Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Professors at Cambridge University are worried that climate issues are “slipping down the government’s list of priorities”. But they have a plan, for engineering one last colossal splurge of taxpayer’s cash.
UK must not cool stance on global warming
February 2, 2017, by Terry Macalister
World-renowned British scientist Martin Rees has urged the UK government to prioritise global warming, and warns of the danger of not taking urgent action.
LONDON, 2 February, 2017 – One of Britain’s most senior scientists has expressed concern that action to tackle global warming is sliding down the government’s list of priorities despite its ratification of the Paris Agreement on climate change.
Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal and former president of the Royal Society, says politicians should not be distracted or listen to “siren voices” seeking to dissuade them from early action.
“I worry that we have to wait till the downsides of climate change are even more apparent than they are today before action is taken,” he says.
“It may be slipping down the agenda and may not get much ideological support, and that is why I have been banging on about increasing research and development of clean energy, which gets broad support even from those who are not so enthusiastic about climate action.
“They [many politicians] like hi-tech, and they are right to think that the quickest way to bring down emissions is by accelerating the development of efficient, clean energy.”
…
Read more: http://climatenewsnetwork.net/uk-must-not-cool-stance-global-warming/
The professors are currently holding a series of lectures to promote climate awareness.
This effort might seem a genteel, inconsequential professorial sort of thing, but make no mistake, this is a last stand by the climate community. To make renewables viable, they are demanding a worldwide commitment to fund a global Climate Apollo Project – up to US $230 billion over 10 years, just for the R&D.
This does seem to be doubling down on stupid. When the dread events do not happen, and the “solutions” prove unworkable, the only possible answer to a zealot is “not yet” and “we just didn’t put enough money into it”.
+ 1000
Just like the Obama stimulus, and how it would have been more effective if it had just been bigger. Or maybe it was that shovel-ready jobs thing?
They have been saying “urgent action now” for what?, 20 years? I’m getting tired of the hyperbole, and its the coldest snowiest winter since the 60s/70s where I am. I’m finding the message harder to believe. 10 years ago I was a luke warmer. Now I believe the ”scientists” less than I did back then. I am a full blown Denier.
I think I may be older than you (61). It is more like 45 plus years, not 20.
Regarding “warming” only, I lived through the Ice Age, Acid rain, Ozone ect… the warming may be marginal at best. I have not experienced any change in climate where I live. It is global isn’t it?
I have lived not far from the Pacific Ocean for my entire life. Changes in climate trends come through here first, in a manner of speaking. I remember that back in the mid 1970s I found myself wondering about the changes taking place, less coastal fog, more sunny days in SF during the summer, a slight change in rainfall patterns, a missing flood/very heavy rain winter in the Pacific Northwest in the mid 1970s. Back then I knew next to nothing about Earth’s climate system as compared to now, but I had always been sensitive to and aware of nature.
The change is regional more so than global as the oceans are such an important player. As such Europe gets a good dose of change as does the west coast of North America due to surface wind flows.
Basically, the Earth has not warmed significantly since 1988. All other “warming” is caused by dishonest, undocumented “adjustments” to temperature data, which predictably (knowing their political agenda) always cools the past and warms the present.
As long as they let the dishonest data handles handle the data, they will continue to alter the data and attempt to dupe the world, all for their own profit and the goals of their political managers.
Yes goldminor – in the 70ties we had
Diesel locomotives, Steam locomotives, smoking Factory chimneys, Domestic coal ovens, Oil heating.
https://youtu.be/kyFAqXBAFSw
The British went to work by bus but never leaving home without an umbrella.
https://youtu.be/oZurhN36qcI
Now it’s less airpollution but 2, 3 following days precipitation in two months – and neither cities nor country land are prepared to that changes.
http://www.thelocal.no/20170116/oslo-to-implement-temporary-ban-on-diesel-vehicles
The next day Oslo had to cancel the ban because people simply could not get to work, to school or shopping.
