The climate obsession virus - by Richard... Saturday, December 12, 2009

The climate obsession virus - by Richard... Saturday, December 12, 2009

There can hardly be an adult in the UK who is not aware of the parlous state of the public finances, so it almost beggars belief that Gordon Brown should be throwing even more money around at the Copenhagen slugfest.

From his original £800 million, he has now upped the ante to £1.5 billion as the "British" contribution to an EU fund "intended to help poorer countries to cut their carbon emissions."

Like a destitute gambler living off borrowed money knowing that the roof is going to fall in tomorrow, the man is throwing money around as if it no longer had any meaning or value.

Incomprehensibly, on the brink of bankruptcy, Brown's offer makes us, British taxpayers, the largest contributor to this ridiculous fund, leaving France and Germany trailing with offers of around £1.2 billion each to the EU fund, which will be worth around £6.5 billion in all.

One thus cannot help but take the view that there is a pathological morbidity in this reckless impulse to spend other peoples' money – money which as yet does not exist and had to be earned by the efforts of real people, all to be thrown away on such an empty, pointless gesture.

Thus, while we have been arguing that the warmist creed has taken on the attributes of a religion, as far as it affects politicians like Brown – and his many fellow travellers – the behaviour is symptomatic more of a disease, a mental illness.

However, rarely is mental illness infectious, yet the plague which is affecting Brown shows signs of having spread so widely that it has become an epidemic, leading many otherwise rational people to obsess endlessly over an issue without substance, without good evidence to sustain it, and of a nature that – even if it was a problem – is insoluble by the means which are being devised to counter it.

Perhaps these people are being attacked by a new kind of virus, one which rots the particular part of the brain which controls judgement and perspective, leaving them prey to any wild passing notion, causing them to indulge in the irrational behaviour we are seeing.

If the disease was not so damaging to the common weal, one could almost feel pity for those afflicted, but such is its malign effect that the healthy are damaged to as great an extent as the victims.

However, if disease it is, then clearly the processes of reasoned argument are of little avail. For such an illness, we need a treatment, a miracle cure even – otherwise we may all succumb. And, if it does, it could become, as a man once said of BSE, "worse than AIDS".

The first step can only be to recognise the phenomenon with which we are dealing – not a religion but a disease. Ironically, if this was an animal disease, a selective cull might be in order. But if that option is not open, then the hunt for an antidote to this climate obsession virus would be a good next move.

CLIMATEGATE THREAD

Print ready

Open debate? - by Richard... Friday, December 11, 2009

Via Big Government Blog, Professor Stephen Schneider uses United Nation security officers to silence a journalist asking him "inconvenient questions" during a press briefing at the climate change conference in Copenhagen.

CLIMATEGATE THREAD

Print ready

Limp-wristed - by Richard...

James Delingpole reminds us that Private Eye is not the magazine it once was ... certainly when it comes to Mann-made global warming.

But then I've never rated Hizzer. But what do you do with an editor who takes your copy without comment for years, and then the one and only time you ever hear from him is in a letter telling you that you've been doing a great job, that the readers really enjoy your column – and by the way he's halving your pay, publishing the column monthly instead of fortnightly, and changing the format, with only two-thirds of the length?

All that came without warning and without even the pretence of consultation – take it or leave it. I told him to stuff his job.

Delingpole reminds us of Christopher Booker's conversation with the "great man", when he remarked to Hislop how flimsy seemed much of the evidence behind the global warming scare. For his pains, he got a almighty put-down to the effect that George Monbiot of the Guardian knew a great deal more about the subject than he did and that he should think twice before daring to challenge such an expert authority.

Booker, let it not be forgotten, was the first editor of this once-great satirical organ – whose purpose, he always told contributors in the early days, was "to challenge all orthodoxies."

Over the decades, says Delingpole, Private Eye has more than lived up to this precept with its frank, fearless (and legally costly) willingness always to speak truth to power. But apparently not on this occasion.

CLIMATEGATE THREAD

Print ready

It flewed - by Richard...

The caption to the piece says "it can haul 30 tons over a distance of 2,800 miles. Its maximum payload is 37 tons."

Unless they have miraculously cured its weight problem, 30 tons is pretty near the maximum payload. The cited figure is about as accurate as the CRU's global temperature dataset.

At least, though, it makes a change from computer-generated graphics – which is more than we can say for the CRU.

COMMENT THREAD