Many of the new offences created by Parliament in the coming years will stem from the new religion of global warming. The reason is simple. It increases the power of government. Indeed it is a politician's dream because the scope for governmental interference and pious lectures is limitless.
Industry can be splattered with new regulations. The private citizen can be subjected to constant hectoring on how this or that might save the planet. Politicians can appear in the media, unquestioned, and new fields of supposed expertise can be created. The subject can be ordained for the schoolroom so children can sternly rebuke their parents over their carbon emissions and reckless lifestyles.
One of the oddities about the cult of planet-saving is the wide acceptance of the gospel of global warming, despite the fact that most of us are shivering in the cold. History shows that the planet has over the ages warmed up and cooled down over long periods before the arrival of any SUVs or anything else on wheels. Since we are dependent on the sun's seemingly enigmatic behaviour for our heat, this is not altogether surprising.
So far as the scientific debate is concerned, it is fascinating to observe the rush to join the new religion. As Andrew Alexander pointed out on 2nd January 2009 in his column in the Daily Mail 'Some of you will knowingly add, grants and posts and promotion are readily forthcoming for those accepting the new orthodoxy, not the challengers. After a lifetime observing the whimsical views of orthodox 'experts' in so many fields and the publicity their views receive, I find this pattern familiar.'
The heretical Danish professor Bjorn Lomborg prefers to deal in facts and numbers about global warming than join the priesthood. This puts him on a collision course with 'the crazed extent of global warming argued by Al Gore in his famous and fatuous film An Inconvenient Truth,' to quote Alexander. Unfortunately the facts are turning against the new religion.
Satellite data show that global sea level is rising by a truly tiny amount, with no rise for the past two years. And global temperatures have probably fallen in the past year-and-a-half, leaving the global position unchanged over the past decade.
Lomborg declares that the vast sums of money due to be involved in preventing global warming could be better spent elsewhere...food and water for all and a war against malaria just for starters. He calculates, for instance, that if all the Kyoto agreements were fulfilled it would reduce the global temperature in the year 2100 by only .0075 degrees.
Britain's contribution to Kyoto would be tiny to the point of immeasurable in terms of global warming. But would there be any casualties from a refusal to worship at the altars of the carbon exchanges? Individual ones undoubtedly...and deservedly so for they stand accused of misleading the people...after deluding themselves. But the majority would prosper from a change of tack.
We are told that hardworking scientists with families to support would find themselves short of employment, no longer with fame and fortune within their grasp. Or would they? The real threat from our ignorance of cosmic and galactic affairs needs every scientist and astronaut we can muster. The real risks of catastrophic change in the Earth's climate will come from without and not from within.
But pity the poor power companies. Their share price will be exposed to the folly of their nuclear power fiascos. How will they survive the cancellation of their free grants of carbon pollution vouchers without lucrative profit offsets from their inefficient wind turbines?
The real need is to dismantle the planet's electricity grids, oil and gas pipelines and the related transport infrastructure and rebuild energy needs and energy supply from the ground up...one household, one business, one village, one town, one rural county and one city region at a time. For bankers profit rules and they would soon go about once it is worth their while.
And what of our politicians going boldly into a brave new world of controlled climate and ambient temperatures? Must they admit the error of their ways? I don't think so. John Maynard Keynes once said that a sound banker is not one who foresees ruin and avoids it, but one who, when he is ruined, is ruined in a conventional and orthodox way along with his fellows, so that no one can really blame him. My advice? Stick with the herd but get it headed in the right direction. Where the planet's climate is concerned it is hard facts and not blind faith that will be needed in the 21st century.