Last Saturday around Salzburg blue sky but now wind – the following days rain or snow:
https://www.google.at/search?client=ms-android-samsung&ei=c0CZWI3TH4KfU7vHs5gP&q=inversion+weather+&oq=inversion+weather+&gs_l=mobile-gws-serp.3..0i1https://www.google.at/search?client=ms-android-samsung&ei=c0CZWI3TH4KfU7vHs5gP&q=inversion+weather+&oq=inversion+weather+&gs_l=mobile-gws-serp.
https://www.google.at/search?q=Autobahn+Salzburg+ig-l+80+kmh&oq=Autobahn+Salzburg+ig-l+80+kmh&aqs=chrome..69i57j33.47383j0j4&client=ms-android-samsung&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8
= max. 50 miles per hour all through February because of immssion protection in the crowded city at 500 meters above sea-level, 700 meters above sea level the air is OK.
The cities as the townships make profits on ‘Business tax’;
so greens and conservatives are working hand in hand.
Niefelheim Oslo means: home of the fog.
https://www.google.at/search?q=oslo+from+the+fjord&oq=oslo+from+the+fjord&aqs=chrome.
https://www.google.at/search?q=niefelheim+Oslo&oq=niefelheim+Oslo&aqs=chrome.
If you include the early 70’s “the coming ice age” scare (another failed forecast/prediction) its nearly 50 years.
Seems to belong to the “If it won’t fit, use a bigger hammer” school of problem solving.
Poor Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal. “I worry that we have to wait till the downsides of climate change are even more apparent than they are today before action is taken,” says he.
Martin, that light at the end of the tunnel is actually a mirror reflecting the light of your ‘Gravy Train’. Brace yourself for the coming, sudden impact.
If and when these things (wind and solar) truly become necessary, they WILL be attended to, and without the need for government money/subsidies either.
As far as Prioritising Global Warming, perhaps it does need Re-Prioritising someplace between having their tonsils scrubbed and their next colonics flush. Perhaps not even that soon.
Guvments have no money, it’s taxpayers’ money!!!!
Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming => Climate Change
Semantic creep is a first-order cause of credibility change.
Martin Rees
No you don’t. Not about anything that any healthy, honest, person would worry about.
Given your intelligence and access to the facts about human CO2 emissions, you, Mr. Rees, are either:
A. Lying
or
B. Brain disordered
*********************************
All these histrionics add up to is (essentially):
Budget Allocation to Engineering UP.
Budget Allocation to Physics and Math UP.
Budget Allocation to (cough) “Climate Science” DOWN.
(and, this threatens their enviroprofiteer patrons, too, of course)
In a word: money.
Okay. If he is brain disordered, then, yes, he is really worried. If that is the case, if he is REALLY worried, he is not someone to take seriously.
Janice, it’s called paranoia, often associated with schizoid and/or delusional dysfunction.
I think Rees is REALLY worried, worried in the same way that a hyena worries about the health of the giraffe with the broken leg he has been following for three days.
Or, worse, from the hyena’s perspective, that baby giraffe that was limping seems to be getting better, and is easily able to maintain distance.
I think he may have changed his “Profession” from Astronomy to Astrology.
Janice, good points, the money can be much better spent on education for education that adds value to the economy and betterment of society. At my age I wonder how we survived very well in the past without all these Universities that now have dedicated buildings full of Students and Professors specializing in Climate models (102 + separate ones) and issuing useless papers that do not contribute to the GDP.
I would say, Janice, that he is (C) really worried that the ideas to which he has committed him self will gradually be exposed for what they are and he has to stay the rest of his life in bed under the blankets.
