My week as a climate change denier
Amanda Baillieu 6:07pm
The Spectator’s Global Warming special is only in the shops for a couple more days. If you’ve missed it – or if you still need convincing to buy it – here’s an extended version of the article by Amanda Baillieu from within its pages:
When a work colleague sent a tweet to his 2000 followers comparing me to Nick Griffin I realised I was heading for my Jan Moir moment.
A few days before, I had written an opinion piece with the rather attention seeking headline Is global warming hot air? I’d wanted to see if my readers, who are mainly architects, agreed with the line now adopted by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) that ‘man made’ climate change is the greatest challenge facing the profession. Given that about 30% of them have lost their jobs in this recession and some of them will never work again, I wondered if RIBA might not have some more immediate issues to address.
The mainstream press is pretty tame when it comes to talking about climate change. The enormity of the problem and the mountain of research amassed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ( IPCC) has led us to a position where climate change cannot be challenged, except in the blogosphere where the debate has been raging for many years.
And even if the earth is warming and man-made carbon emissions are to blame there is still disagreement about how to tackle it. Privately, many architects question whether the emphasis on making all homes ‘ zero carbon’ by 2016 while the ignoring the carbon that’s produced during construction is really the best solution.
As rival magazines started to crank out the usual unquestioning pieces in the run up to Copenhagen, I wondered if all architects agreed with their institute ‘s line. I had recently talked to a scientist, now retired from the Met Office, who said he thought the emphasis on CO2 concentration was ‘misplaced’ and told me, off the record, that the Met’s new computerized climate models did not tally with the old models.
I wrote my weekly leader arguing the reason that so few architects had turned up to listen to the secretary of state for energy Hillary Benn talking at RIBA’s headquarters the week before might be because of ‘a weariness with a government that trots out the same line year after year — that climate change is predominantly man made — without allowing this claim to be challenged, despite the growing wealth of scientific evidence that it is not’.
I might as well have written that that Richard Rogers is a deluded clod and Prince Charles has been right all along. The reaction was swift and shocked. As the article richotted through cyberspace the UK Green Building Council, an organisation whose role I’d always found a mystery finally had a target. Me. Its chief executive was incandescent and wanted ‘ right of reply’ while its head of advocacy sent the first of many emails ticking me off for my bad behaviour. How could I be so out of touch with our elected public servants?
I went out for a lunch and received an email from the Guardian’s architecture correspondent, Jonathan Glancey. ‘ Well done questioning climate change orthodoxy’, presumably not a sentiment he can openly express when he’s in the office.
I should have known better than check my BlackBerry late on a Friday night when the bloggers, fortified by a few drinks, really get going. I soon realized that what I saw as provocative journalism had put me in the camp of the climate deniers- a sort of outer darkness from which you can only come back if you undergo ‘re-education’ and a public apology. Along with the anonymous RIBA member who said I should have the word ‘ bitch ‘ tattooed across my forehead, my critics said I was clearly mad, dangerous, and most likely in the pay of the petrol-chemical industries. ‘Calling for debate on this issue is like calling for debate on evolution. The debate is settled’ thundered one.
‘How impertinent, disobedient and ungrateful’, wrote another. All this dangerous thinking for myself and not doing as I’m told must stop immediately, was the general line of the eco-police. That night I dreamt about George Monbiot.
Back at work on Monday my web editor was drowning under emails. Martin Durkin, maker of the documentary The Great Climate Change Scandal and Piers Corbyn, the maverick weather forecaster. weighed into the debate from the sceptic camp. I stopped counting who supported me and who didn’t but I was convinced the sheer number of comments, from both sides, meant that the debate was not closed, as some claimed.
At a Downing Street reception, hosted by Gordon Brown to mark RIBA’s 175th Anniversary architects came up to me, and whispered ‘ well done’. It seems I did have some supporters, more maybe than I thought. I had dinner afterwards with Paul Finch the new chairman of the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (Cabe), the New Labour quango. ‘I liked your leader’ he said once we were safely out of Downing Street. He admitted that Cabe had drifted far too far into climate change issues and hinted that when he takes over next month they would take a back seat.
