Has the Global Warming Frenzy passed its peak?

A certifiable paranoiac would have a high old time tracing out the patterns behind the global warming campaign of the past month. The effort has the feel of something long planned, well scripted, and worked out to the final detail. It's hard to avoid thoughts of conspiracy when contemplating the activities of the Greens.

Not that it's necessary to believe any such thing. (In analyzing cases like this, I apply Dunn's First Law: With enough idiots, you don't need a conspiracy.) It's part of the natural order -- birds flock, insects swarm, and Greens campaign. But the actual point is, whether carefully-hatched scheme, herd instinct, or sheer accident, it's clear at this juncture that the effort has failed.

Let's take a closer look at those patterns. First we have the release of the International Panel on Climate Change "report" (still referred to that way throughout the legacy media, despite the fact that the actual report isn't due out for several months yet). This was followed by weeks of mounting hysteria in every possible media outlet, culminating in Al Gore's Norma Desmond moment at the Oscars. Then at last, the universal sigh of relief as the climate program telling us exactly what we need to do to save ourselves was presented to the UN by 18 (count `em, 18 -- all mainstream, too!) scientists.

The big report you never heard about

What's that? You didn't catch that last part? Neither did anybody else. (Notice that the link leads to the Voice of America, the only site where I could find a complete report, and not the New York Times or Washington Post) And that's an odd thing. The entire effort was obviously building up to the revelation of What Must Be Done, to be delivered in tones of thunder to a world agonized to the breaking point. Instead it comes across as the standard piece of useless UN paper - of the type dealing with fisheries policy in the Maldives or primary schooling in Slovakia.

But this particular report went effectively uncovered, unmentioned, and ignored - an awfully strange response to the solution to the most terrifying threat in human history. Clearly, something went wrong. If the campaign had been a success, it would have been covered, all right - as much as the IPCC summary and then some. Al would have been at the UN. So would Hillary, Chuck, and Nancy, more than likely. There would have been speeches, and plenty of them. Parked SUV's would have been trashed all around Manhattan. Somebody would have pointed out that Turtle Bay would in short order be twenty, or forty, or sixty feet underwater.

None of that happened - the unveiling of the grand solution was a complete washout. (And what was the solution? Umm... carbon taxes and... I forget.) With a failure as abject as this, there's no simple means of recovery. The entire effort to sell anthropogenic global warming will have to be redone from scratch. Look for another buildup when the actual IPCC report is released sometime this Spring. It's a good thing they can't do the Academy Awards all over again. Three major factors are responsible for the Green's failure:

* The weather
* Al Gore
* Science

Bad timing: a seasonal obsession

The weather is the key factor, the one that rendered it impossible to push the warming thesis as an accomplished fact. The IPCC report was released during the first days of the worst six weeks of weather in several decades. While the UN, Al, and the media jabbered about how hot it was getting, the rest of the northern hemisphere was digging out of blizzards, enduring colder temperatures than any in recent memory (this was the worst run of continuous low temperatures I have seen personally since the infamous "ice age winter" of 1975), and in some cases simply trying to live through it. Europe was hit by killer blizzards, one of which shut down all of southeastern England. Japan, China, and Korea suffered bone-chilling readings. Cambodia was treated to temperatures of an unthinkable 40 degrees Fahrenheit, prompting the distribution of blankets to the poor. The central and northern U.S. went through weeks of below-freezing temperatures, (two and half weeks here in western PA), with much of the rest of the country enduring less than normal levels. Excessive snow, often reaching blizzard heights, added to everyone's pleasure. Some are still going fighting their way through it - on March 1, Governor Culver declared all of Iowa a disaster area after an extra foot of snow fell in one 24-hour period.

The result was a general popular tacit dismissal of "global warming" talk as elitist nonsense, something to occupy the time of people who don't have to dig out their sidewalks, free their cars, or rescue stranded travelers.

Of course, weather is not climate - but the distinction is irrelevant, as far as public attitudes are concerned. And as has been pointed out here previously, there is a direct correlation to global warming as a scientific proposition. The most plausible warming models predict that the bulk of temperature rises will occur during the winter in high latitudes. After thirty-odd years of uninterrupted warming, we should be seeing some sign of this, and not a return to bitter mid-70s winters. This is a case where the public mind is correct even when it's wrong.

The possibility of something like this could have been foreseen. February, after all, is the generally the coldest month of the year. Could it be that the IPCC release was arranged by a UN bureaucrat from a tropical country, one not all that familiar with northern weather patterns? Whatever the case, the lesson to draw from this is: don't put out your global warming material in mid-winter in the Northern Hemisphere industrialized countries.

