Check out Professor Ian Plimer's excellent piece in today's Mail. He uses a geological timescale to put global warming and climate change hysteria into sensible perspective.
Human activity produces only three per cent of the world's carbon-dioxide emissions each year. One volcanic belch can emit as much as that in a day. Carbon dioxide has a short life in the atmosphere and is absorbed by natural processes that have been taking place for billions of years. ...
We are still in an ice age that started 34million years ago, with the climate driven, among other things, by the Earth's orbit, the Sun, oceans and volcanoes. It is vital to remember that time, in a geological sense, is a far broader canvas than any of the detailed vignettes upon which the prophets of doom would have us focus.
This article was written in the wake of Climategate, of course. So after putting current temperatures into a geological context, Plimer puts climate change hysteria into a more human perspective.
Why is this story contrary to what we hear? Because sensationalism is so much more lucrative. A climate catastrophe was provided for an anxious public by scientists who had everything to gain by frightening us.
They put forward an ideology that is blind fundamentalism, unrelated to scientific facts. Politicians build new bureaucracies and pose as environmental saviours without having to face the consequences of their actions. Heads must roll. Meanwhile, the planet will do what it has always done: change.
For those still confused about Climategate there is a neat little video on Youtube that gives an overview of some of the key players and what they've been up to.
As you will probably already be aware, some individual has been sufficiently hacked-off with the endless stream of nonsense about climate change to hack in to the computers at the UK’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU). Now, torrents of filthy water have been unleashed from behind the walls, giving us a real glimpse into the operation of one of the most influential organisations of its kind in the world, and the minds of those behind it. It’s not a pretty sight.
This case of scientific fraud – for that is what it seems to be – ought to wake us up, not only to the fact that global warming is rammed down our throats by holier-than-thou eco-zealots, but also to the fact of how politics is done today. Behind closed doors. You’re not allowed in. Standing between you and every decision that affects you, your future, your childrens' future, and your money, is a gatekeeper.
The gatekeepers of scientific data at the CRU withheld evidence that would undermine the argument for climate-change legislation, regulation, and taxation. I bang on about windfarms, pointless and dangerous recycling and landfill directives, stupid light-bulb bans, and so on. Each of these policies is in no small way owed to the “research” produced by the CRU, and leads directly to the policies that make them happen. So, you see, what looks for all the world like a polite scientific, academic institution in East Anglia might as well be in Westminster. Or, for that matter, Brussels. Because, as the leaked emails reveal, this wasn’t a polite academic institution at all, it was a department for propaganda. It produced graphs and data to support policies, and it locked out anyone who dared to question them, and it hid any inconvenient truths.
And so it is with Brussels and Westminster. They too are surrounded by gatekeepers.
In spite of climate-sceptic public opinion, the government and the opposition parties press ahead with environmental legislation. In spite of clearly expressed Euro-sceptic public opinion, the government and opposition parties remain mealy-mouthed with respect to the extent of our membership of the European Union. In spite of public opinion, focus-groups, quangos, and undemocratic committees, hide behind data from bogus research organisations, NGOs like Greenpeace, and fake charities. This all leaves you with less and less control, and puts their decision-making process out of your reach. Politics today is done behind closed doors, and between unanswerable self-important and self-serving cliques. Climategate is just one symptom of this rot.
I will spare you the scientific details of what has emerged from Climategate, as there are many people doing a much better job of sorting through it than I can. If you’re interested in this sort of stuff, I thoroughly recommend you have a good tour of the sites and stories linked to below. Events like this provide an opportunity to get either newly acquainted with, or a new grip on the debate, as they call into question so much that has been discussed previously, and to see it in a new light.
But don’t just sit on the information. Harass your MPs,MEPs, and local councillors with it. Confront environmental activists with it. Make them answer the questions that the scandal has thrown up. Remember, they are the ones who want to change the world, and to make it less easy for you to work, to live, and to enjoy your life. They want to limit your freedom, tax your income, and regulate your lifestyle. They want control over your future. So they better have a bloody good reason for it, and they can no longer say “science says...” Climate science has been shown to be as corruptible as politics.
My rough guide to Climategate discussions.
The razor-sharp James Dellingpole got the Climategate ball rolling with a quick rundown of the first things to emerge from the affair: the manipulation of evidence, doubts about whether the world really is heating up, and the suppression of evidence. Is “Climategate the final nail in the coffin of ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming’?”, he wonders. Let’s hope so.
