There is the issue of the science, which I had previously taken as given; but many people’s faith is being tested. We are often told that the science is settled. I suppose that is what the Inquisition said to Galileo. If so, why are we spending millions of pounds on research? The science is far from settled. – Lord Turnbull Dec 8th 2009
House of Lords, 8 December 2009: Lord Turnbull: My Lords, on first reading the Committee on Climate Change’s latest progress report, I found it an impressive document. It was broad in scope and very detailed. But the more I dug into it the more troubled I became. Below the surface there are serious questions about the foundations on which it has been constructed. There are questions in four areas-the framework created by the Climate Change Act 2008, the policy responses at EU and UK level, the estimate of costs and finally the scientific basis on which the whole scheme of things rests. I will consider each in turn.
Unlike many of those involved in the climate change field, I have no pecuniary interest to declare, but I am a founder trustee of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which seeks to bring rationality, objectivity and, above all, tolerance to the debate.
I have long been in the camp of what might be called the semi-sceptics. I have taken the science on trust, while becoming increasingly critical of the policy responses being made to achieve a given CO2 or global warming constraint. First, let us look at the Climate Change Act, which has been highly praised, even today, as the most comprehensive and ambitious framework anywhere in the world-a real pioneering first for the UK. However, it has serious flaws. It starts by imposing a completely unworkable duty on the Secretary of State to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, even though many of the actions required lie outside his control. It would have been better, as the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, and I argued, for the duty to be connected to what the Secretary of State can control, such as his own actions and policies, and not the outcome, which he cannot.
In the Act’s passage through Parliament, the target was raised from 60 per cent to 80 per cent, with little discussion of its costs or feasibility. It is a simple arithmetic calculation to show that if the UK economy continues to grow at its historic trend rate, we will need, only 40 years from now, to produce each £1,000 of GDP with only 8 per cent of the carbon we use today. That is a cut of [92] per cent. Many observers think that this is implausible. A recent report by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers reported that the rate of improvement in carbon intensity/productivity would need to quadruple from the 1.3 per cent achieved in the five years up to the recession to around 5.5 per cent. It would need to be even higher at the end of the period to make up for what the noble Lord, Lord May, calls falling behind the run rate.
Professor Dieter Helm has pointed out that the measurement system used in the Kyoto framework and in the UK’s carbon accounts is a misleading guide to what is really being achieved. The carbon accounts use the territorial method-that is, the emissions from UK territory. In this way, the UK is able to claim that CO2 emissions have been reduced, but that is a misleading way of measuring a nation’s carbon footprint and its impact on the world. It should include the carbon in its imports. If this was done it would show that we are going backwards, since we would be forced to take responsibility for the manufacturing that we have outsourced to such countries as China but are still consuming. The current method is, of course, politically very convenient as it allows us to label China as the world’s largest emitter. The embedded carbon calculation is, I accept, far more complicated, but it is far more honest.
Another flaw in the framework is that the targets are unconditional. It is a legal duty, irrespective of what other countries achieve. Some, including me, argue that there should be two targets: one of which is a commitment, and a higher one which we will argue for internationally but only undertake as part of an agreement. Ironically, this is precisely the approach that the EU is taking with its 20 per cent reduction target by 2020, which would be raised to 30 per cent as part of an international agreement. The danger is that by going it alone we could face a double whammy, paying for decarbonising our own economy, yet still having to pay for the costs of raising our sea defences if others do not follow suit.
Secondly, let us consider the specific policies that have been adopted. Current EU policy follows two inconsistent paths. On the one hand, the ETS seeks to establish a common price for CO2, against which various competing technologies can be measured. The market share of each is determined by the relative costs. This is attractive to economists, since it allows the cost per tonne of CO2 abated to be equalised at the margin, thereby ensuring that the cost of achieving any CO2 target is minimised. The problem is that, despite its theoretical attractions, the ETS is failing. It provides no clear signal on the price of carbon on which investors can base their decisions. The committee, in this report, estimates that the ETS CO2 price in 2020 will be around €22 per tonne. The committee has rightly identified the central contradiction in its own report: the carbon price will be too low and too uncertain to stimulate the low-carbon investments needed to validate the committee’s projections.
