels, Paris, New York and other world government hangouts, attend Davos and all the COPs with the elite crowd year in and year out, all for the cause of “the process”.  These are the professional bureaucrats who may be true believers, or who, like Sir Humphrey, have “never believed in anything”.  For these folks, what real people believe is neither here nor there — mere irrelevant, populist background noise from the Deplorables.  They are the philosopher kings who know best and go to lots of meetings.

Another node in the network is the “doctor’s wife”, and indeed often the farmer’s wife, the school teacher or the public servant, that deeply concerned, woke individual who just “cares”.  The veracity or otherwise of the “science” doesn’t matter really.  It is just awful, this climate change thing, and we must act to stop it.  Do our bit.  It is on the list of things we have to care about – refugees, homosexuals, Muslims, and so on.  And we have to do something about it.  These people often have a sociology degree, or these days, media studies.  They read the rags of the Left, they watch ABC News, they simply abhor white Trump voters, they worship Brussels, they reflexively hate Tony Abbott and Craig Kelly, they eagerly await Father Rod of Gosford’s latest billboard effort.  They occupy places on the continuum of support for the cause, of activism at one end to merely earnest cheer-squadding at the other.  They either join GetUp or support it financially.  They probably contribute carbon offsets when they fly.  They gave up buying groceries in plastic bags before the rest of us were made to.  They are into tolerance, except of course tolerance of conspiracy-theory-believing climate criminals.

Next are the politicians who either know it is all bulldust but are scared to push back, or who actually believe in it themselves.  They are often advised by what can only be regarded as the worst generation of public policy advisers in Australia’s political history, craven yet comfortable Canberra seat-warming bureaucrats for whom “fearless”, let alone informed policy advice, is a foreign concept, a thing of the distant past.

Second-to-last are the media, who have, with honourable exceptions, swallowed whole the lies of the alarmist tribes. Yes, alarmist stories make better copy.  And yes, most journalists are left wing and tend to support that which increases government intervention.  Whole countries – New Zealand is one – never get to read or see or hear the truth, hear the other side of the debate, or even know there is a debate. ABC-24 is now more or less a twenty-four hour climate change channel.

Last are the over-schooled but under-educated, brainwashed millennials and those only now emerging from the utterly corrupted modern Australian education system (so well described and lamented by Kevin Donnelly in his various writings).  This most unfortunate generation has suffered mortal intellectual damage from the twin pedagogical evils of the age – the absence of real learning on the one hand and the endless propaganda peddled by teacher activists and curriculum terrorists on the other.  These youngsters, alas, do not know what they don’t know, nor have they been given the intellectual tools to see that the stuff being peddled is so much like the emperor without clothes.  They are often the sons and daughters of members of one or other of the nodes of the network described above.

These, then, are the tribes of the alarmist archipelago.  They form a formidable and highly effective bulwark against the recovery of sanity in public policy related to energy and a range of other concerns. 

Their tactics and strategies are impressive. Tell the big lie once then repeat it ad nauseam.  Say “climate change” endlessly with straight faces and eventually it will just become part of the unchanging background of people’s lives.  Capture strategic organisations.  Infect the young and the gullible.  Speak very loudly.  Capture language.  Insult opponents of your view.  Make them seem stupid, and uncool.  Change history (see under hockey stick, for example), for, as Orwell suggested, he who controls the past controls the present.  And he who controls the present controls the future.  It is, indeed, a case of Alinsky meeting Orwell.

I have argued elsewhere that ideology makes people believe silly things and defend the absurd.  Climate change, whose absurdities are revealed to those who will but see on a daily basis, is perhaps merely the most egregious example of this phenomenon.  But it is more than just ideology that makes people suspend their rational faculties.

According to Daniel Hannan:

The fall in IQ scores in the West is perhaps the most under-reported story of our era. For most of the twentieth century, IQ rose by around three points per decade globally, probably because of better nutrition. But that trend has recently gone into reverse in developed countries.