The Telegraph weighed in with a blog by James Delingpole calling me his ‘ heroine of the week’ for ‘daring to question the so-called “consensus” on Anthropogenic Global Warming’. Meanwhile, the Guardian had warned me via Twitter that it had me in its sights and I was to be the subject of a blog.
After the initial shock at seeing my picture by-line below and a claim that ‘I had laid bare my utter contempt for environmentalism’ I came to the conclusion that the journalists who work on the Guardian environment desk do my job for me. The people who flock to its web site to ‘hunt down the unbeliever’ make its cause look even less credible. They claim to argue from a scientific viewpoint but reject anything that conflicts with this regardless of its value. They are a vicious bunch that like nothing better than a good punch up. But what they hate with a passion is a journalist, like myself, entering the fray. How dare I.
But I did dare, and I have no regrets. It’s not particularly pleasant being attacked by colleagues, or having your opinions trashed by bloggers but that’s the territory you risk if you’re prepared to question the prevailing green orthodoxy. And if magazines and newspapers can’t be places where ideas are debated, criticised, analysed and gently tossed about without restraint, where is to be this debate to be had? In the University of East Anglia’s Climate Change Research Unit whose leaked emails has led to claims that the scientific community has fudged data and deliberately kept sceptics out of the peer review process? I think not.
Previous
oldrightie
December 8th, 2009 6:15pm Report this commentUAE's CRU most ceratinly do not do debate. Joun me and wear a flat earth cap!
Summer
December 8th, 2009 6:22pm Report this commentWell done Amanda keep it up, nearly 60% of the population at least are with you (maybe more now) and you are speaking up for truth. Be proud of that !!
Edward
December 8th, 2009 6:29pm Report this comment"I might as well have written that that Richard Rogers is a deluded clod and Prince Charles has been right all along."
Or that the Pope is Catholic, or that Stalin wasn't a particularly nice chap.
Norman Dee
December 8th, 2009 6:49pm Report this commentThe trouble is "Summer", it's the same 60% that are part of the overall percentage of the people that are against Europe, and nobody listens or cares what they think either. Maybe we should have compulsory voting, and a drive to make the government (whichever one it is) truly listen to us.
JohnOfEnfield
December 8th, 2009 7:08pm Report this commentWell done Amanda, for speaking out, right or wrong.
There is something particularly nasty going on in public life today.
I think we used to call it fascism.
gkempsom
December 8th, 2009 7:09pm Report this commentI'm with you, it's not scientifically confirmed when you have such crass people at CRU
Jeremy
December 8th, 2009 7:13pm Report this comment"They claim to argue from a scientific viewpoint but reject anything that conflicts with this regardless of its value."
Then theirs is not "a scientific viewpoint", is it?
Dungeekin
December 8th, 2009 7:23pm Report this commentSo the numbers are in*, and they don't make for pretty reading.
I'll ignore the enormous monetary cost of the Copenhagen Circle-Jerk for the time being - instead, let's just focus on a couple of the other numbers.
15,000 policy wonks, 'global leaDUHs', greenlebrities and assorted other fellaters, fawners and general sycophants. A further 45,000 greenies spouting their noxious emissions about Gaea into our poor, long-suffering atmosphere. 41,000 tons of CO2 just to transport the delegates to Copenhagen (so one can assume that unless all the campaigners walked or rode their ethically-sourced vegan bicycles to Denmark, three TIMES that for their right to protest).
So that's 164,000 tons of CO2 (approximately) just in transport for this conference.
Hmmm. It would seem that the right-on brigade haven't fully grasped the concept of, say, videoconferencing. Or, for that matter, carbon footprints or emissions control**.
But they say the conference must happen, lest we all suffocate in a carbon dioxide smog, eating household pets because the foodchain's collapsed and engaging in armed conflict over the few remaining sources of potable water. And it'll be all our own fault***.
It must happen, they say. We must have lengthy, caviar-subsisted negotiations at which absurdly-privileged and wealthy people will wring their hands at the depredations we've wreaked upon our planet. We must have endless press conferences from our leaders and from those campaigners and scientists whose ongoing lifestyles depend on our fear of the Climate Change bogeyman. We must, they cry as one from the bottom of their taxpayer-subsidised hearts, do something.
