The climate is up the spout and we’re to blame. The planet is boiling like a pan of porridge. We face the possible extinction of all life on earth. ‘Science’ says so. Anyone who questions it is a demonic scoundrel. The climate catastrophe is a 100% solid-gold, slam-dunk irrefutable fact.
Hmm. And yet, it is clear to anyone who has paid the slightest attention, that the tired, hysterical predictions of the climate alarmists (made repeatedly over four decades and based on their hypothetical computer-models) have proved to be spectacularly wrong, again and again and again. It does not take much digging (we have the internet these days) to discover that the outlandish claims of climate alarmists are flatly contradicted by lots and lots of perfectly good scientific evidence and data. We’re not talking here about fringe science put about by whackos. We’re talking about official data – mainstream science, published in respected journals. (Some of it is featured in my ‘climate-denier’ film, Climate: The Movie, available for free online).
The world is not boiling. We are, as any geologist will tell you, in an ice age – one of the coldest periods in the last 500 million years. The level of CO2 in the atmosphere is not unnaturally or frighteningly high. Compared to the last half billion years of earth’s history it is extremely low. And there is no evidence that changing levels of atmospheric CO2 (it has changed radically many times in the past) has ever ‘driven climate change’. If there had been, Al Gore would have said so in his silly film, but he didn’t. Hurricane activity is not increasing, nor are the number of wildfires, nor are the number of droughts, and so on and so on. This is what the official data say. You can look it up.
Of course this is all a bit embarrassing for the science establishment. The climate alarm is worth billions to them in climate-related funding. A lot of jobs depend on it. A lot of reputations are at stake. And it’s deeply awkward for the renewables industry, which turns over around a trillion dollars a year.
The climate alarm is not supported by scientific evidence. It is supported by bullying, intimidation and the censorship of anyone who dares to question it. Climate catastrophism is politics, shamelessly dressed up as science.
The climate scare was the invention of the environmentalist movement, which stands opposed to vulgar, dirty, free-market capitalism. They say there are too many people, consuming too much. We must be restrained and contained, for the sake of Gaia. The solution to the global, existential climate problem is higher taxes and more regulation.
At any social gathering, you can pretty confidently predict who will think what about climate, by asking them about taxes and regulation. People who love the Big State can’t get enough of climate chaos. People who want lower taxes and less regulation will roll their eyes and say rude things about little Greta.
Across the Western world, the state has grown enormously over the last century, vastly increasing the number of people whose livelihoods depend on state-spending, and whose jobs are related, directly or indirectly, to government control. In the U.K. and U.S. both, more than twice as many people now work in government as work in manufacturing. And this does not include all those (in the third sector etc.) who rely indirectly on government largesse.
These people depend on government. They are paid for out of taxation. In such circles to proclaim the joys of a small state, lower taxes and less government is a breach of social etiquette. You have crossed a moral line. You will be suspected of liking Donald Trump, of voting Brexit, of hating lockdown and compulsory vaccination, of defending the Second Amendment, of being a climate denier.
And indeed all this may well be true. These views tend to hang together. As do the views of those on the other side. To repeat, the climate alarm is in fact politics dressed up as science. We are, as more people are beginning to realise, engaged in a class war. On one side, the tax-consuming regulating class that feeds from taxation and bosses us about. On the other, the rest of us in the private sector, who rather resent paying taxes and being told what to do and how to live our lives.
This is the real basis for the consensus on climate change. The consensus exists among our sprawling, tax-consuming establishment. This is not a small group of people. It is an entire class. It is, if you will, the ruling class. It controls our civil service, our schools and universities, large parts of our arts and science establishments and much of the media. It is an intolerant class, deeply aware of its own interests. The taboo that surrounds climate scepticism is a reflection of its power.
It would be nice to think that politely pointing to the actual scientific data might put an end to all the climate chaos nonsense. Sadly it won’t. Because this ain’t about science.
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And most people are so abused and gaslit by this point that they cannot conceive a world taxes and regulation.
The moment you even suggest it, they get defensive and nervous, a bit like a battered woman when you ask her about her husband.
