Thoughts on what end for Global Warming?

Following today’s announcement on WUWT that Tim Flannery has had his position terminated by the new Australian administration, I’ve been wondering what implications this has for the demise of the global warming scam in the UK … and (sitting with my coat on inside in September because heating costs too much and the early cold in Scotland) I had rather more to say than would fit on a WUWT reply.
Watching the global warming scam end is a bit like watching paint dry. It really doesn’t look like anything is happening until something inconceivable happens like Black (BBC) and Hansen(NASA) being invited to spend “more time with the environment”. But during all this time watching this paint dry, I’ve had plenty of time to speculate how the Global warming scam would come to an end.
So what can these events in Australia tell us?
In the early days, when I started reading the evidence and found it was just fluff and non-science, I thought that if we just let enough people know that sooner or later there would be a “road to Damascus”  type event and the mainstream media would realise they were lied to by e.g. claims of 50m sea level rise and it would all end in a big media circus.
But as I waited and waited and saw event after event showing all the mal-practice and failed forecasts, etc. and none triggered the kind of investigative journalism I thought would bring it to an end, I began to realise that “investigative journalism” is a myth and unless you own or run a newspaper, the only people that can trigger such events are huge publicity groups like political parties. Because such media fire-storms only occur when you have hugely powerful and well funded self-interested publicity groups, it wasn’t going to happen for us climate sceptics. We simply do not have the money or resources to create the media story that the press need to feed off.
In other words, however well meaning and honest, because sceptics are largely small time individuals who try to be honest and stick to proven facts, we don’t have the resources or know the “tricks” to create a media fire-storm. Indeed, many of us are hostile to good publicity! So, unless someone else with a lot of money decides it is in their interest, it will never end this way.
Eventually after waiting several years and particularly after Climategate failed to “put the final nail in the coffin”, I looked at other similar scams and I realised that many similar scares like Bird Flu just get quietly forgotten. So, I began to think this is what might happen.
I think they get forgotten because the people who feed off these scams: the politicians and Mainstream media not only don’t benefit from playing down the scare, but as they are usually the main culprits in spreading the scare and it hardly suits either group for the public to be reminded how wrong they were.
But there is a huge problem for this scare because unlike all the other daft scares (Bird flu, Millennium bug, kids not being allowed to see sunshine – in Scotland!), the global warming scam couldn’t just be forgotten because so many people have had their lives blighted by bird mincers and were not going to just forget about it and in any case laws have been passed which have to be scrapped – and that cannot be done without someone noticing.
But as I thought about it, politicians often completely change their views – they have brass necks, cold hearts and they would have no compunction changing what they said if …. they could find someone else to blame.
And who will the politicians blame for the global warming scam?

• Sceptics. Yes, strange as it sounds, the easiest option of the politicians is to blame the messenger. In project planning I think this stage comes after one called “search for the guilty” and is called “praise and honour to the non-participants” – which means those who are involved, whether culpable or not, get the blame.
• Other parties (not really an option in the UK as they all agreed)
• Newspapers (not if they ever want any positive publicity ever again)
• Their “friends” in the scientific elite who massaged the facts to create the scam.
• Some small guy academic who made an honest mistake which the scientific elite had to try to sweep under the carpet.

In other words, I can see us getting a “Dr Kelly moment” (WMD) … where some academic who could well have been very neutral in the debate … just happens to find themselves at the centre of attention and ends up being the “scapegoat” for every one else due to some high profile mistake.
And seeing what has happened to Tim Flannery seems to confirm that at some point, the politicians who have been so nice to the climate scientists and so willing to spread their propaganda, could suddenly turn on these same people and start tearing them apart so that in the public’s mind it is the climate scientists who are to blame for everything that went wrong on global warming.
Politicians need to be able to answer this question: “if global warming doesn’t matter … why did we spend so much money and destroy so much of our landscape by windmills?”
The real answer is that the politicians, media and scientific elite, not only didn’t do their job, but they did a thoroughly bad job with broadcasters like the BBC & even the Royal Society wholly & dishonestly distorting the evidence and so the debate.
However the same conspiracy that prevented the proper investigation of Climategate will stop those who are really culpable taking the blame over global warming which means that I cannot see any other option than the blame being stuck on one or two individuals.
And any sceptic could name those people who are most likely to become scapegoats. But oh Man they deserve to be held to account for mal-practice, but over-confidence, failure to understand science and statistics and group think are only mal-practice. It could be fraud if it had resulted in financial gain (grants) which were obtained be deception, but it would be a difficult line to draw between “egging up results” and out right lying. However it is all a different matter with a conspiracy by those in authority to hide these actions because that is clearly criminal. But as we in Britain know, the law only applies to us plebs. And so that is what I suspect certain climate academics will discover to their cost as we approach the point where the political elite just cannot sustain this scam any longer.
But it is a bit like a very complex chess game. We know the outcome: the politicians win and I suspect it will be the climate scientists who get the blame for deceiving the public (by which politicians mean themselves), but there are some awful difficult steps to understand how we will get from where we are now to where we will be in a few years
Flannery and Oz is a prime example of the “tar your opposition and the scape goat with the same brush” approach. It may work in Oz, where the opposition can come in and do a clean sweep, but in the UK the Tories, Labour, Lib Dem (and in Scotland the SNP) have all been enthusiastically pro-wind and leading the charge. Any allegations about being “pro-wind” could easily backfire because the main parties have all been up to their armpits in the cow-produced greenspin.
Worse, there have been several high-profile inquiries by parliament and by the scientific “elite” (i.e. Royal Society) and so if any major political party starts suggesting climate scientists were less than honest, they are effectively saying that not only were individual climate scientists guilty but there was a conspiracy to cover this up by people like the Royal Society. There will not be many “expert” witnesses to testify to the crime because anyone a court would consider an “expert” will probably be in the Royal Society … or is the kind of person who would like to get in.
So, unless someone breaks cover and wants to out the rest of the “elite”, I doubt they will ever be on trial.
Other things to consider about time-scale

