Global warming: Would you buy a used car from this bunch of snake oil sales assistants?

Whenever I post an article about Global Warming (G/W) and raise questions, more often than not, I end up being told I am up the creek with the G/W deniers and siding with reactionaries, only last week someone emailed me to say he now regards me as being in the same camp as the McCarthyite’s, who witch hunted and blacklisted many on the US left in the 1950s.

In reality I am doing none of these things, I am simply raising what I regard as reasonable questions about G/W, believing as I do in Marx's favourite dictum 'question everything to doubt.' When I see the worlds political elite trying to sell something that in many ways looks like a pup and smells like a pup, I do not believe it is unreasonable to ask of those who have purchased this product and whose opinions I respect, whether in their view what they purchased actually turned out to be a pup.

The problem with some within the pro G/W lobby, (apologies if some feel my terminology is off beam but this issue is complicated enough and I am just trying to keep it simple.) whether they be scientists, politicians or environmental activists, they have started acting like evangelists, believing they and all those who support them are on the side of the angels and all those who oppose them, or even raise doubts, are in league with the devil in a dastardly plot to destroy the planet and with it humankind.

It would do them no harm to calm down just a little, and realise that hectoring people might not be the best way to get their point across. Looking at the photo above, it seems to me neither side in this debate has a monopoly on political virtue, which is hardly surprising, as it is not in the nature of the political or scientific ‘business.’  It might help those who belong to the groups who are campaigning vigorously against ‘man-made’ global warming, if they left the cold war mentality of campaigning where it belongs, in the dustbin of history; and instead concentrated on debating through ‘the issues.’ Whilst it is true the overwhelming majority of the scientific establishment is now onside, the general public is not, what we need is facts given in layman’s language, as it is, instead of convincing people that their cause is worthy, far to many people in the GW camp seem to be in the business of religious conversion.

When seeing individuals being pilloried for taking an inquisitive stance over G/W, I am mindful of those who rejected the common sense of the day and refused to join the mad rush to war with Iraq and Afghanistan; and found themselves under the same sort of media and political onslaught as is prevalent today against those who are asking perfectly reasonable questions about G/W, carbon trading, etc.

As it happens I am opposed to the far shore of the anti G/W camp, as I am convinced the earth climate is warming, whether this is 'solely' down to mankind, I am less sure. Nevertheless, humanity undoubtedly pollutes the planet dreadfully and increasingly, and if we have any sense we will start to do more to slow this process down. (I do not believe in miracles)

I may be at fault when I say I am not yet convinced the warming of the plant is solely down to man's reckless behaviour, it seems to me as a layman there are a number of process at work. This question is of enormous importance because if G/W is not just down to man, then I  am very doubtful whether humanity can reverse nature on this. At best we must put the house in order so we can combat the eventual impact of G/W more effectively. In other words we need to act rationally and not in a Messianic manner.

I have some sympathy with the views of the scientist Bjorn Lomborg, who argues that the benefits of the measures proposed to tackle climate change, are pretty small and the resources would be better put into tackling poverty, disease (and pollution-mh) in the here and now, an argument I find perfectly reasonable if not sound.

Yet Lomborg, who a commentator to Organized Rage called a social democrat, has been placed by the pro G/W camp into the same anti climate change camp as ‘Big Oil’ and various reactionaries and cranks. (Again please forgive my shorthand terminology)
For example Lomborg once made a mistake over an Oil forecast, and he has been pilloried for this in an attempt to discredit his views. Which for me is a silly attempt by the G/W camp to follow the example of there’re opponents and over egg the pudding. For a scientist or commentator to be wrong on one thing,  does not discredit their entire body of work, after all, some of the scientist at the University of East Anglia made a mistake by sending those emails, but in no way to my mind does it discredit their decades of work on climate change. Now does it?

Last week I republished a letter from a Pro Ryan, he concluded it with the following paragraph,
“My reading of this affair is that climate science, like finance in the 1970s, is at an immature stage of development. There are heavy consequences when scientists forget Karl Popper's favourite dictum that good science seeks to refute, not confirm. With climate science the stakes are high, and so we need the very best of science. That is why I am on the side of the skeptics.”