Yes, we are getting dumber.  But not all of us.  Remember those Google survey results mentioned above.  We are indeed as a world seeing the light.  But for the capture of the commanding heights by the alarmist archipelago, the age of global warming might indeed be over.  The woke and the dumb make a powerful combination and together stand athwart attempts to begin the long, slow reversal of the grip of climate insanity on public policy.

An absurd proposition has captured the imagination of nearly 200 governments around the world and inflicted untold damage on the people of the world and on the body politic.  Seemingly the gradual recovery of sanity by the folks is not yet enough to convince all these governments that the game is up.  In which case, all power to Trump and to Orban and to the new Brazilian guy and to Tony Abbott and Craig Kelly and to all those brave pollies who talk common sense in the face of their jelly-backed colleagues and who speak truth to evil power.

And no, this isn’t a conspiracy theory.  Just public policy 101.

10 thoughts on “Still Taking Water in the Alarmist Archipelago

  • ianl says:

    I used to think that the collapse of the power grid would act as an unrelenting emetic. I was naive – it will simply be promulgated as proof that “climate action” was just in time and needs to be pushed through with even more ruthless vigour.

    The *only* instructive change has been the advent of the “yellow jackets”. That outpouring of anger stripped Macaroni of any credibility (and gave rise to the jibe that Little Napoleon is back – this time with his mother), set the smug EU bureaucrats on their behinds and infuriated global puppeteers such as Greenpeace. This is the ONLY resistance capable of making a difference – and it’s about the cost, not the concept – yet here in crash-test dummy Aus the idea of street resistance is recoiled from with utter horror. So – not a hope.

    Dumbed down, indeed.

  • Peter Smith says:

    Brilliant article. Loved it.

  • Stephen Due says:

    It’s significant, I think, that the prevailing weather is the single most popular topic of general conversation. On the phone to friends interstate we say “It’s hot here today”. When we meet acquaintances in the street we say “Beautiful day!” – and so on. This is absolutely neutral territory, a reliable topic of mutual interest.

    It’s no coincidence that a project to control the weather – no matter how unrealistic – has captured the imaginations of millions. We’ve all got a stake in it. We’ve all got an opinion. It’s a common cause. It is, after all, a perfect example of the lowest common denominator.

  • johanna says:

    The house of cards is of course supported by the decline in educational standards, particularly in the humanities. From schools, where logic and grammar are thrown out in favour of feelings and pottering around with the chooks in the ‘sustainable’ garden, to universities, which we all know about.

    The degradation of language from a means of communication to a means of expressing personal feelings, no matter how incoherently, is central. In this model, the expresser is at the centre, not the receiver. It is literally equivalent to baby babbling.

    People who have been brought up to ‘think’ this way are utterly impervious to facts or rational argument. It’s all about feelings – in particular, their feelings. In this solipsistic universe, we find, for example, refugee advocates who cover up their own rapes, and I read today about a family whose daughter was murdered by a ‘refugee’ they took into their home, who promptly took in another to show that they have no hard feelings.

    One only hopes they don’t have any more vulnerable children whom they are prepared to sacrifice on the altar of virtue signalling.

    In this context, the climate scam’s longevity fits perfectly with the zeitgeist.

  • en passant says:

    Great article that needs to be studied in schools.

    Only joking …

  • Jody says:

    “By their fruits shall ye know them”.

    Crown Casino currently being built RIGHT ON THE SHORE of Sydney Harbour, at Barrangaroo.

  • Andrewurban says:

    The IPCC was set up 30 years ago to serve the purposes of the UN Framework on Convention on Climate Change. The ultimate objective of the UNFCCC is to “stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic [i.e., human-induced] interference with the climate system”. This is the equivalent of saying “man made emissions are fuel in our atmosphere; fix it”. The diagnosis was in, before the first tranche of research cash was paid out. This was the original sin. The unshakable belief in global warming and its attendant evils was established through a campaign of fear – a campaign devoid of science. It has won the hearts and minds of millions – as perfectly established in this excellent article. I suggest this craze can only be minimised by a campaign based on emotion. A series of strong tv commercials, maybe starting like this:
    The camera catches a toddler wheezing in the swirling smoke of a cooking fire inside a small hut as her mother battles to cook a meagre meal using air polluting animal dung. The camera pulls back and out of the hut, taking a birdseye view: the whole village is revealed, similar cooking smoke rising from many of the huts. In other footage, we see many villages where babies battle, smoke, heat and the flies, where the absence of electricity – and the home appliances that it powers – exacerbates the poverty.