Martin Rees has long known the power of worry. Promoting worried about the End of the World has only brought good things for him and for the science he promotes:
https://enthusiasmscepticismscience.wordpress.com/2010/11/14/apocalyptic-enthusiasm-and-the-royal-society/
He happens to be on the advisory board of the Grantham Institute, http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/about/about-the-institute/advisory-board/
along with these eminences:
Prof. Julia Black, Director, LSE
The Lord Browne of Madingley FREng FRS, Chairman, L1 Energy (former BP head)
Tamsin Cooper, Strategy Director, Green Alliance
Ed Davey, Former Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change
Dr Simon Dietz, Co-Director, LSE
Professor Sam Fankhauser, Co-Director, LSE
Professor Joanna Haigh, Co-Director, Grantham Institute, ICL
Professor Sir Brian Hoskins, Chair, Grantham Institute, ICL
Professor Nick Jennings, Vice Provost for Research, ICL
Mr Fred Krupp, President, Environmental Defense Fund
Dr Gerard Lyons, Economic Adviser, Mayor of London Office
Dr Tidu Maini, Qatar Foundation Endowment Fund
Jennifer Morgan, Co-Executive Director, Greenpeace (formerly WWF, WRI, E3G)
Professor Judith Rees, Vice Chair, GRI, LSE
Professor Lord Martin Rees OM PRS, Master of Trinity, University of Cambridge
Mr Carter Roberts, President and CEO, World Wildlife Fund
Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, Trustee, The Eranda Foundation
Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Director, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK)
Professor Martin Siegert, Director, Grantham Institute, ICL
Mr James Smith, Chairman, The Carbon Trust
Prof. Lord Nicholas Stern, Chair, GRI, LSE
Mr Marc Stuart, Private Equity Investor, Allotrope Ventures, East Bay, CA
Nigel Topping, Executive Director, Carbon Discslosure Project (CDP)
Dr Camilla Toulmin, Senior Fellow, International Institute for Environment and Development
Jon Vatnaland, Vice President Strategy, Wind Power & Technologies, Statkraft
Dr Paul Woolley, Centre for the Study of Capital Market Dysfunctionality, LSE
Fankhauser and Hoskins are members of the UK Climate Change Committee, which monitors and drives UK government action on “decarbonisation”.
Oh dear, action on globaloney warming is sliding down the UK government priorities list! The bloom is off the rose now, with Trump now president. Where, oh where is the climate cash going to come from now? I know, ask China! They are the new climate leaders, so should be only too happy to cough up a goodly portion of climate dough.
Bruce : And lets do that and see how they react , you know after 2035 when they’ll start making progress in fighting CC.
China is not interested in supporting the pseudoscience industries of the west. If China decides to buy pseudoscience they will buy exclusively from Chinese manufacturers. This will put domestic pseudoscientists out of work. We might have to institute a stiff tariff. We could call it a “made up in America” program.
Thanks for banging on about important issues. This is too vital to ignore. By the way, my grandmother in North Carolina was a Worrell. We may be kin and the Worrall name spelling was adjusted a little.
Griff!! Quickly!! Send Cambridge University a copy of the Arctic Sea Ice Extent.
Yes, his use of that one graph reminds me of those who still believe that picture of the “Face on Mars” means that it once had advanced life.
Not trying to insult those who believe in aliens, of course…
Pffft, aliens. You’d have to be pretty silly to believe in that kind of ‘star-trek’ nonsense.
.
.
.
Now, Transformers, that’s different. They’re robots. Everyone knows that robots are real. ○¿○
This is just so hard to believe with all the climate doom right in front of our faces. /s
This is like other serious addictions. They keep hoping for that next big “hit” (aka climate disaster). They are mortgaging their intellectual future in an attempt to keep the wonderful feelings of saving the Earth alive. These people need medical help.
Or, increased medication.
Mail on Sunday, for what it is worth, have interesting article on NOAA deliberately misinterpreting data before Paris. Claim they have been shown proof by Dr John Bates. They deliberately skewed the data. Should be big news.
Do keep up at the back.
Already covered.
It really is amazing how the sea gull trolls squak, poop, and fly away.
