Guest posting by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Anthony Watts’ earlier posting about Margaret Thatcher’s sceptical approach to the climate question prompted some comments asking whether I could add anything to the story, since I gave her advice on science as well as other policy from 1982-1986, two years before the IPCC was founded.
First, what on Earth was a layman with a degree in classical languages and architecture doing giving advice on science to the British Prime Minister, who was herself a scientist and a Fellow of the Royal Society?
Truth is, British government is small (though still a lot bigger and more expensive than it need be). The Prime Minister’s policy unit had just six members, and, as a mathematician who was about to make a goodish fortune turning an obscure and hitherto-unnoticed wrinkle in the principles of probabilistic combinatorics into a pair of world best-selling puzzles, I was the only one who knew any science.
So, faute de mieux, it was I who – on the Prime Minister’s behalf – kept a weather eye on the official science advisors to the Government, from the Chief Scientific Advisor downward. On my first day in the job, I tottered into Downing Street dragging with me one of the world’s first portable computers, the 18-lb Osborne 1, with a 5” screen, floppy disks that were still truly floppy, and a Z80 8-bit chip which I had learned to program in machine language as well as BASIC.
This was the first computer they had ever seen in Downing Street. The head of security, a bluff military veteran, was deeply suspicious. “What do you want a computer for?” he asked. “Computing,” I replied.
I worked that weighty little box hard. It did everything: converting opinion-poll percentages to predictions of Parliamentary seats won and lost (we predicted the result of the 1983 General Election to within 1 seat); demonstrating a new type of index-linked home loan that removed the inflationary front-loading of interest payments and made it easier for working people to buy the State-owned houses they lived in (we sold a million, and turned cringing clients of the State into proud homeowners with a valuable stake in Britain); and calculating the optimum hull configuration for warships to prove that a government department had defrauded a lone inventor (he got $1 million in compensation).
The tiny computer back-engineered the Social Security Department’s model that showed the impact of changes in tax and benefit rates on different types of family; discounted Cabinet Ministers’ policies to present value to appraise their viability as investments; and worked out how much extra revenue the Government would get if it cut the top rate of income tax from 60 cents on the dollar to 40 cents.
On that one, I was right and the Treasury were wrong: as I had calculated, the rich ended up paying not only more tax but a higher percentage of total tax, even though the top tax rate they had previously paid was 50% higher than the new rate.
The only expenses I ever claimed for in four years at 10 Downing Street were £172 for soldering dry joints on that overworked computer, on which I also did the first elementary radiative-transfer calculations that indicated climate scientists were right to say some “global warming” would arise as CO2 concentration continued to climb.
I briefed my colleagues in the Policy Unit, and also the Prime Minister herself. My advice was straightforward: CO2 concentrations were rising, we were causing it, and it would cause some warming, but at that time no one knew how much (plus ca change), so we needed to find out.
The Prime Minister’s response was equally hard-headed: we were to keep an eye on the problem and come back to her again when action was necessary.
Did she even mention that “global warming” presented an opportunity to give nuclear power a push and, at the same time, to do down the coal-miners who had destroyed a previous Conservative government and had also tried to destroy hers?
Certainly not, for four compelling reasons.
First, nuclear power was politically dead at that time, following the monumentally stupid attempt by the Soviet operators of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor to shut it down without external power just because they were curious to see what would happen.
Secondly, by then the mineworkers, under their Communist leadership, had long been defeated, and we were making arrangements for the deep, dangerous, loss-making coal-mines that had killed so many brave pitmen to be shut down and replaced with safer, profitable, opencast mines.
Two mineworkers came to my farewell party at 10 Downing Street: the first miners ever to enter Downing Street during a Conservative administration.
Thirdly, Margaret Thatcher was never vindictive: it simply was not in her nature. If any of us ever suggested taking any action that would unfairly disadvantage any of her political opponents, she would give us the Gazillion-Gigawatt Glare and say, very firmly and quietly, “Prime Ministers don’t, dear!”
Fourthly, she had an unusual mind that effortlessly spanned CP Snow’s Two Cultures.
As a former food chemist, she possessed the ruthlessly honest logic of the true scientist. As a former barrister, she had the vigor and articulacy of the true practitioner of the forensic arts. Too many scientists today are in effect politicians: too many politicians pretend to be scientific.
