The Cooling Trend

There's something a little perversely satisfying about this new revelation in Britain that shows the climate change skeptics are gaining ground.

I've long suspected that the climate change/global warming scaremongering is little more than a fad like just about every other imminent environmental disaster proclaimed over the last 40 years. What ever happened with that hole in the ozone layer that was supposed to fundamentally alter our existence? What about the destruction of rain forests that was going to kill us off? How about the impending ice age that was touted in the 70s?

My climate change skepticism is not about whether the warming effect exists but whether humans are responsible. And even if we are, is it worth scaling back national economies to implement "fixes" that will have very little practical effect on mean global temperatures? Seriously, the United States was the Great Satan for not signing the Kyoto Protocol but China and India weren't even included?


So does this new trend in Britain reflect a cooling off of the popularity of global warming? It's been about long enough. It's not sexy to talk about climate change anymore. It's been drilled to death. How many times can we see Al Gore with that hockey stick graph of his?

Perhaps this is also a result of people's focus on the terrible financial meltdown that the world is in at the moment. When everyone is rich and prosperous it's really easy to latch onto some cause that spells certain doom for all of us. But as many people are facing and living actual doom in an economic sense right now, people are starting to care less about environmental concerns for which they never really understood or believed the date anyway.

I called it a few months ago in a conversation, but I'll say it here and now: the next environmental catastrophe that the world will start focusing on is the depletion of fish in the oceans. It's already starting. Just wait. Within about 5 years loud vocal groups will be advocating the elimination of fisheries on a global scale.

Of course by then China's going to own all the waterways anyway because the dollar and the euro won't be worth anything. We'll have to give them something.