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The Environmental Spectator
The Scaremongers’ Ball
The Global Warmists have concluded their annual fundraising vacation.
Static made it hard to hear the voice on the other end, but I soon recognized it as that of my friend Henny-Penny, the erstwhile found of The Holy Order of The Sky Is Falling, now a leading global warming skeptic. “Where are you” I asked when I reached her late last week.
H-P: In Doha, Qatar, at the U.N. Conference on Climate Change, also known as The Scaremongers’ Ball. And, believe me, the delegates are having a ball, chatting one another up furiously as they try to put together a new treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 which expires at the end of this month.
ME: Isn’t it the treaty that didn’t get a single vote in the U.S. Senate?
H-P: Yes, and it’s good thing, for it would have tied us — but not China and India — to various “greenhouse gas” emissions reductions that would have hurt our economy. They were based on unproved scientific theories, as is the hoped-for new treaty.
ME: What about that conference in Copenhagen in 1997 that got pledges from industrialized nations for $30 billion to go to the so-called developing world?
H-P: That’s expiring, too, and the pledges weren’t mandatory. No telling who has paid.
ME: Aren’t there delegates from about 200 countries? How do they feel about all this?
H-P: Most of them are employees of their governments, posted to the U.N. Their job is to get more money out of the process for their countries. That’s what these conferences are all about. They last a week or so. The delegates get free air travel, free accommodations, free meals and lots of time to gab and have fun.
ME: Don’t they all believe that global warming is leading to disaster?
H-P: Many do. If , for example, you live on a low-lying island in the ocean and you have bought the scaremongers’ theory, you would be scared stiff your island would be awash in a few years.
ME: Many scientists seem convinced that the phenomenon is getting worse by the year.
H-P: Yes, but there are plenty of skeptics among them. While there has been a moderate uptick in temperature over several decades, it is by no means certain that it is human-made and will continue for ever and ever. Scientists who look for a cause have hit on human consumption of fossil fuels. After all, if they are right, humans behavior can change, so the problem can be fixed.
They then create computer models to “prove” their theory. You begin a computer program with assumptions, using whatever data you have. When a dire prediction pops out, the scientists says “Aha, this is the way it will be,” then speaks at a conference, writes a paper, gives interviews, is widely quoted. Before we know it, believer scientists claim that the theory is “settled science.”
It’s not, but the environmentalists love it, for their philosophy, just under the surface and disguised as saving trees, rare birds and animals, is the belief that human beings are wasteful, lead materialistic lives, produce too many children and must be made to have a simpler — read “lower” — standard of living. So, if all the Sturm und Drang results in reduced use of fossil fuels and a shrinking economy, the greater good will have been served. So they think.
ME: What about the street demonstrations outside the conference hall?
About the Author
Peter Hannaford was closely associated for a number of years with the late President Reagan, beginning in the California Governor’s office. His latest book is Presidential Retreats.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (12) | Leave a comment
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c. j. acworth| 12.10.12 @ 8:09AM
Everybody reading this has got to go over to Watts Up With That and read how Lord Moncton took over a microphone for about a minute and told the assembled idiots in Doha a few inconvienient truths. Hi-larious!
stmichrick| 12.10.12 @ 9:39AM
Sanity from an unlikely source:
http://newswatch.nationalgeogr.....l-warming/
TLP| 12.10.12 @ 10:39AM
Is it just me?
Or might these people be a little less Over The Top on all this Global Warming Stuff, if they stopped meeting in The Deserts of the Middle East.
I know why they do it. They do it because, everytime they go somewhere else, there's a Blizzard.
This is what happens when people have too much time on their hands.
Idle hands are the Devil's tools.
Indeed.
Ronsch| 12.10.12 @ 12:28PM
Like always, the dialogue has morphed after the failing of "global warming." Mow it is "climate change" as if climate change is n0t a natural occurrence! Of course the climate changes for if it did not, we would still be one giant continent of garden-like conditions, even after the drift period.
And those chuckleheads that are protesting are just like the L-S-Ds (Liberal-Socialist-Democrats) in the US that are demanding faster change...The want the global takeover and punishment of industrialized nations to occur faster.
Stan Redmond| 12.10.12 @ 3:19PM
Get with the times. "Climate Change" is so 2010. Now it's "Climate Disruption"
TLP| 12.10.12 @ 1:13PM
I think we've found a home for our Contest, this Friday.
Albert Constantine Jr.| 12.10.12 @ 4:31PM
I'm sure that by Wednesday, there will be an article with even fewer comments.
Bill8472| 12.10.12 @ 2:34PM
The claim that the ice above the Arctic Circle is melting in amounts not seen before is pretty credible, isn't it?
Now the question is, what effect with that melting have on the world? I doubt it'll be disastrous. It may even be a net good thing, for example, making it possible for ships to travel between continents over open water at the North Pole, and opening the Northwest Passage to regular use commercially.
In about 5000 years, it'll freeze right back up again.
TLP| 12.10.12 @ 3:20PM
They didn't name the place: GREENLAND because it was covered in Ice, did they.
Stan Redmond| 12.10.12 @ 3:22PM
We have only been able to "see" what is going on in the arctic for 50 years or so. Yet, somehow, scientists can extrapolate all that data to have a 100% consensus that we're all doomed unless we give billions of dollars to cesspool countries and the UN.
Marc Jeric| 12.10.12 @ 4:39PM
Anthropogenic global warming hoax lives on; after 16 years of cooling it turned into "climate change". Whatever - just kill off 5 billion surplus people.
JmsA| 12.10.12 @ 11:52PM
In Physical Geography 101 class as a freshman, I recall, if memory serves right, one of the greatest climactic threats to man, was that of was global cooling, resulting in, among other phenomena, decreasing crop yields in the Ukraine. This was in part related to not only solar cycle variance(s), but also changes in the mean annual air temperature, particularly between the Equator and latitude 80 degrees North, since about 1940 as the result of greatly increased input of dust into the upper atmosphere by major volcanic eruptions, the first of which, the 1947 eruption of the Icelandic volcanic Hekla. Another factor given consideration was man-made dusts from industrial sources, resulting in an increase in the proportion of solar energy absorbed in the stratosphere, with resulting less energy arriving at lower atmosphere levels, with a concomitant reduction in the level of sensible heat in the lower atmosphere. Also posited was the part played by latitude, particularly that from the equatorial zone to the polar zones, as well as how large land areas, especially the continents of North America and Eurasia subverted the simple latitude zones to cause great seasonal extremes of temperature. In contrast, the southern hemisphere, it was also explained, was strongly dominated by the simple effects of latitude. That was a great class, and I cannot recall any mention was made regarding any threats from global warming.