One of the most arresting case studies in Nick Davies’ book Flat Earth News, about the ‘churnalism’ of poor reporting/stories that is sweeping through the journalism industry as the result of its commercialisation, is about Y2K – the millennium bug.
Davies successfully shows how a ‘non-story’ fed itself, both politically and in the press, until it was a major moral panic that costs millions (and made some people millions), and took up a huge amount of column inches in newspapers and magazines worldwide. And at one minute past midnight on Jan 1, 2000… nothing happened. It was a fake story, blown up out of nothing. But that didn’t stop most major news outlets and governments acting as if it was real: check out this retro BBC map of ‘millenniun bug’ infected countries. For an even better BBC entry on the bug, the h2g2 website got it absolutely right…
Now climate change is being likened to the Y2k ‘scam’ — a fake story. Or more precisely, a story with a real but insignificant meaning for a global community.
Ian Plimer, a professor of mining geology at Adelaide University, in a speech on climate change, labelled the Australian Federal Government’s plans for an emissions trading scheme to the Y2K scam:
”If you thought Y2K was a scam, you wait for this one,” he told a Sydney Mining Club lunch yesterday.
A message the mining industry may be happy to hear, perhaps. Happily coincidental for the opening theme of this blog post, Professor Pilmer has also been tagged as No.86 out of 100 of the ‘Flat Earth Society’ on the Weather Underground blog.
As Luis from Perth points out in a comment post on another article quoting Professor Pilmer, “he’s a geologist, not a climatologist.” That doesn’t necessarily mean he does not have a right to investigate and debate climate issues. However, it does mean his views should be held in the context of his expertise, and his trade associations with mining companies. (For more information on Pimer at the University of Adelaide.)
The story has been picked up by the CO2Sceptics clearing house and the Australian Climate Madness blog. Both agree with Pilmer, especially his suggestion that the ‘science follows politics’. He’s also a regular source for Jennifer Marohasy and Andrew Bolt.
In what looks like an unrelated occurrence of the same theme, the Lake Michigan Air and Waste Management Association(.pdf) use the same metaphor/language to describe climate change (again courtesy of CO2Sceptics.)
Al Gore gathered $300 million to share the ‘truth” of man-induced climate change. He now warns of irreversible damage to the earth if dramatic action isn’t taken before 2020. These echo the overwrought Y2K panacea which cost billions, but vanished overnight. Main stream media report little at odds with the theory. Millions of research dollars hinge on tacit acceptance of the theory. Skeptics with the temerity to question the theory may expect ad hominem attacks. But recent years have seen a sharp increase in the release of scientific facts and testimonies questioning the theory of man-induced climate change…
Use of the ‘millennium bug’ metaphor for communicating the ‘scam’ of climate change is a powerful choice of language: it’s easily explainable, and can be referred back to a real, momentous and memorable anti-climax: we all remember nothing happening as a result of the moral panic/scare. That’s a powerful image with which to encourage a thought about the current understanding of climate change. Those critical of the mass support and evolving action to mitigate against and adapt to climate change could adopt the form of this metaphor–the anti-climax–as a better means of communicating the economic-foolhardy repertoire of ideas that reach their polished zenith in Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus.
What really interests me is that the likeness seems to have occurred independently at around the same time thousands of miles apart: it would be fascinating to see if there were linkages between the people or groups involved.
(x-posted from The Current Climate)
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The IPCC is a bunch of economists and they cannot even run the economy!
I think Prof Pilmers qualifications exceed Al Gore’s.
To impune Pilmer’s scientific integrity is improper. He is an academic and a scientist with a valid point of view.