The Mix of Propaganda and Predictions

In this article I consider the subject of propaganda – that feat of public delusion often attributed to Joseph Goebbels. How was this feat performed?

“Tell a lie big enough and repeat until people believe it.”

Now I’m not saying that all TV advertisers are liars, but they sure do believe in the power of repetition. It works!

However, so as not to impugn the integrity of TV advertisers, we must look elsewhere for suitable illustration. Let’s see … something really big, truly humongous, totally implausible … and endlessly repeated …

Yes! There is one stand-out candidate: Climate Change!

Let’s check the record of past press predictions …

1970: New Ice Age by 21^st Century

1972: New Ice Age by 2070 (Brown University to the President of the USA)

1974: New Ice Age Coming Fast

1978: ‘No End in Sight’ to 30-Year Cooling Trend 

1988: Prepare for Long Hot Summers

1988: Maldives Completely Underwater in 30 yrs

1989: New York City East Side Highway underwater by 2019

2000: Children won’t know what snow is

2004: Britain to have Siberian Climate by 2020

2008: Arctic Ice-free by 2018

2008: Ice-free arctic by 2013 (Al Gore) 

2009: 96 months to save the world (Prince Charles)

2009: 50 Days to save planet from catastrophe (Gordon Brown)

2014: 500 days to avoid climate chaos (Laurent Fabius / John Kerry).

True, the IPCC did not support all these claims (which is not to say that the IPCC is blameless) but recall that my topic is propaganda.

This entertaining record cannot justify turning the world’s economies upside down right now. Maybe in fifty years time another review would be appropriate, but until then, keep calm and carry on.

Let’s review some salient facts:

1. Plants converted the preponderance of CO₂ in our original zero-oxygen atmosphere, giving us oxygen. The world thrived. More CO₂ did not and thus cannot cook the world, ever.
2. Zero CO₂ = ZERO FOOD. Plants require CO₂ water and sunlight. In return we get food. More CO₂ means more crops, more food, more oxygen, more abundance. That’s why growers add CO₂ into their greenhouses! The world will make very good use of more CO₂.
3. CO₂ today is a surprising fraction of our atmosphere – go on, have a guess, then read to the end to see the actual figure (no cheating!).

To summarise – we need more CO₂. More crops mean more wealth, less hunger, turning impoverished unhealthy crime-ridden communities (assuming Big Agriculture can be kept at bay) into healthier wealthier more productive communities.

The exact antithesis of where the UN-WEF “partnership” with our governments is taking us.

So what’s really not to like?

(Air:- Nitrogen 78%, Oxygen 21%, H₂O around 1%, CO₂ 0.04% or 417 ppm – less than half of one thousandth of one unit by volume. We could have 20 times as much before breaking 1% by volume. OK, now panic.)