Anthony Watts, has blog posts covering the affair, including this neat little primer explaining the scandal to newcomers. Climategate: “Men behaving badly” – a short summary for laymen. For those unfamiliar with Anthony’s work, his blogging work began as a project to assess the quality of each of the weather data recording stations sited throughout the USA. Some of these stations began life in the middle of fields. But over the course of the last century, as towns and cities have expanded, many of these same locations are now covered in tarmac, or are next to huge buildings. So the temperature record which is being used to prove global warming may in fact have been measuring building instead, because as we all know, it’s cooler in the countryside than in the town, because fields, mud and grass hold less heat than do tarmac and concrete.
Steve McIntyre has been trying to get to the bottom of theinfamous ‘hockey stick’ graph that has become an icon of the global warming movement for a number of years now, blogging his results along the way. His website is well worth a visit if you’ve got a real head for statistics, and are interested in the forensic analysis of climate change nonsense. His perspective on what has emerged from Climategate will no doubt be amongst the most insightful. From McIntyre’s site, Climate Audit, this graph gives an example of the data is manipulated to achieve the politically-correct ‘research’.
[pic] Two versions of Briffa MXD reconstruction, showing archived and climategate versions.
The Devils Kitchen blog hosts an excellent argument explaining “Why this can't be swept under the carpet”, which gives a superb account of the scientific method and how it has been abused by climate alarmists.
One of the most remarkable statements to emerge during thisfiasco has been from Guardian columnist, George Monbiot. A long time anti-capitalist protester and environmental campaigner, Monbiot never gives a moment’s thought to the views of us deniers, on the basis that we’re all part of some evil conspiracy. Now Monbiot calls for the head of the head of the CRU – Phil Jones – who, Monbiot seems think, has betrayed the cause, and undermines its credibility.
Yes, the messages were obtained illegally. Yes, all of us say things in emails that would be excruciating if made public. Yes, some of the comments have been taken out of context. But there are some messages that require no spin to make them look bad. There appears to be evidence here of attempts to prevent scientific data from being released, and even to destroy material that was subject to a freedom of information request.
If you want to read and explore the leaked emails for yourself, they have been compiled into a searchable website here.
The Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia is a “leading centre” for the investigation of “manmade global warming” and government policy relies on the integrity of these statistics. Several claims have been made: that data was “cherry picked” to make the 20th century temperature rise look exceptional in historical terms; emails suggest the unit has colluded in “tricks” to “hide the decline” in a high profile scientific journal, and this unit has colluded in active, secret and highly political campaigning through the website “realclimate”.
The preparation of climate statistics require many judgements: stations move & sites become surrounded by urban sprawl (urban heating) & a judgement must be made of the size of the offset to apply to the global temperature record. The University accepts most emails are genuine so it appears the Unit has been acting in a highly partisan way incompatible with that of a neutral body preparing and interpreting government data. We call on the PM to suspend all further use of the climate research unit until all pertinent allegations have been investigated and any action (if any) has been taken.
Five years ago researchers on the island of Flores in Indonesia found bones of a miniature human species, the Homo floresiensis. The hobbit, as it came to be known, had such a tiny brain for its period that scientists dared to cast doubt on the veracity of the theory of evolution. The paleoanthropological community was aghast. But, after more digging, the theory of evolution survived the hobbit and the paleoanthropological community recovered its equipoise.
The editorial team at The Times are certainly an authority on humanoids with tiny brains. But what has this got to do with climate change?
On the subject of climate change, there appears to be plenty of people who have discovered a hobbit. The poll in The Times today reveals that only 41 per cent of respondents believe that climate change is happening and that human causation is an established fact. A third of the public believes in the fact of climate change but remains unpersuaded that it is the work of human hands. Nearly one in ten people believes that climate change is a purely natural phenomenon and blaming humans is propaganda put about by environmentalists. Fifteen per cent of the country simply do not accept that climate change is happening at all.
The implication here is that to dare to be unconvinced by the cascade of nonsense that emerges from politicians and environmental activists is equivalent to the ‘denial’ of the theory of evolution. The logic is that, since we know that the public haven’t found an equivalent to a ‘hobbit’ to challenge climate change hypothesis, they are wrong. In fact, the implication is that they are stubborn and stupid.
Let’s be clear about what this bullshit is. It is pure propaganda. The Times is doing government PR work here. It is hiring out its reputation as a respected source of comment and analysis for some kind of promise. This much is obvious, because the standards of this leader comment are so very low. And the timing of this article is no accident: the government is on a massive propaganda effort because of the immanent Copenhagen conference. It wants to persuade people of the urgency of their policies, yet they know that they are deeply, deeply unpopular. They have given up on normal reasoning, and have resorted to cruder, and cruder tactics to blackmail the public into submission.
Take this advert from the government, for instance.
