2023-02-26
The problem with "Climate Change" is that we fall into the trap of arguing the toss on the basis of "the science" (which is monstrously complex and therefore impossible to prove, and - more to the point - very hard to disprove in the minds of most).
But the truth of the matter is that it isn't science, it's propaganda.
So let's look at it from that viewpoint ...
What is propaganda?
Neither more nor less than the art of deluding the public to believe something that isn't true. The Nazis of Germany in WW2 are reputed to have been adept at this skill (but I don't think they were by themselves). What was their secret?
"tell a lie big enough and repeat it until people believe it"
Obviously, the ideal world for the propagandist is one in which the media of the day are controlled. In Germany in 1940 the primary media was newspapers, although they surely had radio stations as well (but no TV yet). Newspapers and radio stations would have been expensive to operate and thus very likely under government (radio) or at least big corporate (newspapers) control, as in the UK, so repeating the government's messaging would have been a relatively trivial exercise.
So what of Climate Change? Is the lie big enough? In spades!
Has it been endlessly repeated? Well, sort of ...
1970: New Ice Age by 21st Century -
1972: New Ice Age by 2070 (Brown University to the President of the USA) -
1974: New Ice Age Coming Fast -
1978: ‘No End in Sight’ to 30-Year Cooling Trend -
1988: Prepare for Long Hot Summers -
1988: Maldives Completely Underwater in 30 yrs -
1989: New York City East Side Highway underwater by 2019 -
2000: Children won’t know what snow is -
2004: Britain to have Siberian Climate by 2020 -
2008: Arctic Ice-free by 2018 -
2008: Ice-free arctic by 2013 (Al Gore) -
2009: 96 months to save the world (Prince Charles) -
2009: 50 Days to save planet from catastrophe (Gordon Brown) -
2014: 500 days to avoid climate chaos (Laurent Fabius / John Kerry).
The IPCC did not support all these claims (which is not to say that the IPCC is blameless) but recall that my topic is propaganda, and public perception is driven by the media.
So what is the role of the IPCC?
It gives the lie a necessary and highly portentous veneer of scientific respectability.
It keeps the argument focused on "the science" and the innumerable "scientific" models, creating a maze of obfuscation in the public mind so that they prefer to believe the "scientists" rather than work their way through the impenetrable. It is so effective that most of these modellers themselves probably also believe the lie (encouraged by their funding) and think that they are doing great work.
In short, complexity makes it impossible to convince the public of the lie by deconstructing the pseudo-science. It is simply too complex for the public at large to comprehend.
Even when the public record of predictions is all over the place.
That record may be entertaining, but it can't in all seriousness be accepted as justifying the immediate upending of the the world's economies. Climate change isn't a day-by-day or year-by-year or even a decade-by-decade experience - so we might take a fifty year time-span as a minimum period over which to attempt to measure the overall trend (a hundred years might be better, a thousand better still if we acknowledge that the climate moves in cycles like everything else; establishing a permanent trend by looking at the last 50 years is clearly somewhere between problematic and a fool's errand, but we have to allow that there has been a learning experience, so predictions over the next 50 years ought to be better).
So let's look again in fifty years time and meanwhile ignore these propagandists for the doomsayers that they currently are. Let those who want a net zero lifestyle take the measures that they think appropriate (it's a free country) and let the rest of us help the world by creating more CO2 as we think fit.
"Help the world by creating more CO2"?
That's right. CO2 is very close to the lowest it's ever been for tens of millions of years on this planet. But our global population is the greatest it has been (at least in our current aeon).
The oxygen in the atmosphere all started off as CO2 and was converted by plant life over hundreds of millions of years to the oxygen we breathe today. The notion that a doubling or tripling of atmospheric CO2 from current levels would lead to runaway global warming is preposterous - higher levels in recent geological time never did, and modest increases won't now.
In fact, the level of CO2 is now so low that small increases result in quite measurable global greening as plants gleefully take it up, giving us more food (and a currently minimal amount of oxygen) in return, and (whisper it quietly) measurable cooling!!
I guess that isn't too surprising, given that the current level of CO2 (417 parts per million by volume) would still account for less than one thousandth of one unit of atmosphere even if we were to manage to double it. Unlikely any time soon, given that the major part of new atmospheric CO2 each year still comes from natural sources.
To summarise – we need more CO2. More crops mean more wealth, less hunger, turning impoverished hungry unhealthy crime-ridden communities into healthier wealthier happier and more productive communities (assuming Big Agriculture can be kept at bay).
The complete opposite of where the UN-WEF "partnership" with our governments is taking us.
So what’s really not to like?
A note on pollution:
CO2 is essential for plant life - no CO2 means no food - it isn't a pollutant.
But burning fossil fuels may create pollution alongside CO2. It is clearly important to minimise pollution, but that is out of scope of this article.
Composition of the atmosphere:
Nitrogen 78%, Oxygen 21%, H2O 2% variable, CO2 0.04% or 417 ppm