1. Kyoto is dead.
   Yes they have pretended it will be resurrected but with only the EU (and countries like those trying to get into the EU) being supportive of any new agreement, it is defacto dead as an international treaty. However, as they have shown … they can keep pretending whatever they like the media just lap it up. However whilst they can keep it going a few years, they cannot keep this pretence up for ever.
2. Aarhus Convention.
   Paradoxically this environmental legislation all but makes wind illegal in the UK. But like recovering money from a debtor … getting a court judgement is not quite the same thing as getting the goods. But it is another wild card … because how many rich people really hate windmills?
3. Prospect of global cooling.
   Realistically sceptics don’t worry about global cooling because we understand what the trends mean. But politicians don’t. So, when they stop believing in Global Warming they may well start believing in the prospect of sun-spot related global cooling. OK, that is possible, but politicians will think it is an imminent prospect and they know that just one more cold winter and the press and public could be jumping on the global cooling bandwagon – which could bring the global warming scam to a very sudden end.
4. The Scottish Referendum in 2014 and UK parliament elections before 2015.
   There is no doubt that the SNP and Lib Dems are by far the most outrageously pro-wind-mincer parties. It is also well known that it has been mostly those well-to-do people looking for an idyllic countryside that have been most upset by wind. In other words: those who tend to vote somewhere between Tory & eco-Lib-Dem (the two parties in the UK coalition). And it is well known the UKIP who have taken away large numbers of voters from the Tories are strongly anti-wind and anti-global warming non-science.So I think there is no doubt that it would be very much in the Tory’s interest to get the support of the anti-wind lobby who might otherwise vote Lib-Dem or UKIP. In Scotland this could turn people against the SNP & toward voting no in the referendum (which Scottish tories are against). The bigger question is whether they set the ball rolling for the Scottish referendum in 2014 (which now looks to be lost so it is beginning to look doubtful) or will they try to engineer a climate fiasco for the Lib-Dems just before they go to the polls (note I’m not saying in 2015 – because there’s a good change their marriage won’t last). But either way, it looks like the Tories could do well out of creating pubicity against global warming in 2014/15.
5. AR5
   And then there is the latest IPCC report which if the drafts are to be believed is delusional with regard to certainty. For example it cites the one increase: that being an increase in maximum rate of rain, in the worst rain clouds (which could easily be due to a change of the way it is measure & could certainly just be a random chance that this one measure has gone up) AS PROOF HUMANS ARE HAVING AN EFFECT ON EXTREME WEATHER IN GENERAL.
   How will the press react? This is another uncertainty.
6. Australia
   And finally there is Australia. Australia has been a ripe source of public funded climate alarmism. From the early actions such as the termination of Tim Flannery’s post, that source  of public funded alarmism appears to be drying up. But could there be active support for sceptics. There certainly are some high profile sceptics in Australia. And as we have found to our cost, alarmist news from Australia has got a lot of attention in the media in the UK. But more importantly, if the BBC continues its alarmist propaganda, the new Australian administration will have no option but to refute what they are saying because the BBC gets reported in Australia. So, it is almost certain that the BBC propaganda will come up against opposition in the form of the Ozzie government which will severely trim the feathers of the corporation and stop its most outrageous propaganda. So the change in mood in Australia will be felt in the UK.
7. Mann or other Court Cases
   Another wild card is that there are now several court cases. Even though there is no substance to any of the these cases (as far as I’ve seen) a few years ago the outcome would have been certain: sceptics are evil & therefore there was no truth in anything they say. Today, I would still doubt a true verdict if the case was decided by a public-servant like a judge, but I doubt a jury would have much sympathy for climate scientists. But … if you are an academic probably everyone you know is sympathetic and so they have no real idea about the views of ordinary people in a jury. So, these cases may well go to court and there is a very good chance they will loo se.