Since when are piles of bat and bird carcasses ‘clean energy’? Only by fake environmentalists I would assume.
No worse than the impact of ethanol from corn and the other biofuels!
Yes, I am wondering why no action has yet been taken to implement fines for the deaths of all of our feathery friends at the hands of the bird choppers…
Obama signed a presidential order that granted them an exception.
I wonder how long they could stay in business if Trump were to cancel that exemption.
(Just wish it could be a retro-active cancellation.)
oops, didn’t see WUWT already covered it, please delete
It is absolutely the right thing to ” bang… on about increasing research and development of clean energy, which gets broad support even from those who are not so enthusiastic about climate action. They [many politicians] like hi-tech, and they are right to think that the quickest way to bring down emissions is by accelerating the development of efficient, clean energy.”
“Accelerating the development of efficient, clean energy.” is the modern imperative without reference to CO2, climate change, world politics or national politics.
It is what we should have been doing the last twenty years instead of being distracted by the CAGW movement and their silly inefficient prescriptions for “green energy”.
Kip, we have also been spending a fortune on “clean” energy, I have personally enjoyed the fruits of some futile challenges especially in biofuels. There are certain laws of chemistry, thermodynamics, and physics that indicate there is no free lunch converting crops to liquid fuels. $26/gal for the NAVY makes no sense. A few years ago there were many rich benefactors that invested in various biofuel schemes, ultimately, they all seemed to realize the futility and those consulting jobs away. Only government seems to be funding today using DOE personnel who don’t seem to have a grasp on anything except to let contracts. Maybe there is something in fields other than biofuels.
More on government abuse of Military forcing spending on Biofuels instead of readiness.
http://www.heritage.org/defense/report/biofuel-blunder-navy-should-prioritize-fleet-modernization-over-political
Kip, if there is no problem with CAGW, there is no problem with fossil fuels. Researching “clean” energy is equivalent to researching “green” energy. Let’s let the invisible hand (profit motive) provide the impetus for private funding of pie-in-the-sky clean and efficient energy research, like fusion. Only in this way, will the actual research process be efficient and accountable.
Mickey Reno, keep in mind that prior to the Clean Air Act, and Clean Water Act the “profit motive” was responsible for most pollution in the USA. Take for example the air in Beijing. The “profit motive” is having a very negative impact on the lungs of people living in that city.
Mickey ==> Burning fossil fuels has known downsides — mostly air pollution, particulate matter, the nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, etc. Limiting fossil fuels to what they are needed for — currently transportation.
A lot of things would be better if all electricity in the world were produced in clean, non-polluting nuclear power plants (new design fission or yet-to-be-developed fusion).
Martin, you blame the free market for problems caused by government.
Prior to government intervention, there was a legal principle that you couldn’t pollute other people’s air or water.
It was acts of government that canceled riparian rights.
MarkW says: ” there was a legal principle”
..
But tell me Mark, why did this “legal principle allow large businesses to pollute? The government was supposed to enforce the law and these legal principles right? You claim: “It was acts of government that canceled riparian rights.” Please provide a citation or evidence of said acts of cancellation.
PS MarkW, the “free market” brought us such things as child labor. Government regulations stopped child labor. I suppose you think it would be a good idea to abolish the government regulations prohibiting child labor?
Also MarkW, the word “riparian” has nothing to do with air. You can pollute air with well outside of the banks of a river, and suffer it’s consequences nowhere near a river bank.
A family member is big on blogging and recently posted his climate change interview with several well-known names. (inc Martin Rees, Laurie David – producer of An Inconvenient Truth, and others.) His central thrust was AGW is THE gravest threat to humanity and Earth, ever. It has ONE Facebook like.
On his previous post he posted a picture of his cat which currently has over 100 likes.
There, in a nutshell, is why academia is so worried about the huge gap between their and the public’s perception of ‘climate change’.
