SOL SANDERS: A REVIEW OF “ROOSTERS OF THE APOCALYPSE: HOW THE JUNK SCIENCE OF GLOBAL WARMING NEARLY BANKRUPTED THE WESTERN WORLD” BY RAEL JEAN ISAAC
Roosters of the Apocalypse: How the junk science of global warming nearly bankrupted the Western world
A VERSION OF THIS REVIEW APPEARED IN THE WASHINGTON TIMES OF APRIL 11, 2012
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/apr/10/global-warming-the-fad-of-fads/
The fad of fads by Sol W Sanders
Mass hysteria, alas! is all too common a phenomenon of our life and times, in a post-digital revolution society where disinformation is as rapidly passed as information and where cheap and available transportation aggravates rapid mob collection and intensity. [Its ubiquity is so pronounced that it is even parodied by young pranksters with so-called flash mobbing.]
But what is more inexplicable is when an allied phenomenon spreads through supposedly intellectual circles to dominate the public forum. Perhaps the most extreme – and certainly one of the most socially and financially costly — examples currently is the one that Rael Jean Isaac lays out in economical but exceedingly comprehensively documented detail in this little book.
Isaac shreds the arguments for “global warming” from start to finish. But in so doing, she more than once demonstrates the pure irrationality of its spokesmen – “the roosters”. For example, she shows how when driven to the wall to prove that changes in climate which may be taking place as they have through the millennia cannot be attributed with evidence to the effects of human activity, the proponents of global warming simply switch the argument without acknowledging this important “quibble”.
With more than adequate evidence and citations for her fundamental hypothesis, i.e., that consumption of fossil fuels is not the proved origin or principle cause of a presumed climate change, she goes on to show the perfidy of many of its spokesmen. But more than in the arguments of most her fellow opponents of the fashionable argument, she lays out the profitable stake many of its promoters have in this complicated world of government intervention, subsidies and their lobbies – and pure blackmail.
I have not seen anywhere a more exhaustive list of the cost of the campaign of the global warming advocates and, therefore, its threat to our standard of living. The amounts paid – generally by the taxpayer but often directly by the consumer – for the various attempts to impose a priori judgments and restrictions on economic activity is laid out here in staggering detail in anecdote after anecdote.
Where I might part company with Isaac is in her final peroration wherein she hints the global warming propagandists and their works are on their way to defeat. She has strong arguments here, too, for that conclusion. Mostly, she says in effect, the crippling effects of the financial crisis of 2007-8 on the whole world economy are forcing realistic reappraisals of the global warming initiatives in government and in the private sector. That would seem to be the logical outcome of a domestic U.S. crisis that calls for economies at every level of government in order for traditional private initiative to take the recovery in hand.
Even in its first glory the Obama Administration with a Democratic House of Representatives and Senate could not follow the now despised “reform” of the nation’s health care industry with passage of its “Cap and Trade” effort to put “a carbon tax” on a drowning U.S. economy. Ironically, too, the usual international suspects in supporting utopian agendas, the Chinese, Indians, and other “developing nations”, are not about to accept curtailment of their modernization through industrialization using untried “alternate sources” of energy nor pay a tax on their essential use of fossil fuels. Only a Canadian billionaire like Maurice Strong can afford to be a United Nations spokesman for global warning, for even in that mad assembly he leads less than the usual mob of Third World adherents.
But even given the fragility of the whole global warming “syndrome” and the advocacy of its adherents, I am not so optimistic. In the “gotcha” game of candidates in the run-up to the November presidential elections, I am constantly surprised to find how many seasoned politicians for whatever reason have at various times signed on to this lunacy. In that regard, I am fond of quoting an old deceased Brandeis professor friend of mine, Milton Sachs, who during the often confused debate over the Vietnam War, often said, “Never underestimate the role of faddism in American life.”
Pres. Obama repeats “going green” shibboleths over and over again, only occasionally modifying his rhetoric in the face of skyrocketing gasoline prices at the pump. His stubbornness at refusing to acknowledge the shortcomings of so-called alternative energy sources is only equaled by his blatant demagoguery. The incredible chutzpah of going to Oklahoma to take credit in a photo-op for a private sector pipeline, which already had passed environmental tests and other government regulations, already under construction despite his refusal to permit a much larger pipeline network including it to go forward, etc., etc., boggles the mind!
I fear the fight against this particular piece of somewhat exotic utopia is still in contest.
Roosters of the Apocalypse: How the Junk Science of Global Warming Nearly Bankrupted the Western World by Rael Jean Isaac (Paperback – Feb 24, 2012)
113 pp.
The Heartland Institute
One South Wacker Drive #2749
Chicago, IL 60606
$8.95 [single copy]
—————————————————————————————————Sanders’ weekly column, “Follow the Money”, for The Washington Times, analyzing the confluence of economic and political trends, appears on Monday.
sws-04-07-12
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