It is no surprise that when you feed the public rubbish like this, they respond by sticking two fingers up at it. They aren’t quite as stupid as the government and the Times think they are. The Times doesn’t think there’s a ‘hobbit’ in the climate change hypothesis. Well, that video is just one of many hobbits that escape from Westminster and Brussels.
Even if you believe that ‘climate change is real’, as the government wants you to, it remains undeniably the case that it has been exaggerated. And it is undeniably the case that the exaggeration of climate change has been used to argue for policies. This exaggeration was in fact the subject of a Times article less than a month ago.
Exaggerated and inaccurate claims about the threat from global warming risk undermining efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions and contain climate change, senior scientists have told The Times.
Environmental lobbyists, politicians, researchers and journalists who distort climate science to support an agenda erode public understanding and play into the hands of sceptics, according to experts including a former government chief scientist.
Well, well, well. How quickly The Times changed its tune, eh? It even cites former Chief Scientific Advisor, Sir David King,
“When people overstate happenings that aren’t necessarily climate change-related, or set up as almost certainties things that are difficult to establish scientifically, it distracts from the science we do understand. The danger is they can be accused of scaremongering. Also, we can all become described as kind of left-wing greens.”
Antarctica is likely to be the world's only habitable continent by the end of this century if global warming remains unchecked, the Government's chief scientist, Professor Sir David King, said last week.
He said the Earth was entering the "first hot period" for 60 million years, when there was no ice on the planet and "the rest of the globe could not sustain human life". The warning - one of the starkest delivered by a top scientist - comes as ministers decide next week whether to weaken measures to cut the pollution that causes climate change, even though Tony Blair last week described the situation as "very, very critical indeed".
It is only because the great and the good have only now realised that their exaggerated claims have failed to convince the public that some of them are now back-peddling. Back in 2004, it was the norm. The government have not yet realised this, of course.
So when The Times tells you that the public are stupid, remember that the public are in fact in good company, with the likes of the one-time climate-change-alarmist, Sir David King saying much the same thing as them.
The Times goes on to correctly say that “There has clearly been a serious failure of political communication...” Too right. But it’s not because the message being communicated is bad, according to them, but that there’s something wrong with those the message was intended for. They seem to think that all that is necessary is to bark some ‘facts’ at the public, and they will sit! roll-over! and play dead!
the [Fifteen per cent who do not accept that climate change is happening at all] at least should be easy to convince. The decade from 1998 to 2007 is the warmest on record. Of the top ten warmest years in this country, eight have happened since 1997.
That is a half truth.
The most recent decade may well be ‘warmer’ than the previous. But the 1990s warmed much more. There has been virtually no warming since 2000. And as we can see, there has been cooling since 1998. So what the Times thinks is a ‘convincing argument’ that will persuade 15% of us, is in fact a half truth – there has been no global warming since 1998.
Then there is that little claim that “Of the top ten warmest years in this country, eight have happened since 1997”. What has the UK’s temperature record got to do with global warming, I wonder? Here is the graph produced by the Met Office, showing average annual UK temperatures.
It certainly looks conclusive, with the hot years all bunched up at the end. But on the other hand, look at all the cold years bunched around the 1800s – it was ‘unusually’ cold to a greater degree than it is now ‘unusually’ warm, and we know that the ‘little ice age’ accounts for the low temperatures of the 1800s, and that most of the warming since then represents a recovery from this natural cycle.
Also, notice that the recent summers are just 1 degree warmer than the average. That’s not the difference between a gentle spring day and a devastating drought. If climate change is supposed to be catastrophic, it will take more than a single degree to wipe out life on earth. It is hard even to imagine how the mythical 2 degrees will be catastrophic – it is barely even sufficient to make the difference between needing and not needing to wear a jumper outside. Clearly, the UK has survived a two degree warming – most, if not all, of it natural – between 1880 and 2000 without any problem at all... In fact life is arguably much more pleasant now.
The Times leader continues...
If the concentrations of greenhouse gases and aerosols stabilised at the levels found at the turn of the century, we would still expect global temperatures to reach 1.4C above pre-industrial levels by 2100.
Why would sceptics find the Times editorial teams’ expectations of future climate at all convincing? They continue...
The sea is rising at an accelerated rate.
I live in the country... I know bullshit when I smell it.
Here is a graph from the University of Colorado, showing sea-level since 1992.
It shows that in fact sea level rise has been decelerating since 2002. The solid black line that runs across the diagonal of the graph demonstrates a trend that is roughly constant. It fits the signal behind it. That means sea level is not accelerating. If sea-level rise was accelerating, there would be an upward curve in the signal, but as we can see, there is only a slight bend the other way.
Some might say that that graph isn’t long enough to get a big enough picture.
