Environmental Hysteria Published: February 23 2007 Women's Post by Elizabeth Nickson Isn't it about time we retired the word revolution? At least in its connotation as unalloyed good. The astonishing film The Last King of Scotland shows us that revolution means blood-bath, tyranny and a new thief come to power. The Iranian revolution brought us that lovely creature Islamic fascism, now threatening nuclear jihad. And right here, global warming hysterics are forcing a consensus that is truly terrifying. This consensus, if it leads us to take the recommended regulation and repression route, will force us to spend, in the next century, according to a U.N. estimate, $553 trillion dollars. That translates to 30% less income for each and every one of us by 2100. Now that's revolution. Sometimes I feel as if I am living in Germany, circa 1935, when sensible people were saying, "this pipsqueak is a nothing." Four years later, their country is at war, and they're euthanizing anyone who disagrees with said pipsqueak. How might this play out for us? It's 70 years on, but have humans changed that much? Apparently not. Instructive is a little publicized event which took place in Denmark on Jan. 15, when Al Gore brought his hugely successful global warming film, An Inconvenient Truth, to town. The editors of Jyllands-Posten, the largest newspaper, thought it would be interesting to have Bjorn Lomberg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, interview Gore. Lomberg is not a global warming skeptic, he merely questions some of the data we all take as written in stone, because he spent years taking apart the numbers and found some, not all, but a substantial amount, to be ill-founded. The interview had been scheduled for months. "Fantastic", cried Gore's p.r., anticipating, no doubt a free exchange of ideas, during which Gore wins, hands down. "We'll be there with bells on!” No bells. Mr. Gore bailed. First he wouldn't be interviewed by Mr. Lomberg, then he decided he wouldn't be interviewed by the paper at all. No hard questions allowed – case closed, no sharing of the spotlight with actual, rather than inconvenient, truth. But if this is a catastrophe writ large, shouldn't we be asking the hard questions? Trust me, they are legion. The eviromental industry's habit of exaggeration is still monstrous. If it weren't so, very real problems wouldn't get press. But if things are so serious, shouldn't we all be speaking with measure, not hysteria? Terence Corcoran in the Jan. 26 Financial Post, says that ship has sailed. On Feb. 2, the UN Panel on Climate Change released the executive summary of its latest report. The science will be released two months later. Corcoran charges that the late data release means, and he provides evidence, that the science is going to be massaged for two months to fit the findings in the summary. If that is anywhere near true, our future may fall into the hands of fanatics, and drear history will repeat its bloody self one more time. Elizabeth Nickson is an accomplished journalist who loves a good discussion or debate.

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