“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits”. So said the great Einstein years ago.
As living proof of his brilliant observation, we are now treated to St Greta of Doom, the teenage half-wit from Sweden who thinks she can “…see carbon dioxide in the air”.
Cruelly used by unscrupulous politicians trawling for the votes of the credulous, and eco-racketeers seeking to fleece the taxpayers yet again, this poor ill-informed girl should be sent back to school to learn some basic science. Worse than that are the hordes of politicians, journalists, lawyers, fake news reporters–the snake-oil salesmen of the modern world–exploiting her for all its worth to foist their end-of-the-world hysteria on all of us.
Nearly 500 scientists and engineers have just sent a letter to the UN urging them not to sign on to this hysterical tsunami of madness. There is no climate emergency. The world will not end in ten years. The only real threat to ourselves is the madness enveloping the chattering classes. The only real effect of all this hysteria will be the wasting of billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money on absurd projects that will go nowhere.
Look at all the failed predictions of the last fifty years of climate hysteria.
Every now and then, hysterical movements sweep through nations. In times past, there was the South Sea Bubble, the Children’s Crusade in the Middle Ages, the Tulip Mania, the Mississippi Scheme, and many more. Many of these were described in fascinating detail in Charles MacKay’s book of 1841, “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds”. It should be required reading for all politicians. (I would add journalists but I’m not sure if many of them can actually read.)
As MacKay says at one point;
Every age has its peculiar folly — some scheme, project, or phantasy into which it plunges, spurred on either by the love of gain, the necessity of excitement, or the mere force of imitation. Failing in these, it has some madness, to which it is goaded by political or religious causes, or both combined.
Climate hysteria is the current mania. Politicians are its mountebanks and the Fake News Media its poltroons. Infusions of Reality may cure it, but much damage may be done first.
Rebel Yell