The Folly of the Precautionary Principle

One of the wise-sounding arguments thrown around in the Climate Scare has been the so-called Precautionary Principle.

The argument sounds reasonable enough: if we know that there may be a problem in the future, it makes sense to take precautions to prevent it even if we don't know for sure that it will happen. You don't know that your house will burn down so buying insurance makes sense so that if your house does burn down you can cover the cost of rebuilding it.

Of course this only works if the cost of insurance is small compared to the cost of the risk it is covering. For example when cars get to a certain age and are not worth so much, even the most prudent of owners will switch to a lower form of coverage as it no longer makes sense to have full comprehensive cover when the annual cost of that is nearly as much as the value of the car.

Which brings us back to the climate scare.

For years, at least a decade, we have been told that the climate is warming, that snow would no longer be seen in southern England or even in the Australian ski fields.

And that is why we now have this:



and this:



Heathrow airport, one of the busiest in the world, has been shut down by snow for the last couple of days.

This also happened last year.

Now the EU, one of the chief proponents of the Global Warming myth, is berating the operators of Heathrow for not preparing adequately for these conditions. After all airport across North America and in northern parts of Europe cope with far heavier snow.

But when you have been told for over a decade that snow events will be rare or non-existent then it doesn't make any economic sense to prepare for them.

Now the British Government is preparing for "a step-change in the climate"-- that is a step-change towards a cooler climate not a warmer one.

Meanwhile in Australia we have those famous "working families" needing help from charities to pay for escalating power bills caused in part by the requirements by governments to meet "green" targets.

And in the Murray-Darling Basin, only a few years ago warned that drought would be the new norm due to climate change, we are living through one of the best flood seasons for decades.