Countdown to Copenhagen

Frank P

How can you write an essay on Countdown to Copenhagen without mentioning the revelations of the last week about the CRU?

WeatherGate; NeatherGate; When-Will-You Ever-Gate?

Michael Sweeney

I heard Stern on Start the Week and was deeply unimpressed. He's exactly the reason this country is as it is - he was a treasury civil servant before he gained exposure for the weird Stern review. No wonder the public finances are in such a mess. We have far too many highly educated idiots running public policy who don't possess a bean of common sense between them.

Neil McEvoy

...and still no actual warming in the last dozen or so years.

John Levett

We should take him as seriously as we do Al Gore: both have strong vested interests in carbon trading.

By the way, how are his credentials on the forecating of the banking meltdown?

Rhoda Klapp

I'm not a believer. Apparently according to Stern I'm confused and muddled, but never mind that. In their scenario, whatever the increase in temperature they predict, is there never ever anything good to come out of it? Like not having to go abroad for holidays, like a better climate for a whole lot of places? Or does the story require unremitting doom?

oldtimer

"How seriously are we to take Lord Stern on the economics of climate change?" you ask.

Answer: not seriously.

Lord Stern has swallowed the CRU/IPCC bait plus the hook, plus the line and plus the sinker. Alternatively, has he been part of the group that has set the bait?

There are two parts to the question. Part 1 is the validity of the science. Part 2 is the validity of the political/economic response to the issues raised by the science. If the science, Part 1, is wrong or doubtful, then Part 2, the political/economic respone, and Lord Stern`s contribution is irrelevant.

The significance of Climategate is the doubt it casts on the science. The inadequacy of the data, its apparent fudging, questionable peer review processes, absence of rigorous scientific method are all charges levelled at the work revealed by the e-mails. There are too many unanswered questions about the science to take Lord Stern`s proposed economic remedies seriously.

Only the Chinese have got to the heart of the problem by limiting families to one child each. Fewer people on this planet is the surest way to deal with AGW, if that is what you believe.

HFC

This the kind of reporting we need to see in the UK:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703499404574559491076961008.html

Sally Williams

I am old enough to remember, for instance, floods of 50 odd years ago, which these days are blamed on climate change. All global warming seems to mean is freezing for those who need to keep their houses warm during the day. Putting on an extra jumper is not enough when you need to be in a warm temperature because of chest or heart conditions. But the elderly and the disabled are being sacrificed with the vague possibility that others will not die in 100 years' time. So I hope that Copenhagen collapses in a heap and we can get on with living now!

Snowman

Good on you, Fraser.

Instead of attempting to stop climate change, if it truly is happening, we should try adapting to it. Adaptation should be the name of the game, nature is by far more powerful than all of us put together.

Diverting resources to unreliable wind turbines, writing off the plentiful coal deposits, transferring funds to developing countries where the money’s likely to enrich but a few corrupt politicians and most of the rest borders on lunacy.

Arnold Toynbee got it spot on: ‘Cultures, civilizations don’t get murdered. They commit suicide’.

2trueblue

How seriously should we take Stern? Can he be trusted?
To your question we have to take him seriously because he is part of the problem, and the establishment that insist on the propoganda we have pushed at us right now.

Can we trust him? We have been lied to and the jury is out as the model that was used to arrive at the position we are in. The scientists has not used proper procedure and have ignored vital raw data, so NO.

What was very telling was H Benn in the house of commons after the recent floods shifting blame on climate change for the mess there. This governmnent are using the climategate as a 'get us out of trouble' card to avoid any responsibility for not looking after our problems in the country.

I clearly remember the last fiasco when there were indeed clear indications of work that had not been done (by his department) and yet the bonuses were given out to the department directly responsible for those errors.

We are not talking about exact science in any of this, and those who are qualified, but do not agree with the 'believers' are banned from the table. This is unacceptable, we need open dialogue and expertise on this matter. WE are in the worst economic slump and the questions are more vital than ever. We do not need just one agenda, the ability to raise taxes without actually doing the job. Governments world wide are far too busy paying lip service because they want to be seen to do the right thing, and politically align themselves with useful people. I see very little real leadership in the field to investigate properly rather than hide the facts. I an a non-believer.

Naomi Muse

You cannot take Lord Stern seriously, really you cannot!

I was amazed when the CBI embraced the whole Stern report with a grave-faced gusto and communed on how we could do anything about it.

Whether or not human activity has affected the climate is beside the point. Climate has been changing all over the world for millennia.

