We’re now half way through the Copenhagen summit and sadly we’ve neither seen nor heard anything new.
Can’t say I’m particularly surprised – but I am disappointed. In light of the recent media attention given to the issues I had hoped for a little bit of common sense and scientific reason to be given and for some fresh debate on the root of the issues. As I said at the end of my last blog though, don’t hold your breath.
All we’ve heard so far is more of the same: each politician trying to “out green” the other, we’ve heard from prime minister Brown and president Sarkozy talking of how many billions of our tax money they are pledging to their latest fad.
Not one person in authority seems willing or able to face the very real questions being asked by the electorate.
Sea level rises are not global, they are localised issues – why?
Global mean temperatures do not rise in line with net CO2 emissions – why?
But this is where the real problem crops up. These issues are not being debated in Copenhagen because the politicians don’t want debate what they cannot argue against. They don’t want to be faced with evidence that inconveniences their agenda.
On Thursday evening, the BBC’s This Week TV programme allowed an activist to push his biased views on climate change – nothing new there you might say. His attitude towards anyone who questioned man made global warming was shameful if typical of his ilk. He simply claimed they were all idiots. Not a very constructive attitude to open debate but one to which we have sadly become accustomed in the UK. When he was faced with the Manhattan Declaration of some 500 scientists who have disputed the IPCC claims, he brushed it off as an irrelevance as many of the scientists in question were allegedly “employed by big business”.
This is a very common ploy engaged by the environmental lobbyists for a number of years: any position against them must be a paid-for position because it benefits the big oil companies. Never mind investigating whether or not there is any merit in the argument, so long as you can simply discredit the opposing body that’s all right then!
Yet shouldn’t we now be questioning this position from the other perspective? Greenpeace is a multi-million dollar enterprise employing hundreds of people around the world. The same applies to WWF and Friends of the Earth. Thousands of similar but smaller organisations have been set up around the world in recent years. All these people need to be paid, rents and mortgages settled, local taxes paid and this requires significant funding from a public that continues to be squeezed by its political leaders.
This is why the environmentalists try to stifle debate constantly. If the debate is brought out into the open and the public become even more sceptical, many will stop assuaging their consciences by donating to the green movements and then where will all these people work? Many of them have never worked outside an overtly political arena and lack the skills needed to hold down a productive job.
And so the bandwagon keeps rolling on with the backing of politicians who lack the backbone to stand up to this scandal and say, “Enough is enough!”
For the record: I am not in the employ of any big business – I am a self-employed engineer at a small family company. I am also not a “denier” – I have read the evidence with an open mind and simply come to conclusions that do not concur with the radical activists. It is still a free world – isn’t it?