2. The social forces driving the hysteria of 'global warming'
But how did the official line of Royal Science and mass-media coverage manage to flip flop from the hysteria of anticipated 'global cooling' to the hysteria of 'global warming'?
By 1989, mass-media mouthpieces were promoting the notion, now dominant, that 'all' scientists in the U.S. and Europe were agreed on the reality of 'global warming'. The magazine Science, of course, was at the forefront of the new fashion. When Lindzen submitted, in the spring of 1989, a critique of the myth to Science, the paper was rejected without even being peer-reviewed. Eventually, it was accepted by the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, but Science took it upon itself to criticize the blackballed article before it was even published - one in a long line of clear-cut instances of Science's unethical behavior, and proof positive of the existence of an unspoken policy of general circulation of leaked submissions.
The direct political reasons for the promotion of the 'global warming' fad are to be found in the convergence of diverse social forces:
• the evolution of left (social-democratic) political forces towards a new electoral marketing - militant form of environmentalism, and technocratic managerialism;
• the transformation of 'ecological' organizations into profitable non-profit, macro-capitalist funds;
• the design of national State bureaucracies to control the entirety of social life with new regulatory mechanisms;
• the emergence of a new International State technobureaucracy in search of supranational powers and jurisdictions.
To these social forces one must add the worldwide unregulated growth of cadres and the transformation of forces of antiproduction and destruction into profitable ventures. Thus -
• an excess of PhD's in physics and mathematics with little left to aim for other than the pursuit of a career within the official institutions of organized dissent, where they endlessly generate models and fads pliable to political interests, in particular those fads that are dear to the global techno-socialist management of capitalism; and
• the subsidies, grants and investment provided to 'green' groups by some of the worst polluter industries (eg oil, nuclear companies, utilities, etc) as a way to redeem their status or blanch their image, and as a sort of 'protection fee'.
Finally, there is, as we said, a softness that, so far, is intrinsic to environmental sciences, and which makes them particularly vulnerable to mystification and political manipulation.
Of all these social forces and trends, it is apparent that the main role is played by the emerging global technobureaucracy. Taken separately, the other forces were unlikely to amass sufficient momentum for a deep social penetration. They needed a substantial partner in power, and a pseudo-scientific doctrine that could be shoved down everyone's throat. That's what they found in the UN, in its latest role as a 'regulator' of 'sustainable development and global growth', and in its highly corrupt NGO structure. From the sham Rio de Janeiro Conference, in 1992, to Kyoto, these neo-left-wing militants - their ranks swollen with crypto-anarchist volunteer slave-labor - formed the frontlines of the New Global Order, the millenial paradigm, even as they claimed to be denouncing 'globalism'. Pliable to the new international capitalism of global looting, the 'global warming' movement disguised its objectives as scientific, and 'dictated' them as being in the objective interest of mankind. The myth of 'global warming' was their precious tool:
"Global warming advocacy is big business, hundreds of millions in research and other funds are available annually for those scientists and organizations who spout the party line (just check the Pew Foundation gravy trains), don't fool yourself, scientists and professors need money and research funds, and some are willing to violate the scientific method to obtain them. (...) Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, WWF, etc, who make these claims, (...) who present themselves as non-profit/non-partisan, are neither. They are just as biased and unscientific in their approach as the big oil, car and chemical companies are. They make money from fear mongering to collect funds from well meaning, concerned, but scientifically naive people." [4]
'Global warming' is likely to be the most expensive pseudo-scientific hoax ever implemented. As of August 22, 2005 - and since the Kyoto protocol came into effect on February 16, 2005 - the Kyoto Agreement has cost 80 billion dollars for, supposedly, a prevention of warming by 0.0008 deg C... To prevent a 1 deg C increase it will cost some 100 trillion dollars [5]. One can measure this wasteful capital expenditure by the 16 billion that was needed to shore up New Orleans and the Mississippi delta from a stage 5 hurricane like Katrina, or by the paltry 3 billion that the US spends annually in orthodox research on alternative energy (reduced, in essence, to solar cells and wind turbines) . 'Global warming' is a clearcut example of the central role acquired by antiproduction in global capitalism. Its promoters, with peer-reviewed mainstream publications at the forefront, have struck gold - a very lucrative business, where nothing needs to be actually produced, not even real science, in order for a 'healthy' profit to be made under the cover of an altruistic advocacy voicing demands in the name of mankind...
Nothing could outdo the power of this hoax in fuelling anti-Americanism worldwide, nor become as engrossing a plot for the 'prime time' show:
"The global warming circus was in full swing. Meetings were going on nonstop. One of the more striking of those meetings was hosted in the summer of 1989 by Robert Redford at his ranch in Sundance, Utah. Redford proclaimed that it was time to stop the research and begin acting. I suppose that that was a reasonable suggestion for an actor to make, but it was also indicative of the overall attitude towards science. Barbara Streisand personally undertook to support the research of Michael Oppenheimer at the Environmental Defense Fund, although he is primarily an advocate and not a climatologist. Meryl Streep made an appeal on public television to stop warming. A bill was even prepared to guarantee Americans a stable climate." [1]
From Jeremy Legget of Greenpeace, to George Mitchell and Albert Gore (who compared the 'true believers' in 'global warming' to Galileo! Caramba!), 'global warming' had become the latest soap, an international brand to sell books and plead for donations. Lindzen appropriately concludes:
"Rarely has such meager science provoked such an outpouring of popularization by individuals who do not understand the subject in the first place."
To the long list of circus performers, one must add that other latecomer among the plethora of modern trashcans, the populist purveyor of gross ineptitude - Wikipedia, ruled by a neo-maoist cabal of 'global warming' zealots.