Just make all new grants available only to folks who hadn’t gotten one before.
I’ve seen this “divide-n-conquer” scheme work before.
The mouse will defend his cheese supply. He says “banging” guess thats like a lose rod in an old engine. Means it isn’t running well.
Aha Professor? Lord? Scientist Rees, while we have your attention, could I impose on your for an answer to a few simple questions?
We are often told the ‘Climate’ is some sort of average of 30 years of weather. yeah OK
Stupid question I know but, how does this ‘average’ manifest itself? At a guess its ‘just’ a number and presumably with all the technology we now have, you can re-calculate this number on a (probably) daily basis?
So, what was yesterday’s 30-year weather average number?
I’m sure it was different from the number you got the day before that as the weather here was different one day to the next. Was carbon dioxide the cause of the difference. If so, how?
How is this current number different from the number you maintain for the reference climate period, whatever it is, say 1970 to 1999.
Professor, may I remind you, you are ‘World Renowned’ and we’re paying you a handsome salary in 1st class working conditions to know this stuff. It should be at your fingertips.
I’m waiting, as I’m sure are a lot of people
Notice how they didn’t refer to their leader as an astronomer, but as a “World renowned scientist.” So , exactly how many scientific papers has this renowned scientist written about climate?
To science-challenged journalists, a scientist is a scientist, apparently. I wonder if they would accept their children going to see this scientist for treatment about drug addiction? I can save these nimrods $230 billion by simply telling them that molten salt nuclear reactors are the future of energy, low carbon or not.
But of course, that would lose them all those research grants.
You have to start to wonder when someone is going to pay a political cost for all this nonsense. Sooner or later the public is going to have to stand up and send a clear message that they will not tolerate fraudulent agendas being manufactured to push these obscenely expensive and ineffective public policies. When are the voters going to say enough is enough.
Just How Much Does 1 Degree C Cost?
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/01/25/just-how-much-does-1-degree-c-cost/
Climate “Science” on Trial; If Something is Understood, it can be Modeled
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/02/06/climate-science-on-trial-if-something-is-understood-it-can-be-modeled/
How to Discuss Global Warming with a “Climate Alarmist.” Scientific Talking Points to Win the Debate.
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/01/03/how-to-discuss-global-warming-with-a-liberal-the-smoking-gun-files/
Don’t be silly, No one is going to pay for promoting the Climate Crisis. Any more then they paid for promoting the Population Bomb, DDT ban, Peak Oil, or the Ozone Hole.
CAGW will end not in a Bang OR a Whimper, but in a deafening Silence, as the world is distracted away by the next disaster that can only be prevented by transferring all money and power into the hands of a select few.
Those are different. Those were opinion pieces. The data manipulation is easily proven to be fraudulent. At worst, this recent development can greatly harm the credibility of the organizations and politicians gullible enough to promote it.
Schitzree,the absence of a worry target is itself a major worry for these ‘scientists’ to worry about.
As an aside, he could use his own personal super fund to develop these technologies, after all, the professorial Board at Cambridge wants their trust fund to divest in CO2 producing endeavour.
There is nothing stopping him and like minded people to do this.
Only confidence that it may even work or is worthwhile.
Where’s Griff on this? I need my afternoon attack of derision.
I think he may have lost his job at renewable UK
These “R&D” Projects are mainly a way to employ academics to sit at desks and write articles for the internet.
Wolf! Wolf! Woooooooolllllffff!!!!!!!
ELEVEN years of it.
Do NOT hire this man to announce a real danger.
Average Joe watching TV one quiet evening at home…..
Rees {suddenly appearing with a worried expression and an urgent tone}: We interrupt this program for a special announcement. An F4 tornado will reach Your Town within 3 minutes. Get to shelter NOW. This is not a test. Repeat — this is not a test.
Joe: Yeah, yeah, and the Statue of Liberty is under water. I need some more root beer. {heads for kitchen}
“eleven years” is roughly the time since the “Time” cover appeared in April, 2006.
