A political conspiracy

Friday, March 13, 2009

A political conspiracy

It struck me the other day that most political commentators are very bad at politics, as indeed are most professional politicians. The reason is at one simple, yet profound. 

The political classes – of which the media are a part – have retreated into themselves and have made the fatal mistake of confusing party politics with real politics. Thus, they believe that politics is about themselves and what they do, rather than about the real world, where real politics is about policies and their implementation.

Thus, while the "political" groupies prattle on about their own narrow pre-occupations, the most intensely political issue of the moment – aside from the economic crisis – is the overt attempt by climate change activists to subvert the political process, bouncing national and international politicians into a series of hugely expensive and massively intrusive measures which will have direct and serious impacts on all our lives.

That is the nature of this "emergency summit" just concluded in Copenhagen, revealed in a report in The Guardian in February. Its organiser, Katherine Richardson, openly admits that, "This is not a regular scientific conference. This is a deliberate attempt to influence policy." 

The target is, of course, the UN-sponsored climate change conference at the end of this year, where activists are seeking to impose a successor to the Kyoto treaty, imposing mandatory targets for emission reductions, and much else besides, the collective effects of which will be to cripple Western economies and effectively prevent any recovery from the current economic recession.

But so thin is the science, and so desperate is the economic crisis, that politicians are beginning to ask themselves whether the insane measures being proposed are affordable, or even necessary. Their doubts are thus threatening to bring the whole of the "climate change" cavalcade to a halt.

Recognising that they are at a turning point – where the global cooling trend observed for the past eight years is going to make the alarmists shrieks less and less credible – the activists are quite deliberately stoking up alarm in a last-ditch attempt to cow politicians into conformity. They are desperate to lock in unchangeable commitments, before reality sets in and their creed is entirely discredited.

In this context, one must look to Dr John Sununu's speech BELOW at the Heartland Institute conference earlier this week. Clearly, without equivocation, he stated what we all know to be true. The activism we are seeing is not about global warming. Global warming is not the real target, says Sununu, but just a convenient demon around which anti-growth and anti-development activism can be mounted. 

The agenda is wholly political, aimed at achieving political objectives under the cloak of "saving the planet". That agenda is largely socialist, motivated by a very real attempt to impose global governance on the world population, transcending national governments.

This is global political integration, writ large, a king-sized version of the European Union, where national governments exist only to implement thediktats of their unelected masters, and to shield from the public that they are no longer living in self-determining nations.

It is the very nature of this agenda that makes "climate change" so attractive to the European Union which, together with its grandiose ambitions to become the supreme government of Europe (largely achieved), sees itself as a regional arm of an overarching global government, based on the United Nations – of which its wishes to be part, representing its vassal states.

What is totally unforgivable is the way the our politicians so easily acquiesce and how the supposedly free press buy in to the "climate change" alarmism without revealing the very transparent, underlying political agenda, and warning people of the very real threat to their freedoms.

But therein lies the evil genius of the "climate" activists. By cloaking their ambitions in apparent concern for the environment, and disguising their rhetoric, they lull the political classes into believing that this issue is somehow outside the political process. 

The totem may be the polar bear but behind that "cuddly" façade, there is – like the bear itself – a killer, in this case a killer of democracy and independent government. We have here not a marginal, specialist issue but mainstream politics. There is a political conspiracy unfolding in front of our very eyes, and the political classes have gone to sleep.

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Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Doomed Planet?

Almost entirely ignored by the British media, earlier this week there was the second Heartland Institute climate conference in New York, attended by over 700 with a galaxy of speakers including our own Christopher Booker. We will publish his speech over on EU Ref 2 shortly.

You may have gathered – if you did not already know – that the conference did not exactly support the warmist religion, proof of which comes from an extremely interesting contributor on the final day, Dr John Sununu, Chief of Staff for President George Bush Snr. between 1989 and 1992. From that unique perspective, we are told, he offered an "incisive commentary" on current environmental activism, including particularly that directed towards global warming.

Sununu's view is that the climate change issue will never go away, no matter how much the false alarmism of global warming is exposed. Global warming is not the real target, but just a convenient demon around which anti-growth and anti-development activism can be mounted. 

Early demons for the same cause after the second world war were, first, the declared "population crisis", and then the global cooling alarmism that became prevalent in the 1970s. In turn, climate cooling alarmism transmuted into the dangerous warming cult of the 1990s and beyond. 

The most significant tactical weapon that was developed along this historic path of anti-growth agitation was the use of virtual reality computer models to generate alarm. Thus the real predecessor to the present situation was the Club of Rome "we will run out of resources" exercise.

This was the first large-scale, environmental, computer modelling project to base its alarms not on empirical data, but on a computer model that was predestined to give a desired result. This same predestination applies to the current IPCC computer models, which are now far too complex to be checked or debated in the public forum, and which carry great authority. Accordingly, they have become a powerful weapon in the armoury of anti-growth environmental groups. 

Sununu recalls a White House briefing that he received from alarmist scientists around 1990, when only the first primitive climate models were available – which did not include ocean to atmosphere interactions. 

Ever since, development of these faulty, but now much more sophisticated, models has continued in order to drive a predetermined climate alarmism. In consequence, the modellers have captured major parts of the funding streams now directed into global warming research, which in the US alone may total as much as $10 billion/year. 

"Despite this", says Sununu, the current models remain "predestined …. and are extremely far away from being able to handle the reality of nature. Nature will respond to climate change in the future in a self-stabilising way, as it always has in the past". 

However, Sununu notes that the media stands in the way of better public understanding and thrives on reinforcing climate alarmism. It is both "biased and ignorant". Nonetheless, science must today be presented in non-technical ways which can be understood - "If we don't give the press sound bites, they won't use it" he says. Honest science, good science and valid science is the necessary basis for public policy. 

Unfortunately, we have neither – and one does get more than a little irritated at funding newspapers which have become little more than propaganda sheets for the warmists. Like politicians, newspapers in particular are going to have to recognise that they are out of touch with the majority of their readers on this topic. If they do not, their readers will go elsewhere, as in indeed they are doing.

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