The Decline of Climate Change Hysteria
By Anthony Gregory • Monday August 29, 2011 10:16 AM PDT • 7 Comments
For decades, concern about global warming spread steadily, moving from academic circles to the general population, and probably peaking around 2006 or so. Not only did An Inconvenient Truth win Al Gore a Nobel Peace Prize, around that time we began seeing the “consensus” about climate change take over the entire mainstream political spectrum, with most top Republicans endorsing “cap and trade” and other such “market-based” corporatist measures to combat greenhouse gasses.
Yet now the Democratic president has stalled on this kind of government solution to climate change, something championed a few years ago even by many conservatives. What has happened?
Between the terrorist attacks of 2001 and the financial collapse of 2008, climate change had promise to be the new boogeyman against which a new central planning crusade could be targeted. It was a big hope for big government and the corporate state. Most of the oil and auto industries came to embrace the fear, knowing that as believers they had a shot at being rewarded when government began shoveling hundreds of billions of dollars around to address the supposed threat, rather than be punished as heretics by a new regulatory atmosphere.
But somewhere along the way this great danger lost its menacing reputation. Sure, scientists with federal research grants will still blame anything on human carbon emissions—from natural disasters to spiders getting bigger. And yes, such left-liberal luminaries as Paul Krugman have called mere doubt of the climate change “consensus” a case of “treason against the planet.” Al Gore even called for censorship to silence businesses that express doubt.
And yet the great cataclysm of climate change is beginning to scare people less internationally. Other concerns, like the economy, are starting to overshadow the fear of global warming.
One notable point to make is that the trade-off between economic health and a governmental solution to climate change was always a reality, even back when the economy seemed to be doing swell. The sheer cost of restricting human carbon emissions so as to reduce global warming at all substantially, according to the dominant models, would be immense. In the industrialized world, it would cripple industry. In the Third World, it could prevent an industrial revolution from occurring in the first place, which would likely pose far greater harm to the health of the people living there than a couple degrees’ difference in weather.
It is still considered crazy in many circles even to question the zeitgeist of anthropogenic global warming. The few scientists willing to ask uncomfortable questions are marginalized if not silenced. Yet the key component needed for the political class to enact drastic measures to stop this supposed threat to all the world is a public willing to go along with the project. As the public tires of this boogeyman, the prospect of a huge socialistic undertaking to combat climate change begins to fade. One day, perhaps—decades from now, I would guess—people will talk more dispassionately about this topic, and I suspect will look back upon past generations with a bit of laughter.
Tags: Environment, Global Warming, Government subsidies, Power, Propaganda, The State 
The few scientists willing to ask uncomfortable questions are marginalized if not silenced.
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The few? Where have you been?
Dr. Robinson (Dixie’s Homeschooler) Myth Of Global Warming
http://www.namsouth.com/viewtopic.php?t=2219&highlight=robinson
More than 31,000 American scientists have signed the following petition which Dr. Art Robinson initiated. His Power Point Presentation below compares their findings against the opposition, and lists the names of the scientists who signed.
Brock Townsend | Aug 29, 2011 | Reply
Actually what’s missing from American culture is the Wealth Ethic. The myth of new frontiers to conquer, and ever-expanding natural resources, has impaired our ability to conceive of wealth as a temporally-fixed quantity. Wealth that is limitless, in myth, gave rise to conspiracy theories as to who was failing to share it, and the belief that any problem, poverty included, could be fixed by declaring war on it. In reality, natural resources are limited. Non-renewable resources are especially limited. Technologies that make better use of the available resources, require time and capital to develop. Environmental hysteria is a natural consequence of this communistic mentality. If all the world’s natural resources are held in common, no one is in charge of how those resources are to be allocated, and worse, no one has a clue how scarce any resource is, at the moment. As our stock and housing bubbles grew toward bursting and people paid more attention to their FICA score than their bank balance, people vaguely uneasy over just how safe was their standard of living, concerned themselves with all manner of hysteria, but in the end, saw the need to transition toward renewable resources as a basic necessity...which could not be met by building bigger houses and retail stores with borrowed money. Now that the twin bubbles have burst, more of us know our limits.
No, Mr Gore, the President did not drop the ball on Global Climate Change. The public simply quit worrying about the bogeyman in the cellar, to deal with the bogeyman under the bed.
Bob Schubring | Aug 30, 2011 | Reply
We hear this warming crap every year – BECAUSE IT IS SUMMER! Bunch of wackos if you ask me. So I suppose that the earth has never gone through warming and cooling cycles before man came along.
Andy | Aug 30, 2011 | Reply
Off the mark, somewhat.
ralph | Aug 30, 2011 | Reply
Even now this ridiculous issue is handled with too much caution. It was a farce from the beginning and anyone who has ever watched a couple of Discovery or History Channel shows on earth science could see it for the scam it was (unless they had reasons to WANT to believe it). IF there was real global warming it has passed. There is no evidence to show it was man-made and much to dispute it. We know people cheated to protect the notion of man-made global warming and yes, it is costing the economy dearly. Soon the green movement will destroy the economy of California completely. Al Gore should be thrown in jail or sued for all the damage he caused.
Mary Larkin | Aug 30, 2011 | Reply
Hysteria may be on the wane, but you can bet that those who stand to reap billions on this pernicious scam have not given up. Cap and trade is a cash cow waiting to be milked by Wall Street.
Roland | Aug 31, 2011 | Reply
You missed the real game changer, the email ‘hacking’ that revealed the true intentions of the Climate Pirates and the ability of the independent blog-o-sphere in getting the information into the general population. W/O this the Eco-fascist would not have been stymied!
Westie | Sep 6, 2011 | Reply