Here we can see that sea levels have been rising for far longer than can be attributed to climate change.
In this next graph, we can see that, funnily enough, sea-levels have been rising for 20,000 years.
The sea was 140,000mm lower than today, 20,000 years ago. That’s an average of 7mm a year. But most of that happened between 8,000 and 14,000 years ago, at an average rate of about 14mm a year. Even the relatively flat period spanning the last 8,000 years fluctuates, as the planet has experienced warming and cooling episodes, such as the little ice age, and medieval warm period, as has been discussed here before. There is nothing unnatural, unusual, rapid, or dangerous about the current rate of seal level rise.
More hot air from The Times:
In some parts of the world there have been statistically significant increases in precipitation and rainfall and Asia and Africa have seen an increased frequency and intensity of droughts. Mountain glaciers in non-polar regions have retreated significantly.
The Times neglects to tell us who thinks the “increases in precipitation and rainfall” ( which are the same thing) are significant, and how significant they think it is. It means nothing to say that something is ‘statistically significant’, other than that there appears to be a trend. But it would be a surprise to find out that there were no trends anywhere in the world. Climate changes. It always has. There was a medieval warm period. Then there was a ‘little ice age’. These two entirely natural events demonstrate “statistically significant” changes in climate. It is one thing to say that there is a change in climate. It is another thing to say that it is caused by humans. “Some parts of the world” might mean somewhere as small as York. On the other hand, we know that large areas in Africa are very changeable.
Glaciers have become the environmentalists ‘canary in the coal mine’. But climate change can’t explain glacial retreat. Here is a graph from the IPCC.
As we can see, glacial retreat began well before modern climate change came along. The figure on the left, for example, shows glaciers on Mt. Kilimanjaro melting much faster than in recent years, way back in the mid-late 1800s – the era following the end of the Little Ice Age. It is wrong, therefore, to say as The Times have, that the retreat of mountain glaciers ought to ‘prove’ climate change to the 15% of us climate change
More hot air from The Times,
Sophisticated critics, of course, do not deny any of this. They argue that change is constant in the natural world, not that it has miraculously ceased. They deny not climate change but human causation, suggesting instead that global warming is due, variously, to the Sun, volcanoes and el Niño. Fifty-nine per cent of the respondents to this newspaper’s poll do not, for one reason or another, believe that human action is responsible for climate change.
Well, aren’t we the stupid ones!
There are the facts and the figures and lines on graphs above the Times leader’s own words. You can see for yourself that climate change – sea level, glacial retreat, changes in UK average temperature, global temperature, and precipitation – cannot be easily explained as our fault. Every simple story that the Times has tried to tell you is a lot more complex than they say. Some of what they say – the story about sea levels, for instance – is an outright lie. You can see for yourself that it is a lie.
More hot air from The Times,
Again, the failure of political communication is very stark. None of the main parties has yet succeeded in making this issue its own. Yet the case is overwhelming.
Overwhelming? Did they really just say ‘overwhelming’? If the case they have presented so far – some half-baked half-truths, an outright lie, some more half truths – is ‘overwhelming’ then it is only overwhelmingly underwhelming.
The case continues...
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was written by 152 scientists from more than 30 countries and reviewed by more than 600 experts.
What? How do scientists ‘write’ a panel? This is the Times newspaper, ladies and gentlemen. This is the leader comment in The Times newspaper. This is the British institution that has, for generations, been regarded throughout the world for its excellence.
Yet it knows not what it is speaking about. It scolds the British public for their stupidity, but in the process reveals that it has to lie, and speak half-truths to make its case, and then it reveals that it doesn’t even know what the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is or does.
The IPCC is no more ‘written’ by scientists than the House of Commons is ‘written’ by Members of Parliament.
Last month, I wrote about the cretin, John Prescott, who believed that “the UN has a thousand scientists meeting every year in the IPCC committee and their reporting from when I was at Kyoto it’s got far worse, there’s no doubt about it.” He was wrong.
It seems that nobody knows what the IPCC does. They make up whatever statistic or fact they think will make their case, and attribute it to so many scientists.
The IPCC ddoesn’t make it hard for world leaders and editors of major newspapers to know what they do. They released this flyer just before their last report.
The Times continues.
It concluded that most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is due to the observed increase in man-made greenhouse gas concentration. Concentrations of CO2 have increased by more than 35 per cent since industrialisation began, and they are now at their highest for at least 800,000 years. Natural factors alone cannot, on any but the most extraordinary assumptions, get anywhere close to the temperature rises that have been witnessed. Hardly any serious scientists dispute this any longer.
