Maintained by bullying and bluster, the facade grows more brittle by the day, as heretics start to come out of the woodwork — being pragmatic, concerned, but unapologetic.
From the Daily Mail in the UK — Johnny Ball says Beware of the Global Warming Fascists. More evidence that this is a propaganda campaign, not a question of science (as if we needed that). Kudos to the Daily Mail for printing thousands of copies of this story. A hat-tip to Johnny Ball for being brave enough to face down the bullies.
In the past decade or so I’ve been mocked, vilified, besmirched — I’ve even been booed off a theatre stage — simply for expressing the view that the case for global warming and climate change, and in particular the emphasis on the damage caused by carbon dioxide, the so-called greenhouse gas that is going to do for us all, has been massively over-stated.
And something very similar has happened to Dr David Bellamy, who has never been shy about expressing his belief that climate change is an entirely natural phenomenon. His media career, particularly in television, has suffered as a result.
As someone who has dedicated his life to popularising science and mathematics for young people, I find it hard — hurtful even — to be cast in the role of villain. I’m also aware that many of the people who have been kind enough to enjoy my TV programmes over the years are surprised to hear me — nice, cheery, Johnny Ball — expressing such strong and arguably provocative views.
If it costs 2.3p to produce one unit of electricity using gas, it costs 2.5p to produce the same electricity using nuclear energy and perhaps 2.9p using coal. Using wind power, the cost is an astonishing 9.8p.
In the face of such figures, most reasonable people interested in cleaner, sustainable energy would surely go off and build carbon-free, nuclear power stations or gas-fuelled ones.
He fears for the children:
I don’t make television programmes any more, but I do still visit 80-100 schools a year and I know what children are taught about climate change, and what the result is. They accept it absolutely and will solemnly tell you that they always turn off lights, close doors and, at school, have installed solar panels on the roof.
They tell me how worried they are about global warming, rising sea-levels and, having seen alarmist films such as Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, the imminent prospect of all human life being wiped out.
And this breaks my heart. I want children to be excited about the future, not cowed by it. I want them to grow up in a world which is going to be better than the one their parents knew, not significantly worse. I want them to grow up excited by technology and new inventions, not worrying about where the electricity is going to come from to power them.
Ultimately this is a PR war, and the skeptics must not be allowed to speak. (Even believers know that the public faith will evaporate if they hear the skeptics).
People have a right to know the truth, but it’s so difficult to break the strangle-hold the global warming gang have on the debate. David Bellamy can’t get on television and I can’t even get a ten-minute meeting with the controller of Radio 4.
H/t to Joe Bast
PS: Speaking of vilification — It goes on at all levels – even peer reviewed journals are not immune. RealClimate have been vilifying Energy and Environment for years, and evidently E&E have had enough. H/t to Popular tech for the notification (who wrote this piece last year on E&E – Correcting misinformation about the journal Energy & Environment)