Wednesday, May 15, 2013

A quick summary

I mentioned  the latest article from Peter Foster in the last post but it is worth pulling some excerpts because he so nicely summarizes the present situation with climate alarmism.

As he writes, the
  • alleged climate catastrophe is based not on “simple” atmospheric physics but on the computer models of the... IPCC
  • which assume that CO2 drives the climate
  • then assume the multiplication of that driving force via positive feedbacks
  • then assume the worst possible implications.
All of these assumptions can and have been successfully challenged. Some would say debunked and discredited.

Meanwhile, there is no disputing that levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have now reached 400 ppm.  However, the breathless reporting of this figure reflects numerical mysticism, not science, especially as the  period of years during which there has been no warming is now 16 years.

Not only is the science not settled but the situation is muddied further by that fact that
  • ...the policy measures taken to address this alleged existential crisis have been (a) climatically pointless, and (b) economically disastrous.
  •  However, any suggestion of revisiting the science is treated with primal screams because the climate industry has succeeded in framing this as a “moral issue,” all about hurting poor people and recklessly endangering the future of the planet. 
  •  This moral crusade has been so successful because it is fed by the anti-capitalist psychological compost that has been piling up since Marx stalked the earth.
  • The issue also remains politically toxic due to the vast and disproportionate power of radical environmental NGOs, who have very deliberately been cultivated both within the UN and by nodes of Global Salvationism
Anyone who persists in positing climate policy as an issue of science is both disingenuous and misleading.  Climate policy has always been an environmental morality play and the role of science has been as a tool of authority to bully and intimidate people into conforming with prescribed policy outcomes that conform to an elitist ideology of environmentalism that in practice contrasts markedly with the pragmatic environmental ethics of common sense.

The underlying problem with any elitist ideology is that it is not sustainable in a free democratic society.  Zombies, vampires and ghosts make for good scary stories but they are ephemeral and as mythical as the sky is falling alarmism of climate catastrophe.