Mc Sherry’s Musings – Heed the experts…

Renowned cartoonist Ian Knox can tell a story with a swish of his pencil.Last week he depicted red faced DUP MP Sammy Wilson complete with suit and tie, a ‘99 in hand, saying, “A warm day – get over it”, while behind him fire-fighters fought a raging forest inferno and helicopters dropped huge volumes of water from overhead.

As Britain endured record breaking temperatures and wild-fires raged from Greece to Morocco with more than 1,000 deaths in Spain and Portugal, Sammy declared, “Don’t listen to the heatwave hysteria”, before going on to describe the apocalyptic temperatures as “a couple of warm days”.

It was classic ‘Nero fiddled while Rome burned’.

Incredibly, Sammy was once minister for the environment.

He has form for such nonsense.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, he tweeted, “Hark the herald angels ping Robin Swann won’t let us do a thing, no more parties, work at home, in the streets you cannot roam.”

Many conspiracy theorists and Covid deniers in our midst felt likewise, but Sammy is supposed to provide leadership – not behave like a spoilt child because restrictions might affect his way of life.

There are a lot of flat-earthers and deniers arrogantly refusing to countenance scientific evidence.

Van Morrisson threw the dummy out of the pram when artists weren’t allowed to perform during the restrictions and famously performed this little ditty in a duet with Ian Óg Paisley at the Europa Hotel, “Robin Swann is very dangerous, Robin Swann is very dangerous…”

He also wrote, “No more lockdown, no more government overreach, no more fascist police disturbing our peace, no more taking of our freedom and our God-given rights”. (‘No More Lockdown’ 2020).

I’m not sure whether Covid denier and rocker Meat Loaf was also penning an anti-lockdown song when he died of… Covid-19, as did many others, some sadly we knew.

Donald Trump floated the idea that folk inject disinfectant to fight Coronavirus while seated close-by the rostrum, scientific adviser, Dr Birx looked on aghast.

This man had millions of followers hanging on his every word!

To tidy up his mess, the Harvard Toxiology Department quickly moved to tweet: “Please don’t inject bleach or drink disinfectant. Bleach injections cause hemolysis (where your red blood cells that carry OXYGEN break apart) and cause liver damage, and many disinfectants can cause dangerous burns or bleeding in your stomach. This tweet IS medical advice.”

Former Cabinet Minister (sacked by Johnson) Michael Gove famously said, “Britain has had enough of experts.”

Often those in power, including huge corporations, are driven by financial consideration when they ignore expert advise.

‘Modernisation’ is strewn with immoral profiteering from Western company Nestlé unethically persuading poor mothers in Africa that their product was better than mother’s milk, to Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) hiding its culpability for the Hinkley groundwater contamination made famous in the 2000 movie Erin Brockavich.

In the 1980s, oil companies like Exxon and Shell carried out internal assessments of the carbon dioxide released by fossil fuels, and forecast the planetary consequences of these emissions.

Privately, these companies did not dispute the links between their products, global warming and ecological calamity. On the contrary, their research confirmed the connections.

Shell’s analysts warned that global changes in air temperature would also “drastically change the way people live and work.” All told, Shell concluded, “the changes may be the greatest in recorded history.”

For its part, Exxon warned of “potentially catastrophic events that must be considered.”

Like Shell’s experts, Exxon’s scientists predicted devastating sea-level rise, and warned that the American Midwest and other parts of the world could become desert-like. Looking on the bright side, the company expressed its confidence that “this problem is not as significant to mankind as a nuclear holocaust or world famine.”

The documents make for frightening reading. The effect is all the more chilling in view of the oil giants’ refusal to warn the public about the damage that their own researchers predicted. Shell’s report, marked ‘confidential’, was first disclosed in 2018 by a Dutch news organisation.

Exxon’s study was not intended for external distribution either, and was leaked in 2015.

Despite scientific warnings, the outcome of United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow last year was described by one commentator as “pouring a glass of water on a house fire” with a host of so-called ‘developed’ countries not on board to meet climate goals.

Meanwhile, closer to home, the Stormont administration has not only failed to adapt policies that seek to reduce emulsions, it has actively encouraged the expansion of industries that generate so-called greenhouse gasses, the main driver of global warming.

But Sammy says it’s all nonsense. Who do we listen to? Sammy or eminent scientists?

A lad had a dreadful game in the Lowside, he couldn’t have kicked back doors, as they say. As he made his way off the field, a local wag shouted in his direction, “I don’t blame you, I blame the man who picked you.”

We’ll leave the last word with a more enlightened prophet, Bob Dylan, “Man thinks because he rules the earth he can do with it as he please and if things don’t change soon, he will, Oh, man has invented his doom…” (Licence to Kill)