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.
Steven Mosher said : June 17, 2010 at 12:23 pm
.
quote 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. unquote
.
On that last point I’m not sure. It may well be that, if the sea/atmosphere/land system is actually homeostatic, that adding energy (or, more accurately preventing energy from leaving the system) may not warm it. If you would like an analogy then think of it like a man under a duvet with just his leg sticking out. Double the tog rating of the duvet and he will cool himself via the leg until his cooling system is overwhelmed and he begins to run a fever.
.
My idea about our influence on the climate is that we could be, so to speak, putting a stocking on the leg.
.
quote 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.unquote
.
Interesting. Essenhigh predicted that an open Arctic Ocean would cause a great increase in snowfall over the land. Higher albedo, marked cooling, at least until the snow melts. Warming in that case could lead to cooling, at least to this limited extent. Whether it would runaway to a colder attractor is another matter and I do not know the answer to that.
.
However, let me ask the question you are trying to put. Do I deny the physics of GHG warming?
No.
And now a question for me. Do I speculate about whether GHG warming is less important compared to other alterations we are making to the linked system which controls the overall temperature of the Earth?
Yes.
.
No physics was harmed in the making of this post.
.
JF
My guess at climate sensitivity, as formulated …err… formally, is about .6 deg C, but I see no way to confirm that without waiting, as the other things we are doing make it difficult to tease out the different effects. Incidentally, if BP wants to win from the Gulf situation it should crash -fund the VOCALS team to study the atmosphere above the Gulf. If the Kriegesmarine Effect is real they will come out smelling of roses. If not, then it was worth a try. They won’t notice a couple of million. Bags I go as an observer — I’ll carry the bags. Sweep up. Cook….
Tallbloke said
“And yet most of the climate-sceptical commenters here are willing to overlook that because the woman who wrecked Britain…”
Come off it tallbloke. I can only assume that you are much younger than I am if you don’t remember the complete and utter mess that Thatcher inherited from Labour (not helped by Ted Heath) who have a knack of ruining economies they are left in charge of for more than 2 years. We had rampant inflation, were spending money we didn’t have, bankrupt and inefficient industries, hide bound ways of working and over mighty unions. If you recall, this all led to a stagnant or declining economy and serious loss of self esteem as a country as we feared we were being left behind and marginalised.
This isn’t the proper place for a political discussion but Thatcher brought us back from the brink, just as the current Tory/Lib administration will have to do.
Tonyb
Monckton of Brenchley says:
June 17, 2010 at 4:08 pm
“Several people have made comments suggesting that a full refutation of Abraham’s attempt to rebut a talk by me about the climate would be desirable.”
Abrahams rebuttal did in my view have a number of errors, but as it is being cited so widely it would be good to see a proper analysis of what he said. I listened to his talk and whilst I found it dull and a little confusing (I think you need to be there and in front of the slides as he explains it) I found him courteous and reasonable in his manner.
It didn’t help your case (nor ours) in the way you subsequently attacked him and it is good to hear that you have apologised-unfortunately that has not been carried as widely as your original comments.
As I have said before earlier in this thread I wish that Big wind would sponsor me to carry out a slide by slide critique of Abrahams work as a number of flaws were evident. Hopefully you will be able to put forward some substantive rebuttals yourself, so I for one wait for the publication of your detailed responses with great interest.
Tonyb
Well, where to start,
@Smokey Thanks for the article, what you fail to mention is that the writer states
“Superficially, this observation would seem to imply that pCO2 does not exert dominant control on Earth’s climate at time scales greater than about 10 My. A wealth of evidence, however, suggests that pCO2 exerts at least some control [see Crowley and Berner (30) for a recent review]. Fig. 4 cannot by itself refute this
assumption.
I’ll explain: At shorter time-scales (<10M) CO2 does partly control climate (not on its own of course) and on longer time-scales this article cannot disprove it (open question maybe)
As about all the comments of H2O: of course H2O is an important greenhouse-gas and given the concentrations, stronger than CO2. But H2O is in equilibrium with temperature and therefore very quickly (much more quickly than Co2) follows temperature. Again, a positive feedback.