At the same time, the EU is following a different approach under its 20:20:20 plan-to achieve a 20 per cent reduction in CO2 by 2020, with 20 per cent of energy coming from renewables. In this way, it predetermines a market share for a technology-renewables-rather than letting the merit order decide. The danger is that in pressing to achieve this target, which implies that over 30 per cent of electricity generation will come from renewables, some renewables capacity will be created which will be more expensive than other responses.
There is also a lack of clarity about the true cost of wind power, once we factor in the cost of retaining a large amount of underutilised conventional capacity, and the extension of the grid. The noble Lord, Lord Reay, has said more than enough on that so I do not need to follow that line of argument.
There is illogicality in the treatment of nuclear energy in the climate change levy. It is ridiculous that nuclear power, as a low-carbon source, is still in the taxable box. For 50 years, a major experiment has been conducted just 20 miles off our coast. France has generated three-quarters of its electricity from nuclear power. The French believe that it has been a huge success, delivering electricity which is secure, cheap and stable in price. France’s carbon intensity is 0.3 of a tonne per $1,000 of GDP, compared to 0.42 in the UK, 0.51 in Germany-so much for it being a market leader-and 0.63 in the US. However, the French option has barely been considered in this country.
As part of the EU plan, 10 per cent of road fuel is mandated to come from biofuels, but by the time this was enacted the credibility of first-generation biofuels had collapsed. Finally, our policy framework lacks balance. It is almost exclusively focused on mitigation through CO2 reduction, The Institution of Mechanical Engineers has argued for what it calls a MAG approach, with effort being committed not just to mitigation but to adaptation and geo-engineering.
Thirdly, there is the issue of cost. All we had to go on at the time when the target was set more ambitiously was the estimate by the noble Lord, Lord Stern, of 1 per cent of GDP. Many people were sceptical at the time and probably even more are now, including, it seems, the noble Lord, Lord Stern, himself. It was reported in the press last week that he now thinks that it might be 2 per cent, but could rise to 5 per cent. I hope he will clarify this when he speaks to us shortly.
In the document that we have before us, the committee says that it previously estimated that costs in 2020 would be about 1 per cent of GDP. That is consistent with its view that it might get to 2 per cent by 2050. In the new report it simply reaffirms the 1 per cent figure in just one paragraph in 250 pages. That is it. I have to say to the noble Lords, Lord Krebs and Lord May, that I do not think that that is adequate. It is difficult to relate these figures to what we are observing on the ground about the difficulties and costs of bringing on stream different technologies such as offshore wind and CCS.
One of the problems bedevilling the debate is the lack of transparency over the huge cross-subsidies that are being created by the renewables obligation and the regime for feed-in tariffs. There is no assurance that their extent is commensurate with the benefits in CO2 abated. My electricity costs me 11p per kilowatt hour. If I erected a wind turbine, I could sell the power I produced to the grid for a whopping 23p. I think I would go out and buy a gizmo which linked my inward meter to my outward meter. That excess cost is averaged over the bills of consumers as a whole, but how much is it in total, or for individual consumers? Here I differ from the noble Lord, Lord May. The whole issue of cost must be given far more attention. The Government cannot ask people to make radical changes to their lifestyle without being more open about the costs that they are being asked to bear.
I accept that “do nothing” is not the right option. Some measures, such as energy efficiency, heat recovery from waste and biomass, and stopping deforestation are probably justified on their own merits. More nuclear power which, in turn, would open the way for electrification of our transport fleet would enhance security of supply. Other measures may be justified as pure insurance, given the uncertainty that we face. But what is badly needed is a consistent metric that allows us to judge whether any given objective is being achieved at minimum cost. The recent book by Professor MacKay, the newly appointed scientific adviser at DECC, provides an excellent starting point. I also very much welcome the intervention by the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, debunking the waste hierarchy and the act of faith that that embodies.
There is the issue of the science, which I had previously taken as given; but many people’s faith is being tested. We are often told that the science is settled. I suppose that is what the Inquisition said to Galileo. If so, why are we spending millions of pounds on research? The science is far from settled. There are major controversies not just about the contribution of CO2, on which most of the debate is focused, but about the influence of other factors such as water vapour, or clouds-the most powerful greenhouse gas-ocean currents and the sun, together with feedback effects which can be negative as well as positive.