“Well, he can get angry sometimes. Often it’s my fault though. He means well really, he just struggles to control his temper…”
“Yes, taxes are a bit too high, and government can be very wasteful. But you need some form of regulation, you need someone to be in charge, otherwise you’d just have chaos. And I think most people in the public sector are trying to do good.”
Well it’s going to hell in a handcart. The US apparently prints a trillion dollars every 100 days just to keep up with the debt they already created.
Yep and that printing will only accelerate. US are not far off paying a trillion in debt interest.
It’s about control, the reduction of “the peasants'” living standards in the west and transferring whatever money they have left to the 2nd/3rd world and Big Business.
Me: Small c conservative; Brexit voter; anti-Covid tyranny and un-jabbed; climate change realist. Never watch the BBC.
My older sister: LibDem; Remain voter; supports the Covid tyranny and jabbed to the max; loud-mouth climate change proselytiser. Gets all her “news” from the BBC.
We don’t get on
You have accurately described the population, and you and I would be in the minority (10-20%) and your older sister in the majority.
However, the statistics from Austria during Covid are interesting as they wanted to lock down all those who refused the mandatory jab. When these people still refused to have the jab they realised that they were the most productive workers and had to be allowed back to work or the Country would close down.
Same in China under Mao when the most productive and inventive were locked away.
So although we are the minority we are also the ones they need to keep the show on the road and for future advancement, and it is the majority who would be easiest to ‘let go’.
That’s a very good observation.
However, don’t underestimate the willingness of the bloodsucking class to take everything and everyone down with them rather than consider reforming or changing their behaviour.
A great scene from Schinler’s List which I am sure accurately reflected much of the thinking at the time is when a bunch of people in the ghetto are discussing rumours of trains taking people to extermination camps. And one of the guys chimes in something like they wouldn’t do that because they were too useful to them, mistakingly assuming that the German leadership at the time was too rational and too pragmatic to do such an evidently self destructive thing.
Pol Pot also set about exterminating “intellectuals”, i.e. anyone with an education.
A lot of damage can be done before things spin out of control for the ideologically fanatical.
Good film. The Pianist is another about the Holocaust.
Interesting ….. I’m a retired Civil Servant (not a career CS, I joined in my mid-40s for family-management reasons, having always worked in the private sector).
I didn’t fit in
but managed to put up with it for 13 years until I took early retirement.
I was identified as a self-motivator/high performer and in their top 10% of achievers. Which is probably why they put up with my “failure to conform.”
My sister is younger than me but otherwise this describes us to a T.
Yes the mentality of your siter is similar to friends and family of mine who take the attitude that I cannot possibly know more than “The Scientists”. But if I ask any of them to name just one of those “Scientists” they cannot do it. These people expect you to disprove what they cannot prove in the first place and if you cannot do that, which you won’t be able to do because you cannot prove a negative, then they think they have won the argument. They cannot seem to see that under that way of thinking they will be able to claim anything at all and if I cannot disprove it then it MUST be true. ——–I class these people as Brainwashed Dreamers.
I hear you but when we watch that pseudo expert Jim Dale (he was challenged to show his credentials on GBN but couldn’t but he said he was called as an expert witness in many trials) spout nonsense and doomsday predictions (his own), we do have evidence of the negative. The non scientific views.
We are brothers from another mother
Dear Martin Durkin, ——Way back in 2007 I got a phone call from a friend to say there was a program about to come on Chanel 4 about climate change and maybe I would want to watch it. We had an interest in lots of issues and were often discussing science, politics etc. The film he was telling me about was of course your “The Great Global Warming Swindle”. To be fair I had not really encountered the climate change issue as such at this point. It was something I had heard of but had no clue as to what was really going on. Your film changed that.