What I find disappointing in this discussion that I get to answer loads of questions and criticism, but when I ask a single question back, I only get more questions, so I would still like an answer
Smokey: you didn't answer my question why you showed a graph of CO2 difference and temperature to claim there is correlation. You do realize that
this doesn't make any sense, because linear trends are removed and in this way you get correlations between linear increasing and stationary data sets.
And for thos who claim that in current times CO2 lags temperature, please answer my earlier questions:
how do you explain that with:
1) The precise correlation between CO2 emmissions and CO2 increase
2) the evidence from CO2 isotopes?
tonyb says:
June 18, 2010 at 12:03 am
This isn’t the proper place for a political discussion but Thatcher brought us back from the brink
By pushing quite a few million people over it. Are you from the south of England Tony?
Anyway, as you say, this isn’t the place for a political discussion, so let’s concentrate on the climate scare she started, both as a booster to her international status as a leader with a science degree, and as a handy stick to beat the mining union with, and that she continued to run with for years after the facts were in.
An earlier commenter said she had “Gigatons of integrity”.
What a hoot.
Oh heck for guys who like ice ice baby
Scientist links increase in greenhouse gases to changes in ocean currents
Findings released during the annual Goldschmidt Conference at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville
KNOXVILLE — By examining 800,000-year-old polar ice, scientists increasingly are learning how the climate has changed since the last ice melt and that carbon dioxide has become more abundant in the Earth’s atmosphere.
For two decades, French scientist Jérôme Chappellaz has been examining ice cores collected from deep inside the polar ice caps of Greenland and Antarctica. His studies on the interconnecting air spaces of old snow — or firn air — in the ice cores show that the roughly 40 percent increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere since the Earth’s last deglaciation can be attributed in large part to changes in the circulation and biological activity of the oceanic waters surrounding Antarctica.
Chappellaz presented his findings today in Knoxville, Tenn. during the Goldschmidt Conference, an international gathering of several thousand geochemists who converge annually to share their research on Earth, energy and the environment. The event, hosted by the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is taking place June 13-18.
By measuring the carbon isotopes in the firn air, scientists can pinpoint the source of atmospheric carbon during the millennia. Because living organisms at the surface of the oceans tend to take up the lighter of the carbon isotopes, 13C, and this isotope is then released when the organisms decay, scientists know the higher concentration of 13C is originating from the oceans.
Normally, the organisms die, sink to the ocean depths, and decompose, releasing carbon that remains stored in the cold, deep waters for centuries. But a growing concentration of the isotope 13C in the air during the last deglaciation indicates that this “old” carbon from decomposition was released from the southern polar waters, where the Antarctic Circumpolar Current transports more water than any other current in the world. Here, oceanic circulation is increasing in intensity and the deep water is releasing carbon dioxide at the surface.
For two decades, Chappellaz has examined polar ice cores to decipher how the primary greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide — have changed in concentrations and ratios since ancient times and what has caused those changes. He notably showed for the first time the tight link existing between atmospheric methane and global climate at glacial-interglacial time scales. Chappellaz is research director at the Laboratoire de Glaciologie et Geophysique de Environnement in Grenoble, France.
###
The Goldschmidt Conference is named for Victor Goldschmidt (1888-1947), the Swiss-Norwegian scientist who is considered the father of geochemistry. This year’s conference is sponsored by a number of international geochemical societies.
Julian,
That’s good to hear. I remain amazed at the people who spout the scientific method yet dont use it. So It’s good to hear that no physics was harmed in your post. personally, I’ve always been intriqued by your theory about the ocean surface. would be nice to have data to back it up.