Worse still, there are even controversies about the basic data on temperature. The series going back one, 10 or 100,000 years are, in the genuine sense of the word, synthetic. They are not direct observations but are melded together from proxies such as ice cores, ocean sediments and tree rings.
Given the extent to which the outcome is affected by the statistical techniques and the weightings applied by individual researchers, it is essential that the work is done as transparently as possible, with the greatest scope for challenge. That is why the disclosure of documents and e-mails from the Climatic Research Unit is so disturbing. Instead of an open debate, a picture is emerging of selective use of data, efforts to silence critics, and particularly a refusal to share data and methodologies.
It is essential that these allegations are independently and rigorously investigated. Naturally, I welcome the appointment of my old colleague, Sir Muir Russell, to lead this investigation; a civil servant with a physics degree is a rare beast indeed. He needs to establish what the documents really mean and recommend changes in governance and transparency which will restore confidence in the integrity of the data. This is not just an academic feud in the English department from a Malcolm Bradbury novel. The CRU is a major contributor to the IPCC process. The Government should not see this as a purely university matter. They are the funders of much of this research and their climate change policies are based on it.
We need to purge the debate of the unpleasant religiosity that surrounds it, of scientists acting like NGO activists, of propaganda based on fear, for example, the quite disgraceful government advertisement which tried to frighten young children-the final image being the family dog being drowned-and of claims about having “10 days to save the world”. Crude insults from the Prime Minister do not help.
The noble Lords, Lord Krebs and Lord May, and their eminent colleagues on the CCC have a choice. They can take the policy framework as given, the policy responses as given, the costs as given, and the science as given, and then proceed to churn out more and more sophisticated projections, or-as I hope-they can apply the formidable intellectual firepower they command and start to find answers to many of the unsolved questions.
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Yes, a great speech. Unfortunately most of the Peers of the Realm vote unthinkingly for their party (or church in the case of the bishops) – which means that ouit of 735 of them, around 500 will vote, regardless of the arguments are put (no matter how lucid or compelling) according to party. And all the parties are signed up to the IPCC line. Well, with 80% of our laws handled by unelected EU commissars (sorry, commissioners) or quangocrats, I guess ignoring the public (to say nothing of the contrary evidence) on global warming is just par for the course.
“No other party except the UK Independence Party believes that Britain should remain a self governing country.”
Not true. The BNP also believes this. They also believe the science behind AGW is not settled.
Good news that Lord Monckton is joining UKIP. I was planning to abstain from next years General Election – can’t vote Labour or Lib-Dem because they’re both embroiled in the EU dream of a united Europe, and can’t vote Tory, as Cameron is a self aggrandising, elitist prate.
UKIP seems like the last hope for those like me who believe in common sense and freedom. Our pseudo-democracy is a fascist state by any-other name, as is most of the rest of the western world.
The Earth turns and I think it is time for a fresh beginning again.
Well, with 80% of our laws handled by unelected EU commissars (sorry, commissioners) or quangocrats, I guess ignoring the public (to say nothing of the contrary evidence) on global warming is just par for the course.
Interesting this is now stated. Here in the US we’re told by “official” clearninghouses of info that if we outsource our laws (which it is also denied we’d EVER do such) by treaties and the like, the US Constitution is still our ultimate backup and shelter against Euro-styled regulation.
It is not, of course, in that treaties in case law have the effect of superceding US law.
The current rage being over the mere possibility of regulating, say, guns and carbon, to name of couple of things plucked at random from the news.
Of course, the defendes of notions of, say, intense carbon regulation and joining a Euro-esque, EU-styled international governance of unelected busybodies is always defended as the requisite move to save the planet and regulate behavior, even while it is also denied this means loss of freedoms at the personal level, etc.
Partington (01:03:25) :
Global Warming from “greenhouse gases” is indeed real. Turnbull knows that and Monkton knows that. A simple calculation based on satellite data of Earth’s energy balance show a likely warming of about 1.8 degrees C from a doubling of “early” CO2 levels. We’ve already had about 0.8 degrees so that leaves another degree to go, nothing to worry about and perhaps even welcome.
The “problem” is the hype and how this one degree or less is parlayed into four or even six degrees. That’s where the dodgy science enters and one can be very easily sucked into belief.
The problem with this argument is that it assumes the rest of the climate system stays te same while the thoeretical warming effect of co2 takes place. There is plenty of evidence to show it doesn’t.