People adapt.

Fraser makes a good point that the whole way Stern is banging on is entirely narrowly focused on the potential changes in the climate.

What he should be doing is feeding the debate as to our future forward planning in a holistic plan. His words and thoughts are only an opinion in what has become the new religion that has no god.

People used to live in a green place now called Greenland,but it got too cold to enable them to provide food and they had to move. The same happened with many coastal areas as well as the land which was covered by the sea between the UK and what is now France and the Benelux countries.

Whatever is the truth about this particular set of climate change data, it is no excuse to create another financial bubble on carbon trading and its derivatives.

Whilst access to the raw data is being refused we should take anything Stern or anyone else says with a pinch of salt and plant more vines and veggies.

NM

For the grown-ups, there's also Martin Wolf's comment in today's FT.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1f6c42fc-dead-11de-adff-00144feab49a.html

Naomi Muse

Looking forward to reading Robert Mendelson of Yale's piece in the Speccy but my copy won't arrive with me until Saturday, thanks to Royal Mail....:-(

Bickers

The game's up for those that have ben peddling the AGW scam, although I suspect our glorious politicians and the unelected quangocrats heading for a jolly in Copenhagen will not want to get off the gravy train.

The BBC's reluctance to report Climategate only goes to give away their advocacy position on Global Warming/Climate Change/Whatever and that's disgraceful for a publically funded body that's supposed to impartially report both sides of the argument. If they're unable to do that they should forfeit the licence fee

Simon Stephenson

Fraser

You won't get a "rational debate" involving the Green camp unless they are prepared to separate the political content of their campaign from the scientific.

What they have discovered is that it's pretty hard going seeking to persuade solely by means of a faith-based political agenda, but that such an agenda is re-empowered when spiced up with a few cherry-picked "facts" of a supporting nature. And the more emotively-appealing these "facts" are, the more helpful they are in the persuasion process.

The problem for the Green camp is that without the politics, the science is ramshackle, and without the purported science the politics is unremarkable. There's no chance of having a reasoned debate with them.

Hysteria

What Frank P said - As I saw the heading of the article I thought "at last - something on the topic of the CRU release" - but there is not a reference - I could almost understand Fraser if you said "Seen it, don't believe it, let's move on" - but complete silence?

Baffling - truly baffling.....

Jupiter

Yo Nelson, there has been no global warming since 1998. Do try to keep up old chap.

Verity

Beware of the law of Unforeseen Consequences, Old Timer. You write: "Only the Chinese have got to the heart of the problem by limiting families to one child each. Fewer people on this planet is the surest way to deal with AGW, if that is what you believe."

Yes, China's population has stabilised - although it would have anyway, as it became a more developed society and people didn't need to have a lot of children to support them in their old age. But in China, when that law was brought in, they were still in the mindset mentioned in my previous sentence. Meaning, they wanted boys. (It being assumed that girls would marry and move away to the husband's family.) So they wanted to be sure that the one child they were permitted to have was a boy.

Consequence: millions of young adult men looking for wives, and no young women available.

Ian C

Fraser

If you read the CRU files (see the Monckton critique at the SPPI) and knew what they mean and it has been translated correctly, 'global' warming is not happening. A series of local varieties from familiar weather has happened e.g. western european weather has been colder in my 50+ years, so we can 'believe' in a warming planet, especially when we're told it's 'global'. But the fiddled books at CRU, and therefore all other main datasets of world temperatures (as opposed to local experience and recorded temperatures not 'proxied') are utterly unreliable.

One wonders what research Stern has done independent from the so called 'experts'. If I wanted to do it for my sake, surely Stern was obliged to do it so that he could check at a basic level what the countervailing view was/is when he was doing his report?

Trust in these people who should 'know better' is finished.

Mitch

When these fools can predict the weather correctly out to ten days I might believe the 100yrs rubbish but they cant so....THEY ARE AND WERE LYING!.It always was about taxing people without them begrudging it, after all who would want to ruin the planet. Incompetence has exposed the lies.

Neil Turner

Why is everyone in this government called "Lord" ?

James

I cannot believe the posts on this blog.
EU leaders have legislated (Canute statute, sub-section C) to limit global warming to 2 degrees celcius. They must be telling the truth. They wouldn't lie....would they?

oldtimer

@Verity re China. Well yes, there are always unintended consequences. In this case the shortage of girls means that China`s population will be even lower than the planners were aiming for.

Augustus

"I write this, by the way, as someone who believes that the planet is warming due, at least in part, to human activities."