Margaret Thatcher was genuinely both scientist and politician, and was able to take the best from both roles without confusing them. She would not have dreamed of doing anything that in any way undermined the integrity of science.
A little vignette will illustrate her scientific integrity. In the late 1970s, a year before she won the first of her three General Elections and became Britain’s first woman Prime Minister, I had sent her a tiny piece of propaganda that I had designed, the Labour Pound.
The little slip of paper bore this simple message: “This is a Labour Pound. This is how small your banknote would be today if it had been shrunk to match the fall in its value under Labour. Vote Conservative!”
Margaret Thatcher noticed at once that the piece of paper was a little too small. Inflation had been bad under the Labour Government (at the time it was running at 27% a year), but not that bad. “Do it again and get it right and be fair,” she said. Humbled, I did as I was told – and tens of millions of Labour Pounds were distributed throughout Britain at the subsequent General Election, to satisfyingly devastating effect.
In 1988 it was my successor at No. 10, George Guise, who traveled one bitterly cold October weekend down to Chequers, the Prime Minister’s country house, and sat in front of a roaring fire writing the speech that would announce a government subsidy to the Royal Society to establish what would become the Hadley Centre for Forecasting.
George remembers how he and the Prime Minister chuckled at the irony of writing a speech about “global warming” on an evening so cold that he could hardly hold his pen.
But that’s October for you: a couple of years ago the scientific illiterates who now inhabit the House of Commons voted for the Climate Change and National Economic Hara-Kiri Bill by one of the largest majorities in Parliament’s history, with only three gallant MPs having the courage to defy the Whips and vote against – and this on the very night that the first October snow in 74 years fell in Parliament Square.
In due course, the scientific results began to arrive. It became as clear to Margaret Thatcher as it has to me that our original concern was no longer necessary. The warming effect of CO2 is simply too small to make much difference and, in any event, it is orders of magnitude cheaper and more cost-effective to adapt to any consequences of “global warming” than to wreck the economies of the West by trying to demonize CO2 and cut our emissions.
Margaret Thatcher was very conscious that the Left tries to taint every aspect of life by attempting to politicize it.
In her thinking, therefore, there is genuine outrage that the coalescence of financial and political vested-interest factions in the scientific and academic community that are driving the climate scare should be striving to bring the age of enlightenment and reason to an end by treating scientific debate as though every question were a political football to be kicked Leftward.
In the elegant words of my good friend Bob Ferguson of the Science and Public Policy Institute, she is interested not in “policy-based evidence-making” but in “evidence-based policy-making”. The present crop of politicians on both sides of the Atlantic could learn much from her honest, forthright, no-nonsense approach.
Margaret Thatcher: the world’s first climate realist
by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Anthony Watts’ earlier posting about Margaret Thatcher’s sceptical approach to the climate question prompted some comments asking whether I could add anything to the story, since I gave her advice on science as well as other policy from 1982-1986, two years before the IPCC was founded.
First, what on Earth was a layman with a degree in classical languages and architecture doing giving advice on science to the British Prime Minister, who was herself a scientist and a Fellow of the Royal Society?
Truth is, British government is small (though still a lot bigger and more expensive than it need be). The Prime Minister’s policy unit had just six members, and, as a mathematician who was about to make a goodish fortune turning an obscure and hitherto-unnoticed wrinkle in the principles of probabilistic combinatorics into a pair of world best-selling puzzles, I was the only one who knew any science.
So, faute de mieux, it was I who – on the Prime Minister’s behalf – kept a weather eye on the official science advisors to the Government, from the Chief Scientific Advisor downward. On my first day in the job, I tottered into Downing Street dragging with me one of the world’s first portable computers, the 18-lb Osborne 1, with a 5” screen, floppy disks that were still truly floppy, and a Z80 8-bit chip which I had learned to program in machine language as well as BASIC.
This was the first computer they had ever seen in Downing Street. The head of security, a bluff military veteran, was deeply suspicious. “What do you want a computer for?” he asked. “Computing,” I replied.
I worked that weighty little box hard. It did everything: converting opinion-poll percentages to predictions of Parliamentary seats won and lost (we predicted the result of the 1983 General Election to within 1 seat); demonstrating a new type of index-linked home loan that removed the inflationary front-loading of interest payments and made it easier for working people to buy the State-owned houses they lived in (we sold a million, and turned cringing clients of the State into proud homeowners with a valuable stake in Britain); and calculating the optimum hull configuration for warships to prove that a government department had defrauded a lone inventor (he go $1 million in compensation).
