One more Global Warming post

The end is near for the warm mongers.  The Wall Street Journal has flipped and become skeptical of the science behind this movement.  Major British papers, the The Daily Mail and London Times are both now openly skeptical and ridiculing of the warm mongers.

I'm tiring of this subject.  It's today's news, and I'm much more interested in tomorrow's news.  I've spent a little time thinking through how the rest of the collapse will play out.  This is interesting, because there are opportunities that can be seized.

Advocacy Opportunities
Right now there are millions of dollars pouring in to climate change (warm monger) think tanks and consultancies.  That will dry up very soon.  All of those donors will be angry and disillusioned.  Someone could sing the right song and build out the next environmental care group and sweep up those millions.  They just have to be very careful in how they talk about man-made global warming.

I doubt that will happen.  That money will go to some cause other than environmentalism.  Certainly some money will go there, but the bulk will go elsewhere.  I wish I knew where.

The Next Environmentalism
There are many companies that are retooling and shifting their product lines to be more environmentally friendly.  Much of that is driven by public opinion on global warming.  Some of it is also based upon reduction of pollution.  Some of it is based upon energy independence.  But those two drivers were unable to get the ball really rolling until the warm mongers began their hyped-up scare tactics and well-funded media blitz.  Without the support of the global warming scare people will soon forget why we are working so hard to be environmentally friendly.

There is an opportunity for someone to remind them--similar to the above opportunity.  But what I think will happen is that the pendulum will swing away from environmentalism for a while.  So there is opportunity for an entirely new issue to capture the public's attention.  What will be the new environmentalism?

That's a great question.  Fiscal responsibility might be the new environmentalism.  Worker's rights might be it. Nationalism might be it.  Employment is the biggest issue facing the US today, so some form of employment guarantees is a good guess.  Inflation is going to be the next great challenge facing the US, so that's a good guess, too.

Product Fallout
Electric cars, wind turbines, and solar power will all have to find a new reason to exist. Without global warming scaremongering they are all dramatically less attractive products.  They are here now, with lots of people relying on those jobs.  They will be the last to admit that the global warming scare was a hoax.  But when they do they will blow out their marketing budgets trying to find a boogeyman.  My guess is that they will choose energy independence.  That's good, because energy independence is a good thing.

But I don't think that the American public will buy it.  Sarah Palin seems to do well with her crowd.  But even after the global warming hoax is put to bed the anti-Sarah crowd will never get on that bandwagon, if for no other reason than because Sarah and her crowd are there.  Can you imagine a Prius commercial fear-mongering about Arab oil power?

So I am afraid that many of these good products will ultimately lose out.  There was already a great contraction coming, as the time neared to pick a winner between the competing green energy sources.  I'm afraid that will come much faster now.  Few green power products will survive.  It's winner-take-all, and the next great innovation will be the winner.  I wish I knew who that would be: solar, wind, hydrogen fuel cell.  If I had to put money on it I would go with hydrogen fuel cells, but that's just a guess.  This little nuclear reactor looks like it has legs.

Political Fallout
I would love to say that the long-term advocates of global warming will face consequences for their misjudgment.  But that's never happened before in the political realm, so why think it will happen now.  The politicians who once advocated cap-and-trade and other global-warming prevention policies will simply stop talking about it and it will be forgotten.

I would love to say that politicians will be slower on the uptake and more cautious next time.  Again, I can't imagine that happening now when it has never happened before.  The political class will continue to be the same self aggrandizing sheep they have always been.

I do think that the fiscal problems that the capitalists have made do open the door for socialists of all stripes to gain some ground.  But that's not because of global warming, really.  But the socialists who attempt to gain ground will point to global warming scaremongering as one of the reasons why capitalists cannot be trusted--as if they needed a second reason.  But, ultimately, I think that American's are too independent a bunch to go for much official socialism.

If the libertarians could construct an attractive platform and leadership then they could make a lot of hay right now.  Again, not because of the global warming fiasco, but in part because of it.  "Don't give Washington enough power to do this again."  But that won't happen.  Attractiveness and libertarianism seem to be mutually exclusive.

Environmental Fallout
Pollution is a real problem that has never gotten the attention it deserves.  It will get even less for the next decade or so.  That's a shame.

Climate does change, it just takes a lot longer than the warm mongers have been claiming.  And human activity is not one of the principle causes.  Humanity needs to spend real scientific effort to understand climate change and figure out how to better cope with it.  That has now been set back by at least a hundred years.  That's a shame.  But that's the problem of a much later generation.