Some years ago I asked an old friend, who is a stockbroker and then in his forties, whether he was nervous about the expected onset of a bear market: one in which share prices fall over a long period? This was at the end of a very long bull market with steadily rising prices.
Yes, he said, he was pretty worried. Although there was no problem in managing funds successfully in these less favourable conditions, the city had recently gone through one of its periodic convulsions, with finance houses amalgamating, the upper echelons of management being ruthlessly culled, and new, younger, and more energetic blood being brought in.
He did not feel that there was anything wrong with this of course, but he saw problems ahead; in the short term at least. Although the new kids were bright and capable, they had learned their trade when the going was good and had experienced nothing other than relatively easy trading conditions. In his opinion, when the downturn came they just weren’t going to know what had hit them, and that could be a big problem for markets.
It would seem likely that a large proportion of the AGW activist movement are finding themselves in the same kind of situation at the moment. The eNGOs have grown rapidly over the last decade with a high intake of young graduates straight out of university.
So far, these keen young idealists have been pushing at an open door. Politicians, the mainstream media and, to a great extent, the general public too, have been sympathetic to their cause. No press release has been too absurd to find some journalist who will write it up. No scheme too fanciful or ill conceived to be turned down for funding. And all the time there has been an ever more vocal groundswell of public opinion urging them onwards.
There must have been periods of frustration for them of course, when progress was slower than they would have liked. But these clean cut knights in green armour had signed up to be campaigners after all, and few of them can have doubted that the triumph would be theirs eventually. All that was needed was to continually turn up the pressure with ever more extreme scare stories for the rest of the world to conform to their alarmist viewpoint.
They have become used to being hailed as the infallible fountainheads of wisdom on all matters to do with the climate, the arbiters of correct political opinion on environmental problems, and the conduit through which, provided sufficient legislation could be enacted and funding made available, the planet could be saved. The only opposition they have faced has been from a despised minority of sceptics who have persistently asked whether we can be sure that the planet really is in danger. These voices have been easy to marginalise and ignore. The forces of environmentalism have effortlessly occupied the moral high ground to such an extent that the merest hint of criticism of their views or actions has become tantamount to blasphemy.
What a difference the last two-and-a-half months have made. First Climategate, then Copenhagen, and now the seemingly endless revelations about IPCC incompetence – and worse – which is fast spreading suspicion that those who have been trusted to explain what is happening to the climate may have feet of clay.
If anyone expects that environmental activists, and the climate scientists who are becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish from them, will be able to mount a swift and decisive counter offensive that will win the day, they are likely to be disappointed. To do so would require them to react swiftly and with great skill to a situation that they have never faced before. These are folk who are facing the PR equivalent of shock and awe: terrifying, disorientating, and presenting a challenges for which nothing in their past experience has prepared them. Defending their beliefs is not something that they have had to plan for.
Recovery will require different skills, a new mindset, and a totally restructured strategy. This will not happen over night, and in the meantime, the panic-stricken desire to do something – to do anything – to stem the growing forces of scepticism will be irresistible. But deploying the tactics that worked so well for them in the good times is likely to have precisely the opposite effect to what they intend.
Last week, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Ed Miliband, declared war on sceptics, and presumably he did so after consultation with those who have so successfully shaped public opinion on climate change.
Such a high profile campaign might have worked in October, or even early November, before the Climategate scandal broke , but now that even the Guardian is publishing stories that sound as though they have been lifted verbatim from the most sceptical blogs, his vituperation just sounds like a hopeless act of desperation.
At the moment, any attack on sceptics suggests that the person making it is unable to come to terms with the enormity of the Climategate revelations, or with the abject failure at Copenhagen and what that means for the balance of global economic power, or with the implications that continuing revelations about the IPCC will have for any future attempts to convince the world that AGW should be taken seriously. Mr Milibands declaration of war is more likely to encourage scepticism than vanquish it because it shows that he does not understand what is happening.
This morning the Sunday papers carry stories accusing the sceptics of launching a well-coordinated campaign funded by big oil. There is no convincing evidence to back this up of course, and as a sceptical blogger I know it is untrue. At one time or another I have been in touch with most of the high profile sceptics whose names have been appearing in the media recently. One of the things that troubles us all is that we are so totally and utterly uncoordinated and disorganised in the face of politicians and environmentalists who have vast manpower and financial resources to back PR campaigns run by experts whose calling is to manipulate the media.
Over the last few weeks, baffled MSM journalists have been desperately seeking out sceptics looking for guidance and background on breaking news stories of a kind that they never expected to see. That would not happen if there was any coordinated campaign, they would know exactly who to go to for the answers.
It is the sceptics who have brought the antics of the IPCC to their attention. They have been able to ‘stand up’ these stories, to use journalistic parlance, and produce powerful headlines. As one reporter said to me last week, ‘I don’t think we’ve heard the last of the Himalayas story yet by a very long way. Do you?’. The MSM know that this new slant on climate change ‘has legs’, and that it will run and run.
Attention is likely to focus on further shortcomings in the IPCC process, and those of us who read the sceptical blogs know that there is far more to come out. No doubt the cheer leaders for the warmist cause will be able to place the odd derogatory story about bloggers in the pages of the usual suspects – The Guardian, The Observer and The Independent – which is based on nothing more than bile and innuendo, but the public cannot fail to recognise that the questions that are being asked about the global warming message and the science on which it is based are well founded.
Once you know that there is a worm in the apple, who is eager to eat the rest? And if someone else has drawn the wriggling and writhing invertebrate to your attention, then you are likely to feel gratitude towards them, not suspicion about their motives.
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