The tiny computer back-engineered the Social Security Department’s model that showed the impact of changes in tax and benefit rates on different types of family; discounted Cabinet Ministers’ policies to present value to appraise their viability as investments; and worked out how much extra revenue the Government would get if it cut the top rate of income tax from 60 cents on the dollar to 40 cents.
On that one, I was right and the Treasury were wrong: as I had calculated, the rich ended up paying not only more tax but a higher percentage of total tax, even though the top tax rate they had previously paid was 50% higher than the new rate.
The only expenses I ever claimed for in four years at 10 Downing Street were £172 for soldering dry joints on that overworked computer, on which I also did the first elementary radiative-transfer calculations that indicated climate scientists were right to say some “global warming” would arise as CO2 concentration continued to climb.
I briefed my colleagues in the Policy Unit, and also the Prime Minister herself. My advice was straightforward: CO2 concentrations were rising, we were causing it, and it would cause some warming, but at that time no one knew how much (plus ca change), so we needed to find out.
The Prime Minister’s response was equally hard-headed: we were to keep an eye on the problem and come back to her again when action was necessary.
Did she even mention that “global warming” presented an opportunity to give nuclear power a push and, at the same time, to do down the coal-miners who had destroyed a previous Conservative government and had also tried to destroy hers?
Certainly not, for four compelling reasons.
First, nuclear power was politically dead at that time, following the monumentally stupid attempt by the Soviet operators of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor to shut it down without external power just because they were curious to see what would happen.
Secondly, by then the mineworkers, under their Communist leadership, had long been defeated, and we were making arrangements for the deep, dangerous, loss-making coal-mines that had killed so many brave pitmen to be shut down and replaced with safer, profitable, opencast mines.
Two mineworkers came to my farewell party at 10 Downing Street: the first miners ever to enter Downing Street during a Conservative administration.
Thirdly, Margaret Thatcher was never vindictive: it simply was not in her nature. If any of us ever suggested taking any action that would unfairly disadvantage any of her political opponents, she would give us the Gazillion-Gigawatt Glare and say, very firmly and quietly, “Prime Ministers don’t, dear!”
Fourthly, she had an unusual mind that effortlessly spanned CP Snow’s Two Cultures.
As a former food chemist, she possessed the ruthlessly honest logic of the true scientist. As a former barrister, she had the vigor and articulacy of the true practitioner of the forensic arts. Too many scientists today are in effect politicians: too many politicians pretend to be scientific.
Margaret Thatcher was genuinely both scientist and politician, and was able to take the best from both roles without confusing them. She would not have dreamed of doing anything that in any way undermined the integrity of science.
A little vignette will illustrate her scientific integrity. In the late 1970s, a year before she won the first of her three General Elections and became Britain’s first woman Prime Minister, I had sent her a tiny piece of propaganda that I had designed, the Labour Pound.
The little slip of paper bore this simple message: “This is a Labour Pound. This is how small your banknote would be today if it had been shrunk to match the fall in its value under Labour. Vote Conservative!”
Margaret Thatcher noticed at once that the piece of paper was a little too small. Inflation had been bad under the Labour Government (at the time it was running at 27% a year), but not that bad. “Do it again and get it right and be fair,” she said. Humbled, I did as I was told – and tens of millions of Labour Pounds were distributed throughout Britain at the subsequent General Election, to satisfyingly devastating effect.
In 1988 it was my successor at No. 10, George Guise, who traveled one bitterly cold October weekend down to Chequers, the Prime Minister’s country house, and sat in front of a roaring fire writing the speech that would announce a government subsidy to the Royal Society to establish what would become the Hadley Centre for Forecasting.
George remembers how he and the Prime Minister chuckled at the irony of writing a speech about “global warming” on an evening so cold that he could hardly hold his pen.
But that’s October for you: a couple of years ago the scientific illiterates who now inhabit the House of Commons voted for the Climate Change and National Economic Hara-Kiri Bill by one of the largest majorities in Parliament’s history, with only three gallant MPs having the courage to defy the Whips and vote against – and this on the very night that the first October snow in 74 years fell in Parliament Square.
