A load of hot air
* Don’t believe everything you’re told
* Play Devil’s advocate on climate change
* Drum up sceptical support
Here’s some food for thought: man-made climate change is a myth spun by charlatans and greenies, a load of baloney, data distorted by lobbyists for ideological purposes. In truth, the science is uncertain. There is no consensus to suggest that humans are to blame for the change in climate. Peer back into history and you’ll see that the weather has always been changing. And yet it is you getting the blame. Governments aren’t about to complain; the politics of fear is one of the most effective tools they possess.
Sir Nicholas Stern, the minister who was responsible for conducting a review of the economic cost of climate change, estimated that the cost of capping carbon emissions was £3.68 trillion. Absurd, when carbon emissions may not even be to blame for global warming. And even if they are, the real effects are decades away. In the meantime, everybody needs to take a reality check. Remove impossible climate-change targets and regulations for business and stop panicking. Forget the con that is climate change and choose life.
Saunter past the Royal Opera House and turn right towards the buskers and tourists of London’s Covent Garden. Proceed along the cobbled piazza. Stop outside the Diesel clothing store and look up. There, on the third floor of grey-stoned Bedford Chambers, is the team who will guide the next stage of your quest to cripple this already enfeebled planet. Inside are people who propagate the following: that man-made climate change is a load of bunkum. The little-known International Policy Network is a good place to hang out. This global think-tank’s aim is to aid ‘empowerment, respect, prosperity, health’ and, goodness knows, some people could do with that. The network is an ardent voice against attempts to lower carbon emissions. Hostile to global-warming regulations, particularly the Kyoto protocol, the major agreement in place to reduce carbon emissions, the INP believes that there is no real harm in allowing carbon emissions to increase and observes that the only real achievement of taxes and regulations is to ‘hinder technological innovation and economic growth’.
The gang at Bedford Chambers foresees a future of making money without all this tiresome whingeing about ‘carbon footprints’ and the like. Why not invite Julian Morris, the network’s executive director, out for a bite to eat? There is plenty of choice in the nearby piazza, though naturally you should choose somewhere which specializes in unsustainable shrimps from Indonesia, illegal cod from the North Sea, or cheap meat from the Amazon rainforest. Make sure you impress Morris. He’ll no doubt be watching to make sure you care less about conservation than he does. As for the conversation, expect it to be lively. Morris is a man of forthright views. He once described Britain’s chief scientist, Sir David King, as ‘an embarrassment to himself and to his country’. King’s crime? He said that climate change presented a bigger threat to the world than that posed by terrorism. You might recognize Morris. He used to pop up on the BBC pretty often, courtesy of the British licence-fee payer. Fortunately, he’s not one to let his mouth run away with him; his organization allegedly received payments from ExxonMobil, the oil giant which has aggressively lobbied against climate change, but Morris never mentioned this.
Morris comes across as an articulate economist, someone talking sense amid the hysterical predictions of angst-ridden futurologists. His organization published a book revealing that the world has until 2035 before it is required to take action over climate change. His argument offers a window of opportunity far greater than that which is required. By the time 2035 comes, the third-floor of Bedford Chambers might well be under water, or weathered beyond recognition by an unrecognizable heat. Obliterated, perhaps, in a nuclear catastrophe. The flurry of buskers skulking outside his window may finally have been persuaded to move on.
It’s time to start disseminating the gems that science has tried to keep under wraps. Brush aside the findings of the world’s most eminent scientific institutions. Dismiss the thousands of papers published in scientific journals which link man to climate change. They are the conspirators, you merely speaking up for the truth.
See to it that a paper is drawn up, provisionally titled: ‘Climate change: A load of hot air’. Among its persuasive contents will be the fact that more British people die of cold than from heat-related causes. It seems global warming might in fact save lives. From Bedford Chambers, this vital message will spread across the world. You could try handing over hard cash to journalists who write articles promoting your line – £5,000 ought to do the trick, although it’s unlikely you’ll need to use such methods. Instead you can employ a sophisticated network of like-minded think-tanks, reaching thousands of media outlets across the world.