And yet, does anybody seriously believe that
global warming in the last 50 odd years could not have happened without any effect of CO2? It seems pretty obvious to an increasing sceptical public that climate researchers have pursued the theory of manmade global warming almost entirely as a matter of faith. Unfortunately, human nature being what it is, in a tug-of-war between a benign outcome, or a catastrophic one for humanity, the catastophic argument will win, especially if it is shrouded in
scientific model simulations which only a handful of people can understand. In a 1974
report produced by the Club of Rome, entitled: Mankind at the Turning Point, it says: "In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy, then, is humanity itself."

Cogito Ergosum

Climategate reminds me of something I once read: that an experienced card player can sense when he is being cheated. He may not see the mechanics of the cheating, but he will sense that the "run of the game" is wrong.

Just as I felt with the global warming arguments.

Liz Brown

And Stern's credentials as a climatologist are? Ah yes, he is political economist and an increasingly rich one by all accounts. There is no global warming - this is a monumental scam and unfortunately we, the poor suckers are being forced to pay through the nose to enrich Stern/Gore et al

JohnBUK

Bloody hell! I'm glad I'm not on the same planet as Stern, sounds horrific!

Snowman

Fraser, the East Anglian set-up is going to hold an ‘independent’ enquiry. Do you know who sits on it?

Jupiter

Remember what Mark Steyn said about the shortage of Chinese baby girls, a lot of Chinese guys won't be able to get a girlfriend, which will be a big problem unless China wants to have the first gay army since Sparta.

TrevorsDen

Energy conservation is important, but daft notions like carbon trading and cap and trade and carbon this that and the other are totally pointless.

There is no immediate danger of sudden runaway global warming. This is the mad lunacy being pushed on us.

daniel maris

Stern is clearly a Bear of Little Brain.

The economics is nonsense. The crisis, if it exists, is just as likely to provide a much needed economic stimulus - the equivalent of World War 2 and result in many valuable innovations. One thing is certain: the amount of food that could be grown in places like Canada, Scandinavia and Siberia would increase dramatically.
We already know that the cost of sea freight could reduce substantially if the Arctic ice melts. Has he factored all these things into his calculations?

But of course all this depends on the central thesis and the predictions being correct in any case. That is not proven.

Bryan Appleyard in his useless Sunday Times article notes that we shouldn't interfere with complex systems. He further states that scientists might be wrong about global warming. However, he still wants us to virtually eliminate our carbon input - without knowing what effect that might have on the complex system! What if temperatures suddenly drop dramatically?

Actually I do agree with a precautionary approach and am happy that we move to green energy for reasons of energy independence and our own economic interest. But let's be honest: we don't know for sure what's happening to the climate or why. A degree of intellectual humility is required and will actually be helpful to us making the right decisions.

The Stern report is of absolutely no value at all, unless you want an alternative to Winnie the Pooh for your nighttime reading - guaranteed to have you in the land of nod within seconds.

Augustus

Behind the Copenhagen Climate Conference hides an agenda of global dirigisme aimed at withdrawing policies from sovereign nations. Self-feeding supranational organizations, able to escape democratic control, such as the UN World Climate Organization, aim to push their dirigist global agendas with increasing arrogance. Where did this incestuous circle of supranational bodies, and the present generation of politicians who cover for them, get the democratic legitimacy to decide the fiscal policy of future generations, and impose on them new taxes decades in advance? The coming climate round
is a dangerous step towards a new world order under UN dictate.

Watt Tyler

The most significant thing about this article is that it pretends that the theory of AGW has not crumbled into the trash can of history.

We are treated as fools by Camerons conservative spin machine.

Other on Wattsupwiththat, a story on how the "inventor" of AGW tells the Guardian how Copenhagen should fail.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/02/hansen-copenhagen-should-fail/#more-13607

Number7

How many shares does he hold in Carbon Trading/Green Technology companies??

Ref:- Al Gore!!!

Tom Rendell

If humans have released, over only the last 200 years or so, things from under the ground (oil, coal, gas etc.) which have taken millions of years to accumulate there, then perhaps we have a problem?

Developed countries have become rich due to the amount of resources they have taken from the Earth. I don't really have a problem with whats happened in the past, but I think it's time now to wake up and turn our attention to technological sustainability.