Most of the people who try to deny the effects of GHGs dont realize that they do not have to deny that tested physics. They can, like lindzen, christy,monkton,and spenser actually believe that C02 will warm the planet ( what first order estimates show), and remain skeptical about large impacts. The persistent refusal to even understand the first order physics, while waving their arms about unproven or even unformulated physics, is puzzling. I have many conversations where I explain that they do not have to put themselves in the situation of looking silly to engineers who use this physics, but they persist. It’s most fascinating.
Steven Mosher says:
June 18, 2010 at 12:43 am
He notably showed for the first time the tight link existing between atmospheric methane and global climate at glacial-interglacial time scales.
One thing I’ve learned from the way these press releases are written is that “tight link” always means, “temperature first, followed by the change in gas concentration”.
Martin:
Mr Mosher
“What you are talking about is theory and that is not necessarily what happens in the real world. You assume theory as fact when it’s a hypothesis that isn’t confirmed by reality. The real physics is that there is a finite limit to how much warming increasing CO2 can cause and that negative feedbacks are far more likely than positive feedbacks. ”
Actually I am talking about the physics that describes how radiation propagates. Now this physics describes how ALL radiation propagates, be it Xband or visible light or longwave. This physics describes how various molecules in the atmopshere react to radiation, absorbing, reflecting, scattering.. When we design a secure communications piece of equipment, for example, we need to know how that radiation will travel ( or not) through the amosphere. When we design a cell phone tower, or radar or satillite platform, or Nightvision goggles or Ir sensors or wifi or wimax. the propagation of radition through the atmosphere is an important design constraint. If we disreguarded this physics or were skeptical about it or if it was wrong, then the things you use everyday would not work.
Second: the ” real physics” is that there is a limit to the effect of C02. yes I know.
That’s in the equations of RTE. Your point about feedbacks? Sorry, feedbacks are not a part of RTE. feedbacks are not derived physics. They can be estimated if you believe in climate models or estimated from observation, but they are not derived.
frankly I’m agnostic about feedbacks
“Assuming that the small warming over the last 150 years is real (arguable) and caused only by CO2 then the actual forcing of CO2 is far less than the hypothesis would show. I believe that historically the concept of 1-2 degrees NH warming should be welcomed.”
Is it colder now than in 1850? I havent seen any evidence that it is. none. zip.
was it warmer in the MWP ( trick question, be careful)
Steven Mosher says:
June 18, 2010 at 1:13 am
was it warmer in the MWP ( trick question, be careful)
The Paleo evidence from around the world seems to indicate it was, yes.
Talkl Bloke
Are you from a mining community?
We were in a mess. Very Harsh remedies were applied, but one was needed before the patient expired.
Look forward to seeing Moncktons letters and hope for further illumination on the political side of the AGW debate.
tonyb
Eric Paisley says:
June 16, 2010 at 7:26 pm
Monckton is a right wing fantasist. Margaret Thatcher was a relatively rare creature in nature, the female psychopath, and there are millions of people waiting to dance on her grave.
She is also absolutely reponsible for the politicisation of the global warming scam.
——————————————————————————–
Everything I remember about it sis consistent with this – and I remember the coal union weekly visits to the Kremlin. I don’t forget a lot. I won’t forget this misrepresentation posted by Mr. Monckton.
tonyb says:
June 18, 2010 at 1:33 am
Talkl Bloke
Are you from a mining community?
We were in a mess. Very Harsh remedies were applied, but one was needed before the patient expired.
No but I was donating some of my wage to the miners on a weekly basis during the strike. (This should give you some idea of how much younger than you I am).
Very harsh remedies were applied, but not to the fat cats or self-servatives.
The UK deep mining industry was the safest, best regulated mining operation in the world. It had a much better safety record than the building trade for example. It didn’t create anything like the airbourne pollution open cast mines create.
Was it the safest because the management was enlightened and wanted to spend extra cash to make sutre no-one got hurt?
No, it was the safest becase the miners had a strong union which forced the management to look after the health and safety of the miners. Oil rig workers take note.
