There is no doubt that Donald Trump is a climate change sceptic who does not believe that wind turbines are any good, thinks coal is great and wants to develop oil reserves.

Unlike the Democrats, he does not think that the US can run on ‘clean energy’ by midcentury and it is his intention to withdraw the US’s ratification of the Paris climate change accord.

This is all very interesting, particularly in the matter of climate change. I have previously written about disaster activism, or DA (no, no relation to the political party). DA works like this: you predict that power lines cause cancer, CFCs cause a hole in the ozone layer, bird flu is going to affect people, swine flu is going to affect people, all computers will crash in the year 2000, or Y2K. Then you can have conferences, meetings, seminars, parties and research, all funded by government, to solve these nonproblems and the problems never happen because you solved them. See? Lots of funding, travel and no effort.

But you have to use something mythical, unmeasurable. And, until Trump, no large superpower came right out and said: “Y’know . . . climate change is like power lines causing cancer, CFCs, bird flu, swine flu, Y2K . . . It’s all hooey. Cancel the conferences, pull the budgets, cancel the subsidies and get on with the economy.” Nobody dared to do that.

Climate change is a propaganda machine which is fantastic. No scientist in their right mind would want to lose a couple of great research grants and a few free trips to conferences at desirable destinations by saying: “Sorry, I’m not going. The whole thing is a fake.” But right now we have a genuine experiment – President Trump is not going to take much account of global climate change. And he will be running one of the largest economies in the world. So, we can do this test: With Trump in charge, is there more or less temperature change than with Barrack Obama or not? Perhaps foolish, but there has to be a correlation.

The recent American election also is a fine example of the audiovisual ability to convince people to vote for a given person. Very few people know that it was the Nazi party that first used audiovisual aids to come to power. Before the invention of amplifiers and loudspeakers in 1920 and effective radio in 1930, there was no way to reach into the domestic hearth to convince people to vote for you. Both the Nazis and Franklin D Roosevelt in the early 1930s latched onto radio as a great communicator of the message. More of this further on.

Another effect of Trump’s election will be tapping into inland resources of American oil. This could easily cause oil prices to drop to $25/bl, which will make members of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries cartel miserable indeed. But the effect on energy costs and US production will be extreme. There is no doubt that this is going to happen and the results will be very interesting. There is probably a feeling among many that tapping more oil and opening more coal mines is ecologically sinful. There is no doubt that, 20 or 30 years ago, there was little care for the environment and the effects on it by oil and coal mining. With today’s technology, this is not so.

For many years, the American environmental movement has been driven by propaganda, not all of which was true but was largely driven by green self-interest wishing to sell wind turbines and solar farms, complete with subsidies and consequent enrichment. For the first time in many, many years, these energy sources are going to have to be competitive with respect to fossil fuels.

But getting back to audiovisual aids – as I said, these have historically been very successful at getting Adolf Hitler into power, at getting Roosevelt into power and getting Trump into power. Every day, audiovisual aids are more and more important. Thus, you have to realise that the people who design these audiovisual aids are in fact the people who control history. Working tirelessly behind the scenes, they alter the face of the politics of the world. Yes, they are . . . the electrical engineers. Hey Viva !