No-one knows how the Earth will adjust its temperature through various feedbacks. End of.
As the Lord’s speech referenced the recent “Act on CO2” advertising campaign I thought I’d give an update…
I (and many others) complained about these Government sponsored adverts around October time. I received a prompt and very professional response from the Advertising Standards Agency. I then heard nothing more so I sent them an email (a couple of weeks ago) asking [a] what was happening and [b] how many people had complained.
I’ve just received the following:
Dear Sir/ Madam,
Please find attached an update letter on the progress of this case.
We regret that due to the volume of complaints received we are not able to enter into individual correspondence.
Thank you for your patience.
Kind regards,
Jenny A.
Again a proper response (see below) and nice to see. For the ASA to respond like this, regarding “volume of complaints” means there must have been one hell of a lot of disgruntled types like mygoodself; it’s the only time I’ve ever felt angry enough to complain officially about any advert on TV. The attached letter reads thus:
DECC “Bedtime Story” Ad Complainants Please Quote: A09-106458/JA
By E-mail
10 December 2009
Dear Sir/ Madam
YOUR COMPLAINT: ACT ON CO2 TV AND PRESS ADS
You complained to the ASA about the Act On CO2 campaign by the Department of Energy and Climate Change. We are writing to update you as to progress.
As you may know, we have received several hundred complaints about ads in both broadcast and non-broadcast media. We are now investigating seven separate points of complaint in relation to the TV advertising and three in relation to the press advertising. Two of the points of complaint about the TV advertising have been referred simultaneously to Ofcom, who are responsible for deciding whether the TV ads constitute political advertising.
The fact that this case concerns many points of complaint relating to several ads, in different media, and spanning the regulatory responsibilities of both the ASA and Ofcom makes this an unusually complex investigation. We are progressing it as quickly as possible, but we need to look into all aspects thoroughly. We have now received a response from the advertiser (the Department of Energy and Climate Change [DECC]) to the points of complaint made and are in the process of considering that. Ofcom is still considering the complaints concerning political advertising.
We have now received complaints about four press ads [“Three Men in a Tub” (b) “Jack and Jill” (c), “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” (d), and “The Cow Jumped Over the Moon” (e)]. Please find below an updated summary of the points we are investigating:
Many viewers complained about the TV ad (a) because they believed:
1. the ad was political in nature and should not be broadcast;
2. the theme and content of the ad, for example the dog drowning in the storybook and the depiction of the young girl to whom the story was being read, could be distressing for children who saw it;
3. the ad should not have been shown when children were likely to be watching television;
4. the ad was misleading because it presented human induced climate change as a fact, when there was a significant division amongst the scientific community on that point;
5. the claim “over 40% of the CO2 was coming from ordinary everyday things” was misleading;
6. the representation of CO2 as a rising cloud of black smog was misleading;
7. the claims about the possible advent of strange weather and flooding in the UK, and associated imagery in the ads, were exaggerated, distressing and misleading;
8. Many complainants objected to the press ads (b) (c) and (d) on the grounds of (4) and (7) above.
9. One complainant objected to the press ad (e) on the grounds of (5) above
The TV ad (a) will be investigated under CAP (Broadcast) TV Advertising Standards Code rules 4 (Political and controversial issues), 5.1.1, 5.1.2 (Misleading advertising: general), 5.2.1 (Misleading advertising: evidence), 5.2.6 (Misleading advertising: environmental claims), 6.4 (Harm and offence: personal distress), 7.4.6 (Children: distress), 7.4.7 (Children: use of scheduling restrictions) and CAP (Broadcast) TV Scheduling Code rule 4.2.3 (Treatments unsuitable for children).
The press ads (b), (c), (d) and (e) will be investigated under CAP Code clauses 3.1, 3.2 (Substantiation), 7.1 (Truthfulness), 9.1 and 9.2 (Fear and distress), 49.1 and 49.3 (Environmental Claims).
Once we have reached an initial conclusion, we will make a recommendation to the ASA Councils as to whether or not we believe the ads may breach the advertising Codes on one or more points. We will do this as soon as we can, but it is important that we follow our published procedures, and that means we will not be in a position for the Councils to make a final decision on the case until the New Year.
We will write to you again with a copy of our final adjudication and the date it will be published on the ASA website http://www.asa.org.uk. We regret that, due to finite resources, we will not be able to provide another update until then.