Thatcher wanted to destroy all unions on ideological principle, and took a swipe at the miners because they were the strongest union.
Dogma, spite and vindictiveness. And we’ll soon be paying the price in brown outs and blackouts.
Steven Mosher said: June 18, 2010 at 12:55 am
quote I’ve always been intrigued by your theory about the ocean surface. would be nice to have data to back it up. unquote
I don’t have time to write the paper: here are some notes. I can do isotopes if needed, but that really is hand-waving.
The impact of organic material on cloud and fog processes W D Garrett 1978 (photographic investigation of the projection of droplets by bubbles bursting at a water surface.(4b shows droplets joining back up.))
Laboratory-generated primary marine aerosol via bubble-bursting and atomization. E. Fuentes1, H. Coe1, D. Green2, G. de Leeuw3,4,5, and G. McFiggans1 …
“Hygroscopic growth of particles generated from artificial
seawater occurred at lower relative humidities than that of
NaCl, but similar growth to the pure salt was obtained above
75% RH. No observable differences were found between the
behaviour of the aerosol generated from artificial seawater
by the different techniques. Hygroscopic growth was suppressed
with respect to the organics-free artificial seawater
experiments when the aerosol was generated from filtered
seawater enriched with biogenic surfactants, although the extent
of this reduction was dependent on the aerosol generation
technique applied.”
I’d love to see a popular account of this work and its implications in WUWT. I’ve puzzled over it a few times: does it say that aerosols generated from clean seawater (organics free) are less reluctant to attract water vapour and form droplets? If so, then here is the AGW smoking gun. And if so, how come these people are not being funded until their pockets groan with gold? Maybe I’ve just misread their conclusions.
I wish you luck with
J. Vanhanen, A.-P. Hyvärinen, T. Anttila, Y. Viisanen, and H. Lihavainen,
who have lots of papers about droplets.
Also,
http://www.su.se/english/research/researcher-profiles/2.446/possible-link-between-microorganisms-and-clouds-sparks-international-debate-1.1108
highlights the role of surfactants in droplet formation and behaviour — polluted droplets join together more easily and turn into rain. Which, of course, means the clouds fall out of the sky. Fewer clouds, more sun. Tide, I might add, the first of the synthetic surfactants which are resistant to biological breakdown, appeared during WWII.
In one of the CRU emails, Tom Wigley asks about the 1940s temperature blip, while discussing ways of making it go away. ‘It would be good to remove at least part of the 1940s blip, but we are still left with “why the blip”‘. No, Professor, you don’t explain data by adjusting it. That is poor science. You explain it by thinking about it. And, incidentally, if Folland and Parker had been a little more thoughtful they would never have gone for their bucket correction to smooth away the blip — there”s a wind ‘blip’ to match the temperature excursion and even the most vigorous hand-waving won’t explain that by changing a bucket.
We put enough oil onto the ocean surface in a fortnight to cover it completely. See
http://seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov/OCEAN_PLANET/HTML/peril_oil_pollution.html
which is out of date and probably understates the problem. Add surfactant pollution to that.
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/oilslick.html
shows how much a little oil spreads and what it does to ocean albedo, as do the MODIS pictures of the current brouhaha in the Gulf. I, with a prejudiced eye, can see the slick eating low-level clouds just downwind from it, but my eye is prejudiced. I’d like to see some decent image analysis done on the low level cloud formations during the crisis and, of course, aerosol collection.
And, to round off,
http://royalsociety.org/Benjamin-Franklin-in-London/
“Travel brought out the scientist in Franklin. On transatlantic voyages, he pondered the action of the Gulf Stream and proposed the idea of watertight compartments for ships. Overland, he investigated the way in which oil could be used to calm water surfaces. He first performed this experiment on Clapham Pond in the summer of 1771, and subsequently carried with him a cane containing a small oil holder to repeat his “conjuring trick” on his travels. In the idyllic setting of Derwentwater in the Lake District, the experiment was performed in 1772 by the memorable gathering of Benjamin Franklin, John Pringle and the chemist William Brownrigg.”