I just wish some of those who treat climate change as a life and death struggle for the whole of humanity would take this on board. It is just as dangerous to overstate the dangers of climate change than it is to say there are no dangers?

Over the last week, we have witnessed coming out of Copenhagen, some ridiculous scare-mongering statements and headlines from our politicians and their media gofers, some of which went as far as claiming if an agreement was not reached at Copenhagen it would mean the end of the Planet. I would have more confidence if these same grandstanding politicians started by practicing what they preach. They could start with population growth, which is something we should begin to deal with immediately and if handled sensibly, could bring beneficial changes within 50 years or less.

Yet the pro G/W lobby seem less keen on dealing with this. I can understand this, as I have always shied away from this debate due to the cranks and reactionaries who have supported it. But I feel this is one of the issues we could start with now, instead of this obsession with carbon trading, I repeat the words, carbon trading, which to me seems to be potentially the biggest big business scam since the banks went belly up.

At the weekend I read an interesting article written by the former head of the UK Meteorological Office John Hunt, in which he wrote we need to begin to tackle global warming locally. Take the area I live in along the River Thames rim, the government has approved the building of a new housing project, the size of a small town to be built on a flood plain. Similar housing and industrial project are planned or are already being built on both sides of the river from London to the sea. Which given the UK governments public take on G/W appears to me to be nothing short of a criminal endeavour?

 Finally, I find this absolute trust in science which some have displayed when it comes to G/W extremely worrying. A chap whose opinion I respect left some comments on a previous piece I wrote about the Climate Change UN conference in Copenhagen, he ended with the following "I don't know about you but I think I have to admit my limitations. I don't think I have the time or perhaps the ability to weight differing scientific views of different factors appropriately, at least to pronounce with any authority. Trying to grasp the whole system is an order of magnitude above that."

At first I thought what he wrote was spot on, but then I thought back to when I first became politically aware, I new little about  foreign affairs nor economic matters, but I came to understand these disciplines by at first taking a very sceptical attitude to the official line and through experience, hard study and good advice I moved forward from there.
Having struggled through Marx and the work of others, I also gained an understanding not only of economics but I also concluded no matter what the big house might say, there is ‘almost’ always an alternative. This sceptical attitude has proved useful down the years, the more so over the last three decades when the left have been in a small minority. Thankfully in recent times these disciplines gave me the understanding to see why the Iraq war was wrong, the occupation of Afghanistan is a fools errand and Neo-liberal economics was bound to end in disaster for the ordinary working person.
The  almost total meltdown of the UKs banking system is about as good an example as one could get of the herd mentality. Few were willing to stand up and offer a viable alternative to baling out the banks, let alone actively oppose that which the British PM and the leaders of the G8 powers put into practice. Even though many understood clearly due to the massive debt incurred, this might bring to an end the very social state it has taken six decades to build and defend against attacks from within.

I believe the same process which was at work then, was brought to bare by the G10 leaders and G/W lobby in Copenhagen, I call it the Xfactoring of political decision making. The general public are blatantly manipulated by the media into a state of mass panic and begin to fear if a deal is not signed immediately, the whole sorry shebang will come crashing down, with catastrophic consequences. Political and business leaders fly in with the NGO’s following in the tailwind; and the political elites finally end up cutting ‘a deal of sorts’ in the 11th hour.

Xfactoring has come to play an important role in getting the masses to accept political decision that in the calm light of day they would either refuse to contemplate, or demand they be debated democratically. That no deal worthy of the name has been cut at Copenhagen has not altered my view, I see the Copenhagen jamboree as part of a softening up process, after all the lead in to the Iraq war did not occur overnight. Expect to see Hilary Clinton some time soon at the UN, maps, models, clipboards and all, warning the world Armageddon is to hand; and that her and her ilk are the only ones who can save us. She will proclaim, "Sure we will 'all' have to make sacrifices and those who are not with us must be regarded as our enemies and dealt with accordingly. But the price will be worth it as we will be saving the Planet."

And who is going to argue with that?



CM sent me this link which I found helpful.