Dec 12, 2012 at 7:47 PM | Martin A

[re fads]

With CAGW, the corruption has spread so widely and there are so many beneficiaries in the civil service, national government, local government, media, and universities that I find it very hard to imagine it simply fading away.

[...]

Plus there is a generation of indoctrinated children many of them now teachers and perpetuating the myth.

I often find myself thinking that perhaps we passed a tipping point years ago and the thing is now with us for good.

Thinking back to the halcyon days before I stepped onto the battlefield of the climate wars ... the only awareness I had of the messages of "environmental correctness" were those conveyed by "global warming" and "carbon footprint". My strongest recollection is that there would be "winners" (i.e. of benefits), one of which would be Canada, and "losers" (although it wasn't entirely clear to me how anyone could lose if they had to learn to live with a warmer climate!)

Not that my experience is necessarily typical, but perhaps the "tipping point" - which led to some due diligence on my part - came with the introduction of the great big 'C" ... as in C-AGW and sCary stories. And what seemed to me to be an inexplicable shift in branding from "global warming" to "climate change".

In the past three years, IMHO, increasingly, the rent-seekers, activists and advocates (all the "Big" names, as well as their acolytes and lesser lights) have had to contend with explaining more and more "glaring inconsistencies".

But the "indoctrination" of which you speak, Martin, runs so deep, that they are not equipped to do so (and the facts that have come to light in the interim don't help them, either!)

Canadians (wisely, of course!) began stepping back from the brink in the 2008 federal election, during which they resoundingly rejected PM wannabe, Stéphane Dion and his pie-in-the-sky "Green Shift" in favour of the far more pragmatic Stephen Harper. But I digress ...

This is not to say that I think we are out of the (alarmist-occupied) woods, yet.

Far from it, unfortunately. Rio+20 paid very little attention to "climate change" [pls see Rio – the final score: climate change 22, sustainable 400]

So little that it should have come as no surprise that the recent UNFCCC confab in Doha both began with and concluded with far less hype than usual. It succeeded in achieving the magnificent feat of "retiring" two of its acronymic offspring ... and launching another to populate its stable, in the hope of perpetuating its own existence, as ineffective agenda-driven bureaucracies are wont to do.

But the UNEP (promulgator of increasingly scary stories since 1972) began laying the groundwork for a shift from "climate change" (cc) and "carbon footprint" (cf) to "biodiversity loss" and "environmental footprint" two years ago!

These new, improved mantric buzzwords from the IPCC's younger sibling, IPBES, can easily - and oh-so-conveniently - subsume and replace both cc and cf, using the "we are the experts and it's worse than we thought" propaganda Assessment Report template perfected by the IPCC.

IPBES and TEEB (the "new testament" version of the "climate bible") should by now be ready and primed to step into the spotlight being (perhaps very reluctantly) vacated by the UNFCCC/IPCC. Needless to say, they have their own reporting and financial "mechanisms" all lined up and ready to roll!

But, with a little bit of luck, these new, improved UNEP purveyors of propaganda and indoctrination will not be quite as, well, "sustainable" (you should pardon my use of this word!) Because they suffer from the rapidly declining credibility of their "grandparent", the United Nations. There can be little dispute that the UN is an organization which time and time again proves itself both totally incapable meeting its charter obligations and particularly inept at setting an example by practicing what they preach.

In short ... notwithstanding all that we have yet to overcome before we witness a tsunami of rationality, I'm somewhat optimistic that the undertows suggest that perhaps - at long last - the tide may well have irrevocably turned.

Hmmm ... seems to me that the reading comprehension skills of the "lesser lights" - who decide to grace us with their persistently diversionary presence here - are in a state of rapid decline.