In due course, the scientific results began to arrive. It became as clear to Margaret Thatcher as it has to me that our original concern was no longer necessary. The warming effect of CO2 is simply too small to make much difference and, in any event, it is orders of magnitude cheaper and more cost-effective to adapt to any consequences of “global warming” than to wreck the economies of the West by trying to demonize CO2 and cut our emissions.
Margaret Thatcher was very conscious that the Left tries to taint every aspect of life by attempting to politicize it.
In her thinking, therefore, there is genuine outrage that the coalescence of financial and political vested-interest factions in the scientific and academic community that are driving the climate scare should be striving to bring the age of enlightenment and reason to an end by treating scientific debate as though every question were a political football to be kicked Leftward.
In the elegant words of my good friend Bob Ferguson of the Science and Public Policy Institute, she is interested not in “policy-based evidence-making” but in “evidence-based policy-making”. The present crop of politicians on both sides of the Atlantic could learn much from her honest, forthright, no-nonsense approach.
Sorry, mods, got the name confused with the title – should be ‘Christopher Monckton, etc’
milanovic,
Here, maybe this will help. “…a simple visual examination of the author’s plot of CO2 and climate vs. time clearly indicates that the three most striking peaks in the atmospheric CO2 record occured either totally or partially within periods of time when earth’s climate was relatively cool.”
CO2 has little effect on temperature, so you can quit worrying. Unless, of course, you have a need to worry about non-problems. Some folks have that need.
I cut my teeth on a WANG workstation at the old VA hospital and created plate sized square floppies (when they really were floppy) of number crunching data. Then we switched to little Mac SE’s with the built in handle and these unbelievably small hard square disks. Still called them floppies though. We also used Hypercard as our go-to data entry screen. Loved that program and the intuitive language used to create all kinds of neat little subroutines. That little computer was kind of a precursor to the tough notebooks. If you dropped it, no problem. Still worked. I bought a statistical program to crunch numbers on that little machine. Spent many wonderful days using Statview SE on collected data at the research facility in Portland, Oregon.
I have never gotten an intelligent answer to this. We’re all familiar with the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy, but this one is “pre hoc, ergo propter hoc!”
The ironic truth of this statement is important to understand from all perspectives.
Derek B says: … near total demolition of Monckton’s credibility … by John Abraham.
Well, I took 10 minutes to go through that.
– “who is funding Soon?” Stupid question but in most examples given, it’s NASA together with others, Abraham doesn’t like. But NASA got a recommendation on slide 114.
Btw. CRU was funded by BP(!) and Shell. So BigOil provides Global Warming data?
Gimme a break, sir.
– Sea level rise.One of the researchers admits that rising has stopped, as Monckton said, but adds this may not be the case for ever. Fine. Nobody had said this.
My conclusion: Abraham’s not worth reading. Must be nice in the ivory tower.
Robert says 80% of people don’t think gravity is true. I’m not sure about that but physics says the reason we “fall” to earth after we jump is not gravity but space-time being distorted.
James Sexton says:
“They aren’t the words of a scientist, because he wasn’t responding to one.”
Even if one chooses to ignore Abraham’s scientific credentials (which you apparently are) I fail to see how a response like Monckton’s is at all justified even if the person he was responding to wasn’t actually a scientist. Instead of writing this lengthy response to your post, should I instead be talking about how ugly you are? I’m really shocked that you find Monckton justified in tossing all those insults Abraham’s way.
“I just listened to Abraham’s blather. In the first two minutes he moaned about polar bears and the threat to them. (I guess he didn’t bother to read about how they are growing in population.) ”
Is there anything to read? I’ve only seen links to the contrary posted in this thread so far. Also seems as if Monckton hasn’t read these mystery papers either since he doesn’t address Abraham’s polar bear moaning at all in his response.
“He appealed to authority. (Because Christopher holds no scientific degree he obviously is incapable of clear thinking.) And quoted debunked studies.(I guess he didn’t bother to read the critiques, probably because the critics don’t hold a climatologist degree and therefore incapable of independent thought.)”
