Godfrey Bloom

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.

It is often said that some of the world’s sharpest minds – our best and brightest scientists – discovered the problem of climate change. The green lobby argues that their own ideas carry scientific authority. So why is it that when anyone objects to climate policies, they get presented with the likes of John Prescott, the barely literate, inarticulate and hardly comprehensible MP for Hull East? Does he represent “science”? Does he speak for “scientists”? Perhaps they ought to appoint someone a bit more coherent.

Here’s a clip from the Yorks and Lincs edition of the politics show I appeared in a few weeks ago. Prescott makes an appearance at the end.

When asked about his reply to sceptics, Prescott says,

Well the sceptic you’ve given me is Godfrey Bloom. He was telling the women to clean behind the fridges, says you can’t get these agreement (sic). We got that over the problems of CF gasses (sic) in the ozone lane (sic). We cleared that [???] global problem by changing the gasses in the fridges. So you can have global solutions to global man made problems. That’s the first point.

Paul’s on about the cycles and whether that’s true, but you don’t take the twenty thirty years, they’ve gone back thousands of years and 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. I’ll take the thousand scientists’ interpretation and I’ll listen to those other voices, but I will not make my judgement on them.

Well, so far, so gibberish. But let’s be fair to Prescott – who seems more preoccupied with fridges than with grammar – and try to make sense of his mutterings.

Well, I don’t know what my views on women and domestic chores have to do with my views on climate science.

On agreements, my concern is not that we cannot get an agreement. My concern is very much that we can, but that it is a bad idea, with flawed premises and disastrous consequences. The fact that an inarticulate oaf who can’t tell the difference between an ‘ozone layer’ and an ‘ozone lane’ is charged with creating these agreements does nothing to soothe my concerns.

Onto Prescott’s second paragraph – a cascade of such gibberish that it beggars belief that this man was ever the country’s deputy Prime Minister. Blair might as well have appointed a donkey to be his number 2 for all the sense Prescott makes. Only that a donkey would perhaps have more charm. The IPCC do not meet every year. Nor do the IPCC’s contributors ever even meet, as Prescott claims, a ‘committee’. Prescott needs a bit of a refresher on what the IPCC is.

The IPCC publish reports every few years. These reports are an attempt to gather the current knowledge on climate change into one document. The last report was published in 2007. It was the fourth such report, and therefore goes by the name “Fourth Assessment Report”, or AR4 for short. The Third Assessment report was published in 2001, and goes by the name TAR. The second was published in 1995, and the first in 1990. The IPCC also publish occasional intermediate reports on specific topics.

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. So in the latest IPCC report, Working Group I, which concentrates on the physical science consists of eleven chapters. Chapter one – The Historical Overview of Climate Change Science – was coordinated by Hervé Le Treut, and its lead authors were Ulrich Cubasch (Germany), Yihui Ding (China), Cecilie Mauritzen (Norway), Abdalah Mokssit (Morocco), Thomas Peterson (USA), Michael Prather (USA). You can see for yourself here. A further 26 authors contributed to the chapter. Between them, these authors review the research that exists on the topic in question. As they are doing this, they produce a draft document which is read by reviewers, who are able to submit comments to the authors.

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. Prescott thinks there are a thousand such authors, but in fact there are just 800.

Yet Prescott seems to believe that all of the IPCC’s authors are climate scientists, and that they all meet once a year to decide what they agree on. He is very much mistaken. He doesn’t appear to know what the IPCC is, and what they do.

Isn’t his ignorance a bit worrying, given that he is charged with negotiating deals for the UK and EU? Shouldn’t he be just a bit better informed? Shouldn’t he be just a bit better at explaining why the UK government has decided that ‘we’re all green now’? Perhaps he is too busy eating pies to do any research.

Asked about the recent lack of global warming, Prescott replies.

Of course you do. Of course you get cycles of clueling... coaling (sic) but if you look at the IPC (sic) report, your [???] over the long period of time. This is something different. It’s shooting off. They have up and down in climate. But in these last few years it’s taken off. Why are our glaciers melting? Why is the evidence on the television extreme weather? It’s associated with carbon emissions. And if we’re find an agreement. The science is clear as far as I’m concerned. We’ve got to do something about the emissions. That’s the challenge for us, but also we’ve got to recognise that some more pollute than the others. If you look at China and America they’re 25 per cent each on emissions. But if you look at the populations of [???] per head America’s 20 tonnes per head. China is 5. Europe is 10. So Copenhagen has got to address itself to justice and equity and poverty in this country... in the world and put them together. That’s what Capenhagen (sic) is about. It won’t be easy, but we’ve got to get that agreement ‘cos it will affect every one of us and 187 nations. And finally China and India are coming together China and America to talk about how they can balance out this problem of climate change. They’re convinced about it and I’m delighted an agreement between China shows that [Xiang Xin?] a city of 30 million has lined up with Yorkshire to look at how we can clear up our... they can clean their rivers up, learn our lessons and at the same time bring in carbon sequestration, look at the clean coal technology, and let’s recognise coal will still a part and that conference is taking place in Sheffield University. So Yorkshire’s doing its bit. Whereas in [ruse?] the wind turnpipe people are complaining about the picture from their window. For God’s sake, grow up and think about your children.

