Group Three

Richard Lindzen divides the climate issue between three groups of people, one of which is far more interesting than the other two. His first two groups are scientists with comparatively minor differences about what makes the climate tick. His third group is composed of politicians, environmentalists and media.

To my mind Lindzen’s third group is a major global problem going well beyond the climate debate. This is the problem of paid liars and their useful idiots who seem to infect all areas of public debate from alcohol to house prices, from global warming to racism to gender politics and all points north of pragmatic sanity.

Paid liars in the political classes and the media are not so much paid to lie as paid to support a narrative, sometimes explicitly and sometimes not. In one way or another group three people derive some personal benefit from a narrative even if it is only the benefit accruing to a dull media hack. Often the benefit is social, such as the virtue signalling celebrities and amateur poseurs are so fond of.

Financial benefits and virtue signalling seem to act as moral anaesthetics. Group three people benefit from misinformation and seem willing enough to spread it without compunction or caveats. Many even seem willing to believe what they say and write, but most seem to block it out if there is some kind of benefit to be had. The climate narrative is not a one-off.