Well, since this is a comedy thread (huh? GOTTA be! 🙂 ),
here’s something funny to share about “a certain ‘science guy’.”
Messing up AGAIN
(youtube — 2017 Superbowl ad)
{Here’s the other time (and no doubt there are more — just had this one handy):
— Anthony Watts
(https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/08/10/bill-nye-thescienceguy-and-al-gore-not-even-wrong-on-co2-climate-101-experiment-accoding-to-paper-published-in-aip-journal/ )
Yes, in case you are still unsure who the clown in the back of the room was, it was, indeed:
I am so impressed ! watching Nye mix red with blue to get purple ?
oh gosh he’s just so smart, what have I been missing all this time.
/sarc
Why is he not wearing safety gloves? He also has big flask with blue liquid on a bunsen burner tripod. Fair enough: no actual bunsen burner — but he is clearly setting a bad example. Health and safety need to get on the case.
The puppy wan’t wearing a face shield, either.
Most if not all social and biological systems have a significant component that follows a students-T curve. There is an initiation, acceleration, peak, then rapid decline. Very similar to statistical normal distributions. The climate alarm agenda has peaked, and its future does not involve any more upward trend. From a population response standpoint, the end is inevitable. Just a matter of how far that decline legs tapers out. Once you predict mass extinction, other than causing the planet to fall into the sun tomorrow, there is not much more you can do to ratchet up the rhetoric. Consider the climate agenda a fad, just on a longer time scale. Fads last up to two years in fashion. This one has been quite a bit longer, perhaps due to the scope of the social involvement and the amount of data that had to be acquired.
Sublime reasoning!
Add that so many gravy-trainers are troughing at the public purse that they have built a momentum difficult to reverse.
“It may be slipping down the agenda and may not get much ideological support…”
And there it is, support for an ideology. Last time I checked science was about facts based on empirical evidence defined by observation and replication. Don’t expect funding for something, when all you predict is repeated failed junk claims on ‘the end of days’ or ‘doomsday’ like many other religions.
He’s probably talking about us deplorable voters again…
Margaret Thatcher pushed Global Warming into politics for her own purposes. Maybe current politicians don’t have quite the same urges.
She also dumped it.
But the genie was by then out of the bottle……..
A few years back there was a political group/think push for more expensive diesel cars with better fuel consumption to replace petrol ones, on the false premise that CO2 was the main problem.
As a consequence millions of people around the world are now breathing a toxic brew of NO’s and carbon particulates daily.
Latest EU Emission Standards (Euro6) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_emission_standards#Emission_standards_for_passenger_cars require diesel cars to be almost as ‘clean’ as petrol cars, and yet still emit half the CO.
Of course it is the older diesel cars we need to get off the road. But people shouldn’t be shamed from buying a diesel car and driven towards more expensive petrol hybrids – which are about the only way you will get something cleaner
A brew anyway. There’s no evidence whatsoever that it’s toxic. PMs are simply more junk science.
Where are the dead bodies? Life expectancy continues to grow.
Hey, chaps, notice that Rees’ meme has gone from global warming to clean energy. This is the big upcoming switch.
Cambridge, home of traitors like Blake, Philby and Co has some backing from the state propaganda unit…
Storms in December 2015 linked to climate change caused more than £3.5m worth of damage to cricket clubs in the UK, says a report.
The “Weather Warning” report, which comes from the Climate Coalition, is backed by more than 100 organisations including the WWF-UK, the RSPB, the National Trust and the Women’s Institute.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/38888624
The Women’s Institute is famous for making jams and preserves. Who knew they were climate experts too?
Isn’t the real problem for these people: Cambridge Professors Worried that UK Govenment is Losing Interest in Cambridge Professors?
