While we – us sceptics, that is – like to think that we have the doom-mongers and pseudo-scientists on the run, we have to face the fact that a huge industry has been built on the back of the global warming scare (I can’t even bring myself to capitalise those words anymore, such is my disdain for the phrase).
Cut your energy bills and carbon footprint with the world’s greenest hand-dryer
We can see it in the application of the meme to the most innocuous of products; I recently saw an link on a website extolling the ‘carbon-reducing qualities’ of a hand dryer. I mean to say, great as the technology might be, once upon a time the fact that it was more efficient for the user, plus saved money for the company running it, would have been enough to encourage enquiries. Unfortunately, the manufacturers felt that sales would be negatively impacted unless it carried a ‘save-the-planet’ message.
It would be interesting to ask why they didn’t insist these dryers only be installed where the electricity was generated solely by wind and/or solar power? The answer is obvious, when you think about it; notices would have to be stuck on toilet walls, on a regular basis, pointing out that as it was a still, dark night the dryers were not currently functioning. Normal service will be resumed when either the Sun comes up and/or the wind resumes blowing fast enough to spin the blades.
We could equally ask exactly how much ‘carbon’ was released in the mining, manufacture, delivery, installation and support methods involved in this ground-breaking new advance for mankind? Another perplexing question is whether they can work out just how much effect these dryers will have on a) ‘carbon’ emissions and b) global temperatures?
Maybe I’m simply becoming too cynical about all this. Does it really matter, in the great scheme of things? I think it does, if only for the following reason.
The more this type of (almost) subliminal message is put in front of the man in the street, the more legitimacy it gathers to itself. It becomes a self-fulfilling ideology. Joe Public is given further proof that everyone believes that ‘carbon’ is bad simply by the number of organisations recommending its reduction. Plus, of course, it gets us back to the use of that most egregious term ‘carbon’ instead of the more truthful ‘carbon dioxide’.
The amount of complete nonsense put out by some of the people is beyond belief. Take a look at just a few that I’ve found;
- Low Carbon Transport
- The Green Taxi Company – some of the nonsense used as justification shows just how deluded these kinds of people can be
- And there are all these – Low Carbon Taxis on Yahoo
- Low Carbon Building Services
- Low Carbon Office Equipment
No doubt I could go on but I find it all so depressing; with this amount of vested interest tied up in keeping the bullshit coming, no wonder the alarmists are fighting a spirited rearguard action.
I don’t blame those that have seen an opportunity to jump onto a lucrative bandwagon. After all, I pride myself in being a free-market disciple. It is the simple acceptance of a set of ‘scientific’ values that have not even been tested by their creators and are coming under greater scrutiny and falsification, week by week. The blame lays fairly and squarely on one set of shoulders.
Journalists.
With unquestioning acceptance of the news releases sent out by the alarmists, journalists have failed not only the public but also their own profession. It’s understandable when ordinary journalists simply copy & paste stuff into their columns but there is no excuse for the so-called ‘environmental’ and ‘science’ ones to do the same.
As the truth emerges, little by little, you wonder how long they can maintain their credibility? Already, in the last few months, we have seen more and more mainstream journals start questioning the ‘consensus’.
Those two links, apart from making us ask the key question – Settled science, what settled science? – make a mockery of the following article;
In little less than six months we’ve gone from a virtual Armageddon to a position of ‘well, maybe things weren’t quite as bad as we thought, but, trust us (again) it will get worse in the future, we have models and we’ve adjusted all the inputs.’
When I started digging into this, nearly two years ago, the scientists who said that the climate sensitivity figures were over-stated were derided and ridiculed. It seems they were right all along.
- Major 30% reduction in modelers estimates of Climate Sensitivity (Skeptics were right)
- New York Times Conceding Low Sensitivity! Now Talking About “CO2 Quadrupling” To Get Catastrophe Scenarios!
- Climate “Consensus” Con Game: Desperate Effort Before Release of UN Report
Where it all started going wrong was when the Met Office updated their climate model and posted the changes just as the World was closing down for Christmas, last year. If they’d been more open it may still have excited the sceptics but by being left to face accusations of deviousness they aroused much more interest in what it was they ‘might be hiding’.
- Skeptic win: UK Met Office quietly drops prediction by 20%, hopes no one notices
- [Met Office] Climate model forecast is revised
It’s becoming clear that the science isn’t settled and that there is a substantial amount of back-pedalling going on. Those with the most personal status invested in the scam are the ones that we might, with a touch of irony, now class as deniers. I could fill this page with links showing the desperation of these New Deniers but that is not the point of the article.
The main point is how all these various, mostly well meaning, organisations, trades-people and companies are going to feel, in the next few years, when they find out that all their genuinely-held beliefs are simply turning to dust in their hands. Many will have spent large sums of money investing in promoting themselves and their services to satisfy a non-existent problem.
The environment is a vital part of our personal sense of well-being. I know of no ‘sceptics’ who wish to see the planet trashed just for the sake of it. What we all object to is unreasoned, unscientific solutions that actually do more harm than good in the name of a pseudo-scientific hypothesis.
If even a small part of the billions of $/£/€s that have been thrown at CO2 had been put into other research we would, I feel, be looking forward to a much rosier future.
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grumpydenier 
Grumps –
I totally agree your points. The AGW industry is so large, so vast and so monied that rooting it out let’s be honest is neigh on impossible. And of course the ‘greenies’ range from simple, well meaning folk that plant trees, buy smaller cars, and have adopted a green lifestyle to the full on, one world government authoritarians that are only after power, money and control. And people on every point on that spectrum.
I think we have to be careful not to paint all these various points of view with the same broad brush. For it’s the high profile tru-believer activists that are the real danger, not the old dear over the road that walks to the shops and grows her own veg in a small allotment.
So one of the worries about the James’s of the world (and I have conversed with him on this) is that the “all greens are either useful idiots or one world troughers” message has no subtlety or nuance. His point is the anti-green message has to be simple and strong to pierce through the green fog of lies that has settled upon the western world.
Not sure what the answer is except to hold the line the next decade or so, the planet will tell us what is going on and the facts will eventually carry the day.
Cheers… TSS
Posted by Jeff Wolfers (@JeffinLondon) | May 24, 2013, 8:52 am