Where Are The Carrots, George?

There is one question that no one who denies manmade climate change wants to answer: what would it take to persuade you? In most cases the answer seems to be nothing. No level of evidence can shake the growing belief that climate science is a giant conspiracy codded up by boffins and governments to tax and control us.

I think you just answered your own question, George.

If you can just point to a few initiatives which don't involve tax, control, or punishment, we could share your enthusiasm.

Measures which are certainly going to drive the human spirit in the opposite direction are microchips in our bins, ridiculous fines and criminal records for non-compliance, significant compulsory outlay when selling a home, council inspectors being given access to your property, and massively increased taxation. Hey, that's not an exhaustive list, by the way, just a top-of-the-head sample.

You see, there is plenty of hassle there. No carrot. Just stick. Taxes never reduce, only increase. No encouragement, merely condemnation. The sole solution, according to government, is charging, fining, criminalising, and generally being a right bastard.

It's hardly surprising then, that the public look at how their lives have deteriorated since climate change became a club with which to beat them, and start wondering how the scientists are funded.

The fact that all the studies are financed by the very same people who are dishing out the fines, criminal records, and psychological beatings, might go some way to explain why there is a smidgeon of scepticism there? D'you see?

The attack on climate scientists is now widening to an all-out war on science.

George, you have it all to cock. It's the other way around. Climate scientists, at least from the civil liberties angle, are suffering from a mistrust of science in general. They may not have started the war, but they are reaping the vicious counter attack.

Physician, heal thyself. Stop targeting superior opprobrium at those who won't fall in line with your obvious faith, and instead direct your anger at the legions of state-paid trouser-fillers who have been attacking us for decades.

Writing recently for the Telegraph, the columnist Gerald Warner dismissed scientists as "white-coated prima donnas and narcissists … pointy-heads in lab coats [who] have reassumed the role of mad cranks … The public is no longer in awe of scientists. Like squabbling evangelical churches in the 19th century, they can form as many schismatic sects as they like, nobody is listening to them any more."

'Tis true. They have sold their soul to the government devil and we wouldn't believe them if they said that an orange was, well, orange.

Distrust has been multiplied by the publishers of scientific journals, whose monopolistic practices make the supermarkets look like angels, and which are long overdue for a referral to the Competition Commission.

You're on the right lines there, George. At last. But your lefty red-tinted spectacles prevent you from seeing that it's not exclusively a private sector problem.

Quite the opposite.

A scientist colluding with Tesco to say that their ready meals are nutritious doesn't result in a homeowner being financially hammered (or jailed) at pain of government sanction. If Asda threatened to cart visitors off in a paddywagon for not buying the Indian meal for two, customers may well take an equal and opposite view to the science which created the policy.

The private sector long since realised that the way to a customer's approval is appealing to his/her needs. It's a butcher, baker, brewer thing.

The only approach from public sector goons is to demonise, kill, slash, destroy. You will comply or we will strike down on you with great vengeance.

No-one likes waste. No-one wants the world to end. You have incredibly powerful tools at your disposal, right there, in the form of self-preservation and thrift.

Yet you and your brethren in the climate change religion have fucked it all up by kicking people in the nuts for too long.

Is it really such a surprise that they have responded by trashing your house of cards while you weren't looking?