We hope you find this information helpful. As before, we ask you to keep confidential all correspondence relating to this case.
Yours sincerely
One of the best and most balanced overviews of the position we have seen.
Now we need to start on the next step. A good start would be a significant overview of the temperature data.
CRU, the Met Office, NASA and NOAA have all been doing this, but Climategate shows us they are colluding with one another and that on an issue as important as this, we cannot depend on them to be totally trustworthy
E.M.Smith (22:15:35) :
To the extent funding can be secured, other volunteers may be recruited, provided they pass an extensive interview process that would assess their ability to tolerate the noxious side effects of the large doses that well may need to be applied for proper evaluation.
We simply must gain a greater understanding of the environmental impacts of the vast quantities of these zymurgy products set loose in the economy and the nitrogen rich metabolites produced hours, or sometimes mere minutes, later. It is up to you. Please, do it for the children.
It would be an honor for me, on behalf of my grandchildren, to volunteer for the odious task of supplying whatever raw materials are necessary to further this splendid endeavor.
Hey – even the old duffers in the Lords understand the many problems.
.
Tenuc
As they say in the other place Hear Hear.
I’ve always voted tory but its UKIP this time.
Vincent, I’m anti-EU and anti-AGW. David Cameron, leader of the Not The Tories, is pro both. Although I’ve voted Conservative all my adult life there is currently no such beast as a Conservative Party. Voting Brown out is not a good enough reason to vote “Cast Iron” Cameron in. If only we had another Margaret Thatcher to take the helm. Seeing Rompuy and his creatures “handbagged” would be a treat.
Since we effectively lost our sovereignty on the first of December and are now ruled from Brussels, I’m not actively seeking the re-election of the party who sold the UK out to Dark Socialist Forces or voting for the wannabes who want us to remain a vassal state and be taxed into the Dark Ages in the name of Gaia. As far as I’m concerned they are treasonous and should be booted through Traitors Gate and locked in the Tower from whence they ought to be taken…
Unfortunately, this isn’t going to happen so I’ll be voting UKIP instead.
tallbloke (08:35:04) :
“The problem with this argument is that it assumes the rest of the climate system stays te same while the thoeretical warming effect of co2 takes place. There is plenty of evidence to show it doesn’t.
No-one knows how the Earth will adjust its temperature through various feedbacks. End of.”
What you write is true tallbloke, that’s why I was careful only to cite empirical evidence: Earth’s radiation balance from satellite data which includes all current feedbacks of whatever sign. Whether my suggestion of one degree warming to come (for doubling early CO2 levels) is right or wrong at least Monckton acknowleges some small amount of future warming based on empirical evidence as indeed do I. I put myself firmly in the sceptical camp but cannot deny the possibility of some slight warming by GHG’s, after all we have about 33 degrees from greenhouse gases (one of which is water) which keeps the Earth comfy.
I find it unusual when Climategate finally reaches the British House of Lords after 4 weeks !
The House of Lords meets in the Palace of Westminster in London , approx. 116 mi (about 2 hours 28 mins) from the University of East Anglia’s Hadley Climate Research Unit , Norwich , UK. One could almost open their windows in London and smell the stench of ClimateGate .
this is why we have the house of lords, as a balance against, politicians, the house of lords is unelected, and they have nothing to gain.. they have their peerage..
Charles. U. Farley (00:54:21) :
Michael (17:36:31) :
AdderW (17:10:36) : Wrote
“My new mantra:
Refuter is the word – I am a refuter
Absolutely.
I join this “bandwagon” as well, I AM A REFUTER.
Re – Lords – Before we get too carried away with our (well some anyway – there was a lords expenses scandal as well wasn’t there) Lord Monckton is so sure of the British “system” he has gone to America….
The real problem remains however, as the “lower” houses of elected representatives, still “represent” the brain washed, and lilly brained masses (sheepeople).
The CRU emails are the turning point, BUT whilst the met office et al continue as “normal”, that is evidence enough that skeptics, the refuters, work is still not done by a long chalk. It now truely starts. So that the sheepeople have some chance of catching up with those brave enough to speak out, like lord Turnbull.
I still have not seen a single mention of the MLO dataset, you remember, a 60 year dataset, with no raw data and no algorithms used. Surely it (and those that “maintain it” were mentioned in the emails.
