The alarmist wakes to find their new foe is not such an easy pushover.
When I first became a sceptic – I assumed scientific knowledge would end the scare. Then when climategate hit, I thought that when it was known just how poor the science was and how biased those researching it, I thought that would bring it down.
I looked for analogies … perhaps like sharks, the press would eventually smell blood and come in for the kill. As I watched each new piece of evidence come in supporting us sceptics, I wondered “perhaps this time it will collapse”.
Eventually after nothing seemed to cause its collapse, I finally decide that the end would be a slow gradual loss of interest. But how could that happen? Everyone is paying for this scam through their fuel bills. Everyone is suffering as a result. It couldn’t just fade away – the law has to be changed – you can’t hide that.Then UKIP looked like the way. They couldn’t do much on their own, but they certainly could apply pressure and raise the profile.
Finally when UKIP in Scotland fell apart, I just gave up. Clearly this scam could stay supported with no visible evidence to back it up apparently for ever. I could be waiting till doomsday to see anything change. Nothing seemed to work, the press weren’t interested the (UK) politicians were universally hostile.
Then yesterday I had one of my regular overview looks of the news. Something had changed, I didn’t know what, but something had changed. I looked to see any sign of a growing scandal of any rising concerns.But it just looked to be rubbish stories and none of it getting to grips with the science. Eventually I worked out what had changed and it was the bleedingly obvious. The press are no longer interested in “the scientists” and instead Politicians are now replacing “scientists” in the news about climate. It was just too obvious to spot: Inhofe has made this high profile, the Australian government continue to annoy greens, even a few Tory MPs are now being vocal in their opposition.
But the real change is that the old mainstay of the press: “climate scientists say”, has been replaced by “Politicians argue”.
And then it struck me. These days, when I find an article on climate, it is very rare to find one which is not already filled with sceptic comments. Even the Guardian can be filled to the brim with sceptics. And so, won’t more and more politicians be finding the same? That there are votes in this issue on the sceptic side? A piece from Bernard Donoughue on Bishop Hill gives a good insight to the inner workings of politics on this issue:
I notice that my Labour colleagues who are troubled by the cost of the war on climate change, and especially when I point out that its costs fall heavily on the poorer classes, while its financial benefits go to rich landowners and individuals on the Climate Change Committee, still won’t face those facts because they want to cling on to the new climate faith because they want to believe it is in the common good. They are not bad or stupid people. Many are better and cleverer than me. But they have a need for a faith which they believe is for the global good. They don’t want a moral vacuum. And the current leaders of the social democratic parties in Britain and Europe are not offering them much else. For Ed Miliband, who is not a bad or stupid man, but coming from a Marxist heritage, when asked for more vision, he grasps climate change like a drowning man clasping a lifebelt. –Bernard Donoughue, Bishop Hill, 15 November 2014
Compare that with 2009 around Climategate:
- Unlike this public article, in 2009 even most sceptics posted anonymous.
- For your average politician to openly express doubt was tantamount to political suicide.
- Because in 2009 there was open discussion of prosecuting us sceptics, of putting us in jail even tattooing or executing us.
- And there was no effective defence for being a sceptic: you stood up and got shat on from people like the BBC and you had no choice but to take it.
Now from this article by Bernard Donoughue we see:
- It is now recognised that “global warming” is not a free lunch. It is not all the gain of endearing the politicians to green voters with no political risk to themselves. Now it is recognised that it has a tangible and negative effect on voters.
- The whole tone is “when they realise” not “if they realise”. From what I read, it is now expected that policy will change … that when those who are not interested have been caught and cajoled into listening that they will change their mind.
- And there appears to be an expectation of (political) change.
We’ve already seen major political changes:
- The refusal of most of the world to commit to another period of cuts under Kyoto.
- The sharp turn away from climate alarmism in first Canada and then Australia.
- The election of the Republicans and Inhofe’s advancement to the environment committee.
- The German government turn away from Nuclear to coal and their rejection of CO2 targets.
- The rise of UKIP in the UK.
Now that politicians are entering the fray things will change.
Another Phase
I hate to say it, but the politicians are beginning to look like they’ve taken over. Sceptics might have been working on this for years, but politicians have control of the newspapers and so we are seeing a growing confidence amongst politicians to take on this issue and run with it.
So what does a political campaign looking like?
I always imagined the end as “science comes good” – that somehow the bad science would bring it down. But what do politicians care about science? For them the goal is simple: get elected … or perhaps just as important … stop the opposition being elected.
They don’t want to talk about the nuances of climate science or Harry Met Sally comments in computer code. They want juicy buns to throw at the other side, preferably packed with scandal to ensure the other side get all the blame.
I’m now seeing how this could end … not in a scientific scandal, but in a political scandal.
