Morphing the climate game

Many climate sceptics and political commentators see climate change as a dead or dying issue. The science is embarrassing in its strident naivete. The apocalyptic predictions haven’t materialised, Climategate exposed the scientific culture as biased and corrupt, abject failure is the fate of every model prediction.

But the major players have too much to lose, so we still have climate laws and treaties in force with no scientific basis. The game is not about to be called off merely because the science turned out to be garbage.

Minor players have much to lose as well.

• In the UK we have two influential news outlets, the BBC and the Guardian newspaper, both with a great deal of their threadbare credibility invested in climate scare stories. They are never likely to admit how grotesque their journalistic failures have been.

• Institutions such as the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Chemistry have been embarrassingly naive in their approach to climate change. They will accept with quiet gratitude any face-saving diversion that comes their way. 

• The intensity of climate propaganda has left us with an unknown number of people who still believe the climate scare stories, many seeming baffled by what has happened to scientific integrity. Middle class enthusiasts for Green Lite - lost souls still clinging to the wreckage. 

This is just the tip of a UN sponsored iceberg, a gigantic political investment, far too big to fail. So the UK government dutifully behaves as if the science is still sound and the climate threat real, because the shape-changing mega-fraud is morphing again, just as global warming morphed into climate change.

Climate science is being shoved to one side as settled, and as it festers away on the shelf, the game morphs into sustainable development, a much more flexible bogey to wave in front of the children. This move seems to have been planned for some time, so for once somebody in the UN made an accurate climate prediction.

Sustainable development will be more problematic for sceptics – because who supports unsustainable development? The Hydra grows more heads. The same people who now support climate change will grab the lifebelt with both claws. They will be just as strident, just as unprincipled about indoctrinating children, just as vicious towards dissent.

So that’s something to look forward to isn’t it?