The Booker column was up quite early yesterday (Saturday) evening. Readers might recognise the picture and some of the details in the text. But, within minutes, the trolls were at work, the gratuitous insults flowing – using the classic "flaming" technique which seeks to take the thread off topic and destroy any chance of a reasoned discussion. Last week, the column reached over 2,500 comment entries, mostly on counter-troll activity.
With the Guardian moderators on Comment is Free (or Komment Macht Frei, as Dellers puts it) becoming increasingly severe in excising dissenting comment, the internet is fast turning into a battlefield where the intolerant hold sway. By contrast, our little forum is a haven of civilisation.
Anyhow, the basic thrust of the Booker column this week is to contrast the certainty with which the Met Office argues that the world is heating, against the reality, out in the world.
This is why the Okhotsk Sea incident is so important. Check the internet and you will see a considerable number of papers discussing ice formation in this region, and the impact of global warming – more than enough to justify the claim that this has become a "poster child" for the warmists.
That two large ships and a fisheries research vessel should have been caught out, and locked in the ice, suggests that the conditions, if not unprecedented, were certainly more serious than expected. They do, therefore, seriously undermine the Met Office case that the cooling in the UK and Europe has been a local event.
Booker, however, is now the only MSM journalist to make such a point, his originality and focus contributing to the keen interest in his column, keeping it high in the "most viewed" list for the newspaper.
For this blog as well, readership always goes up when we have a run of global warming stories – and declines when we focus on our core issue, the European Union. But, for those (some ex-) readers who write in to complain about the lack of coverage on EU issues, it should be recalled that "climate change" is fundamental to the EU. Defeat the warmists and the EU is also damaged.
This is where there is a certain lack of vision and understanding. As we pointed out in the previous piece , the traditional, jaded eurosceptic has long since had any direct public appeal – and even then, it was never a winning message. To plug on with the same message, therefore, seems to me not to be the best of strategies.
However, while there are good grounds for defeating the warmists, on the basis that the global warming obsession is harmful, the anti-EU dimension gives added value, especially as so many Europhiles are also committed warmists.
Thus, even if it is an indirect approach (which in war is often more successful, and certainly less costly than the frontal assault), the story of the Okhotsk Sea crisis, and the attack on the warmists, is as much part of the battle as taking on the euroslime directly. We will continue to do both, as will Booker, but from time to time, the emphasis and focus will vary, depending on what is going on in the world.
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