And there’s now a big juicy prize for the politician who can bring this down: they can legitimately claim to have saved the average voter several thousand pounds per household. Whoever gets that credit in the public mind will be sure of huge numbers of votes. No politician can ignore that prize particularly when they know their opposition are also going for it.
The problem with the greenblob is that they had it easy from us sceptics.
At the time, the greenblob relished their freedom to say and do whatever they wanted with just a few sceptics withh no idea about PR and no real funding. They did whatever they wanted because no one checking. And that I think will be their downfall. Because that also means there will be many skeletons in the political cupboard which will look very very different in this new sceptical environment.
This I think is the next phase: the search for the guilty … the search for the damning evidence that shows political scandal, incompetence, lies, deceit … you name, it, there’ll soon be an army of political researchers trawling for it, who know how to use it, and who are very motivated to drive the stake home into this vile global warming creature. And when they find it … some politicians are going down.
That I think is now the most likely ending to this scam. Ignominy, political scandal and some politicians taking the rap.
“Girard has a whole chapter on “The Stereotypes of Persecution” (Le bouc émissaire, ch. II, pp. 23-36). They are:
(1) a generalized critical social situation;
(2) stereotyped accusations;
(3) stereotyped categories for the selection of victims for persecution.”
His topic was witch-hunts, as if they were no longer practiced.:(
The real victims are not the sceptics who suffered this witch hunt but the few academics who stood up like Salby and particularly the poor and elderly.
Scottish, the end of any moral panic or scare campaign is always the same – imposition of costly and unnecessary penalties or taxes on an unsuspecting or tired target population.
This will be no different.
If you are regular citizen and a human being, you have several concerns. If you are an activist, you have just one single concern. Guess who will win.
The climate debate is a kaleidoscope. At every point over the years, each side feels they are winning or losing or that the whole thing is coming to an end.
You are right that the heady heights of 2007 are no more.
The victory of the green movement lies however in acceptance of their basic tenets by all political and philosophical schools of thought. The smaller details do not matter.
Thanks, the last comment was thought provoking. My gut reaction is that you need to replace this “tenet” with something else … and I’m now wondering what that would look like.
One area to look is at the nature of “capitalism”, because capital is long-term assets and the whole point about “capital” is that we separate the cash flow from the real value that is locked up in capital. In a sense one could say that the capitalists were the inventors of sustainability.
Conservatives have failed to expose and investigate the biggest existing Enron level scam of all, the latest hockey stick media sensation that Mann so widely promoted and which still features widely on alarmist government and media sites. I have posted proof of the scam thousands of times on news sites and blogs. Few climate activists are aware of it so it was quite useful tripping them up with, exposing their ignorance.
http://i.imgur.com/IsEf6hS.jpg
The blade was a pure artifact of proxy re-dating and resultant sudden data drop off at the end, but instead of a retraction and news corrections, the team issues a bizarre FAQ on RealClimate.org that verbally welded high resolution thermometer data (apples) to the terribly low resolution proxy average (oranges). Both Mark Steyn and Inhofe should be hammering on this since Climategate is said to be ancient history now, a faux controversy, blah blah, taken out of context, etc.
A new generation has finally started revolting against lefty MSM bias too, in the form of the ongoing now three month long #GamerGate movement that overlapped with #ShirtStorm angering so many liberals about their fanatical core of activists. The landslide in the US was mostly attrition rather than conversion, aa embarrassed liberals failed to show up. Obamacare lies and the ongoing train wreck expose MSM bias in general in a way skeptics could have only dreamt of achieving.
Twitter is still lacking the hundreds of skeptics required to create real pressure on alarmists there, only about three of them not being enough. Meanwhile hundreds squander their effort bickering and complaining within skeptical blogs, idiotically, a total opportunity cost, no thanks to the bloggers who fail to regularly promote real activism.
The huge landslide is a turning point exactly since climate alarm was a primary issue in it from the Democratic side. This proves alarm to be toxic to liberals now so conservatives should indeed be emboldened to cry foul.
The worst trend was conservatives adopting the “not a scientist” dodge that merely legitimize rogue climatologists! What a disasterous PR move, from the stupid party that includes Inholfe invoking the Christian god to explain warming. That’s why skepticism hit a wall of inertia: conservatives jumped on board without disowning creationism. Only Mother Nature has saved skepticism from obscurity.
It’s a real problem when you’ve got one group that naturally form “consensus” to such an extent that some of the main alarmists have no idea about the science, and you’ve got another bunch who are naturally very good at understanding the evidence but less than perfect on communicating that knowledge – particularly on “social media” like twitter.
Unfortunately, I didn’t understand what point you were trying to make in the link, could you explain it?
And I’m not sure whether I prefer being in the UK where no politicians were willing to speak up as sceptics or in the US where many of those who did were not the most astute in their understanding of science.