Here is a story of consensus science to make you blush – but not if you are feeling a touch on the toady side – go to http://phys.org/print303119993.html
Its got it all – consensus science, environmentals, and big business, all the ingredients of a great Green mess up – and it was. It happened in the 1930s but the parallel with modern Green beliefs (in league with dodgy science and big business) is glaringly obvious. In recent years it was the Green obsession with biofuels that is now claimed to be destroying soils and habitat in N America and creating a potential for a global food shortage, or windmills that kill birds and bats and blight the landscape – yet the money flows like a gushing river of golden opportunity for hedge funds, bankers, and entrepreneurs who are all rubbing their hands together in glee. You've heard of the Midas touch – everything the king of Lydia touched turned to gold. Well, everything the Greens touch turns to dust – and the ordinay Joe Public suffers.
This comes from somewhere called The Conversation but it has a sort of jaunty air of wicked delight. Its all about the blight of cane toads, introduced to Queensland to munch the larvae of scarab beetles which feed on the roots of valuable sugar cane crops. The grubs are in the soil – the toads are on the surface, a fatal flaw in the theory. Yet, all the scientists and enviros of the time were united in condemning the sole 'toad denier' – a retired entomologist. Its always the old guys that can see through the fog and the parallel with today is too obvious – but not as entertaining as the modern old timers on the sceptic blogs that really have their teeth into the alarmists. Of course, he was probably not the only person to think the idea was bonkers – but nobody takes any notice of the plebs.