Actually, Abraham says “You can be knowledgeable about areas outside of your formal areas of expertise. But, never the less, we want to think about the backgrounds people have when we ascribe credibility to the comments that they make. Particularly for Chris Monckton. If you listen to his talk you’ll find he disagrees with every major science organization. Many have official positions on climate change.So what is it the he knows that everyone else doesn’t know? What is it about his background which has allowed him to see something that these other scientists haven’t seen?” Seems pretty even handed to me. I think we’d all like to know just what Monckton knows that everyone else doesn’t…
“Cal, have you ever programed in machine language? Me either. ”
Other than his unsupported statements above, I don’t see any proof that Monckton has either. In any case, what is the relevance of having programmed in machine language?
“You ever reverse engineer a com protocol? I did.”
Nope. So what?
“Do you know what engineering degree I hold? None. So, does that mean I can’t hold my own and rise above, intellectually, engineers?”
Nope. I don’t know of anyone mentioned in this thread, including Abraham, who has said this.
“Abraham’s lack of knowledge regarding the polar bear is unforgivable, given he takes Monckton to task over the issue.”
See above.
“His appeal to authority shows his lack of ability to argue the issues intellectually on his own. I hope they disseminate that power point presentation all over the world. It shows, not just Abraham’s want of capability, but the one’s that disseminate it also.”
I really don’t see how you could look at Abraham’s presentation and then at Monckton’s response and argue that Abraham was the one who has shown the inability to argue issues intellectually.
“BTW, did you notice how later he rationalized the disappearance of the MWP? And, did you buy into it?”
No. I actually do think the MWP disappearance is a less straightforward issue than Abraham presented, but I did buy into the slides where he showed how Monckton was misrepresenting the conclusions of some of the 700 MWP scientists.
“Those who can, do, those who can’t teach.
Just because someone had the money (and lack of drive) to sit and listen to people that “can’t”, for an extended period of time, doesn’t make them “scientists”, it makes them leaches on society.
Now, if they came up with something useful, they could call themselves decedents of Newton or some other person of value.”
I don’t understand what you’re trying to say here. Is this supposed to be a criticism of Abraham somehow?
@RockyRoad
For sunstantive read substantive, thanks for noting the typo. Thought you might have worked it out for yourself. Dyslexics rule KO.
I don’t find your point particularly convincing. CO2 lagging temp in the temporal record is well-known up to the present.
Cover of Popular Science Magazine
March, 1983
Pictured along with the Osbourne and Kaypro is one my first designs. The “luggable” at the bottom left in the cover photo was designed by yours truly, my boss and VP of engineering, plus one good mechanical design guy. It was my very first job as a design engineer. Me and my boss from back then still work together today. I did mostly software and he did hardware which is still true today although we can both crossover quite well. I have less patience than he does so the instant gratification nature of software development appeals to me more.
Sorry Derreck B, but every single study cited by Abraham in his attempt to refute Monkton has been refuted. Monkton has the real data on his side, whereas Abraham has the trumped up data on his side (which has since been refuted by the real data)
Nice try though.
Friends:
There has been some debate here concerning the veracity of the above article by Lord Monckton. I think I should add my bit.
Firstly, I consider Christopher Monckton to be a man of great integrity and I count it a privilege that I know him (see http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=2938 ).
Secondly, his and my politics are very different: he is a right wing Tory and I am a left wing socialist.
Thirdly, his and my accounts of Mrs Thatcher’s involvement in the start of the global warming scare seem to be very different. But I write to say that together they provide a coherent whole which explains the quotations from Mrs Thatcher that several have posted above in attempts to discredit Lord Monckton’s account. I now write to explain the coherence of his and my accounts.
My account derives from 1981 (i.e. before the global warming scare existed) and an extract with updates was published on the web in the late 1990s. The updated extract can be seen at
http://www.john-daly.com/history.htm
The origin of my account is as follows.
In 1980 the British Association of Colliery Management (BACM) commissioned me to investigate if there were potential environmental scares that would be as damaging to the coal industry as the ‘acid rain’ scare that was then raging. I interviewed as wide a range of interested parties as I could to determine
(a) potential ‘environmental’ scares
and
(b) factors likely to influence development of the potential scares.
I collated my findings as influence diagrams that would indicate if there were sufficient reason for any of the identified potential scares to develop into a problem.
I presented my report of my findings to BACM in 1981. That report identified several potential scares and it concluded that two of them could become significant problems; these two were ‘micro dust’ and ‘global warming’. Importantly, it concluded that ‘global warming’ was likely to grow to displace all other environmental issues whether or not ‘global warming’ obtained any supporting scientific evidence.