Contact the network’s old address in Washington DC. Number 1001 Connecticut Avenue also happens to be home to one of the world’s most famous think-tanks, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), who have worked commendably hard heaping doubt on scientific global-warming consensus. In a 2006 television advert, the CEI spoke out to millions of US viewers: ‘Carbon dioxide. They call it pollution. We call it life.’ Quite. The environment lobby, desperate to demonize the world we live in, seems to have forgotten that without carbon dioxide the world is dead already. Kaput. Gone. Humans even breathe out the stuff. And they want to reduce levels of one of the most natural substances around. That, surely, is bonkers.
The man you need to find is Roger Bate, fellow of the CEI but also a director of Morris’s think-tank. Bate and Morris are old muckers and have much in common. Bate, too, has publicly derided cutting carbon emissions as ‘folly’. Bate is an expert at playing the US lobbying system and his connections will be vital in spreading the anti-climate-change message stateside. Handily, Bate is also a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, the body that encouraged scientists and economists in Europe and the US to submit articles that could help undermine a report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on climate change, one of the most critical ever published on the issue.
Exploit the CEI’s connections with the George C. Marshall Institute, whose chairman Frederick Seitz sensibly argues that more carbon dioxide would make the world a better place. In turn, they will turn you on to the Heartland Institute, which correctly insists climate change is the product of ‘junk science’. Climate-change strategies ‘will surely make us poorer’. Absolutely. If you want to make money, there’s no point in faffing about with that dreadful emissions-reduction malarkey. Get that carbon dioxide out where it belongs. Your network of experienced, sophisticated institutions will disseminate the message far and wide. It may have come from the offices of Morris, but by the time it’s out there, this vast network of eminent-sounding institutions will have created the impression that doubt about climate change is widespread.
And the bonds among these groups do not end there. All have received money from the world’s largest and most profitable company, oil giant ExxonMobil. Morris’s International Policy Network has received almost £200,000 from Exxon. The Competitive Enterprise Institute at least £1 million. The American Enterprise Institute a cool £800,000. The George C. Marshall Institute another £350,000, with the Heartland Institute receiving the slightly higher sum of £400,000. Denying climate change is pretty lucrative work if you can get it. In 2006, Exxon spent more than £1 million on forty-one leading lights of the sophisticated climate-sceptic industry. Some of them sound mightily impressive, like the Centre for the Study of Carbon Dioxide, but for some reason their work never appears in peer-reviewed journals.
For almost a decade, during which crucial international talks should have been taking place to tackle global warming, the debate was beautifully stalled. They were the glory years, a period when the planet warmed nicely and a spate of natural disasters served as a warning that wasn’t heeded. Now, the penny is finally dropping and you will need to hone your efforts. There are, of course, many groups who receive funding from interests trying to educate the public that climate change is not such a worry after all. A number of EU-focused think-thanks, many based in the EU capital Brussels, are suspected of receiving funding money from ExxonMobil. Sceptical think-tanks active in Brussels are, quite rightly, unwilling to voluntarily disclose their funding sources. Exxon, meanwhile, has stated that it is withdrawing funding from climate-sceptic groups, though details are suitably opaque. No matter. Should things get desperate, you will always have David Bellamy. A respected conservationist, he is one of the few with the courage and credentials to speak out. He believes that ‘no facts link the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide with imminent catastrophic global warming’. Bellamy is famous for his opinion pieces, which stud the world’s media and reach audiences of millions. Some, surely, must listen. He might not strictly be called a scientist; rather a naturalist, but in these carbon-dioxide-heavy times, speaking up for the truth is what really matters.
* New regulations force lobby groups to declare where their funding originates from. Probable.
* Exxon stops support for all think-tanks and begins publicizing entire accounts in show of unprecedented transparency. Remote.
* International business community weighs up cost of tackling climate change against increasing evidence that efforts don’t make a jot of difference. In 2012 they give up on the whole damn thing. A new era of unfettered trade sees carbon emissions rise by 16 per cent a year. Feasible.
* David Bellamy is knighted for services to science. Preposterous.
* Millions are too petrified to leave their homes for fear of adding to their carbon footprint. New network of climate-change deniers, funded by big guns of retail, travel and hospitality, arrive on the scene to coax them out. Plausible.
Likelihood of climate-change deniers increasing influence: 21%