first published as Shepherd on Climate No.68 on Sunday 3rd August 2008.

Dear Freya

For the past few years I have been warning colleagues on The Left to be careful about the positions they choose to take on climate change and global warming.

Increasingly I have come to the view that bigger games are in play and that the Carbon Dioxide Hypothesis...which I don't think stands up to scientific scrutiny... is part of an orchestrated (and to date a very successful) attempt to blindside the left and divert them away from challenging the shift going on from Financial Capitalism via Disaster Capitalism...see Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine...to Resource Capitalism where resources are controlled directly (seed, soil, water, energy etc) instead of through central banking and financial intermediaries.

I also agree with the views of Bjorn Lomborg and Michael Crichton and have posted interviews with them on my holobolo website...although the best link is to my Agnetha Fältskog page...the best female voice in the world.

I suspect that the point of the Carbon Dioxide Hypothesis is to set up the trading exchanges for manipulating and then controlling the ownership and distribution of resources. There are then secondary benefits such as getting the public purse to pick up the tab for the conversion of the global transport fleet from oil to hydrogen grids, nuclear power etc. but control of the Resource Exchanges is the main purpose.

My daughter...one of my fiercest critics...recommends that you read Ice Ages and Science Wars before making up your own mind about global warming. My approach to climate change has been to explore the science behind the political headlines. The seventy posts on my climate blog is one measure of the complexity of the issues. But I hope that my honesty at least is infectious. My blog statistics show that the Shepherd on Climate blog received 1932 page views and 856 visitors in July 2008 while my website dispatched several dozen copies a day of my 2006 pamphlet England's Climate & Energy Politics into cyberspace in response to requests flowing into my webserver from somewhere out there in the ether.

It may be that many of these went to Right Wingers. Most people like to have their prejudices reinforced and many people come to the right conclusion for the wrong reasons. However my own position is about as far to the left as you can get. I don't like ordinary people being bossed around (and necessarily slaughtered) by rich, wealthy unaccountable elites and I don't want to see a One World Government imposed on my grandchildren...my first was born earlier this week and is likely to be alive in 2108.

I believe that by the mid 2030s most of the energy and electricity grids and pipelines that lace our world with a network of vulnerable terrorist targets will be closed down and dismantled. They are unjustifiable by either economics or energy fundamentals.

The sun showers enough energy on the Earth in forty-five minutes to meet the planet's need for a year. No elite, however powerful, can alter this reality. They can hide the fact. They can obstruct honest attempts to exploit its implications. But not for ever. It would be smarter for them to change tack sooner rather than later. The MIT Professor Daniel Nocera has put another nail in their coffin. Predictably their first reaction to his breakthrough on solar energy storage will be to steal, control and restrict access to the invention. But reality will break through. It always does...in the end.

This grid-pipeline demolition job is not one I would give to the energy companies and the pipeline operators. They have strong vested interests in doing the exact opposite, namely monopolising the energy flows and creating artificial energy scarcities.

I think that is enough to give you a flavour of the issues surrounding the climate change debate. My underlying attitude should also come through clearly from my climate blogs. More and more people will be moving this way as Good Science...the method rather than the individual scientist...leads us ever closer to the truth. Sensible steps are best made on firm foundations and not shifting sands. Slow and small are beautiful.

Best wishes as always.

William Shepherd
Saturday 2nd August 2008

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