Prescott was asked about the lack of warming. But his answer was about China, America, India, and agreements, and Yorkshire and Sheffield University and clean coal and emissions per head, and people complaining about ‘turnpipes’.

Why didn’t he just say, ‘I don’t know’? Instead, he says something about something ‘shooting off’, and then shot off himself, on a rant about god knows what. Here are some graphs showing global temperature since 1998, from the four main sources of data used by scientists.

Precott says that “in these last few years it’s taken off”, but quite clearly, in the last few years, there has been no warming. It is true that if we look at a longer view, we see warming.

But as we all know, there was, until 1850, a ‘Little Ice Age’, from which the world has recovered. Before that, we know that there was a ‘Medieval Warm Period’. This much used to be in the IPCC reports. Here’s an image used by the IPCC in one of their earlier reports.

But this was an inconvenient graph. It showed that our current temperatures weren’t unusual in the planet’s recent history. So a small team of scientists in the USA, rather like Stalin’s photographic artists, began airbrushing history to suit the present. They produced this graph.

This was included in the next IPCC report, not as Prescott would like to think, because thousands of scientists agreed with it. But instead, because a small group of scientists who know each other, work with each other, and who refuse to criticise each other’s work, all worked on the same chapter. The scientist who produced this graph – Michael Mann – was one of the chapters lead authors, meaning he didn’t have to listen to any criticism from reviewers. This is like taking an exam, and then marking your own answer sheet, giving yourself an official grade. Welcome to climate science, ladies and gentlemen.

That is just one reason among many, many reasons why the ‘hockey stick’ graph is perhaps the most controversial graph in history. It has been debunked time and time again, and shown to be a fraud. Yet it remains at the centre of political arguments that will affect our future, and our children’s future, not because it has any scientific value whatsoever, but because it is useful to blockheads like John Prescott.

For more about the criticism of the graph, read the excellent blogs by Anthony Watts, and Steve McIntrye.

In answer to my constituents’ concerns about widnfarms, Prescott says this.

For God’s sake, many changes are coming, and I ask them, two-thirds of this world, five billion people, live on less than two dollars a day. It isn’t only political it’s also environmental. But above all it’s a moral issue. This of our responsibility. After all, we polluted the world to have your nice little home in East Yorkshire.

Did you catch that? If you live in a nice home in East Yorkshire, you polluted the world. It’s all your fault. And it’s all your fault that “five billion people live on less than two dollars a day”.

What Prescott doesn’t explain is how wind farms in Yorkshire will make life better for these billions of people.

Prescott isn’t just any old Labour Party worker – we can excuse them for having s*** for brains. He was deputy Prime Minister from 1997 to 2007. He has responsibility for negotiating in our interests. Yet he can barely string a sentence together, and whatever sense can be made of those strings are inconsistent with the facts about climate change.

This is a troubling state of affairs. Senior politicians who don’t know what they’re talking about – who don’t understand the science, and don’t understand the institutions they take authority for their arguments from – are creating the international agreements and regulations that will change our future.

That is why our countryside is being littered with huge, expensive, and pointless machines. They are the mirror of Prescott and his comrades: huge, expensive, and pointless. That is why our fuel bills are rising, and will continue to rise. That is why our industry and economy is failing. Prescott, like the majority of the political posers in Westminster, badly needs an education.

Here's a short video of me explaining things to my colleagues yesterday. Not that many of them want to listen.

Nick Stern – the author of the climate change report that bears his name – writes in the Guardian today.

But there are still major obstacles and some doubt whether a strong global deal can be hammered out in time for the United Nations's conference on climate change in Copenhagen, now just seven weeks away.

Thank heaven for small mercies. Let us pray for more obstacles. The road to hell is paved with ‘good intentions’.

Take a close look at what Stern is saying. He hopes that a deal that will bind the world’s major (and minor) economies can be ‘hammered out’, over the next seven weeks. Hammered out?

What is this process of ‘hammering out’? It is the discussion about policies that affect your future, and your children’s future, our economy, jobs, and industry. It is happening behind closed doors, by politicians, diplomats and bureaucrats, and as far as they are concerned, it’s none of your business.

