What’s all this hot air about hot air?
Multitudes of media fly to Paris to report on what is said by the multitudes of politicians and delegates flying there from every corner of the globe to attend the Climate Change Conference. It raises more questions than answers in the somewhat confused and skeptical minds of folks who may have difficulty accepting all the touted “facts” on global warming.
For quite a few years, green-hued experts have issued dire alerts from the echo-chambers wherein they dwell, that increased greenhouse gases are rapidly bringing about an end to our civilization as we know it on our little blue planet.
A climatologist from Manchester, England, was interviewed on television this past week; he attended a similar conference in China, and travelled there and back by rail, simply to avoid air travel, which he sees as a huge culprit in degrading the atmosphere. While rail travel must also pollute, the aforementioned high-flying international politicians, delegates and media are surely creating so much more of the very carbon that they are in Paris to complain about.
Purveyors of doom and gloom warn of impending disaster, and speak their very own lingo, some of which is eventually interpreted by the hoi polloi. The terms “carbon footprint” and “fossil fuels” entered the lexicon quite a while ago, and by the time old fossils like me worked out what they meant, another host of puzzling expressions emerged.
For example: natural capital, ecosystem services, carbon offsetting, water footprint, fugitive emissions, post-consumer waste, transfer technology and many other terms are constantly used in convoluted climate conversations.
It used to be said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. But now the great unwashed are told to study the “Bali Road Map.”
Maybe it would be more convincing if those spouting all the hot air about hot air were not politicians, whose track record on telling the unexaggerated and unvarnished truth has never been overly impressive. Bernie Smith, Parksville, B.C.