Well, as is so often the case, I have a small suggestion. A solution, if you will.
Carbon Footprint tell us (in a remarkably non-preachy manner****) that the planting of trees is a really good way to offset one's carbon footprint. Apparently, one tree absorbs approximately 1 tonne of CO2 in an average hundred-year lifespan.
THe average weight of a human male is approximately 80kg. To allow for females, it's a bit lower than that so let's say 65kg overall average.
Now, my studies tell me you shouldn't over-fertilise a tree when planting, so I reckon if we estimate 1kg of fertiliser per tree, that should be plenty.
So. 60,000 delegates and wonks, times 65kg = 3.9m tons of prime fertiliser. Or, to put it another way, 3.9 million trees. Or, to put it in yet another way that the greenies will understand, if we killed and minced up every single one of the attendees, whether protester, politician or policy adviser, and used them as mulch for new trees, there'd be 3.9 million tons of CO2 absorbed. And trees are much nicer to look at that your average unwashed climate protester.
And they can't complain, coz we're saving the planet and everything, which is what they want, isn't it?
I reckon if we also auctioned off the opportunity to run Gordon Brown, David (and Ed) Millipede and anyone who's used the term 'climate denier' in the last few weeks through a wood-chipper, we'd raise enough cash to make a dent in world poverty as well. Which would please Bono*****.
There you go. A solution to climate change, peace and quiet for those of us who are normal, and world poverty sorted, all by the voice of common sense. Me.
I commend the idea to the House.
*h/t to Wat Tyler at BOM for reading the Daily Fail so I don't have to.
**Though a brief perusal of the £6m-plus cost and the perks of attending shows that the delegates have fully grasped the concept of 'freeloading'.
***Probably. Actually, make that possibly - no, make it perhaps, as even the most sandal-bound of climate scientists actually has to admit that we - and I quote - know with certainty that we know fuck-all.
****I only looked at the one page, though. I didn't want to look further, as I don't know whether Green is contagious - a sort of syphilis. It seems to have similar effects on mental capacity.
*****At least, it would please the hypocritical twat until I ran him through the wood-chipper too.
Janet
December 8th, 2009 7:26pm Report this commentPlease can people stop using the term "Climate change deniers"? Climate change has been happening for the last 4.5 billion years or thereabouts, ever since Earth had an atmosphere, and it's certainly not going to stop now. I don't believe the majority are questioning that. Nor, I believe, would most people deny that there has been global warming over the past couple of centuries; we're in an interglacial period where fluctuations are to be expected, and we're coming out of the Little Ice Age.
I am, however, an AGW denier. What I deny is: firstly that mankind has or can have anything other than a minimal contribution to global climatic variation; secondly that the current temperature changes/sea level changes/ice changes are in any way unprecedented, inexplicable by natural processes, or outside their normal ranges; and thirdly that cutting carbon dioxide emissions will have any affect on the rate or type of change.
I don't work either in climatology or in anything remotely connected to the petrochemical industry. I do, however, have a combined honours degree in biology and geology so not totally ignorant, but getting very irritated.
Apologies for the rant.
Neil Turner
December 8th, 2009 7:36pm Report this commentWell done Amanda
By the way, am I getting paranoid ?
I was interested to see how many hits the term "Climategate" now has on Google. When I typed it in Google did not register. It searched for CLimategate, but didn't show how many hits
Does Al Gore have anything to do with Google ?
Fearless Frank
December 8th, 2009 7:39pm Report this commentJohnOfEnfield, December 8th,7:08pm
There is something particularly nasty going on in public life today.
I think we used to call it fascism.
I find these twitter alerts to one or other form of heresy rather sinister.
The ready availability of a docile flock willing to pile in and denounce the deniers... it reminds me of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (the Donald Sutherland version), and that sinister hiss from the throat they did to alert others to one of the few humans still "unsnatched".
dexey
December 8th, 2009 7:48pm Report this commentI'd happily be a climate chage denier if Shell would pay me. In the meantime I believe climate is changing; I believe it always does; I believe that I am in my late middle age and it isn't going to affect me. I just don't care very much. After all, the millenium bug didn't get me. I reckon I'm safe living on the side of this hill.