Al Gore

The second factor is something vaster and more certain than mere weather or climate: Al Gore's arrogance.

It can't be said that Al didn't deserve what he got. The revelation that his Nashville mansion uses more electricity each month than the last twelve Olympics (he must have felt right at home among all those spotlights on Oscar night) has struck his halo of Green rectitude a serious blow. Later revelations that his explanation was bogus may well have shattered it. (He claimed to be making up for all that power usage by purchasing carbon offsets.

The problem is that they were being purchased from Generation Investment Management -- chairman, Albert Gore, Jr. In other words, Al was paying Al for the privilege of wasting electricity. It's as if Gandhi had been photographed inside his ashram wearing spats and a waistcoat and sipping Boodles gin. From now on all the little gestures - riding in the hybrid limo, having the private jet pilot sign the carbon offset certificate, and for all we know, touring the North American continent in a solar-powered blimp - are going to look just the slightest bit hollow.

Gore can't help this. He was born to make the wrong move at the absolute worst time. Any doubts about that are erased by two even more recent incidents: sneaking his party past security at Nashville airport ("It's okay, they know me here..."), and, as Iowa was being shut down by the worst blizzards since the retreat of the glaciers, giving his customary warming Jeremiad to a crowd in Oklahoma only a few hundred miles south.

What this means is that the Greens will have to cultivate a new messiah. Gore's campaign will continue, and media inertia being what it is (don't you feel sorry for all those people predicting his run for the presidency in `08?) he'll get plenty of coverage. But his effectiveness as a spokesman for the Green cause is nil. Al Gore has once again become what he was after his post-2000 election tantrum -- a joke. And while there are second acts in American lives, pushing for a third is really tempting the fates.

The Science

The final element is science - namely, its lack of respect for anybody's opinion, even that of its own most mainstream elements. "The debate is over" was supposed to be one of those catchphrases that enters common usage and sweeps all resistance before it, like "Women don't lie" or "We want change". But even as the warming campaign was unfolding, we were given a clear demonstration that science never produces final answers. Over the past month, two scientific challenges to the warming thesis were made public, one of them speculative, the other damning.

The speculative aspect is provided by a theory advanced by Danish astrophysicist Henrik Svensmark of the Center for Sun-Climate Research. Svensmark's theory is complex, but can be summarized easily enough. It is based on the observation that cosmic rays assist in cloud formation by encouraging condensation. A rise in solar activity strengthens the sun's magnetic field, which shields the inner solar system from cosmic rays. Cloud formation drops slightly but significantly, lowering the earth's albedo - its reflectivity - resulting in increased temperatures.

Solar activity is currently at all-time high, with the intensity of incoming cosmic rays correspondingly low. Have rising temperatures been a mere coincidence? Svensmark doesn't think so, and has convinced one of Britain's premier science writers, Nigel Calder, to collaborate with him on a book, The Chilling Stars, not yet published in the U.S.

The other challenge was embodied in an op-ed by NASA climate scientist Roy W. Spencer in the New York Post. Not your average scientific journal, it's true, but it's been along time since this was merely a scientific question. Spencer points out a glaring omission in nearly all climatology dealing with warming: a complete neglect of the phenomenon of precipitation. Spencer explains that precipitation lowers atmospheric temperature, with effects on the climate in general that remain unknown. The lack of consideration of precipitation in the global warming model is a gross error, on the level of putting the wrong lenses on the Hubble Telescope or confusing metric and English measurements while constructing the lost Mars probe.

How much is overall temperature lowered by precipitation? We don't know. Has the level and frequency of precipitation increased? We don't know that either. Precipitation is probably the least understood element of climate. We don't even know the total amount of precipitation in the world. A clearer indictment of warming "science" is impossible to make.

Svensmark's theory remains to be tested, and the data concerning the effects of precipitation need to be collated and analyzed. But their implications cannot be ignored. The fact that two such major elements, one cosmic, one prosaic, have been overlooked undercuts the warming thesis completely. The warming theorist's obsession with carbon dioxide buildup - only one factor in an infinitely complex system - has blinded them to everything else. They're in the position of a pack of hounds so intent on the rabbit that they missed the cliff edge right in front of them.

It's heartening to see that the Greens, whether technical, political, or media, have retained their basic ineptness. They're such cookie-cutter true believers that they really can't grasp how they can go wrong or why anyone wouldn't listen to them. As a result they begin their push in the middle of winter, choose the current prince of the also-rans as their champion (such individuals, who include figures such as Wendell Wilkie and Hubert Humphrey, can often go on to make serious and valuable contributions. But not this time.), and ignore the fact that science marches on without regard to anybody's agenda.

