Historically, the claim of consensus is the first refuge of the scoundrel; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had. Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics.
Michael Crichton, PhD, MD, author, screenwriter and academic
Humans cause all or most of the changes in the climate by burning fossil fuel. We must stop using the most efficient fuel we have, one that supplies 85% of our energy needs, and sign up for a so-called Net Zero future. The rich will get richer, since they will control state-mandated transfers of once-productive capital into new untried technologies, and the poor will get poorer. Holidays, personal travel and energy will be rationed (for the masses), while meat-free diets will be the order of the day. There are disadvantages, admit the green, politically motivated zealots, but it has to be done. The Earth is on fire – the science is settled.
Except that it isn’t. The idea that humans are largely responsible for climate change is an unproven hypothesis. The claim that it is ‘settled science’ on which all specialists in the field agree is a political con. Over 40 years, climate models have produced wildly inaccurate warming forecasts that have never been right.
The political narrative of global warming got going in the 1980s, following the failure of the 1970s global cooling scare. The warming narrative had a good ride for 15 years, until the recent warming started to run out of steam. Over the last seven years, there has been a standstill in temperatures. This is part of what lies behind the recent rebranding of bad weather as ‘extreme’, and unscientific attempts to link solo events to long-term aggregate climate change. Record high temperatures among the jet aircraft at Heathrow, record “gusts” of wind off isolated sea cliffs – all are used to craft a political Armageddon narrative.
Read More: The Lie That Net Zero is ‘Settled Science’