What the IPCC say, in fact, is this
Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations. It is likely that there has been significant anthropogenic warming over the past 50 years averaged over each continent (except Antarctica).
What the IPCC do not conclude, as The Times claims, is that a 0.6 degree rise in temperature can only be attributed to natural causes by making ‘extraordinary assumptions’. That is just the opinion of The Times. And the IPCC do not say that ‘Hardly any serious scientists dispute this’. That is just the opinion of The Times, too. Like Prescott, and Rudd, The Times seems to believe it can say what it wants about the IPCC. It continues,
It is possible that the collective expertise of brilliant scientists could be wrong.
There is no such thing as “the collective expertise of brilliant scientists”, if by this expression, The Times means the IPCC. As I explained to Prescott, when he laboured under the misapprehension that “the UN has a thousand scientists meeting every year in the IPCC committee”,
The IPCC is divided into three working groups. The first group looks at the physical science of climate change – models, atmospheric physics, climatology, the behaviour of glaciers, that sort of thing. Working Group Two (WGII), looks at how vulnerable society is to climate change, and what the consequences might be. The third group (WGIII) looks at how we might limit or mitigate climate change. These groups work largely independently. Each working group produce their part of the report by dividing its contributing authors into groups, each working on a chapter, headed by one or more lead author. (...) The authors from chapter one don’t necessarily ever meet or talk to the reviewers from chapter two. And the authors from WGI don’t necessarily ever meet the authors from WGII or WGIII. The reviewers of each chapter may have said nothing at all. An author of chapter 1 of WGI, might disagree completely with what is written in chapter 4 of WGII. And many – if not most - of the contributing authors to the IPCC are not climate scientists at all. They are also economists, social scientists, psychologists, medical researchers, geographers, insurance industry experts, and political activists.
The Times, like Prescott are ignorant of the IPCC’s purpose and functioning. The IPCC does not do research. It does not do science. It consists of government-appointed scientists and experts to review existing research for political ends. Those ends are to inform politicians on the best way to ‘save the planet’, if you believe the hype. And if you don’t believe the hype, those ends are to generate hype for politicians (and newspapers) to suit their agendas. Nonetheless, The Times carries on.
The best minds in the world once held a geocentric theory of the solar system. Before the discovery of sub-atomic particles they believed that everything was made of earth, air, fire and water. Right up to the 19th century, serious scientists wrote recipe books for making animals. But no previous process of scientific trial, error and progress has ever overturned such a well-attested thesis.
There is a difference between scientists making progress independently and autonomously, as is the case with these examples, and on the other hand gathering experts together to generate a consensus.
Imagine, if you will, that before the discovery of sub-atomic particles, the governments of the world gathered selected experts in order to produce a consensus on what matter consisted of. The mere fact of these experts being brought together would not make the idea that everything consists of earth, air, fire, or water any more true. So many scientists being forced to arrive at a consensus about how to make animals from recipes would not make it any more possible or true. That is all that the IPCC is. They have not formulated a hypothesis at all, let alone “a well-attested thesis”.
These mistakes are no mere typos. They are the fruit of stupidity and arrogance. Either on its own is forgivable. But together they are poison. The Times leader finishes,
Lord Rees has reminded us that we now live in a global village and it is, he pointed out, probably inevitable that there will be some global village idiots.
The Times misrepresents the IPCC. It misrepresents the science. And it misrepresents sceptics or ‘deniers’. It lies, distorts, and tells half-truths. It claims that more than half the population are idiots, and that those who disagree are not in possession of the facts.
The Times has proven itself to be a dishonest source of facts. Do not take what you hear in the climate debate at face value. Not from the IPCC, not from the government, not from The Times, and, not from me... You can check for yourself that barely a single claim that The times makes in its leader column is true. Trusted and respected institutions like The Times newspaper (never mind the government) can no longer be relied on. This ridiculous leader comment demonstrates that it is more interested in some agenda or other than in reporting facts. It has hitched itself on to the green bandwagon, most likely in order to score some favour from the government in return for disseminating its environmental propaganda.
Thank god the British public have sufficient sense to see this nonsense for what it is.
Last week, the Institute of Mechanical Engineers published their report, saying that the UK’s climate change strategy – i.e. covering the entire country with expensive wind turbines – will not meet the targets they are designed to meet.
the UK is already losing the climate change mitigation battle. The greenhouse gas emission targets set by the Government require a rate of reduction that has never been achieved by even the most progressive nations in the world. The Institution’s latest report, Climate Change: have we lost the battle? argues that if the UK is realistically going to reach an outcome equivalent to a reduction of 80% by 2050, we need to start mapping out an alternative solution using all engineering methods possible and not only relying on mitigation.