The campaign will continue. We'll be hearing about global warming until the glaciers return, the same way we occasionally still hear a few frightened voices crying about overpopulation, in a world where population collapse is the challenge. The Greens may pass some taxes, get some cosmetic programs pushed through, but the idea of a Green millennium, of some kind of apocalyptic phase-change resulting in a global environmentalist state, is something we can forget about.

They had their shot, and they have blown it. The past few weeks could serve well as a textbook example of how not to influence public opinion. In time (and it can't be soon enough), global warming will take its place in the museum of folly alongside overpopulation, nuclear winter, and the coming ice age. There aren't any spotlights there, and they don't give out prizes either.

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Eco-Nazis trivialize the Holocaust

Post lifted from "The American Thinker". In history, Kristallnacht was the first big slaughter of Jews by the Nazis

First came Ellen Goodman's offensive column, in which she likened global warming "deniers" to Holocaust deniers. Recent commentary  about Al Gore and his energy usage has brought me into contact with his claim in Earth in the Balance, published in 2000, that global warming

"threatens an environmental holocaust... today the evidence of an ecological Kristallnacht is as clear as the sound of glass shattering in Berlin."

Al Gore lives the lifestyle of a movie star, with limos, private jets, a mansion, and 20 times the average electricity consumption of the ordinary American. It is beyond repugnant that such a man lecture us on the virtues of consuming less, no matter how rich he might get off the sale of carbon credit indulgences.

If Al invokes Kristallnact, it should be spelled "Cristal"nacht - as in the very expensive French champagne favored by movie stars, drug dealers, and Wall Street hotshots as they nightclub away at glamour spots in Hollywood. Or maybe "crystal," as in Baccarat crystal stemware.

Perhaps if the Gestapo had shined fluorescent bulbs while interrogating prisoners, they could have also participated in saving the earth.

Come to think of it, how many carbon credits did the Nazis earn by lowering the electricity usage of 6 million Jews, as well as by getting many of them to travel by freight train instead of private automobile to concentration camps? In Al Gore's Brave New World, removing human beings from the earth is real plus.

I actually once spoke with someone who told me he knew of a car enthusiast in Israel whose father in Poland was wealthy enough to own a Buick, which he used to take his family to the Russian-controlled eastern part of the country early in World War II, thus saving their lives. I am hoping that since they carpooled, Al Gore has no objections, even though their vehicle wasn't a hybrid and didn't get 45 miles to the gallon.

Global warming crusaders are taking a distinctly anti-human view, seeing people as the disease, and prosperity the symptom. They would condem 2 billion Indians and Chinese to sweat out their lives without air conditioning, and implicitly count every American death as a victory for reducing carbon emissions.

This sort of thinking is anti-human, and their sloganeering a shameless appropriation of the Holocaust redefining the language in order to to redefine reality, something described in Robert Cheek's AT article Solzhenitsyn, the Prophet. Gore's Redefinition of Reality, coming to a theater near you. Don't buy a ticket.






ANOTHER GREEN HYPOCRITE

The right to own a gas-guzzling car was indignantly compared with other fundamental human freedoms, such as the choice of a sexual and family life, by Jose Manuel Barroso, head of the European Commission yesterday. Mr Barroso was challenged about his ownership of a large SUV (sports utility vehicle), minutes after warning Europe's leaders that the eyes of the world would be upon them tomorrow at a summit at which he wants to set ambitious targets to cut greenhouse gases.

He denied that his choice of vehicle contradicted Commission plans to limit CO2 emissions from cars to 130 grammes per km. His personal Volkswagen Touareg 4x4 pumps out 265 g/ km but he argues that it is mostly used by his wife, Margarida. On official business he tends to use a top-of-the range Mercedes with CO2 emissions of 270 g/km. He said: "I never see myself as an example. A moralistic approach is not mine. We are setting public targets and should avoid giving certificates of good behaviour to individuals."

Asked whether he should set an example in his own vehicle choice, he added: "People are responsible and should take their decisions. "If you start on the environment you could go on to the family, sexual, etc. You have to respect the law and what we are doing is pushing for a more ambitious law."

The proposed target of 130 g/km CO2 across all cars sold in Europe by 2012 would leave manufacturers free to produce big cars, provided that average emissions met the target.

Friends of the Earth Europe said: "Mr Barroso claims to be committed to fighting climate change while driving a big gas-guzzling car in the narrow roads of Brussels. As a high-profile politician he should be making significant changes to his own lifestyle." Jean Lambert, Green MEP for London, said: "The Commission's own website urges people to take steps to reduce their carbon footprint. I recommend that Mr Barroso reads the website and gives some political leadership on climate change." Other politicians in Europe have adapted their travel habits. David Miliband, the Environment Secretary, for example, offsets his flights.

