The Politics of Climate Change

Analyst Martin Spring gives a concise but trenchant description or explanation of the politics of climate change.

Writes Mr. Spring (bold emphasis added)

Following the resignation of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Glaever from the American Physical Society because of its insistence that the evidence of human-caused global warming is “incontrovertible,” 16 eminent scientists have published an attack on “the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something be done to stop global warming.”

They say that’s “not true.” Indeed, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers disagree, recognizing that there is much contrary evidence.

Such “heretics” are persecuted, one example being the campaign to fire Dr Chris de Freitas, editor of the journal Climate Change, for daring to publish a peer-reviewed, factually-correct article that recent warming has not been unusual in the context of what happened over the past thousand years.

Many young scientists say they have serious doubts about the global-warming message, but “they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted – or worse.”

The reason such savage efforts are taken to suppress contrary opinion and inconvenient facts is that “alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow.

“Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet.”

The scientists argue that even if one accepts the “inflated climate forecasts,” aggressive policies to control emissions of greenhouse gases are not justified economically.

“A recent study of a wide variety of policy options by Yale economist William Nordhaus showed that nearly the highest benefit-to-cost ratio is achieved for a policy that allows 50 more years of economic growth unimpeded by greenhouse gas controls.

“This would be especially beneficial to the less-developed parts of the world. And it is likely that more CO2, and the modest warming that may come with it, will be an overall benefit to the planet.”

The anthropomorphic global warming or climate change dogma has mostly been about the expansion of political power or control over the marketplace (via mass indoctrination and propaganda through government influenced institutions and media outfits), crony capitalism and covert socialism.