Wouldn’t it be nice if the Royal Society, which has been shamefully bad in its conduct wrt this subject, has had the clue staring it in the face?
I must go — grass-cutting and weed spraying call. One cannot spend all one’s time saving the planet.
JF
Steven Mosher
Re the MWP. Why was that a trick question? I’m just writing a major article on that and the LIA so I need to know 🙂
tonyb
Tallbloke
We will beg to differ over Mrs Thatcher. You also said;
“And we’ll soon be paying the price in brown outs and blackouts.”
I’m all for using coal for our energy needs (with suitable modern emissions safeguards)
I’m at a bit of a loss as to how the UK is going to meet the needs of a major industrial economy unless we use grown up sources of power-coal, nuclear, gas or oil.
I’m more comfortable with using resources under our control rather than someone else’s so coal moves up the pecking order.
Unfortunately the Governments non energy policy over the last dozen years is likely to result in just the scenario you paint. Incidentally I’m all for renewables, just realistic as to the real world input they can make within our lifetime.
All the best
tonyb
Tallbloke:
At June 17, 2010 at 11:14 am you assert to me:
“What you and Christopher Monckton have been saying here, is that Thatcher started a worldwide doomsday scare for personal aggrandisement. And kept it going throughout her (overly long) term in office despite knowing at an early stage that the science indicated there was nothng to worry about.”
No! That is NOT what I have said at any time!
Please read my article that I referenced in my comment. To save you looking that up, I copy the URL again here. It is
http://www.john-daly.com/history.htm
Your dislike of Mrs Thatcher is not a reason to distort history. I, too, despise her, and with personal reason. I was employed by British Coal (aka the National Coal Board) at the Coal Research Establishment (CRE) where I was the Senior Material Scientist. Her destruction of the coal industry closed CRE and curtailed my career after nearly three decades of employment.
But the facts are the facts. The terrible damage done to our country by Mrs Thatcher is a matter of history, but resentment of that damage is not a justifiable reason to distort the facts.
Richard
tonyb says:
June 18, 2010 at 4:17 am
I’m all for using coal for our energy needs (with suitable modern emissions safeguards)
Well it’s a pity Thatcher closed the pits then isn’t it? (flooding them means they can’t re-open, and even if they could, the expertise and tradition is gone.)
I’m at a bit of a loss as to how the UK is going to meet the needs of a major industrial economy unless we use grown up sources of power-coal, nuclear, gas or oil.
Don’t worry, she closed down our industrial economy as well in favour of creating a financial chimaera and a servant class of ‘service providers’.
We don’t even have a single major shipbuilder left to get us off the island, or a domestic car maker to get us around it.
Richard S Courtney says:
June 18, 2010 at 4:35 am
But the facts are the facts. The terrible damage done to our country by Mrs Thatcher is a matter of history, but resentment of that damage is not a justifiable reason to distort the facts.
I didn’t mean to upset you or distiort anything. I was pointing out that between You, Christoper and me, there are some dates that need pinpointing:
When did she start the scare? – Your history
When did the facts show it wasn’t a big concern? – Christopher’s assertion
Why was she still crapping on about it at the 1991 International Climate Conference? – My observation
Just a quick question. Can anybody confirm for me that Christopher Monckton’s job title in No 10 was as an adviser on education policy?
Mr Mosher, one piece of evidence please to give evidence to catstrophic AGW.
I know that you can’t give that despite the science being settled and the situation actually being far worse than anybody could imagine. How about anything that can show that any environmental degredation is caused by AGW.
savethesharks says
June 17, 2010 at 9:31 pm:
You feel free to do the same, Cal.
I’ve got an even better idea: A debate between the two! Somebody needs to arrange that and then let the truth win out.
A debate. A live debate. I am sure both parties would agree to it, no?
