I think that many of my readers (hey, two out of three counts as ‘many’) would be aware that I firmly feel that global warming climate change falls firmly into the ‘crock of shit’ category. And even if it didn’t, the assumption that man is to blame for it definitely counts as bullshit. And even if it existed, and man caused it, it still wouldn’t justify any more than about 5% of the massive intrusion into everyone’s lives that the greenish like.
I was quite content with this; I have no problem being on the wrong side of generally accepted beliefs; it’s when everyone starts agreeing with me that I get nervous.
From PJ O’Rourke, in Parliament of Whores:
Whenever I’m in the middle of conformity, surrounded by oneness of mind with people oozing concurrence on every side, I get scared. And when I find myself agreeing with everybody, too, I get terrified.
So, I’ve been at the scared stage for a few years now. But there seems to be a backlash happening; first, there was a fair number of scientists calling bullshit on the whole thing; then there was the good ol’ hockey graph; then, more recently, Channel 4 raised the flag for dissent. And now even the Beeb are raising concerns.
For some ornery reason, I find myself terrified now that the Beeb et al are showing sign of dissent from the Gospel according to Climate Change. Because the O’Rourke quote is right: nothing is as dangerous as a perceived consensus. And nothing could do more harm to the anti-greenish cause than formerly greenish nonsense-spouters getting onside, and calling it a new consensus.
Plus, if the BBC start agreeing with me all the time, who shall I rail against?
Climate change is real (as real as the dinosaurs, ice ages and anything else in which we infer the past from the present), it’s the human contribution to climate change that’s up for question. I don’t really have a position on that, it’s very hard to see through the hysteria to the facts.
What would concern me more is the almost deification of science, people now get laughed at for questioning theories. Isn’t the point of science to question theories?
Especially the unproven ones…
Boobies
Are you saying climate change is unproven?
That the climate today is not the same as it was 100 years ago is not in doubt. Nor is that the climate 100 years before that was different. And so on, ad infinitum.
What is in doubt is that it is changing in the way predicted by any of the accepted climate change models. In that, the current ‘climate change’ argument is unproven.
And even if that was proved, then the link between human activity and ‘climate change’ is pretty far from proven.
Climate change is proven. If by that you mean that the climate is demonstrably changing. But CO2 being a cause of warming is an assumption used in the models, not the conclusion of the models.
The other interesting thing is that we know, for a fact, that in recent history the climate has been cold enough for fetes to be held on the Thames, and hot enough that vineyards were developed in the North of england. Yet within those same temperature bounds apocalypse is now being predicted.
In otherwords, the models are not proven.
…and what about the fact that the surfaces of other planets in our solar system are also increasing in temperature? Our sun is getting hotter. The increase of temp on planet earth is not wholly due to us human beans. I still hate berks who drive off road vehicles that NEVER go offroad though.
The whole carbon offset/footprint is another way of taxing us.
Mudflapgypsy: the global warming on those planets is clearly due to 4x4s and budget airlines.
If not theirs, then ours. Bad karma. Or something.