BACM had not heard of ‘global warming’ before receipt of my report, and they rejected my report because they consider its conclusion about ‘global warming’ to be “extreme” and “fanciful”. Since then global warming has displaced all other environmental issues but has failed to obtain any supporting scientific evidence.
In the late 1990s the late John Daly asked me to update the part of my 1981 report for BACM that concerned ‘global warming’, and he posted that as the article on his website at
http://www.john-daly.com/history.htm
Consideration of the influence diagrams in that article shows my reasons for the surprising conclusions presented in my 1981 paper. As the article says;
“Many positive feedback loops exist in the system and the major ones are shown in Figure 2. The system amplifier is the politicians’ support of global warming. The issue is assisted by gaining political approval each time it passes around a loop shown in Figure 2.”
So, from its start the global warming issue was political and not scientific. Indeed, remove all mention of science from Figure 2 and the feedback loops that generated the scare would remain.
And the political initiation was from Mrs Thatcher. As the article explains:
“Mrs Thatcher is now often considered to have been a great UK politician: she gave her political party (the Conservative Party) victory in three General Elections, resided over the UK’s conduct of the Falklands War, replaced much of the UK’s Welfare State with monetarist economics, and privatised most of the UK’s nationalised industries. But she had yet to gain that reputation when she came to power in 1979. Then, she was the first female leader of a major western state, and she desired to be taken seriously by political leaders of other major countries. This desire seemed difficult to achieve because her only experience in government had been as Education Secretary (i.e. a Junior Minister) in the Heath administration that collapsed in 1974. She had achieved nothing notable as Education Secretary but was remembered by the UK public for having removed the distribution of milk to schoolchildren (she was popularly known as ‘Milk Snatcher Thatcher’.)
Sir Crispin Tickell, UK Ambassador to the UN, suggested a solution to the problem. He pointed out that almost all international statesmen are scientifically illiterate, so a scientifically literate politician could win any summit debate on a matter which seemed to depend on scientific understandings. And Mrs Thatcher had a BSc degree in chemistry. (This is probably the most important fact in the entire global warming issue; i.e. Mrs Thatcher had a BSc degree in chemistry). Sir Crispin pointed out that if a ‘scientific’ issue were to gain international significance, then the UK’s Prime Minister could easily take a prominent role, and this could provide credibility for her views on other world affairs. He suggested that Mrs Thatcher should campaign about global warming at each summit meeting. She did, and the tactic worked. Mrs Thatcher rapidly gained the desired international respect and the UK became the prime promoter of the global warming issue. The influences that enabled this are described in Figure 1 and the following paragraphs.”
And an update from my 1981 report in the article says;
“Mrs Thatcher had to be seen to spend money at home if her international campaign was to be credible.
So, early in her global warming campaign – and at her personal instigation – the UK’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research was established, and the science and engineering research councils were encouraged to place priority in funding climate-related research. This cost nothing because the UK’s total research budget was not increased; indeed, it fell because of cuts elsewhere. But the Hadley Centre sustained its importance and is now the operating agency for the IPCC’s scientific working group (Working Group 1).”
So, on face value, my explanation disagrees with the above account from Lord Monckton. However, in reality the two accounts agree.
My account explains the personal political motivation that Mrs Thatcher had to present ‘global warming’ as a potential problem. It explains the reason for the statements she made that are quoted above by persons who dispute the account from Lord Monckton, and it explains why she founded the Hadley Centre. Simply, she was seeking to establish a ‘scientific’ issue as a major international issue because her science degree would then provide her with credibility as a leader on the international political stage.
And, as my account says, “the tactic worked. Mrs Thatcher rapidly gained the desired international respect and the UK became the prime promoter of the global warming issue”. So, ‘global warming’ soon fulfilled its usefulness.
There are many potential problems at all times. Some become real and others don’t. ‘Global warming’ was never likely to become a serious scientific problem. As Lord Monckton says in his above article:
“In due course, the scientific results began to arrive. It became as clear to Margaret Thatcher as it has to me that our original concern was no longer necessary. The warming effect of CO2 is simply too small to make much difference and, in any event, it is orders of magnitude cheaper and more cost-effective to adapt to any consequences of “global warming” than to wreck the economies of the West by trying to demonize CO2 and cut our emissions.”
