Global Warming As Imperial Surrogate For The United Kingdom
I have just sent my local MP a slightly-edited version of Clive Francis’ “£400 billion” letter. (h/t Malcolm Shykles).
The UK governments’ obsession with AGW had actually been until now a bit of a puzzle really, as it covers the entire spectrum of Westminster’s opinions, apart from a few lonely voices. A bunch of fools they might be alright, but carefully selected to be in the same place at the same time, that’s unlikely.
Then I read a passage from Carl Sagan’s “The Demon-Haunted World“, and everything became clear:
The last scientifically literate President may have been Thomas Jefferson…Britain had such a Prime Minister in Margaret Thatcher. Her early studies in chemistry, in part under the tutelage of Nobel Laureate Dorothy Hodgkins, were key to the U.K.’s strong and successful advocacy that ozone-depleting CFCs be banned worldwide.
Never mind if promising to achieve an impossible target by spending an incredible amount of money makes sense or doesn’t. What matters for successive British governments really _is_ to be able to “show leadership”, i.e. be at the head of the bandwagon. Just like Mrs Thatcher was able to do: a great surrogate for a lost empire, if you ask me.
In other news: when will Mrs Thatcher or one of her scientifically-illiterate male clones finally stop being the UK Prime Minister?
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Maurice Strong, the Canadian socialist entrepreneur, (currently living in retirement in Beijing) is supposed to have played on Mrs Thatcher’s scientific credentials when, as an inexperienced newcomer to international summits, she was looking for a way to shine. Hence the multi-million pound backing of the CRU and Tyndall research centre at a time when Mrs Thatcher was saving pennies everywhere else.
The thirty year rule on publishing cabinet discussions means that we should be learning a lot more about this in the next few years.
The bizarre political consensus in Britain (not found in the USA) suggests that AGW is an ideology, filling the gap left by organised religion.
In the UK the media, the government and quite a lot of the people love over-reacting to “disasters”, especially where “health and safety” are involved. The foot-and-mouth disease outbreak being one example, swine flu another.
Michael Crichton on Environmentalism as a Religion
This is this problem with Cameron: Michael Crichton on People Who Want to tell you what to do