Le rosbif
December 8th, 2009 8:02pm Report this commentThe AGW mantra "The Science is Settled" is oxymoronic. Let's keep on asking those questions until there is no longer a need for "belief".
From C. Hitchens; extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, therefore, what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.
Holly ......
December 8th, 2009 8:16pm Report this commentNeil Turner.
climate gate.
got stuff straight away.
NickW
December 8th, 2009 8:45pm Report this commentIn the distant past our geography was moulded by glaciers.
The ice went and our tempperate climate arrived without any influence from humanity.
So why is it so hard for people to understand that the climate changes and those changes have nothing to do with man?
There is a large body of the public who have more in common with the priests who used to sacrifice virgins to appease the rain god, than they do with science and scientists.
Obnoxio The Clown
December 8th, 2009 8:50pm Report this comment"the mountain of research amassed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ( IPCC) has led us to a position where climate change cannot be challenged, except in the blogosphere where the debate has been raging for many years."
I think you mean "a vast amount of data has been fraudulently manipulated and the press has been far too relaxed about challenging the orthodoxy."
Don't you?
oldtimer
December 8th, 2009 9:11pm Report this commentWell done. Keep up the good work of questioning the absence of adequate evidence - dodgy data, the dodgy statistical techniques, the dodgy reasoning, the dodgy equation of correlation = absolute proof. The case for AGW, most emphatically, has not been made.
If you have not already seen it, I recommend you read this - the nearest thing yet to a smoking gun - at:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/08/the-smoking-gun-at-darwin-zero/
This example shows why it it is necessary for independent analyses to be made of all the data that has been normalised, fudged and otherwise mangled to support the AGW case.
Snowman
December 8th, 2009 9:17pm Report this commenttruly well done, you are a courageous star, thank you.
Dungeekin @ 7.23:
yours is a plausible solution for alleviating the impeding disaster, mine goes a notch further, it may actually solve it.
Breathing out CO2 adds to the density of the gas in the atmosphere, too (different isotopes, but what the heck). Hence withholding breath, each and every believer in the AGW creed could contribute handsomely to a cut of this, in their view ‘obnoxious’ substance in the air. Obviously not in one go, but intermittently will do, thank you. With abit of luck, some of the more fanatical worshippers of the new religion may go the whole monty, and voila, the problem’s solved for the rest of us.
Not bad, ha?
Draughtsman
December 8th, 2009 9:31pm Report this commentJanet - I quite agree with you. There have been three cycles of cooling and warming since about 600BC and even before that. The warm cycles have lasted an average of 500 years and we are about 150 years into the Modern Warming. With any luck humankind will enjoy another 350 years or so of the type of benign conditions that existed in the Medieval Warm period, when crops could be grown at much higher latitudes and elevations. No catastrophic warming, no worse storms than now and no sudden rises in sea level.
The forces involved in these changes are are fantastic and quite outside humankinds ability to influence with or without a piddling bit of additional CO2 in the atmosphere.
As to what will happen to the Earth's inhabitants when the cold returns in a few hundred years - well let us hope that technology will have moved on enough to enable them to cope.
paul kerr
December 8th, 2009 9:37pm Report this commentWell done indeed! for treading where many of your colleagues are afraid to go
But responsible reporting with open debate is overdue.
The new religion of global warming must be questioned. The name calling, personal attacks and apocylptic predictions are a testament to how uncomfortable people are debating the science.
Meme Mine
December 8th, 2009 9:38pm Report this commentHey Global Warmers:
Why are there fewer Climate Change demonstrators than consensus scientists? If you get these 25 thousand science saints of yours to march with you I might re-consider your SAVE THE PLANET insanity.
And, why are the effects of climate change after 23 years still only far away in the rain forests, polar caps, mountains and deep in the oceans. I'm sick of shoveling snow for a quarter of a century. WHEN WILL WE FEEL "YOUR" CLIMATE PAIN?!
