When the mass media and the government team up, the amount of fear and hysteria they can induce upon the nation is priceless. It happens quite regularly, as such with smoking, antisocial behaviour and terrorism; the entire nation tend to get behind something that has been purely engineered by the government and perhaps one or two ‘independent’ professionals, and there sometimes isn’t a direct economic or political motive other than pure control.

I take anything the government says in league with the press with a pinch of salt. Don’t get me wrong, I would be terrified if current gas emissions resulted in a huge temperature shift, culminating in an ice age that would mean the end of mankind as we know it. But if you take a look at some basic facts, coupled with a bit of historical information, you tend to forget the hyperbole and see things more sensibly.

If you believe that Carbon Dioxide is most responsible for the ‘diseased planet’ then buy all means get rid of your car (if you believe the papers and the propaganda, why the hell not?) but first, understand that just 3% of all the C0²  in our atmosphere results from human activity. Secondly, understand that the recent planet-saving Kyoto agreement plans to cut back gas emissions by 20% in Western nations, bar the United States for widely-publicised reasons. Do the maths, and it works out at diddly-squat of a difference. Thirdly, recognise that our planet needs CO² for its inhabitants to survive. The media, who tend to present this very useful gas in the same light as Saddam Hussein and Colonel Gaddafi, seem to have failed to grasp the very basics of respiration.

I ask global warming believers/worriers this question: Naturally, what would be the most telling occurrence of this ultimate disaster? Would it be your house flooding? Would it be a slight rise in world temperature? Or, would it simply be hot summers and cold winters?

Do you think the generations of London citizens were terrified when the Thames froze over, consistently, from early Norman days and beyond, until the end of the nineteenth century? A similar occurrence today would send the entire planet into a frenzy of “we told you so” and “this is what happens on The Day After Tomorrow”! Instead, it was understood then that the earth’s temperature naturally fluctuates in order to make land more inhabitable.

Moreover, did you know that under Roman rule, we had vineyards in England? It is not so widely-publicised that temperatures in the past were much higher than current levels. Eco radicals seem to have the moral monopoly when it comes to global issues, and sadly, the global warming skeptic crowd is represented solely by a grossly inarticulate, fiftysomething man named David Bellamy.

Bellamy made his first appearance on national television, debating global warming with a well regarded government scientist on Channel 4 News. The scientist had a walk in the park; he argued about polar icecaps, questioned Bellamy’s source, discredited him personally and then drove one of his five SUVs all the way home to Edinburgh. The last part isn’t true. But the occasion was a triumph for the eco radicals, who appeared to have beaten the skeptics factually as well as morally.

Sadly, the debate wasn’t taken seriously, as Bellamy’s failure to string a cogent sentence together seemed the key focus of the interviewer, Peter Snow. His poorly-expressed argument was laughed out of the studios.

What made me laugh though was the irony in the fact that in that particular broadcast, they had a feature on whether or not democracy could be achieved in Iraq’s January elections.

June 2005

About the Author:
Born and raised in England's green and pleasant land. I am 18 years old and my writing of late has been polemic yet entertaining. I originally began writing stories aged 6 or 7 but I've since dabbled in poetry and scripts. I aspire to be a freelance journalist and I hope you enjoy my work. www.clarkspeak.net or steve_clarkson_29@hotmail.com