I do not want these kinds of deals ‘hammered out’. I want them to take place openly and transparently. I want them to be democratic. I want the terms of the debate to be contested in public. I don’t want it to be hurried through in just weeks. I want our options to be carefully considered. I want a debate that consists of more than secret deals, blame, and political manoeuvring for self-serving agendas. I want a careful debate about the costs and benefits.

Instead, the UK’s position on climate has been set by just one man, Nick Stern, in his 2006 report. The report was widely criticised, even by environmentalists. But the government has ignored all of this criticism. They carried on seeking climate deals, regulation, taxation, and legislation, regardless. There has been no political debate about Stern’s report and how seriously it should be taken by the policy-making process.

The targets that Stern wants – the ‘strong global deal’ – will be set by an undemocratic process that you have no control over. It will be made by people who aren’t accountable to you. Your political representatives have decided that it suits them to have a climate deal. You haven’t ever had the chance to express your views about it, and to have those views represented.

If you believe, as I do, that there is no reason for this deal, that it will cost us, and that even if there was a reason, there are better ways of dealing with the problem, that’s just our tough luck. Our views and our interests will not be represented in the ‘hammering out’ of the ‘strong global deal’. It will be a great deal for political-posers and their rent-seeking cronies. It will be a catastrophic deal for ordinary people, for their jobs, and for their futures.

Stern continues,

However, to have a reasonable chance of cost-effectively limiting a rise in global average temperature to no more than 2?C, beyond which scientists regard as "dangerous" to go, annual emissions must be reduced to below 44bn tonnes by 2020, well below 35bn tonnes in 2030 and well below 20bn tonnes by 2050.

This is nonsense. There is no magic point – Stern says two degrees centigrade – beyond which lies ‘dangerous climate change’. This figure is arbitrary. It is made up. It is a political target set for political purposes. Chair of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, who is usually the first to argue for ‘strong climate change deals’, is remarkably candid about the meaningless of the 2 degrees target. He says,

So this whole issue of 2 degrees versus 1 degree or 1.5 degree is something based on a value judgment that essentially relates to what is dangerous, what is a threshold that would define danger in terms of making it almost impossible for some people on this planet not being able to live in those locations. So it's difficult to say if it should be 2 degrees or 1.5 or 1, but this is an issue that needs a great deal of discussion or debate. There's an ethical discussion which should not be ignored at all, and it really hasn't been brought out in the [climate convention] debates.

Stern really ought to know better. The person charged with creating the basis for the UK’s climate policies makes stuff up in order to pass his political values off as ‘scientific’. It is this kind of playing fast and loose with ‘scientific facts’ and that needs ‘hammering out’. We need a straight climate debate. Not one which is twisted and bent to suit the agendas and careers of the unaccountable, self-serving, Great and the Good.

The Daily Mail reports the Climate Change Committee's (CCC) suggestion that drivers face 'pay per mile' tolls in order to prevent climate change.

Now in its first annual report, the Climate Change Committee says there is a 'good economic rationale to introduce road pricing and thereby reduce congestion' and that 'the Government should seriously consider road pricing'.

It seems that the CCC are confused about whether they are trying to combat congestion or climate change. What is certain is that it wants things to be more expensive.

It wants the freedom to travel - for work, for leisure, and for the normal business of your life - to be more expensive.

When the Government last visited the idea of road-pricing, it suggested that some routes might cost as much as £1.50 a mile. But suppose you had to rush somewhere, perhaps to visit a sick relative living on the other side of the country. Suppose circumstances forced you to travel, and you got caught in a traffic jam. The CCC's proposals might mean that the 200-odd mile trip from Yorkshire to London could end up costing you £300 in tolls if the M1 were congested all the way down - as it often is.

The Mail quote CCC chief executive David Kennedy,

We are not calling for the Government to rush ahead and introduce road pricing, but it shouldn't come off the agenda. It would have significant carbon benefits.

'Significant carbon benefits'? But who really benefits from a de facto car-ban? You? Me? The polar bear? No. Only the likes of the CCC, and the government are likely to see any benefits from this scheme.

Your freedom is a problem for today's power-hungry politicians. They don't want you to have it. If you were able to enjoy your life, it would mean that would have no job to do in rationing it, regulating it, and taxing it.

It would mean that they would have to actually start representing your interests.

This government already wanted to charge people for using roads. But the idea was unpopular, and the government backed down. In the meantime, it has stepped up its rhetoric about the threat of climate change, and set up the CCC.

'Saving the planet' is the ruse for authoritarianism. The Climate Change Committee was established to outsource the task of making unpopular policies look like a sensible response to the 'threat' of climate change. So now we see the CCC recycling the government's policies, giving them a different 'spin', and the appearance of expert authority.

This panel of 'experts' is unaccountable, and unelected. Yet they appear to be making the decisions that affect your life.