After seeing your film I started to read more and more about the issue. I first went to sites like “Climate Depot” and after would move onto WUWT (Anthony Watts) I would be on Amazon looking for all books that were challenging and questioning the narrative being pushed by the IPCC, western governments and media (especially the license fee funded BBC). To date I must have read 150 books eg “Hubris” by Michael Hart. “Taken by Storm” Christopher Essex and Ross McKitrick. “Energy and Climate Wars” Michael J Economides and Peter Glover. “Power Hungry” by Robert Bryce. “Climate Change isn’t Everything” by Mike Hulme. ——–The work of Andrew Montford showing how Steve McIntyre demolished the phony Hockey Stick Graph, and the insights from the likes of Ross Clark, Judith Curry, Roy Spencer, John Christie, Alex Epstein etc etc etc. ——–I have come to realise that climate change is mostly NOT about the climate and is also a political, economic moral and social issue. Science has been hijacked for political purposes and that is why anyone challenging or questioning this “official science” is demonised and hounded from their positions at Universities because the government source of funding will be put at risk and even the media is censored where eg the BBC will not have anything to do with asking any serious questions about what is supposed to be “science”. ——–It is quite clear that when you have this kind of tyranny that silences opinions that it is not really science we are talking about here. ———————Thanks Martin for starting me on the road to investigating the issue that I consider the most important one there is, where policies like Net Zero based on this hijacked science are the greatest threat there is to our prosperity, freedom, health and life spans. Thanks also for taking all of the flak you surely received back in 2007 and for having the guts to make your new film.
Nice one varmint.
wink ————-It is surely time we saw the likes of Martin Durkin on GB News. I am aware that these News channels like Talk TV and GB News are walking a regulatory tightrope but there must be clever ways to negotiate officialdom’s restrictions and how they tie hands behind the backs of anyone not toeing the “official science” line.
I’ve re-read this comment a few times astonished at how starkly it describes the depths we’ve descended to.
Basically, in a matter of years we’ve gone from being able to discuss pretty much anything – e.g. having David Irving being interviewed on the BBC – to channels risking sanctions for putting someone on air that has a different take on climate change. i.e. full on state censorship.
And here we all are, either oblivious to it or very aware but tolerating it.
Talk about a frog in boiling water.
Climate change is a multi trillion dollar industry. The power and influence coming from that is way more powerful than the little people and our “free speech”
“The climate catastrophe is a 100% solid-gold, slam-dunk irrefutable fact.”
According to Neil Oliver, the climate crisis is “solid 24 carat Bo!!ocks”
I know who I agree with!
Yes and notice if you agree with the polemic you will never encounter a problem. No one will think to tell you to shut up. On the other hand if you question it you will have all manner of silly activists spitting blood from their eyes and name calling you like you were the devil with horns. ——–This tells you that it has nothing to do with science. Do we ever hear people being name called and ostracised because they have a different point of view regarding black holes? —–No, because there is not a political agenda regarding black holes.
Last month, I watched your “Climate The Movie” under Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/924719370?share=copy .
Well worth watching. Also available in YouTube at present: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3Tfxiuo-oM , but with a different heading – Climate: The Movie (The Cold Truth) English. There is a bit more information about it here: https://tomn.substack.com/p/climate-the-movie-faq
I think that it might have been better for it to be in a different sequence c.f. the original. Start from around 55 minutes in, then move to about 44m, then finish from the start to about 44. That presents the main aim, then followed by supporting evidence. The reasoning behind this is that it is quite long, and many viewers probably drop out part way through. Making the point early, then followed by more evidence might be more attractive to some.
All the best.
On the other hand, if the point is made early many people may react adversely and turn it off. Easing them in gently may be the way to go.
I shared a link with one person, who isn’t political but does take her ‘news’ from the BBC. She said it was eye opening.
I am sure you made this comment about this film a few weeks ago. Or maybe it was someone else. But this is really a film that introduces people to the idea that they might not be getting the whole story when they listen to politicians and the media on this issue.. It is then up to people to investigate further for themselves——–If people cannot take the time to watch a film like this then they deserve all the impoverishment coming their way.
This article just reinforces Martins thoughts.
https://quadrant.org.au/the-luxury-of-delusion/
It seems I have one more day of commenting before my £5 runs out.
According to opinion polls about 75% of the population are concerned about climate change. Is Martin Durkin claiming that 75% of the population belong to this “tax-consuming establishment”?
We are, as any geologist will tell you, in an ice age – one of the coldest periods in the last 500 million years.
Yes we are in an ice-age but in that sense an ice-age lasts millions of years. Climate change over millions of years is totally irrelevant to change over decades in the modern era. The globe was utterly different – the continents were in different places for God’s sake. And change over millions or even hundreds of thousands of years allows life time to evolve or adapt. When the movie began with stuff about life thriving in the Cambrian/Cretaceous/Jurassic (I can’t remember which) I knew it was primarily a propaganda exercise. Although I did valiantly listen to the rest.
