No surprise, really. For there are all kinds of reasons why the public isn't buying into the climate change hysteria: lack of hard scientific proof for the wild claims made; plenty of evidence that actually contradicts Al Gore and his manic crowd; the astronomic costs associated with reducing our carbon footprints; and the increased understanding by the citizenry that the movement behind the hysteria is much more about promoting socialist controls over the economy (and our personal lives) than it is about saving the planet.
But perhaps as significant as any other reason is the "the giggle factor," the inevitable response created when the scare tactics, egoistic ravings, guilt trips and science fiction absurdities reach the tipping point...and fall over into the realm of comedy.
One of the latest examples? How about this "think tank" that has stopped thinking and started hallucinating instead about ships with giant funnels traveling the oceans, sucking up seawater and belching it back out as "clouds" to deflect the sun's rays. The wind-powered vessels (no crews, just computers) would be directed by satellite to areas with the best conditions for increasing cloud cover.The idea has attracted plenty of attention within the ranks of those true believers affected by global warming mania including the Royal Society, the Copenhagen Consensus Centre, and the Carnegie Institute. Maybe because the scheme would only cost $9 billion to test and launch within 25 years. A lot of coin, to be sure, but nothing compared to the costs connected with such other lame-brained schemes as launching big mirrors into orbit that would reflect the sun's rays away from earth. That was ticketed to be about $395 trillion.
But you get the idea.
Just like my generation could willingly suspend our disbelief when we watched those H. G. Wells and Jules Verne inspired movies back in the 1960s, there are plenty of scientists and others who get so wrapped up in the self-aggrandizing, politically correct science fiction of global warming that they suspend their disbelief, their common sense, even their understanding of the hard rules of physics (let alone economics).
But we kids of the 1960s came out of the theaters. And when we did, we giggled at the very things that had alarmed us inside: those moon monsters and the dinosaurs that lived at the center of the earth. And that's what's happened to the public today. After being initially scared by the awesome horrors foretold by the climate change storytellers, we caught our breath, calmed down and began to take a realistic look at their arguments, their predictions and their visionary solutions.
And we began to giggle again.