Pictures that tell a thousand stories

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Pictures that tell a thousand stories

The story behind these pictures (see also below) is told on Watts up with that. In a nutshell, these are "before and after" pictures of the Dye 2 radar warning station in southern Greenland, one taken in 1967 and the other in 2006, after it had been abandoned due to the encroaching snow.

At a direct level, this gives the lie to the oft' repeated mantra of the warmists that the Greenland ice cap is melting, adding to the growing body of evidence that suggests that their alarmist creed is totally misplaced.

The wider lesson, however, is that despite the evidence, not only does the warmist creed survive and prosper, but it is embedded so deeply in the body politic that it has driven out any discourse. It has become the received wisdom amongst all the major political parties, not only in this country but elsewhere, not least in the United States.

Driving this is the leaden doctrine of consensus, so beloved of the "colleagues" in the European Union. This is a close relative to totalitarianism, where only the party line is permitted. Any disagreement is treated as heresy, a political crime which must be punished.

Yet, in the "real" world, as demonstrated by Booker's column last Sunday, there is anything but consensus. Over 1,000 comments on the piece attest that the doctrine of global warming, or "climate change" as the believers now like to call it, is hotly disputed and subject to a vibrant – some might say vicious – debate.


The point here is that is debate takes place not in the media proper or within the political classes, but outside on the periphery. Yet there is nothing more inherently political than global warming, driving as it does huge areas of public policy, distorting government responses to a wide range of problems – not least energy – and costing us a fortune in taxes and hidden levies.

That the debate takes place outside the normal political cockpit illustrates one thing – that the political classes have, in effect, opted out of politics. Instead, they entertain themselves prattling about the things they want to talk about, and then expend their energies on trying to tell us that we should take them more seriously than our own concerns.

Therein lies the heart of the disengagement with the political process. It is not, as many politicians would aver (and like to believe), that we have lost interest in politics. It is more that they the politicians – and their groupies - have lost interest. They have become totally detached from reality, wrapped up in their tiny, putrid bubble of self-interest which dominates their lives.

To that extent, global warming is the model. As with this subject, we have the leaden consensus on immigration, on the European Union, on public finance, on law and order, and a host of other issues. Where the public at large would like to see radical change, the political discourse is limited to tiny movements within rigidly defined boundaries.

The political classes will entertain discourse only within those boundaries so that, while we are permitted to have a discussion about how we manage the effects of global warming, we are not allowed to dispute the central premise. We are not allowed to argue that the phenomenon is not man-made – rather it is part of a normal climate cycle and that, quite possibly, we are now entering a much more dangerous cooling phase. That area, to the political classes, is totally out of bounds. 

For "global warming" substitute immigration, or a wide range of issues, and the treatment is the same.

In their own way, however, these pictures could also be used to illustrate another story, the fate of those self-same political classes. They are represented by the radar station, built with high hopes twenty feet above ground level, dominating the ground. For "snow" read "public opinion" and the picture is complete. Unable to shift their ground, the political classes have become submerged, wholly irrelevant and useless.

But, buried in their deep cocoon of "snow" they – like the Met Office - have not yet looked out of the windows. When they do, they are in for a shock. And soon after, the oxygen will run out.

COMMENT THREAD

We are supposed to take this seriously?

Next year in the UK is set to be one of the top-five warmest on record,according to the Met Office.

The average global temperature for 2009 is expected to be more than 0.4 degrees celsius above the long-term average, making it the warmest year since 2005. The Met Office also says there is a growing probability of record temperatures after next year.

The record year was 1998, says the Met Office, and this one, we are led to believe, will not be far behind, even if it will not beat the hottest year. Thus, says Professor Phil Jones, director of the climate research unit at the University of East Anglia, "global warming had not gone away despite the fact that 2009, like the year just gone, would not break records."

Taking a quick reality break, courtesy of Steven Goddard over at Watts up with that?, we are reminded that the Met Office in April last year predicted that the 2008 summer would be "warmer than average" with "rainfall near or above average."

That was immediately picked up by The Observer which happily reported: "Britain set to enjoy another sizzling summer after new evidence from the Met Office suggested above average temperatures for the season."

As the country basked in warm spring sunshine over the Easter weekend, the paper went on, "the new research suggests that it could be time to say goodbye to defining features of British life, like rainy picnics and cloudy sunbathing."

By 29 August, however, someone had obviously been looking out of the window, allowing the Met Office unashamedly to report that the summer of 2008 had been: "one of the wettest on record across the UK." And here they go again, "predicting" that 2009 will give us another warmer than average summer.

Meanwhile, as we shiver in the unaccustomed cold, The Daily Telegraph is telling us: "New Year's Eve set to be colder than in Iceland." Even then, the memory-free journos - Duncan Gardham and Jon Swaine – have imbibed the fantasia and are solemnly repeating the Met Office mantra. 

Funny enough, all Met Office forecasts carry a health warning. We are told that, "Our long-range forecasts are proving useful to a range of people, such as emergency planners and the water industry, in order to help them plan ahead." 

They are not, we are cautioned, "forecasts which can be used to plan a summer holiday or inform an outdoor event." But, it seems, they are good enough to predict global warming well into the next Century.

And we are supposed to take this seriously?

COMMENT THREAD