About 75% of the population gets their “news” from the BBC. The BBC which has been pushing the climate change propaganda for at least 20 years and doesn’t permit challenge or dissent to be expressed.
I agree with you. It is a propaganda movie.
All documentaries are to some extent are they not? Documentaries are still stories and almost invariably are crafted very deliberately to make you think or believe something. And they generally succeed to some degree.
The sensible thing is to treat a documentary like Climate with the same scepticism as everything else. And perhaps a little more when it chimes so loudly with one’s already strongly held beliefs.
Documentaries are not propaganda if they deal with all the facts. It is only propaganda when the issue is politicised, and there is no issue more politicised today than climate. eg If we had a Documentary about Relativity or Black Holes there would be no need for any propaganda because there would be no politics involved.
Not really the data is well sourced. This is mostly a straight forward explanation of climate science and how we’ve been utterly spun a yarn. There aren’t 2 sides to this argument.
Your first point is disingenuous. If you work for the government or in its ecosystem (big business, charities, universities etc.) then you will have a strong incentive to promote a narrative that supports its existence. That’s all he is saying.
Whilst I take your point on the Cambrian not being relevant to our current climate ‘window’, most of the climate change narrative (“global boiling” and so on) is hyperbolic so countering with ‘look how different the climate can be whilst still supporting life on the planet’ is a reasonable communications strategy. It also worked as a lead in to the climate being highly variable even over the last thousand years.
“75% of the population are concerned about climate change”…..But how can that be a big surprise when they are bombarded daily with this idea and no questions are ever asked? The BBC which is funded by us all have decided that no questions are necessary. They simply regurgitate the IPCC and UN world view. ——-But if something is supposed to be about science surely it is essential to question it all. Or as someone once pointed out “In science scepticism is the highest calling and blind faith the one unpardonable sin”.———————On your point about the Ice Age. —Yes we are in one, and this period is an Interglacial where it is warmer and has been for about 12,000 years. ———I am sorry to see you think 5 quid is too much to spend to make your points, so it cannot be that important to you. From what I can see though I think you seem to think this is all only about science and nothing else. I am sorry but you are totally wrong. This is a scientific, economic, social and moral issue, and it is not the black and white issue the BBC would have us all believe. I could name you all manner of scientists and energy experts who do not share this “official science” world view on climate. You would be foolish to dismiss all of these people as some kind of conspiracy theorists or nut jobs. If it is truth you seek then you need to avoid what is called “confirmation bias” where you have already decided long ago what is true and then look around for everything that seems to confirm that belief while dismissing everything doesn’t.
“ where it is warmer and has been for about 12,000 years”
Since you mentioned you read many books listed above, I just thought I’d pick you up on that and mention the mini ice age a couple of centuries ago. Did you miss that out because it was mainly in the Northern Hemisphere?
Nonsense. ——“Did I miss it out”???? —-Are you having a laugh mate? —–If you want me to post comments 14 pages long I can do that if you want. But no doubt even in that lot you would zoom in on something “I did not mention”. ———-Where is your evidence the Little Ice age was only in the Northern Hemisphere?——-Try this–Evidence for Little Ice Age in Antarctica – Watts Up With That? Or try this–Study: “Little Ice Age” also affected South American climate – Watts Up With That?. ———-Or try this—The Little Ice Age Was Global, Scripps Researchers Say | Scripps Institution of Oceanography (ucsd.edu)——–So you may not agree with any of that but please don’t say I missed something out by trying to avoid something. —–I avoid NOTHING.
You do protest a bit, I was only genuinely interested in your opinion,
You may be “genuinely interested in my opinion”, but you suggested I deliberately missed something out as if I was cherry picking. ——So don’t expect me to be polite when you accuse of me of being sneaky.
That was me assuming the Mini Ice Age was mainly in the northern regions. I suppose it comes across like I accused you of missing it out.
That is where the written word can be misunderstood so much more often than, say, in a pub.