Why isn’t there a shortage of Oxygen from all of this CO2 being produced from combustion?
If climate change is powerful enough to destroy life on planets, shouldn’t it have started affecting me by now? Hello, 23 years now.
How can you doomers look yourselves in the mirror and not feel like a perfect chump for getting to a point in your life where you bow to a fat politician promising to make the weather better with higher taxes?
How is the action of hacking worse than you doomers denying my kids futures with your promise of death by SUV gas?
Speaking of fossils, every continent has tropical fossils, even under the polar ice. So how does melting prove we caused it? Why are we not at least being happy about the possibility and probability of avoiding this misery after all. Do we wish for this climate hell to happen?
Do you think this promise of death is sustainable in public support for another 23 years? We the people call the shots, not your consultants dressed in white well pressed lab coats.
The UN has allowed Carbon Trading to trump 3rd World Education, clean water and starvation rescue. Nice job.
drmirsky
December 8th, 2009 9:55pm Report this commentPlease do explain how it is that given that man is burning up millions of years worth of carbon previously absorbed from the atmosphere by plant life/trees (ie oil/coal/gas) in mere hundreds of years, that carbon dioxide levels are not and would not increase in the atmosphere. Or perhaps you would like to explain, clearly describing the new noble prize winning physics argument that carbon dioxide is not actually a greenhouse gas and therefore we need not worry? Perhaps you have discovered a new mechanism by which CO2 levels will suddenly and very soon start decreasing again and therefore prevent global temperatures rising? No? Come on, please, we have known for decades these mechanisms that are leading to AGW and unless you really have discovered a new theory backed up by experimental, measurable evidence, as in the case of AGW, then don't ignore the tens of thousands of scientists with the evidence showing we have something to worry about and hopefully fix.
2trueblue
December 8th, 2009 10:46pm Report this commentJanet, well done. I am also not a climate change denier, I just do not like being theated like an idiot. The scam at the moment is to blame it for all the lack of governments to care for the planet. It used to be called 'land husbandry'. It is also very short sighted to look at the figures for just 150yrs. Then to use it as a stick to tax us with, whilst our great leaders fly around the world and 'fix' it. None of them impressme as they are not interested in any knowledge that disagrees with their new religion, which they intend to use to tax us.
It will be interesting to see how the same agreemnents stand up over the next 2yrs. when the world leaders grapple with their own population as they try to fix their economies. Watch the believers then.
AndyinBrum
December 8th, 2009 11:24pm Report this commentYou're own Jan Muir moment?
Jan Muir said that homosexuals cant die of natural causes and that Gay Civil Partnerships will lead to threesomes drug taking and death due to rogering, or similar.
It was pointed out that this was patent homophobic bollox of the highest order and her article was then passed around Twitter and Facebook and by other sites and Emails, to point out what a tit Muir was for writting such utter tosh.
Why you'ld want to be associate yourself with Ms Muir is beyond me, unless you too have written some utter bollox, and are trying to deflect the attention away from the article and onto those horrible nasty internet types who disagreed with you?
Frank P
December 9th, 2009 12:26am Report this commentAndyinBrum
Why don't you stop insulting Amanda and pop off down to your nearest cottage and get yourself a hand-shandy. You're obviously in need of relief.
populist
December 9th, 2009 3:58am Report this commentI've come to realize that many of the climate change denier footsoldiers are veterans of the so called "truth movement." I wanted to share this youtube presentation, it is about the weird worldview and belief system of the truthers, and why they are opposing action on climate change.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3WJ938sJGo">Investigating the Truth Movement
worth checking out
Lindsay Nation
December 9th, 2009 4:44am Report this commentAnd in news from a few hours ago, the United States Environmental Protection Agency has declared CO2 a poisonous gas requiring immediate allievation without recourse to pesky nuisances such as the US Senate or dissenters generally.
I believe we are living through a Revolutionary period so I will dust off my Edmund Burke.
In particular I suggest a reading of his "Letter to a Noble Lord" which skewers the useful idiots of his day...and ours.
In the meantime, follow the money trail!