I don’t believe it is necessary, anyway. But that’s beside the point. The point is that according to the very people who we turn to for their expertise, the strategy is not working, and cannot work.
The Institute of Mechanical Engineer's can't do, won't do attitude is sending out a defeatist message ahead of the crucial climate change talks in Copenhagen. The truth is that if we act now we can not only beat climate change but gain from the green benefits that will flow in terms of jobs and investment from going low carbon.
Never let the facts get in the way of a good bit of policy-making, eh?
DECC seem quite happy to go to Copenhagen to pursue an international agreement on climate change under the misapprehension that they know how to ‘save the planet’.
Imagine taking your car to a garage, and asking the mechanics there to make it fly.
“We can’t”, they would say.
Would you complain about their “can’t-do-won’t-do-attitude”, because the mechanics weren’t able to fulfil the promises you had made about getting a flying car?
Take note – the Institute of Mechanical engineers aren’t saying “there’s no such thing as climate change”. They aren’t “deniers”. They are not saying “there is no problem”. But they are saying that there is a difference between the targets the Government have set, and the likely outcome of their policies.
But of course, saving the planet has got nothing to do with it, as I have discussed in previous blog posts.This is just about political and social engineering, not technical engineering.
The revelation that ministers have failed in their campaign to persuade the public that the greenhouse effect is a serious threat requiring urgent action will make uncomfortable reading for the Government as it prepares for next month’s climate change summit in Copenhagen.
Only 41 per cent accept as an established scientific fact that global warming is taking place and is largely man-made. Almost a third (32 per cent) believe that the link is not yet proved; 8 per cent say that it is environmentalist propaganda to blame man and 15 per cent say that the world is not warming.
Tory voters are more likely to doubt the scientific evidence that man is to blame. Only 38 per cent accept it, compared with 45 per cent of Labour supporters and 47 per cent of Liberal Democrat voters.
The major parties cannot even appeal to their own voters to support them in the creation of policies that will have the most dramatic effect on the British economy, ever.
People don’t quite understand this yet, but once all of the planned policies are in place, people who have gone to bed the night before in what they understood to be a liberal democracy will wake up in something resembling Soviet Russia. There will be shortages of expensive, low quality of food. It will be cold. There will be power cuts. You will not be allowed to travel as you wish. Jobs –if they still exist – will be make-work employment that is dull, pointless, and increasingly labour-intensive. And that's if we're lucky. At least Soviet Russia attempted to be an industrial. We might end up with something far more medieval.
If you don’t like these policies, tough luck, because none of the parties is offering you the choice. You will be green, whether you like it or not.
Explain this. Most people don’t buy into the climate change myth. This is an established fact. Most people are sceptical at least of the science, but even more so of the policies. Yet each of the major parties is claiming to be the one that will save mankind. Why?
For a lot of people the penny hasn’t dropped that this climate change challenge is real and is happening now. There isn’t yet that feeling of urgency and drive and animation about the Copenhagen conference.
An excellent comment on the Times’ website answers the Foreign Secretary,
Oh the pennies are dropping, David. They're dropping right into your bloody pockets.
The evidence is clear. There is a lack of demand for environmental politics. Engineers point out that the policies designed by our government and those proposed by the other two parties will not work. The government blame the public and the engineers, and go to Copenhagen to build an international agreement on climate change mitigation, so that they can put their policies out of your reach.
Just as it is almost impossible for you to have any kind of say about what happens in Europe, if a deal is made at Copenhagen, it will make it much, much harder to reverse the UK’s climate policies. Only, at least with the EU, you can elect Euro-Sceptics, like me, who can at least try to challenge the steady erosion of our democracy. But there won’t be any such opportunity after a deal at Copenhagen. You can forget it. This is about control.
... Or more to the point, what will you do without it?
Because that is the cost of making a home meet the regulations that the government want to introduce, in order to 'save the planet', according to Lord Adair Turner, chair of the UK's Committee on Climate Change (CCC).
After home insulation and more efficient boilers, we now need more intrusive things – double glazing, cavity wall insulation, solid wall insulation. We need much more of a whole house approach – one-stop shops where people can get a total report on what they need to do to their homes. It may be expensive – between £10,000 and £15,000."
Some people don't earn that much in a year. But it gets worse.
The CCC believes that the cost of the scheme would be paid for by a combination of government subsidy and higher electricity bills.
Last year, our spineless MPs voted by a huge majority to allow Turner's committee - the CCC - to set the UK's "carbon budget". This target dictates how much CO2 the country allows itself to produce. This is done through creating new laws, regulations and taxes, all of which you end up paying for. In other words, Turner and his cronies tell parliament - your elected representatives - what to do.