In order to kick start technology we need LONG TERM investment on a fairly large scale, our global companies won't do that because the CEO's will move on before payback comes. We need our governments to step in and provide encouragement (grants for renewables and taxes for carbon etc.) to get volumes up on renewables technology. Once these volumes come, sustainable energy will surely be very cost competitive (it's free-ish after all excepting initial investment) and we will have to accept more transparent taxes.

Frank P

Augustus (10.22pm)

A week ago I would have agreed with everything in your post - including the final sentence. ClimateGate has now changed all that. Copenhagen will just comprise a tsunami of face-saving bullshit, but the game is up. The US media is making a big deal of the discredited 'science'(unlike our complicitous MSM) and Obama's magic dust has already been blown away in the winds of change engendered by the Tea Parties. He's in trouble on all fronts - his long awaited Afghan 'strategy' with its deep contradictions has gone down like a lead balloon. He looked gauche and ill-at-ease during the speech at West Point; as one blogger on Protein Wisdom put it - "Even Morgan Freeman couldn't have made that script convincing." Take heart - the tide is turning.

Rhoda Klapp

Tom Rendell, those renewables are not very efficient. If they were, there is no argument agaisnt them, but subsidy is always bad. Always. We need technologies which can compete with fossil fuels. Wind is unreliable, solar works best where there's some sunshine, or if the panels could be a lot cheaper. Imagine solar panels costing the same as roofing felt, and used to cover whole roof areas, not just a bit. Solar panels which don't pay back their cost are not progress.

Technologies to watch: Not wind. Not crop-based biofuels, not expensive solar. Not carbon capture from 'clean coal'. But cheap solar, fine. Nukes based on thorium or pebble beds, possibly. Fuel from CO2-fed bacteria grown in vats using CO2 and heat from power stations? Yes, if it works. Algae beds on brackish wetlands, maybe.

The technology needs time and development. To go too early with uneconomic stuff makes no sense.

Frank P

Fraser

I think Mark Steyn could have included your post in his remarks here:

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZmY4YjE1ODE3YmUxZmIwY2E1NDM3MGRkYjA0YjEwOW

michael

Climate variation happens... fact

Dirty environs kill prematurely...fact

The link taxes me.

Snowman

Tom Rendell @ 8.58

When a volcano erupts, and due to other uncontrollable natural phenomena, the release of toxics including CO2 by far outstrips what we humans, as you put, ‘have done by releasing from underground in the last 200 years’. Go to a library, please, borrow a book by Bill Bryson (published in 2003) ‘The Short History of Almost Everything’, and read about half a page about carbon dioxide release. True, BB ain’t a scientist, by he talked to scientists and, being someone who’s got no axe to grind, explained in layman’s language the scale of our contributions.

Am very much in favour saving natural resources, avoiding waste and the rest. Am deadly against the ecochondriacs’ scaring us that we will burn, and the world as we know it will end unless we switch to solar panels (conversion ratio below 20%), clutter the landscape with unreliable monstrosities, drive slower, replace bulbs and all the other crap. Am against grants, never did and never will do any good except for enriching a few.

Three things are unquestionably true on the GW saga: human activity contributes around 4% to the aggregate release of CO2; nobody knows what the ‘ideal’ level of CO2 should be; the density of CO2 has fluctuated greatly, and the way species survived was by adaptation, not interference with it. Nature will beat us hands on for millennia to come.

Peter

Manmade Global Warming is the trannical, pyramid selling of lies.

Since the earliest years of democratic government, as far as politics is concerned, politicians have always had to bend the truth, almost to the point of breaking point - occasionally beyond. A forgivable and sometimes necessary element of doing an essentially unpleasant and shady (must please all) job.

But, never before, on such a grand international scale throughout all Western democracies, have politicians stooped to what they are now - the conscious peddlers of blatant untruths with the primary objective of literally stealing from their own citizens. And not really caring what those citizens feel about it to boot. It doesn't just apply to Global warming.

daniel maris

Let's be clear on one thing: the merits of green energy technology are NOT dependent on AGW theory.

Wind energy is now a very competitive form of energy. The idea that we should saddle ourselves with another generation of poorly performing nuclear power stations (the latest in Finland is 3 BILLION Euros over cost) is craziness of a high order.

The cost of wind and solar and other green technologies has been, is and will continue to go down and down. Nuclear costs have been going up and up, not least because of the need to protect against Al Queda and others who would happily blow up a station if they could.

Latest figures show the best and latest wind energy turbines can generate electricity at 3.5 cents per KwH compared with nuclear at 4 to 5.5 cents. Those figures are from a pro nuclear site:

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf02.html

Moreover costs are scheduled to reduce to as little as 2.8 cents for favoured sites.