The issue had served its political purpose, and the “scientific results” indicated it was not a real scientific problem. So, Mrs Thatcher dropped it (as Lord Monckton says in his above article).
Nobody – not Mrs Thatcher and not anybody else – could have foreseen that the political issue of global warming would take on a life of its own. As my article says of the origins of ‘global warming’ in the UK;
“The system amplifier is the politicians’ support of global warming. The issue is assisted by gaining political approval each time it passes around a loop shown in Figure 2”
It could have been expected that the political issue of ‘global warming’ would fade away when the political pressure ended in the UK. But by then the issue had become an international issue of such power that it continued. Politicians often make use of issues that are available, and – as my article explains – successive UK governments adopted ‘global warming’ for their own purposes.
Richard
Pete of Perth wrote:
Ah yes. I remember wasting countless hours playing “Star Trek”.
Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be 😉
Anyway, we’ve now drifted waaaaaay OT – apologies.
@Dave Springer says:
I want to hear more about the GREAT CHAIN SAW SHARPENING DEBATE, or is the debate over?
“milanovic says:
[…]
Yes, it lagged during the ice-ages, I know, but this does not mean that it should lag now. Which part of positive feedback don’t you understand?”
What evidence do you have for the positive feedbacks posited by the IPCC? Do GCM’s assuming these feedbacks model cloud cover correctly, or do they model troposphaeric temperatures correctly? And if they do, do they fail to model it correctly when we remove the assumption of these feedbacks?
“Should I try to explain this? At the end of an ice age temperature start increasing. This causes CO2 release from the oceans, which starts a positive feedback that enhances temperature increase. So back then, temperature increase was first, CO2 increase enhanced temperature increase. Nowadays, CO2 increases by human emissions, which could again start such a positive feedback. That temperature was first during the ice ages doesn’t imply that the other way around is not possible. This has nothing to do with a “magical invisible future forcing”, which is just rediculous.
So instead of calling All Gore and his science advisors liars, it would be advisable to first inform yourself.”
You had better inform yourself first. CO2 doesn’t start INCREASING until about 800 years AFTER it starts warming up coming out of an ice age, by which time the vast majority of the warming HAS BEEN COMPLETED ALREADY. It is truly sad when the badly misinformed tell other’s they need to “first inform themselves”.
CO2 does NOT cause a positive feedback. If it did, we would never have ice ages in the first place, the planet would currently be an oven with a CO2 concentration of at least 5% rather than 0.04%.
Cal Barndorfer,
Apparently you have never read any of the sCRU-TAPE letters by Phil Jones, Kevin Trenberth, Michael Mann, etc. They don’t talk like scientists at all. They ROUTINELY insult and belittle anyone who disagrees with them, and even appear happy when a prominent skeptical scientist DIES.
Their behavior is FAR MORE APPALING then anything Christopher Monkton has ever said. Sorry.
Cal Barndorfer,
You are a dandy troll, and sure, Monkton should probably be a tad more polite, even though his foes are among the most unprofessional and impolite people claiming to be scientists on the face of the planet. Whatever.
However, the fact remains that none of the things Abraham said are actually factually correct. He is using information for every single point that he makes which has since been refuted.
milanovic says:
June 17, 2010 at 6:53 am
@RockyRoad “Interestingly, CO2 lags an average of about 800 years behind the temperature changes”
I know, but not in the last century, does it?
“And to prove the point, the decrease in CO2 lagged a drop in temperature while going into a glacial epoch AND CO2 lagged a temperature increase while going into an interglacial.”
Yes, it lagged during the ice-ages, I know, but this does not mean that it should lag now. Which part of positive feedback don’t you understand?
——————Reply:
So is CO2 your favorite GHG? Let’s compare it to water:
H2O is a much better GHG than CO2 and occurs at around 10,000 ppm, whereas the latter is only ~390 ppm while being a much weaker spectral absorber.
H2O is a solid, liquid, and gas, whereas CO2 is only a gas; never a solid and never a liquid (ambient conditions).
In nature, H2O sublimates, evaporates, condenses, and solidifies; CO2–none of those.
H2O collects on land, sometimes miles thick, depressing continents and lowering sealevel and rearranging oceanic currents while changing continental expanse. CO2 does not.