Turner said there was a case for greater state intervention in helping to reduce carbon emissions from the motor industry. Arguing that there were "limits" to what markets could achieve, the CCC chairman said: "We need support for the initial wave of electric cars."
The government has allocated £250m to hasten the arrival of electric cars but Turner said the CCC would like to see £800m of public money spent on setting up a network of charging points. "It's chicken and egg. Motorists won't buy the cars unless there are enough charging points; the government is reluctant to put in the charging points while there are no electric cars."
Motorists won't be able to afford cars, let alone rechargeable cars if they're forking out £15,000 to make their homes "green".
Not content with setting the targets which create the regulations, subsidies, and taxes that you pay for, Turner now wants to reach even further into your pockets.
Turner said experts should look at the possibility of using a financial services transaction tax to help poor countries develop low-carbon growth strategies. "Any tax would have to be agreed at the global level because it would be difficult to enforce in one country. That's why people have tended to think that the proceeds should be used for global common goods, such as the environment."
So you will be paying:
For your own home to meet environmental regulations, whether you want it to or not
For other people's homes to be meet environmental regulations (because they can't afford it), whether you or they want it or not.
For even more subsidies to the green energy sector and motor industry.
For even greater fuel bills.
For gifts to other countries, so that they can be as 'eco friendly' as this place.
And don't believe that this is the end of it. The costs of making this country "green" will rise and rise and rise. You will be paying for it. And the likes of Turner will be cashing in on it, make no mistake. The green gravy train is stuffed full of his kind, who don't mind kicking back in first class carriages on public money. Read more
Australian PM, Kevin Rudd, airs his views on climate sceptics,
The opponents of action on climate change fall into one of three categories.
• First, the climate science deniers. • Second, those that pay lip service to the science and the need to act on climate change but oppose every practicable mechanism being proposed to bring about that action. • Third, those in each country that believe their country should wait for others to act first.
Together, these groups, alive in every major country including Australia,constitute a powerful global force for inaction, and they are particularly entrenched in a range of conservative parties around the world.
As we approach Copenhagen, these three groups of climate skeptics are quite literally holding the world to ransom, provoking fear campaigns in every country they can, blocking or delaying domestic legislation in every country they can, with the objective of slowing and if possible destroying the momentum towards a global deal on climate change.
As we approach the Copenhagen conference these groups of climate change deniers face a moment of truth, and the truth is this: we will need to work much harder to reach an agreement in Copenhagen because these advocates of inaction are holding back domestic commitments, and are in turn holding back global commitments on climate change.
It is time to be totally blunt about the agenda of the climate change skeptics in all their colours some more sophisticated than others.
I am surprised to hear that, in my small role as a so-called “climate-change denier” of the first kind, I am part of an international conspiracy.
Aren’t the fundamentally undemocratic institutions such as the EU, and those proposed by the eco-zealots much better described as a ‘powerful force for inaction’?
They are the ones attempting to close down industry, to make you travel less, and to make you use less energy.
They are the ones making the laws outside of the normal democratic process.
They are the ones depriving you of your right to have your say about what laws and regulations you ought to be subject to.
Rudd continues:
Climate change skeptics in all their guises and disguises are not conservatives. They are radicals.
They are reckless gamblers who are betting all our futures on their arrogant assumption that their intuitions should triumph over the evidence.
The logic of these skeptics belongs in a casino, not a science lab, and not in the ranks of any responsible government.
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No responsible government confronted with the evidence delivered by the 4,000 scientists associated with the international panel could then in conscience choose not to act. In any public company, it would represent a gross contempt of the most basic fiduciary duty.
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My message to the climate change skeptics, to the big betters and the big risk takers is this: You are betting our children's future and the future of our grandchildren. You are betting our jobs, our houses, our farms, our reefs, our economy and our future on an intuition on a gut feeling; on a political prejudice you have about science.
Speaking of gambling, I will see Rudd’s “betting all our futures on their arrogant assumption”, and raise it to “pseudo science should triumph over democracy”.
Let us see each of the “4,000” scientists at the IPCC get behind Rudd, and his statement before he makes claims on their behalf. There aren’t even 4,000 scientists who contribute to the IPCC process, as I discussed in previous post.
Rudd is bluffing. And the stakes are high. Like Brown, Rudd no more knows what the scientists say than he knows or cares about what the public want. The cards they are playing with are weak. But their desire to win this game and to secure their political ambitions is not limited. They pretend it’s about saving the planet, but the truth is this is about robbing you of your freedom, and your democratic rights.
The “greener” our economy is forced to become, the less you will be able to do, and the less you will have a right to say anything about it. The likes of Brown and Rudd know that this can’t happen without an international agreement, because we’d simply vote them out. The international agreement on climate change is an attempt to monitor, regulate, and tax your every last move.