Put wind energy together with energy from waste, biomass, solar, wave power, hydro (including more mini hydro), tidal, geothermal, river current, sea current and osmosis (Norway already ahead of the game on that)and you have a complete green energy solution.

Then follow the Better Place approach to electric cars (you buy the car but rent the battery, which you can pay for because electric fuel prices are so much cheaper than petrol and you then for longer journeys simply swap the battery in under 2 minutes at a battery changing station - just like you get petrol from a service station). This is being trialled in Israel and Renault-Nissan are on board with the scheme. When we are using green energy to power the cars we will have achieved effective energy independence and benefit from a much cleaner environment.

And - most importantly - we won't be leaving a poisoned legacy to our children and succeeding generations as happens with nuclear.

frosty the polar bear

fraser,
i took the opportunity to ask a venerable old bear who lives nearby, about the medieval warm period.
apparently during this time, the vikings, never known for originality, named the new land they colonised,'greenland',
as when they looked at it, with their animals grazing on the lush grasses,
they could'nt see a flake of snow, or a particle of ice.
strangely, all the water contained in todays ice sheets and glaciers must have then been liquid, so one would think that sea levels would have been massively higher.
but as places like york and many other viking towns show, this was not the case.
our wise old bear also informs me that there were no motor cars or aeroplanes whizzing about to cause the 'warming' then. furthermore he says that the sun, you know, that large, bright, yellowy thing, sometimes seen in the sky, ( rarely in britain, i admit),is the sole factor in governing the planets climate.
therefore, i am relieved to learn that i, and my fellow polar bears, are not going to drown imminently.
( as we are actually known as ursus maritimus, ( sea-bear),and equipped with webbed paws, and are excellent swimmers, often over dozens of miles at a time, it was'nt really going to be much of an issue).
you may like to note, that the number of my fellow polar bears is nearly treble what it was 30 or so years ago.
simply not shooting us has proved a great help, thank you.
must pop off now, i've got an iceberg to ride, and a seal-burger to eat,
happy thoughts.

Rhoda Klapp

You cherry-picked those energy prices didn't you. Best to use wind power with backup, else you are without power when the wind stops.

Marcher Baron

When I was growing up, the worry was a new ice age, now it's ice melting. Hmm. Climate changes and has done for millenia. If they really are serious about the man-made part of climate change they'd promote a "stop at two" policy and cease paying people to breed.

Michael J. Zabrana

Adrian Sanders
House of Commons
London
SW1A 0AA

2nd December 2009

Dear Mr Sanders,

The Big Bang of Climate Change

I am writing to you as my Member of Parliament to ask you to call on the Chancellor of the Exchequer to stop any further tax hikes on flights from the UK, and to reverse those especially (“climate change” related) taxes already enforced by the Government.

The UK is now the only country in the EU to charge Air Passenger Duty on airline passengers since the Dutch and Belgium Governments decided to abolish their version of the tax, as they evidently seem to be lead by politicians who have some sense left. Both of these countries decided to scrap the tax after it became evident that it put them at a significant competitive and economic disadvantage, and clearly also bearing the arguments against the “Climate Change” in their mind.

It is considered totally outrageous that the UK Government is determined to make air passengers pay more during these difficult economic times, above all for these herein set reasons. The Prime Minister and Mr Milliband are on a war path against all those who dare express their logical opinions against this climate change fraud. No wonder they are taking this position, as especially for a politician it is far easier to choose to defend one’s inept opinions than to admit that one is wrong.

The Government has chosen to adopt this taxing strategy on the basis of false, manipulated, and fraudulently ascertained climate change data that has been unfortunately proffered by many people referred to as scientists who frankly not only do not deserve to be called by this name, but in reality should be in many cases prosecuted and put behind bars. Even a simple child who is aware of our planet’s basic functionalities would be able to calculate that this data is completely wrong, as the least possible description.

Those who have been fortunate enough to obtain serious education, and are truly capable of using their brain capacity at least to its partial extent, know without a shadow of a doubt that climate change is not caused by any human related activities, as while climate change takes place, (on a regular occasion throughout the ages), it is as every sane person knows a cyclical event repeating itself over and over again through millennia. This planet, just as many others in our Universe, is governed by forces and effects on a global, and universal platform, and as such shall change its temperature, as it feels fit to balance itself in a given time span.