The point is that whilst none of these could “bring down” the edifice on its own, the growing mood against climate non-science & the problems politicians (particularly in the UK) have in responding to this, is producing real tension which could allow a trigger event to cause a much bigger response than expected. This would be like an avalanche … it may only take one small shock to bring down a massive torrent of public discussion which could swamp everyone involved and totally change the political landscape.
But like an avalanche, the conditions first have to be right, because without the right conditions, the avalanche cannot be triggered. I was watching some videos of rock faces collapsing and avalanches. What was quite striking, is that whilst the massive collapse was dramatic and quite unexpected … it appears always to be preceded by signs of impending collapse. With the cliff, there were numerous small rock-falls before the big event; the same is true of avalanches with numerous small flurries (which seasoned travellers in avalanche areas learn to spot).
So, in the same way, I’m beginning to look at events like Black, Hanson and Flannery “spending more time with the environment” with interest. Sceptics are always interested, but are they getting “resonance” with the mainstream media that would indicate the right conditions for a major collapse? Are we beginning to see far more of a flurry of interest from minor stories that could signify a major news event could be triggered? My feeling is that yes we are beginning, but I’m not sure if we are just there yet, but with all the events above, perhaps we will be there in the next 1-2 years.
So, could the next UK election be fought over climate? At the moment it seems unlikely because the Tories are not in control of this subject and raising the profile of climate may just give UKIP votes. But if it is likely to be raised in any case, then the Tories really have no option but to ride this wild stallion and see if they can steer it to suit their own ends. Yes, we are seeing newspapers like the Mail being increasingly willing to print stories contrary to the “con-sent-us”. But having watched how something so clearly wrong like climategate just came and went … I have no doubt that we sceptics are just incapable of pushing a major story on climate in the news.
The real answer
The answer (after the Australian election) is that AR5 is likely to either seal the death of the global warming scandal in the UK or keep it going till after 2015. Because if the UK Tories see that the press see the delusional statements in AR5 and the story starts getting traction, they really have no choice but to ride the wild stallion and hope they stay on. So the Tories will come out against wind, against the non-science and start looking like Tony Abbott.
If however, AR5 goes down like a lead balloon and the Australian public react against climate scepticism, then the UK Tories will hope that the UK public also continue to ignore this issue.
And if it is a cold winter in the UK … all bets are off!
But have I missed something – it was the sun what did it
There is a famous news headline in which the Sun Newspaper claimed it won the UK election for the party (was it Tory?). The ultimate “let out” for the scientific elite and politicians is that it was “the sun what did it”; that the scientists were fooled by the behaviour of the sun into thinking CO2 was going to cause doomsday.
As I don’t think much of the intelligence of anyone who believed the global warming scam, I may be overstating their ability to think this through, but if I were them … and as I’m honest & look at the evidence before my pay cheque, I could not be them, … but if  were them I’d start seriously promoting the idea that solar variation of clouds (linked to sun-spots) had been responsible for fooling them (not their own stupidity and disregard for the evidence).
Hence, the precursor to this change could be:

1. An “impartial” program by the BBC explaining how scientists have discovered that sunspots fooled the gullible (sceptic) public.
2. More funding for sunspot research
3. A sudden interest in CLOUD. (Which reminds me, this should be reporting soon which is another potential trigger point).

And for fun, here are a few more outlandish ideas (which I could not be sure wouldn’t happen) which would be other “signs” of impeding doom (for global warming doom).

• Should a large cheque arrive to the “Scottish Climate and Energy Forum” from an unknown source … I will be very surprised, but I will know why it has come.
• If my wife gets a promotion into a well-paid climate or energy related job … where it would not be appropriate for her husband to speak…
• If her husband gets a good job out of the blue …
• If Andrew Montford just happens to stand as a Tory MP, or just happens to get a rather nice job … .
• If I miraculously forgive Thatcher and become a Tory …
• If Lord Monckton leaves for the Tories …
• If there is a lavishly funded sun-spot conference with very wide press coverage.
• … A brand new shiny cloud chamber at CERN.
• … The BBC outlaw “denier” and sound even vaguely neutral (OK, some things are just too outlandish).

If these happen …. then clear the Global warming avalanche zone and pray you’re not a candidate for the scapegoat.