On the secular religion of global warming

This afternoon, I happened to listen to a news broadcast of a commercialradio station in the UK. In a report on the UN conference on global warming that starts in Copenhagen today, they interviewed a female delegate, who sobbed in tears that she hopes for concrete results from the conference for the sake of her children.

If proposals already made by IMO, the UN's maritime organisation, will go through as planned, from 2016 onwards, ships trading in a region that starts at the mouth of the English Channel and covers the North Sea and the Baltic, must switch to use bunkers with lower sulphur contents than what are used today. That will cost almost twice as much as the current bunkers. In my native Finland, this will add 700 million euro to the annual transport costs of the industry. Clearly, the female delegate should see concrete results from efforts to tackle global warming well within her lifetime.

Of course, 700 million euro is a cheap price to pay if the other alternative is the destruction of all life an earth due to global warming. However, that is far from sure. While I shall not dwell much deeper in why I do not believe in global warming as it is presented to the public, I shall dwell a bit on the implications of these alleged changes.

This weekend, a British government minister called skeptcis of global warming "flat earth people," i.e. reactionaries who cannot see the light of truth. From my univerisity days I recall that skepticism should lead all science. Not here: theories backing global warming have become a subject that are beyond criticism. A fundamentalist doctrine has been adopted by Her Majesty's government, which at the same same time is deploying 500 more of Her Majesty's forces to fight fundamentalism of another kind in Afghanistan.

If the proposals tabled by IMO do take effect as planned, then ports like Hamburg, Rotterdam and Antwerp may see significant drop in business, while ones like Liverpool and Lisbon that are outside the region in question could benefit even significantly.

So, why have things gone this deplorable way? I do not have a complete answer to this, but what I can say is that the media has helped a great deal. As the example of the female delegate in Copenhagen shows, reporting facts has not mattered to the media for a long time. Rather, what stirs up emotion is news.

Computer generated images of disasters caused by global warming are very televisual. And as the internet is causing the break up of audiences in the more traditional form of the electronic media and sharp falls in newspaper sales, no wonder they look for topics that grab the public's attention and stir up emotion. Fear is a strong emotion and fits this purpose very well. It, quite simply, helps the media houses to remain in business.

Swine flu is another example of this. It too has a maritime link: both Richard Fain and Micky Arison counted the cost of the outbreak as cruise passengers took fright and did not turn up. And again, the media carried reports that reminded the public of the Spanish flu that killed millions in 1918-19.

We have not seen such death rates in case of the swine flu and it may well be that we never will. But the media has had a field day with this topic as well.

These are interesting times, to say the least! While I do not believe in global warming as it is presented by theorists, I do believe that people have a need for some kind of religion. Since the 16th century, science gradually eroded the position Christianity had enjoyed in the minds of Europeans for the previous 1500 years.

Global warming has become a matter that falls into the category of religion rather than that of science. A commuter that cycles to work past a wind farm is a prophet of salvation, while another commuter, this time in a SUV driving alone in his car past a conventional power station, is a prophet of the devil.

Theory of global warming has turned from science to a secular religion. Why? Because there is money in fear - of global warming, swine flu, the millennium bug, the prophesies of the Club of Rome...