Peter From Maidstone
December 9th, 2009 8:30am Report this commentpopulist, sounds a loud of rubbish to me. I have never heard of the 'Truth Movement' and I deny AGW, though there may be increasing temperatures, but I am not convinced since the weather scientists seem unable to predict the weather tomorrow with any greater accuracy than 30 years ago.
peter
December 9th, 2009 8:38am Report this commentAmanda - you are a hero! I think you have done what is necessary. It is clear that the mood is swinging your way and although the massed ranks of MMGW lunatics will try to crowd us out and censor our words we will win through, in the end.
I just want the sublime pleasure of seeing the motley line-up of time-serving money-grabbers in Copenhagen eat their words - hopefully before they do too much more damage to our planet.
Neil Turner
December 9th, 2009 9:04am Report this commentHolly....thanks but....
"Climate Gate" gets no hits
"Climate Gates" gets 6.4M
"ClimateGate" gets no hits
Still feel suspicious
John Levett
December 9th, 2009 9:17am Report this commentdrmirsky
December 8th, 2009 9:55pm
With your tired, kneejerk attempt at sarcasm, you amply demonstrate Amanda Baillieu's point about the AGW advocates' hectoring determination to shut down debate. If you really wanted answers to your questions, you'd direct them to one of the many scientists who do not share your ludicrous belief system. Here's a group of them:
http://www.copenhagenclimatechallenge.org/
Cue the standard responses of them not being climate scientists or being in the pay of 'Big Oil' or whatever...
John Levett
December 9th, 2009 9:21am Report this commentNeil Turner - Google has just given me 32.8m hits for 'climategate'. This is an excellent strategy for pushing it up the agenda!
John Levett
December 9th, 2009 9:22am Report this commentpopulist - I like to see all sides but I get this when I hit your link:
The URL contained a malformed video ID.
AndyinBrum
December 9th, 2009 9:45am Report this commentFrank P. I wasnt having a go at Amanda for the climate change part of her article, if thats her view so be it, but to try and portray Jan Muir as some poor picked on columnist is pathetic. Muir wrote something highly offensive and got pulled up on it. She doesnt deserve any pity, just brickbats.
Plus for a Mail columnist to complain about whipped up outrage on behalf of someone else is hypocracy on a grand scale.
John Bowman
December 9th, 2009 11:45am Report this commentThe worse the behaviour of those on one side of a debate, the weaker is their argument and the less robust and more lacking the evidence to support it.
I read elsewhere about the covert, implicit and explicit threats made to people in the media who might go "off message" in the Man is killing the Planet debate.
It is clear the current global temperatures can be explained by us being back in Mediaeval times.
Well done for having the courage to stand up to the Inquisition and question the orthodoxy.
Pricky Gayes
December 9th, 2009 11:54am Report this commentI would have thought stopping themselves putting up such shit buildings all over the place should be RIBA's greatest challenge facing the profession.
Tom Pride
December 9th, 2009 4:21pm Report this commentNeil Turner
December 9th, 2009 9:04am
Follow the money . . . “Climate Gates bill”
Frank P
December 9th, 2009 5:59pm Report this commentFor all interested in this continuing criminal conspiracy, the definitive denunciation has now been written by Lord Monckton (December 7th) and is available at- a-click on this link: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/12/revenge_of_the_computer_nerds_1.html Scroll down to the very last line of Larrey Anderson's article (and his notations) and press 'here' in the sentence that reads ' 'See Lord Monckton's discussion of the code here.' You will need the latest version of Adobe reader to download the file, but the 47 pages are well worth the trouble. So far I have not seen this discussed on any MSM news channels, which is a disgusting omission, as I recently wrote on another thread about Monckton’s recent lecture to a Minnesota Climate convention before this latest scandal broke (and should have blown the Copenhagen boondoggle out of the non-rising seas).
Dizzy Ringo
December 10th, 2009 5:36pm Report this commentAl Gore is a special adviser to Google....
Kerie
December 12th, 2009 3:44pm Report this commentRead this - David Bellamy talking sense ... http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/2009/12/12/ignoring-200-years-of-observation-to-believe-in-globaloney/
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