The global warming swindle

The city of Victoria newsletter, entitled Connect, arrived in my mail the other day. Decorated with pictures of happy, glowing faces, it is a report on all the wonderful things our civic government is doing for us. It's an important job, running a city, and the people doing that important work should be respected. But, please. Times being what they are, I know it's impossible to do anything without genuflecting to the enviro gods. So Kim Fowler oh so nicely takes as her watchwords, "Be gentle with the earth." Yup. For most of human history we have been doing our best to protect ourselves from all the catastrophes the earth regularly dishes up to us. Like the recent earthquake in Haiti. Like the the tsunami in Indonesia. The earth is not that gentle. In fact it's downright ruthless. And it's just a tiny fragment of rock which is subject to any other chunk of rock that might cross our path. It could happen at any time and we could all be wiped out in an instant. What's truly remarkable is how blessed we are that we have a moon that acts like a space sweeper. We have a remarkably well-behaved sun just the right distance away so that all this water with which our planet has been endowed is mostly liquid. Since our bodies are 90% water that's a pretty good thing.

Not that there's anything wrong with being gentle with the earth. The operative principle should be that we don't foul our nests. This is mainly a matter of diligent housekeeping. We want to be able to feed ourselves and so it makes sense to conserve the soil and the oceans. When new problems crop up, as when millions of motor vehicles came on the road emitting dangerous fumes into the air, we seek solutions. But the air quality in London was vastly worse when coal was the main heating fuel than it is now. In those good old days the famous London fog could and did kill. As recently as the '50's the main heating fuel for Victoria was sawdust which emitted terrible clouds of noxious fumes. In many ways we take better care of 'the environment' than ever.

For the zealots of the ecocult who see human beings as a blight on the earth, that's not good enough. We (not them) must be punished. Self flagellation becomes fashionable in the west periodically but flagellation of demons and evil beings is usually much more popular. That's why when some obscure researcher came up with a computer model showing that an increase in greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere could lead to a global warming trend. If we didn't watch out earth would become a hell hole like Venus. Not only was this conjecture a godsend for the ecocultists, it was a bonanza for climate scientists and an excuse for the internationalized bureaucratic class to go into overdrive inventing new laws and regulations. Then along came a few sharp-eyed financial wizards and spotted an opportunity to make some seriously big money. No longer would it be necessary to go to all the trouble of producing a product to make a buck. In fact, it would be entirely possible to make more money from not producing a product if you could dream up a way of showing how you were reducing carbon dioxide emissions, thus entitling you to a carbon credit. Brilliant. This would be better than cornering the market in silver, gold or oil. In effect, they would have the power of taxation over every working person in the world. All this without the inconvenience of elections.

Personally, I never could understand how anybody could believe in the man made climate change scam. Climate change, yes. Anybody with a third grade education would know about the ice ages. Any boy who likes to read about the Vikings would know that Greenland was once green. But from a small seed to a huge oak the global warming hype grew, in spite of contrary voices calling attention to flaws in the reasoning and gaps in the data.

Until a few months ago when the lid blew off and we have found out that the science was not merely wrong, it was systematically and deliberately falsified. The case is now closed.

But the news doesn't seem to have reached the editors of Connect. "What are you doing for earth hour?" they ask. "On Saturday, March 27, 2010, at 8:30 pm, cities around the world will be turning off their lights for one hour to show their support for action on climate change." Oh, yes. What better way to make yourself feel virtuous than to make some gesture that has no affect on anything whatsoever. The gesture is the thing. It's free, and afterwards you can get in your SUV and run down to the store, your hemp bag in hand, to pick up some enviro approved light bulbs.

Connect asks for citizen feedback, so here goes. Don't worry any longer about global warming, see. It's a complete and total waste of time and money. If it doesn't snow on Mt. Kilamanjaro there's nothing we can do about it. Got programs? Good opportunity to cut back on something nobody will miss. And think about the energy we'll save. The ecocultists should like that but they won't... they'll squawk their heads off, that's what they do. Just pat them on the head and give them buckets and gloves so they can pick off the tent caterpillars that infest our trees and shrubs every spring. That would be something really useful and might keep them busy enough so they don't have to try to think.

The proposition that human activities were causing a rise in global temperatures was originally just a wrong theory. It graduated into being a scam, and very nearly became the most massive swindle in history. It's time to face reality and stop acting like fools.

By the way, I never did figure out who Kim Fowler is.