The publicly funded NDR German television news show Panorama has had a look at the state of climate science and politics today in Germany. It finds that the topic has gone way beyond its shelf-life. It is used up and no longer draws a bit of interest from the public.
The German public has grown tired of the constant barrage of climate alarmism, and is now über-bored by it. Editors have since taken climate news off the front pages. The public doesn't want to hear it anymore.
And that's the way scares usually end – with a whimper rather than a bang. The public gets bored with it and moves on, leaving the scare promoters or "pushers" to soldier on by themselves. It moves from being a participatory to a spectator sport, and then it dies.
The fascinating thing is that the scientists and the politicians are the last to pick up on the change. But then, the final part of the scare cycle is the "regulatory" phase where the politicians move in to make laws to deal with the imagined threat.
This is the most dangerous phase – the one that does the most damage. We have hundreds of laws on the books dealing with the imagined threats from the 1980-90s, when by now millions of people should have died from Mad Cow Disease (pictured).
As for "son of Copenhagen", the optimism of achieving a climate treaty is gone. Says Karsten Sach, leader of the German Negotiating Delegation: "Everyone knows we've reached a dead-end."
To give it a British perspective though, how fascinating it is that our own politicians are so far down the track, followers rather than leaders. The Mad Cows (of both sexes) are now in government. And to prove it, they're still trying to sell climate change.
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