EU Referendum


Climate change: the Independent is unhappy


29/05/2013



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For all the Nobel prizes and predictions of global apocalypse and destruction, climate change is still a niche issue. The environmental movement has failed to capture the public’s imagination or to engage and inspire them to demand a green agenda from their governments.

This is Liam Dennis in the Independent, who complains that the climate change sceptics are winning - and the environmental lobby only has itself to blame.

Actually, that is so superficial - an argument from a man who laments that climate-sceptic arguments are still heard. That would be laughable if it wasn't so serious, he says, but they have taken on the fight, muddying the science at every opportunity, creating confusion and doubt.

Tabloid newspapers have also become mouthpieces for the sceptics. Their on-going, daily onslaught against the science of climate - which David Rose in the Mail on Sunday labelled "The Great Green Con" - is influential and damaging.

"Without an honest, open and inclusive discussion which re-engages the public about the reasons to act against climate change", this man has the nerve to say, "there will never be the necessary political will for the tough choices that are needed".

This is, of course, from a grouping that has sought from the very start to close down the debate, to claim that the "science is settled" and to denigrate and marginalise those who disagreed with the received wisdom.

But because this self-same grouping now feels that it is no longer in control, it turns round and uses the language of debate. But what it really means is that its opponents are not "honest" or "open" and that it should be given the lion's share of the speaking time.

With the green lobby no longer getting its own way, and finding an uncritical home across the board in the media, Dennis whinges about a "hostile media", about the "lobbyists for big business" and the cost of the gas bill being "more persuasive than the plight of the polar bear".

Never mind that the "plight of the polar bear" is fictional and unpersuasive – a money-making opportunity for one of the biggest lobbyists of them all, the WWF. The green movement, we are told "must re-evaluate what is working, and what needs to be done to get the public back on side".

People, though, are simply not that stupid. They can readily see how the dire predictions that were appearing almost daily in the media – in the days when all the media was on-side – simply have not materialised. Progressively, we have seen colder and colder winters, right up to present where we are seeing snow in May, and unusual cold throughout the northern hemisphere.

Still though, as far as the UK goes, the warmists have their Climate Change Act and they have the EU supporting their ramp. But still Dennis whines that the political consensus and public support that led to the Climate Change Act in 2008 is a distant memory.

"The action needed to meet the targets", he says, "demands a societal transformation". The warmists tried stealth, and they tried scare tactics. They haven't worked. So, says, Dennis, they need, "the mass mobilisation and support of the public". He thus concludes that, "Navel gazing and arrogance will not do", but that is all the warmists have left. 

They once had the support of most of the public, but the scare is losing its bite. Eventually, all scares do, and this one has run its course.

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