The problem with the IPCC is not that some of its science is dodgy, but the fact that it elevates science per se above politics and democracy.

Brendan O’Neill - 4 February 2010

In recent weeks there has been a rare meeting of minds between climate-change sceptics and climate-change alarmists.

Both the doubters of green-leaning end-of-the-worldism and the promoters of green-infused stories of doom agree that the main problem with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is that some of its science is duff. Seriously duff. They might reach different conclusions as a result of their critique of the IPCC’s bad science – the sceptics argue that the IPCC is completely untrustworthy; the alarmists say there just needs to be a ‘spring clean’ of the IPCC’s scientific closet - but these normally horn-locked camps agree on the central premise: that the problem is dodgy science.

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Frank Furedi recalls being educated through fear in Stalinist Hungary, and is disturbed that the same tactics are now used by environmentalists.

Frank Furedi (15 December 2009)

There is a long and sordid tradition of trying to socialise children by scaring them. The aim of such socialisation-through-fear is twofold: firstly, to get children to conform to the scaremongers’ values; secondly, to use children to influence, or at least to contain, their parents’ behaviour.

When I was a schoolchild in Stalinist Hungary, we were frequently warned about the numerous threats facing our glorious regime. I also recall that we were encouraged to lecture our errant parents about the new wonderful values being promoted by our brave, wise leaders. The Big Brothers of the 1940s saw children as tools of moral blackmail and social control. Today, in the twenty-first century, scaremongers see children in much the same way, exploiting their natural concern with the wonders of life to promote a message of shrill climate alarmism.

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