Mtf is short for male to female. I suspect whoever has paid yr 5 quid will create another user name for you to post your goonish nonsense. The point about the ice age is unarguable. We are a species evolved in the tropics, do you think it’s gonna get too hot for us or something. You can wave yr arms and spout twaddle but there’s no getting away from it the earth is very cold right now. You also ignored the corruption of the surface temperature record, when compared to satellite, urban and sea temperature.
For some reason I can still comment although I am over a month for my £5.
Mtf is short for male to female. I suspect whoever has paid yr 5 quid will create another user name for you to post your goonish nonsense.
MTF is my initials. No one is funding me and I don’t use any other id. I prefer not to expose my identity as I don’t want a lot of junk emails but it is not a big deal. I keep a very poorly maintained blog here. This may convince you that I am not funded by some sinister organisation.
The point about the ice age is unarguable. We are a species evolved in the tropics, do you think it’s gonna get too hot for us or something. You can wave yr arms and spout twaddle but there’s no getting away from it the earth is very cold right now.
I am not clear what the “unarguable” point is! Sure it is colder now than it was much of the past. I am not disputing that. I just say it is irrelevant to our current climate crisis. The risk is the speed of change in a planet with 8 billion people – a large proportion living in urban environment already having a massive effect on the natural world. This has never happened before.
I think framing climate alarmism as class warfare by the tax consuming class on the tax providing class is a most valuable insight.
Thank you Martin. I enjoyed your film and the recent podcasts. It is fun trying to pin down the climate change believers with actual facts – about which they are largely ignorant.
When I was much younger, the state used to be responsible for providing water and electricty and ran trains, the post and the telephone network. In earlier times, it used to do much more, eg, the pre-western Germany army alway had its own construction and manufacturing branches. In yet earlier timesd, it still did a lot more as it ran most manufacturing directly and put loads of licensing restrictions on private manufacturers. It’s simply a lie that the state is nowadays bigger than it ever was. It’s significantly smaller as just about everything which can somehow be run profitably has been contracted out to so-called private enterprises.
Just like the Pandemic/ COVAXX saga, ‘climate’ is an example of regulatory capture.
The state assumed industries it essentially stole during ww2. The state didn’t really create any of them. By the 1970s, a mere 30 years it had either run them down totally or destroyed them. The state is a parasite it can produce nothing well the consumer demands long term. See net zero and renewables for an industry the state has created.
You’re referring to nationalisation of certain industries in the UK after the second world war. And I was referring to state-sponsored or state-run manufacturing during the age of mercantilism, ie, in the 17th and 18th century. By that time, the prevailing economic theory was that nations become rich by – ideally – importing nothing and exporting whatever they could and because of this, absolutist rulers like Louis XIV. or Frederick II. established state-controlled businesses to either manufacture exportable goods or reduce their countries’ dependency on imports.
For a more recent example – still really ancient by your “The world began 70 years and I do not want to know what happened before!” standards – the German MG08 machine gun was commonly known a Spandau among the English because it was produced by the royal amoury in Spandau. If you want an English example, try googling royal dockyards, the first large-scale industrial sites established in Britain.
I also hold the neoliberals still trying to sell their shelf-warmers to people opposed to the malaise created according to their theories responsible for it: The current dwarf state is easily captured by powerful private special interest groups who then wield its still considerable power to further their financial self-interest, see Net Zero and renewables — this is all about misapproriating taxpayer money so that owners of privates businesses who are already stinking rich can get much stinking richer.
As icing on the cake comes the openely Marxist (“class war”) rethoric Durkin is employing here. Stuff your Maxism where the sun doesn’t shine, comrade.
“more than twice as many people now work in government as work in manufacturing. And this does not include all those (in the third sector etc.) who rely indirectly on government largesse.”
Even this deeply understates it: many “private” companies get all or most of their business from selling to the State. (Think road maintenance, refuse collection, prisons…) It also does not include nominally private sector companies that are effectively under government control via regulation (examples: National Grid and water companies).
And all are completely obsessed with the “process thinking” that so blights our country. In other words, they are focused on and measured on their adherence to process rather than on outcomes.
Basically, our government has no idea what it is trying to achieve or where it is going, but is convinced it is an efficient machine, unlike any capitalist rabble.
There are some who think there should be limits to government control and those who believe that there should be no limits to what government can do.
Re: Magna Carta.