Origins of the AGW Hoax

Last December an online acquaintance in a discussion group on politics asked me, rather facetiously, if I thought the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) agitation was a plot conceived by the head of R&D for the Italian Air Force. Of course, I didn't think any such thing then, nor do I now. But I did share some thoughts with the group on the general outlines of how I thought the current climate hoax started and gained such traction that even the massively embarrassing disclosures of the Hadley Centre emails have not entirely discredited it. Here (with only very minor edits) is what I wrote on December 27 - 

I would tend to the view that the origin of what is now an ongoing hoax was mere wish fulfillment of enemies of liberty when it began to take off back in the 1970s. This was the decade that saw the inauguration of Earth Day, the two big mideast oil shocks, and Nixon launching the EPA and the Federal Energy Agency. Systematic global measures of surface temperatures from satellites began to be acquired after 1967 for the ocean surface, and beginning in 1978 for atmospheric temperatures.  

If you will recall, the hot idea in climatology back then was the next turn towards ice age conditions.  Naturally, some, both within and outside that particular discipline, began to cast about for policy implications that could justify more government action. In one way or another, nearly all academics rely on government for much if not all their income - as employees or consultants to government regulatory agencies and research institutes, as employees of government funded colleges and universities, as recipients of government research grants, even as consultants to heavily-regulated big businesses.   So, both for the economic reasons just cited, and the general left political orientation of academics and bureaucrats, the obvious thing to look for was ways government could solve this great problem.  

Before the drumbeat could build to hysterical proportions, the evidence for any near term cooling failed to materialize and a renewal of the prior minor warming trend was discerned. Although the problem now shifted 180 degrees, the solution remained the same - more government regulation of businesses and consumers. This warming was a much better position from which to float all manner of policy initiatives. If warming was a problem caused by increased energy use that results from expanded economic activity, the clear solution was to throttle the economy, take more economic decision making out of the hands of business and consumers, and increase government control to ration whatever was left. This was the Marxist solution already on merely philosophical grounds, but Marxism claims to be scientific socialism and here was science fairly screaming about the need for more Marxist policies - a sort of perfect storm.  

A lot of academics began building their careers and reputation on this idea of impending catastrophic warming caused by human action. Many politicians and bureaucrats were quick to get on board for the justification it gave them to seize more power from the public; or, to be more charitable, to save the world and the people on it.  As the mechanism the science boffins proposed began to crumble under closer observation; and as the evidence for any significant warming trend itself faded, there was too much money and power at stake for anybody to willingly announce that the emperor's new clothes were a fraud.