As it used to be quite a frequently mentioned subject on these pages, it does seem surprising that Anthony and Co. have not been apparently delving into it for, to be honest, some years now. Why. ?
This is surely the time to delve again, and
this is THE other main metric relied upon, not as yet mentioned.
Quite surprising really that the CO2 record has not cropped up………
Maybe I’m being a bit too cynical, but,
Britain – we’ll “handle” temperature,
USA – we’ll “handle” CO2 levels and assumptions.
Europe – we’ll “handle” the beauocracy (hat tip to Willie Soon).
Game, set and match.
Re – Europe – Is anyone else also reminded of The Hitch hikers Guide to the Galaxy…
Specifically the first chapter where Earth complains about not being told it was due to be demolished by a vogan constructor fleet for some sort of space highway.
We were told apparently, the plans were plainly on public display in a basement of an obscure coucil building on Alfa Senturi, in a small cupboard, with a large notice on the door in bold letters stating,
BEWARE OF THE LEOPARD.
Roger Knights (02:55:41) : Yes, see my subsequent post, DennisA (02:53:48) :
Monckton’s paper at the end of November was entertaining but had too much hyperbole for me. Turnbull’s contribution, despite the limited scope was more powerful. I’m genuinely impressed that we have people of this calibre in the Lords.
Ray (15:58:42)
It isn’t such a dichotomy as you might think – there are plenty of people on here and Climate Audit that acknowledge that the globe has grown warmer over the past 150 years or so. The question is what is the cause and what can we do about it.
If it has a natural cause then we should consider whether all these carbon saving measures make economic sense given our longer term need to reduce our energy dependence on oil. If they do then that’s great, let’s do them, but let’s not pretend that they have much to do with reducing the levels of Co2 in the atmosphere.
I particularly liked Turnbull’s analysis of the impact of wind power on the merit order – the order in which different generation sets are called to deliver power to the grid depending on the costs of bringing them up to power, the marginal cost of running them and the costs of swithching them down subsequently. At one time the merit order had an obligation to put together a load curve based on minimum cost. Once you have a renewable target, that obligation has to be forgotten.
CLIMATEGATE
THE LEBENSRAUM FALLACY
The Lebensraum doctrine of Green activists rests on three tenets they accept with an act of faith:
• We are running out of space. World population is already excessive on a limited planet and cannot grow without dire effects.
• We are running out of means. The planet’s non-renewable resources are being depleted by consumption at a rate that renders economic expansion unsustainable.
• We shall fry. Carbon dioxide emitted by human economic activity causes global warming that shall make the planet uninhabitable.
When such tenets are quantified, the contrast between true and false stands out sharply.
Is overpopulation a grave problem? The sum of urban areas of the United States is equivalent to 2% of the area of the country, and to 6% in densely inhabited countries such as England and Holland. And there is plenty of green in urban areas. If comparison is limited to land covered by buildings and pavements the occupied land in the whole world amounts to 0,04% of the terrestrial area of the planet. With 99.96% unoccupied the idea of an overcrowded planet is an exaggeration. Population forecasts are uncertain but the most accepted ones foresee stability of world population to be reached in the 21st century. According to some, world population may begin to decline at the end of this century. With so much elbowroom it is untenable that world population is excessive or shall ever become so.
Strictly speaking, no natural resource is non-renewable in a universe ruled by the Law of Conservation of Mass. In popular form it holds that “Nothing is created, nothing is lost, all is transformed.” Human usage is not subtracted from the mass of the planet, and in theory all material used may be recycled. The possibility of doing so depends on availability and low cost of energy. When fusion energy becomes operative it will be available in practically unlimited quantities. The source is deuterium, a hydrogen isotope found in water, in a proportion of 0.03%. One cubic kilometer of seawater contains more energy than can be obtained from combustion of all known petroleum reserves of the world. Since oceans hold 3 billion cubic kilometers of water, energy will last longer than the human species.
There is no growing shortfall of resources signaled by rising prices. Since the middle of the 19th century The Economist publishes consistent indices of values of commodities and they have all declined, over the period, due to technological advances. The decline has been benign. The cost of feeding a human being was 8 times greater in 1850 than it is today. In 1950, less than half of a world population of 2 billion had an adequate diet, above 2000 calories per day. Today, 80% have the diet, and world population is three times greater.