Here is our Chancellor of the Exchequer, placing his bet – your cash – at the G20 meeting.
Ed Miliband has admitted that the talks leading up to the UN Copenhagen Conference next month “are moving too slowly and not going well".
Good. Because such a deal would be a disaster for everyone in the world, except those involved in negotiating it.
Miliband, the government, and many environmental activists – the kind of people who try to shut down power stations – wanted the conference to produce an international legally binding agreement to limit the amount of emissions each country is allowed to produce.
Some people really don’t understand why I, or any other so-called ‘denier’, would want to disagree with these aims. Why would anyone be against an international agreement to save the planet?
The simple answer is that I don’t believe that the science says we are endangering the planet. Instead, I think the real danger comes from letting people like Miliband (and Prescott, see my previous blog post) decide what laws and regulations we should all be subject to.
The UK’s domestic climate change legislation, and EU regulations are already making life harder and more expensive for ordinary people. An international agreement would enable autocrats to press harder on the British public, to tax them, and to stifle the businesses that employ them and create opportunities for them. Then, when people start protesting, these same autocrats could turn around and say, “hey, it’s not us, it’s these international rules that are making us do this, we can’t do anything about it.”
Consider the words of Miliband, for instance.
"We would have preferred a full legal treaty, it has to be said. I think the important thing about the agreement we now seek in December is that while it may be a political agreement it must lead, on a very clear timetable, to a legally binding treaty."
He “would have preferred a full legal treaty”, he says.
But what right has he got to express his own preference for a treaty that binds the UK to an agreement, when the British public have had no say in it?
A recent You Gov survey for the Department for Energy and Climate Change found that 52% of people in Britain didn’t believe that climate change would affect them.
The government have not persuaded the public of the need for the legally-binding international agreements that they are creating, for the EU regulations that they are submitting to, and for the domestic policies such as the Climate Change Act and the ‘Green New Deal’/Low Carbon Industrial Strategy.
Most people think this is all so much hot air, the waffle of pointless bureaucratic busy-bodies.
Along comes Joan Ruddock, the Energy and Climate Change Minister, to explain the government’s failure to win the argument.
“The survey results show that people don’t realise that climate change is already under way and could have severe consequences. With over 40 per cent of the UK’s C02 emissions a result of personal choices, there is huge potential for individual behaviour change to lower emissions.”
Ruddock forgets, of course, that, as I have explained in my previous posts here, climate change has been postponed. But at the same time, she lets it slip what this is all about: “behaviour change”.
The government wants you to behave!
That’s why it needs international agreements. It knows that you’re not so stupid as to believe a word it says about climate change, and it knows you won’t vote for it.
The individuals comprising the group that began their reign with the slogan “things can only get better” cannot help themselves, now that the milk has turned sour. My previous post featured the words of John Prescott, who was determined to blame resistance to wind farms on Conservative councils, and ‘Nimbys’. Yet he only had himself to blame. His incoherent ramblings in defence of wind farms are sufficient to make anyone with a brain realise that the UK’s wind program is founded on the words – lies and myths – of a nincompoop.
No stranger to stretching the truth for New Labour is Alistair Campbell, who writes on his blog that,
Public opinion on climate change - the public might be the problem
... when you read a survey which states that only 15 per cent of British people worry about global warming and its potential impact on the world, you ask yourself 'do I really live in a country where, when people are asked if they worry about global warming and its potential impact on the world, more than eight out of ten say "No."'?
Heaven forefend that the public should be permitted to have an opinion. Campbell left the side of Tony Blair after being implicated in the ‘dodgy dossier’ affair, you will remember.
Campbell continues...
Of course politicians have to take a lead, and will be expected to come to a meaningful agreement at the Copenhagen Summit next month. But if they go with such low levels of interest and awareness back home - and the numbers have fallen from 26 per cent since the recession began, making Britain the 'least concerned' country of twelve surveyed for the Climate Confidence monitor - then their task becomes much harder.
That the majority of the British Public aren’t that concerned with climate change doesn’t seemed to have bothered the vast majority of the Great and the Good that reside in Westminster.
Last year all but 5 MPs voted for the Climate Change Act, meaning that you can look forward to increased fuel costs as the cost of subsidising inefficient and expensive wind farms is passed on to you.
What you think has got nothing to do with how your elected representatives behave.
Most people know this. And that is why most people are able to see that the big noise being made about climate change by the likes of Prescott, Brown, Mandelson, and from the sidelines, Campbell, are just the sounds made by politicians acting out of naked self-interest.