Yes indeed I think this is so. Like the once prestigious societies and journals, most of academia has become a leftist indoctrination rat hole and everyone knows that global warming is simply one of the central tenets of that political ideology. Public credibility and respect has been largely destroyed and clowns like Rees and the rest of the idiotic ‘Expertariat’ just haven’t woken up to the fact that they and their brain-dead climate alarmism are being rejected along with the political liberal left of which they are merely a willing organ.
It’s a bit of a mystery to me exactly why he made the fundamental error of gross overreach to champion what any physical scientist with a couple of neurons to rub together can plainly see is totally unevidenced insanity on a stick. What stands at a tipping point is Rees’ own career and it is sad to watch a man of that kind of stature desperately puffing wind into a rapidly deflating balloon with a skin beginning to resemble a Cantor gasket.
Yes indeed I think this is so. Like the once prestigious societies and journals, most of academia has become a leftist indoctrination rat hole and everyone knows that global warming is simply one of the central tenets of that political ideology. Public credibility and respect has been largely destroyed and clowns like Rees and the rest of the idiotic ‘Expertariat’ just haven’t woken up to the fact that they and their brain-dead climate alarmism are being rejected along with the political liberal left of which they are merely a willing organ.
It’s a bit of a mystery to me exactly why he made the fundamental error of gross overreach to champion what any physical scientist with a couple of neurons to rub together can plainly see is totally unevidenced insanity on a stick. What stands at a tipping point is Rees’ own career and it is sad to watch a man of that kind of stature desperately puffing wind into a rapidly deflating balloon with a skin beginning to resemble a Cantor gasket.
For Cambridge professor read…
Peter Wadhams
I used to live in Cambridge..
They replaced a perfectly good cycle lane with a whizzy new one, which made the main road narrower, because they were GIVEN THE MONEY….
This is always the way these things go. For a while, whilst action appears free an people care (because it’s new), politicians will “do something”.
But once the actions start to have consequences, and people start to understand that they are paying out money to save the world, and yet disaster seems to be as far away as ever, politicians realise they have to get elected, and there are more important things to try and deal with.
Climate change wasn’t much of an issue here in 2015, it wasn’t much of an issue in the US last year, it doesn’t get any mention in France at the moment, and even the Dutch seem more interested in real life.
Re, the headline: They are worried that the gravy train has reached it’s final destination and the good life is over for the parrots and their invisible 97% faux statistics, IMO.
Since Martin Rees is the Astronomer Royal and is interested in climate change shouldn’t he be in favour of more research into Svensmark’s hypothesis?
Though Media Refuse To Admit, CERN Results Vastly Strengthen Svensmark’s Cosmic Ray-Climate Theory -http://notrickszone.com/2016/05/30/though-media-refuse-to-admit-cern-results-vastly-strengthen-svensmarks-cosmic-ray-climate-theory/
Much energy R&D has been wasted on expensive to make biofuels and pie-in-the-sky energy storage dreams. Advanced nuclear reactors such as LMFBR and MSR will happen anyway. Can better be speeded up with deregulation and reregulation. More money in that direction isn’t going to make researchers skilled and dedicated enough to make technological breakthroughs, nor speed up the slow pace of regulatory approval. [The next design to be approved in UK by our Office of Nuclear Regulation (ONR) – Westinghouse’s AP1000 – will have taken over 10 years to approve. The design submission was in 2007 and approval is expected within 2 months (March 2017)]. Fusion will continue to waste money that could have been spent on advanced fission (such as MSR and LMFBR). To the best of my knowledge: Martin Rees never speaks up about mis-directed research. He mostly wants to see the R&D gravy train expanded whether or not it brings any benefits. Presumably with the moon-race mentality of “it gave us Teflon so must’ve been worth all the dosh”. It’s almost as if he’s piggy-backing on CAGW: “Who cares how bad AGW will be? We need to concentrate on milking it for what its worth.” I imagine him saying privately.
Proffs, you are about to get a bonus education that will give the humility you lack. See you in 10yrs.