There is a problem with the alleged global warming. It stopped in 1998, after having risen in the 23 previous years. It unleashed a scare over its effects. Since 1998 it has been followed by 11 years of declining temperatures, in a portent of a cold 21st century. This shows that there are natural forces shaping climate, more powerful than manmade carbon dioxide and anything mankind can do for or against world climate. The natural forces include cyclical oscillation of ocean temperatures, sunspot activity and the effect of magnetic activity of the sun on cosmic rays. All such cycles are foreseeable, but there is no general theory of climate with predictive capacity. What knowledge exists comes from one hundred fields, such as meteorology, oceanography, mathematics, physics, chemistry, astronomy, geology, paleontology, biology, etc. with partial contributions to the understanding of climate.
Devoid of support of solid theory and empirical data, the mathematical models that underpin alarmist forecasts amount to speculative thought that reflects the assumptions fed into the models. Agenda driven computer simulations offer no rational basis for public policy that inhibits economic activity “to save the planet”. And carbon dioxide is not a pollutant; it is the nutrient needed for photosynthesis that supports the food chain of all living beings of the planet. But carbon dioxide became a toxic-by-decree of the Obama administration, with an act that smells of rotten bananas of a comic opera republic.
Stories of doom circulate daily. Anything that happens on earth has been blamed on global warming: a Himalayan earthquake, a volcanic eruption, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, tribal wars in Africa, a dust storm in Australia, recent severe winters in North America, the hurricane season in the Gulf of Mexico, known for five centuries, the collapse of a bridge in Minnesota. Evo Morales blames Americans for the summer floods in Bolivia.
Global warming is not a physical phenomenon; it is a political and journalistic phenomenon that finds parallel in the totalitarian doctrines that inebriated masses deceived by demagogues. As Chris Patten put it: “Green politics at its worst amounts to a sort of Zen fascism; less extreme, it denounces growth and seeks to stop the world so that we can all get off”. In the view of Professor Aaron Wildavsky global warming is the mother of all environmental scares. “Warming (and warming alone), through its primary antidote of withdrawing carbon from production and consumption, is capable of realizing the environmentalist’s dream of an egalitarian society based on rejection of economic growth in favor of a smaller population’s eating lower on the food chain, consuming a lot less, and sharing a much lower level of resources much more equally.” Their dream is the hippies’ lifestyle of idleness, penury, long hair, unshaven face, blue jeans, sandals and vegetarian diet, imposed on the world by decree of Big Brother, and justified by the Lebensraum fallacy.
Vincent said:
“I feel to vote for the UKIP during the general election would be a terrible tactical blunder. These UKIP votes will be coming at the expense of Conservative votes. Are you really prepared to risk Brown winning the election?”
Elections should employ an instant runoff feature (computerized voting makes it easy), whereby votes for losers get reassigned to their preference among the two top vote-getters. (I think there’s something like this in Australia already.)
Vincent is worried that voting UKIP may cause Brown to be re-elected, so he must be assuming Labour are running the country. They’re not – any more than the Tories would be if they won. The EU is running the country, so it will make no difference whether Labour, Conservative or LibDems get in to Westminster. If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep getting what you’ve always got. If you want real change, we all have to vote for a different party that will get our democracy back.
By the way, my favourite question to any of the AGW camp, when they say it is critical we don’t allow average global temperature to rise more than two degress is – “Above what?”
I’m still waiting for an answer.
An interesting development reported on the BBC website just now. Apparently our male-dominated climate scepticism is bred form an early age where men of a certain persuasion were “psychologically damaged”
Utter nonsense from the left leaning BBC once again.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/2009/12/cop15_questions_about_sex.html
My just sent letter to my Democratic Senator:
Dear Senator Merkley,
Well, well, well. I still have the text of the response letter I received from you a while ago regarding my concerns with climate change. Would you like me to send it back to you to refresh your memory?
My position stands as before. I am a registered Democrat. Liberal in my views of my fellow humans, conservative in my own way of life. I have voted the Democratic ticket almost exclusively during my entire adult life. But this climate change business has turned out to be a water shed event for me.
Tell me, what say you now about climate change? Still want to hang your career on it? Because in truth, if you do, your career will surely be hanged by it.
Sincerely,
Your Constituent