    The narrator tells viewers: “In West Bengal, for example, the dung cakes are burnt indoors and the fumes spread inside. Many houses just have a room and a kitchen with no ventilation,” says Dipankar Chakraborti, the lead researcher of a study by Jadavpur University’s School of Environmental Studies.

    After an hour of these scenes, we are emotionally wrung out. Just one hour. “Nearly 240 million Indians lacked access to electricity in 2017 (International Energy Agency). They weren’t the only ones,” the narrator tells us as a child’s weeping face stares at us from the smoke. Overlayed is a message like “Please send me some electricity – mummy needs it to cook.”

  • Les Kovari says:

    A brilliant article, true to the last word, hits every single little nail squarely on the head BUT, how many of the low IQ voters actually read Quadrant, or do they even know Quadrant exists and could they spell the word if asked. I have been tearing my hair out for years every time I see or hear the words “climate change”. It, and a few other closely related terms are forbidden in my family. BUT, This and many other equally worthy articles debunking the climate change religion should be made compulsory reading in secondary schools, perhaps with a spelling supplement, at universities, in churches, pubs, cinemas, in every newspaper, printed on toilet paper, on shopping bags and every conceivable medium consumed and used by the wide public, otherwise, it remains a mere feeble voice in the Global wilderness, not heard by anybody but the converted. I want my Australia back!

  • T B LYNCH says:

    For 50 years around 1600 witches were burned at the stake in great numbers to rid the world of pestilence. Global warming is a similar type of mass hysteria.

  • Alice Thermopolis says:

    Climate-craft Act 2018, n., 1. An Act of Parliament proposed to regulate the practice of climate-craft. Extracts:
    “…..if any person or persons shall from and after the next Feast of Saint Michael, the Archangel , take upon him, her or them to practise climate-craft, obfuscation, big-data babble, modelling or any other form of trickery, enchantment, scaremongering or pact with the Devil; to tell or declare where any carbon dioxide vapours should be had in the earth, ocean, air or other secret place, from whence it came and the alleged harm it is doing or could do to persons or provinces; or where carbon credits, whether counterfeit, lost or stolen, should be found; or to provoke unlawfully in any person or province guilt or distress by such means; or whereby the cattle or goods of any person or province shall be threatened with destruction, waste or impairment, or likewise with hurt or anxiety to any person in his body, mind or pocket, even if the same be not effected and done : that then all and every person or persons making such mischief, whether in the form of an accusation, prediction, projection, speculation, threat, or by disseminating fake news or false facts by any means; and thereby so offending, and being lawfully convicted, shall for the said offence suffer imprisonment by the space of one whole year for each offence, without bail, and once in every quarter of the said year, shall in some market town, upon the market day, or at such time as any fair, expo or convention shall be kept there, stand openly upon the pillory by the space of six hours, and there shall freely confess his or her error and offence….”

    “And for the more effectual preventing and punishing of any pretences to such arts or powers as are before mentioned, whereby ignorant persons are frequently deluded and defrauded; be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, that if any person shall, from and after the said date, pretend to exercise or use any kind of climate-craft, or undertake to make predictions, or pretend, from his or her skill or knowledge in any occult or crafty science, every person, so offending, being thereof lawfully convicted on indictment or information, also shall (if the court by which such judgement shall be given shall think fit) be obliged to give sureties for his or her good behaviour, in such sum, and for such time, as the said court shall judge proper according to the circumstances of the offence, and in such case shall be further imprisoned until such sureties be given.”

    Reference::
    Devil’s Dictionary of Climate Change, (George Lexicon 2018)

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