===================================
What am I meant to find examples of? I’m not the one who claimed Abraham was making ad hominem attacks…
And a debate seems a ridiculous forum to decide whether or not Abraham used ad hominem attacks in his presentation when one can just look at the presentation first hand. I’ve already done this and found no examples of Abraham exhibiting this behavior. If you’ve listened to his presentation and found otherwise, please share.
Steven Mosher says:
June 18, 2010 at 1:13 am
(…)
Is it colder now than in 1850? I havent seen any evidence that it is. none. zip.
————-Reply:
Maybe the question should be whether it is any warmer than it was back in 1850. That’s what I’m really interested in, because I went out this morning and inspected the 20 tomato plants I’ve got in my garden, and they were all covered in frost. FROST! on the 18th of June. I go to http://www.weather.com and sure enough, it reported 31F. But since there was even frost on the roof of my house, I’m betting it was considerably colder than that (and no, I didn’t cover them because our illustrious weather service last night predicted a low of 4 degrees above freezing, so silly me for having believed them).
So I consider all this ballyhoo about global warming and I figure they’re right–the heavy snowfalls last winter and the winter before were, according to the GW “experts”, all due to “global warming”. And I suppose this summer frost (we’re only 3 days from the longest day of the year) is due to global warming, too. (Ok, ok… technically we’re not into “summer” yet, so I’m deflecting that criticism here.)
Hey, it all makes complete and total sense. Now if they’d just change Webster’s definition of “warm”, “cold”, terms like that. Problem is, do I reinvest $40 to replace the plants or just go hungry? If it would warm up some…. excuse me… if it would quit getting so cold… excuse me… if it would stop killing my tomatoes and I had faith the summer would be warm… excuse me… would allow me to get red ones instead of green ones, I’d consider it.
To those who have taken part in the “does CO2 cool” debate, I’d like to ask a question.
How does the atmosphere lose it’s energy (heat) out to space?
I was under the impression that it was via radiative transfer by molecules capable of RT, i.e. GHG’s. If that is true, then GHG’s DO help cool the atmosphere. This does not contravene physics.
Assuming a build up of CO2 to, say over 5000ppm, at the lower atmosphere it would have already done all the warming it can long before reaching 5000ppm.
However higher in the atmosphere, these additional molecules could/may act like extra lanes of a highway, allowing more warmth/energy to be radiated to space. i.e. cooling.
Combined with other factors, this cooling may aid in the onset of ice ages.
From the many paleo graphs I have seen, warm periods are followed by quite drastic falls in temperatures leading to ice ages.
So long as CO2 molecules radiate, they help cool the planet.
Tallboke:
At June 18, 2010 at 4:35 am you ask me:
“Why was she still crapping on about it at the 1991 International Climate Conference? – My observation”
My answer:
Having started the scare and used it for her personal political interests she could not be seen to abandon the issue without losing face. So she had to be “crapping on about it at the 1991 International Climate Conference” because otherwise the credibility she had obtained would have been lost. Refusal to attend or to support the Conference would have been personally damaging to her. However, please note the caveats she included in her address to that and to the earlier 1990 Conference some of which xe136 posted above at June 16, 2010 at 11:12 pm. I think one of his/her quotations is telling in terms of the timings that interest you. He/she quotes her saying:
“Of course, much more research is needed. We don’t yet know all the answers. Some major uncertainties and doubts remain. No-one can yet say with certainty that it is human activities which have caused the apparent increase in global average temperatures. The IPCC report is very careful on this point. For instance, the total amount of carbon dioxide reaching the atmosphere each year from natural sources is some 600 billion tonnes, while the figure resulting from human activities is only 26 billion tonnes. In relative terms that is not very significant. Equally we know that the increases of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere date from the start of the industrial revolution. And we know that those concentrations will continue to rise if we fail to act.
Nor do we know with any precision the extent of the likely warming in the next century, nor what the regional effects will be, and we can’t be sure of the role of the clouds. “
Now, that is a very, very significant retreat from her promotion of global warming during the previous decade.
Richard