H2O as a solid floats on water; as a solid or liquit it falls from the sky, suspends in the air and shades the earth. It’s formation as a precipitate is also influenced by cosmic rays from distant parts of the galaxy; but CO2 does none of these.
H2O collects the acids and dust from the air, along with a significant amount of CO2. Obviously CO2 is subservient to H2O.
H2O fuels storms, splits rocks, moves mountains, deposits sediments, and destroys continents. It infiltrates mid-oceanic ridge systems, greases subduction zones, and appears as the major gas component in island-arc volcanoes. I even hear it has something to do with climate, but is considered “difficult” so most scientists ignore it.
Still, what a marvelous compound H2O is! Don’t get me wrong–I like CO2, for without it my garden wouldn’t grow and soda drinks would be flat, but H2O completely dwarfs it.
Water will even float your boat and wash your body, but CO2 fails in those and so many other ways.
So keep on your CO2 kick if you wish–it is easy to model, scapegoat, control and tax. Water, on the other hand, is none of those. However, I much prefer water, especially as the dominant GHG.
Julian Flood ,
I’ll take it that you agree that increasing GHGs ( methane or H20 or C02 or you name it) will increase the temperature of the planet. Increasing them will not cool the planet. Increasing them will not result in exactly the same temperature. Increasing them will warm the planet. You might argue that the amount is small. You might argue that it is moderate. You might argue that it will be dramatic. But, you wouldn’t argue that the planet would cool. Or rather, there is no physics based theory that would PREDICT cooling and provide a mechanism that explained why increasing GHGs would cool the planet.
@PeterB in Indianapolis
I read the CRU emails. The difference is Jones, et al. were writing emails they thought would remain private, not publicly rebutting a critic. And, though you attempt to excuse Monckton’s behavior by claiming his foes are unprofessional and impolite, Abraham’s critique was none of those things.
Also, I never take anonymous internet commentators at their word (does anyone?), so if you aim to convince me that Abraham has used some refuted sources I need more information than just your word.
“”” RockyRoad says:
June 17, 2010 at 12:14 pm
milanovic says:
June 17, 2010 at 6:53 am
@RockyRoad “Interestingly, CO2 lags an average of about 800 years behind the temperature changes”
I know, but not in the last century, does it? “””
So what am I missing ? why would I be looking in the last century for something that predates today’s rising CO2 levels by 800 years. Wouldn’t it make more sense to be looking say 800 years ago, as in around 1200 AD; you know that period where the Mediaeval Warming took place; that 800 year delay.
Why are people looking for day to day correlations between CO2 and Temperatures; when the only data we have that seems to show such correleations is the ice core data from 600,000 years ago that clearly demonstrates about an 800 year lag between CO2 changes; and the 800 year earlier Temperature changes it causes.
And as for CO2 and other GHG causing warming; and NOT causing cooling, and not causing nothing; well that may indeed be true; but then no other GHG is like water vapor; in that we also get H2O in the form of clouds, both solid and liquid (waterwise).
And there is nothing in the CO2 literature to describer what clouds of CO2 would do; since we don’t get CO2 clouds; only H2O clouds; and then ALL bets are off as to what GHGs do;because the clouds simply negate anything that the GHGs do; including the H2O GHG itself.
IT’S THE WATER !!
Lord Monckton, you are among the true elite – namely, those who are aware there is such at thing as a “Z-80” CPU. 🙂
Steven Mosher says: June 17, 2010 at 12:23 pm
“I’ll take it that you agree that increasing GHGs ( methane or H20 or C02 or you name it) will increase the temperature of the planet”
If it is cooling, point to Mars, so high a concentration of CO2 that it has all condensed and has frozen to the poles causing a runaway ice house affect. Too much CO2 is what froze Mars.
If it is warming, point to Venus, so high a concentration of CO2 that it all remained in the atmosphere and has caused a run away greenhouse affect. Too much CO2 is what baked Venus.
The fact that the two are at two different distances from the Sun is to be ignored, as it the original planets composition and density, as is the relative atmosphere holding potential of the planets gravity, etc.
Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that this topic has attracted an unusual number of fanatical posters?
Anthony, maybe you should see if you can find someone who knew The Gipper… or maybe even Dubya… it would be fascinating to see the comments.
SteveSadlov, I installed a Z80 based device just last week. And they’re all a lot faster than they were when I sold TRS-80s back in… 1980.