It fascinates me how in the age of freely available knowledge to anyone, on every possible media around the world, this Government still remains clearly incapable of putting 1 & 1 together whilst having the opportunity to view and listen to hundreds of examples of serious scientific data obtained by numerous top level and trustworthy scientists around the world, which (only as a simple example), describes the effects of volcano eruptions, changes in magnetic effects of cosmic bodies, impacts of objects with Earth, and other planets in our Universe, as well as cyclically varied activity of the Sun and other stars.

The fraudulent and false argument that humans have a negative impact on our planet’s temperature and its climate is, and shall forever remain, the biggest fraud and deceit certain scientists have chosen to enforce on the Governments of this Planet, and on the scientific society as a whole. Neither you, nor I, shall likely die before it will be proven beyond any doubt that this Government was a puppet of these fraudsters, and acts like it has no knowledge, intelligence, or conscience.

No matter how many International Climate Summits shall our Government together with the Pro-Climate Change people all over the World convene, and no matter how many resultant agreements, (with others who sadly show the same lack of logic and comprehension), try to impose on the people of Britain, (whether successful, or not), the truth, the scientific reality, and the facts of planetary physics shall not be amended. The Earth has passed through thousands of very different climate periods from those described as “ice age”, up to “hot periods”. Our mountains have flourished with flora and fauna in the past millennia, with a complete lack of glaciers and snow in these regions, during these varied periods.

Indeed, the same regions were repeatedly also covered with ice, and it extended much further than today. It means nothing on the scale of planetary physics, other than this planet changes its own climate, to suit a given period in time. Our oceans were covering substantially more of the land now available to us, and it shall be the case again. Mr Brown, or Mr Milliband can change nothing on these facts. People chose to use scary stories to ascertain some level of control over their unruly children for millennia, if not longer - our Government shows precisely the same lack of comprehension when trying to control, and manipulate, the British public in its approach to the ever so infamously popular term “Climate Change”.

However, whilst human activities do not, and cannot change anything significant on the overall Earth’s macro-climate, there is one serious aspect that certainly defines the human race. It is sadly that many people, (above all many scientists), believe they are the most important species since the Earth became habitable for living organisms. It would be superfluous for me to waste my time by trying to convince them that they are simply not, and never will be. The sad desire of these “educated” people, (above all the “so called” climate change scientists), to become known, listened to, respected, valued, and liked by as many people as possible, is a well known fact.

Science does not care about who likes who, or what. Science is, and should remain, governed exclusively by pure logic. The first rule of science is that a theory is precisely that, a “theory”, unless proven and substantiated with absolute and undisputable evidence. This also means that the assessed data must be collected over a significant period of time, (in respect of the Planet’s own climate history, i.e. some 4,5 Billion years), and that when assessing the recent climate developments no other explanation for the noted effects can be determined.

Only then can be a theory, (such as this one), declared FACT! It is only then when any Government, but especially the UK Government, can begin contemplating acting on such proven fact. It is not exclusively our Government that is at fault, various other institutions such as the BBC have allowed the screening of unsubstantiated theories on numerous scientific subjects over the past 20 years, but especially during the last decade, that have been presented to the public in a manner, which leaves a lay person with no other option but to assume that the presented theory is fact. Nonetheless, this is a different subject, and whilst it is of no lesser importance, as it pertains to the quality of education, it is not my current complaint.

The increases to APD penalise long haul flights, despite there being no viable alternative mode of travel for passengers. Over the next two years the tax on flying from the UK will increase according to the Government’s own policy and statements by up to 113% for long-haul flights. This will add up to an additional £90 on a flight.

The Treasury’s intended tax increases to passengers is clear to see in these examples:

Now November 2009 November 2010

Economy Class to Dubai £40 £45 £60
Premium Economy to Barbados £80 £100 £150
Upper Class to Sydney £80 £110 £170

I object most strongly against the Government’s position of forcing the aviation companies of the UK, to pay any tax related to environmental changes! Just as I protest against the Government charging non-sensical levels of fuel duty on our cars, and other means of transport. Currently, the Government’s own cost assessment of aviation’s emissions put the climate change cost at £1.8bn, yet the Treasury is intending to increase its total tax take to over £2.5bn by 2011. Let me stipulate that the duty of the UK Government is to enforce laws and taxes that benefit the UK residents, and that the UK Government has no right to enforce any taxes based on an unproven and wrong theory.

I am therefore asking you to urge the Government not to penalise passengers or airlines to an extent no other country would contemplate.

Yours Sincerely,

Michael Joseph Zabrana

Senior Partner (Celtic Lines)