Mr Barroso was speaking at a preview of the two-day leaders' summit in Brussels that will consider ambitious climate change goals, including a 20 per cent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 and a target to use 10 per cent more biofuels. A call for a binding target of 20 per cent for renewable energy across Europe is being resisted by the Poles and the Czechs. Mr Barroso declared: "This is an opportunity for European leaders to match intentions with deeds, to turn words into actions. " Mr Barroso said that tackling climate change "must be a defining mission for the European Union for the future" and featured in the Berlin declaration on March 25, a statement of EU achievements in the 50 years since it was formed.

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GREENIE CAMPAIGNS BACKFIRE

Jeremy Paxman has been encouraging people to throw rubbish out of their car windows. He didn't mean to. He didn't want to. But he did. Yesterday morning the Newsnight presenter produced an article in The Guardian bemoaning the "uglification" of Britain. He rejected the assertion of the Keep Britain Tidy campaign that "litter levels in England have fallen to a five-year low". "How can they claim the country is so clean," asks Paxman "when the evidence of our eyes suggests quite the reverse?" The TV man conducted an informal survey on a quiet stretch of country road. He hadn't gone 500 yards before counting 100 pieces of rubbish. "Most - sandwich wrappers, McDonald's bags, crisp packets and endless plastic bottles - had been deliberately jettisoned."

How can I argue that this passionate and in many ways highly admirable attack on littering encourages people to litter? Let me tell you a story. Actually it's not my story. It was told to the Prime Minister's advisers by the social psychologist Professor Robert Cialdini when he went to 10 Downing Street recently to discuss environmental issues. One of the professor's students visited the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona with his fianc,e, a notably honest woman, someone who wouldn't borrow a paperclip without returning it. As they entered, the couple encountered a sign cautioning against stealing petrified wood. "Our heritage is being vandalised by the theft of 14 tons of wood every year." The fiancee's reaction was quite unexpected. "We'd better get ours now," she whispered.

Unwittingly the sign provided visitors with two pieces of information that made them more likely to steal wood. The first was that the forest was being depleted rapidly, wood was running out, you better get a move on. They may as well have put up a sign reading: "Hurry now, while stocks last." Nothing moves goods quite as rapidly as the idea that the product is scarce, as any retailer will tell you. The other information provided by the sign was that it was quite normal to steal wood. Lots of people steal wood, it's commonplace, go on, you'll not be different from the rest.

Information about social norms - how other people behave - is an extremely powerful influence on behaviour. It's the reason why bandwagons get going in by-elections. And the information need not be accurate to alter people's conduct. Less than 3 per cent of the park's visitors had ever stolen wood, contrary to the impression given by the sign.

So when the Paxman article appeared, he doubtless hoped that we would be shamed into tidier ways. But, sad to report, the attitude of many of his readers will be to open their windows and toss out some more rubbish. I've always been a tidy person, they'll think, but I read a piece in the paper by that clever bloke off of University Challenge that says that these days no one else is bothered much with tidiness. I don't see why I should go all the way to the bin, I'll just drop my Twix wrapper on the pavement like all the rest do. The Keep Britain Tidy campaign leads its website with this claim: "Half of us boast impeccable habits." This may be impossibly optimistic for your tastes, but it certainly demonstrates a solid grasp of the principles of social psychology.

Almost every day in the media there is a Paxman-type story - an attempt to persuade people to behave differently by telling us all how bad things are getting. Over the past fortnight, for example, there have been countless articles about the decline in marriage. And every one of them encourages a further decline. If you wanted to increase marriage rates you would be emphasising how usual it is to get married, how despite all you've heard it's still the norm. People like you get married and stay together, that's the message you want people to hear. If you make deserting your children seem like a normal thing to do, more will do it. Same with drink-driving, shoplifting, drug-taking, gang membership, whatever.

Last week I called myself a social responsibility militant, picking up a phrase of David Cameron's that describes his policy of altering behaviour through persuasion rather than the law. I argued that laws are often ineffective. There is a wealth of data showing that if you, say, make wearing a seat belt compulsory, drivers buckle up before speeding up and killing others. Persuade drivers to take safety seriously and you may get somewhere.

The petrified forest story and the example of Jeremy Paxman's article show why, despite all the data on the clumsiness of the law, politicians continue to prefer legislative initiatives. It's because legislating is so much easier.

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is generally to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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