Global Wilting: Send Me Dead Flowers by the Mail

You’ve no doubt seen the link; it’s been on Drudge all day: “Flowers ‘losing scent’ due to global warming . . .” I’ve been skeptical about similar headlines, so I looked to see what’s behind this story.

The answer is nothing.

Not one freakin’ fact. No study. No data. No evidence at all.

The story, published without a by-line in the New Straits Times of Malaysia, quotes four people.

One is the mayor of Kuala Lumpur, who delivers a shaggy dog story about the city’s decorative flower beds and why he had to fire the landscape contractor last year. Global warming as CYA memo.

Next up is Professor Abdul Latif Mohamad, an emeritus professor of science and technology at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. (Don’t worry, I hadn’t heard of UKM either.) 

Latif said UKM might have offered plausible reasons as to why some pollinators were not spreading flower seeds, a pattern caused by the missing “scent trail” with scent tissues burning easily due to global warming.

Hooh boy! Where to begin? First off, pollinators don’t spread seeds—they spread pollen. (This guy’s a professor?) Next, did UKM offer plausible reasons or didn’t it? And forget plausible, how about proof? Evidence for missing scent trails? None. The earth warms—allegedly a couple of degrees on average—and scent tissues are burning? 

Who is this clown?

The aroma producing chemical compounds in flowers dry up faster now compared with before.

Before? Before when? Faster? How fast? No evidence, pure assertion.

But don’t let a lack of evidence get in the way of promoting a major policy recommendation:

The only way out, he said, was to genetically modify the flowers so that the effects would not be permanent and the future generation would not be robbed of nature’s beauty.

Prof. Mohamad then tells his own shaggy dog story about local farmers whose orchards weren’t bearing fruit. His research team looked into the matter and found it was because “dust from a hill blast” had covered the stigmas and prevented pollination.

And how exactly does that implicate global warming?

Batting third is the director-general of the Forest Research Institute of Malaysia, Dr. Abdul Latif Mahmod. (I know, this gets confusing. Dr Abdul Latif “The Flowers are Burning” Mohamad is this guy. The FRIM’s Dr. Abdul Latif Mahmod is this guy.)

Dr. Mahmod “said recently the extreme weather change might affect the life span of trees as a result of lighter or heavier rain.”

If trees are dying because of too little rain it’s due to global warming. But if they’re dying because of too much rain, then that’s also due to global warming.

Global warming: the all-purpose, non-falsifiable hypothesis.

The story’s final source is Malaysia’s Deputy Minister for Natural Resources and Environment. He says that “given the extreme climate changes, every country should work together and not in isolation.”

Translation: All your grant money are belong to us.

One would have thought a little humility was in order among the warmists; that they might be more, uh, temperate in their claims in view of the unfolding scandal of missing and massaged data that threatens their entire policy edifice. Instead, they’ve apparently decided to turn up the volume.

They will say anything to keep the stampede going.

They have no shame.

Exit question: How long before the enviros and legacy media include "loss of flower scent" in their litany of the impending eco-apocalypse?