December 10, 2015

How can global warming be a hoax when most important people everywhere in the world accept it?  Surely they can't all be wrong?

When President Eisenhower warned that American politics risked being captured by a military-industrial complex his warning was widely taken seriously -- on both the Left and the Right of American politics.

And he had good grounds for his warning: Just about the whole of human history.  The whole of human history is a history of elite dominance via elite collusion. As far back as we can go, human societies have mostly been ruled by the King and his barons. The ordinary people had no say in government at all.  There was the Athenian democracy for a while and then the Roman Republic but neither lasted as the old ways steadily reasserted themselves. And even those two were very limited democracies by modern standards

Then out of the woods of Germany emerged primitive hunter-gatherer tribes whose lifestyle was inimical to centralization and who needed the co-operation of all to defend themselves from other warring tribes.  So they all had systems of consultation which worked toward consensus action.  Even their system was not a direct democracy, however.  It was a "Senate" ("Witan") of elders who made the decisions.  But the elders really were what the name implied: Heads of family who really represented their families and could bring their families with them if common action was required.

And when some of those tribes invaded and took over Romanized Britannia and made it into England, they brought their ideas of governance with them. There was some survival of that in Germany too.  Even such a powerful and militaristic state as Prussia had a parliament that not even Bismarck could ignore for long.

And when, after huge religious struggles, those ideas of governance became allied with ideas of religious tolerance, the individual in those lands was freed to think for himself.  And that eventually led to the leap of technological progress in Britain known as the Industrial Revolution. And when others copied the British model, the Western world as we know it today was created.

With ups and downs, England has been a democracy of one sort or another for around 1500 years now -- already lasting 3 times longer than the Roman Republic.

But "ups and downs" is the word. Britain was on various occasions theatened by a drift into the sort of tyranny that ruled most of the world.  Along the way, Magna Carta had to be signed and a King beheaded to defend traditional English liberties.

But the battle has always been a close-run-thing. And even now it has not been totally won. The graduates of the Greater Public Schools (i.e. private schools) and the two great universities still run Britain.  The present Prime Minister is an Oxford graduate, as is the Chancellor of the Exchequer (treasurer, finance minister) and as is the Mayor of London.  Even the recently defeated leader of the Labour party was an Oxford graduate.  So even in Britain, elitism makes only some compromises with democracy.

Let me point out two examples of how that elitism still rules -- regardless of what the people want.  

The classic example is the death penalty for serious crime.  Outside the USA, most Western governments now forbid that penalty altogether.  Yet, as I pointed out long ago, that is not the popular will.  Clear majorities of the national populations concerned  want the death penalty retained.  The elite has over-ridden the popular will.

A rather different but much more pervasive example of elite dominance is the phenomenon of trade protectionism: taxing imports with "tariffs".  Repeatedly, big business will collude with big labour to restrict competition from overseas.  With both business and labour lining the pockets of politicians, the people are readily betrayed.  

Who does not want to spend less to acquire his purchases if that were possible?  There must be very few of us who don't respond favourably to the possibility of a "bargain".  Yet the whole point of protectionism is to keep prices up.  It takes money out of the pockets of ordinary people in order to benefit special interest groups. The elite do what suits them and who cares about the average Joe?

And a very contemporary example of elites defying popular sentiment is the way the elites worldwide treat popular anger with Muslims and call it "Islamophobia".  An unending sequence of  great horrors done in the name of Allah is not deemed sufficient justification for criticism of Islam. Anger at Muslim deeds is not only ignored but actively criminalized.  History has seen many examples of whole populations being expelled for bad reasons so, in a kneejerk way, Western elites are determined not to let their Muslim populations be expelled for good reasons.

So we come to global warming: A classical example of elite collusion over-riding the best interests of the people.  Scientists, journalists and politicians all benefit from the scare so that is what dictates policy.  It is a steamroller that flattens most opposition.  Almost every national leader is bowing down to the scare in Paris as I write this.  And they are doing that in the context of global warming having stopped over 18 years ago. Here's the graph:

 

So on a mere PROPHECY of global warming resuming, the great and the good of the world are trying to upend the world's electricity supplies.

It is understandable, however, that people with little historical awareness find implausible the idea that all the serious people endorsing the scare are just participating in a racket.  How can so many people be getting it wrong, they ask? This little essay is designed to show them how.  Elites regularly co-operate, and when they do, anything is possible.  And scientists, journalists and politicians all have good reasons to co-operate on this one.

It is basically scientists who keep the whole racket afloat.  If they universally pooh-poohed it, the whole scare would fall apart.  And their support for the scare is well understood in the light of the old courtroom enquiry: "Cui bono" -- who benefits?  

The Holy Grail of scientists is research grants.  Without research grants, they cannot do research and research is their lifeblood.  And the global warming scare has produced a downpour of research grants onto any scientist working in climate-related fields.  They would be mad to do or say anything to dry up that blessed shower.  To use another metaphor, they would be mad to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. So a small and unscrupulous minority actively promote the myth while most just keep "shtum", but give   token support if demanded.

And the participation of journalists in promoting the scare is perhaps even more easily understood.  Scares sell papers.

And the scare suits the political Left extremely well, which is why belief in it is heavily polarized along political lines.  To quote Obama, Leftists want to "fundamentally transform" the societies in which they live.  And the global warming scare also calls for a complete upheaval of how we live.  Leftism and Warmism are two peas in a pod.

So elite collusion is nothing new and it's clear what is behind it. Warmism suits a lot of elite people and it is mainly their voices that are heard

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