Rationalism enters the climate change debate

Nicholas

Hmm.

I didn't shoot you. I merely released the bullet from the chamber of the revolver into the air and you then allowed your body to collide with it.

Fragmeister

I think the Guardian has chosen the science and you chose the political version. It was a shame, just like AIDS in the 1980s, that it became a political matter and not just a scientific one. The Spectator doesn't have a great track record on science recently but you seem to agree with all four points the Gruaniad makes. Point 4 is the contentious one, or at least the explanation is. And that's the one that our scientific Poirots have managed to narrow the list of suspects down to...

oldtimer

I am pleased to be advised about the Conservative line on this as I have been trying, without success, to discover from my MP just what it is. Maybe the long delays in the replies I receive mean he is having issues with the whips.

It is clear that much of the so-called science (and statistical techniques employed in its support) behind AGW is based on false and/or incomplete evidence. This has been employed to promote a political agenda (Copenhagen being the latest manifestation).

We have a new poll tax in the making. The politicians pushing it will pay a heavy price. The Guardian has spotted some of this - but without abandoning its basic AGW position. It is simply seeking to defuse the current hooha over Climategate before moving on the push the political agenda again..

Colin

Rationalism ?

They're just re-grouping. They'll be back, in spades. There's too much money at stake, not to mention the opportunities for some serious left wing social engineering on the back of this ideology.

Give it three months or so.

I just wish Dave hadn't hitched his horses to this bandwagon.

Rhoda Klapp

The Guardian may well be having a debate, but the last para of its editorial shows that it is fundamentally dishonest about having any sort of a sceptical stance, the debate is being held so they can declare the debate is over as soon as it is done.

It's been mentioned elsewhere, but bears repeating, that the Guardian is also disengenuous in claiming to have found out anything new. The edifice has been crumbling in blogspace for a good seven years. The Guardian has investigated to the extent that any one of us could have done with google, or a look at the new books by Bishop Hill, or Mosher.

Tim Carpenter LPUK

"1. That the planet is warming"

The planet warms on a regular basis - parts of the surface every day and each hemisphere every year. You need to provide parameters to this, such as "warming since...", by how much and future rates. More are now saying and showing that there is little hard evidence for this (e.g. groundstations are compromised). Further, one needs to also ascertain if warming will actually create disasters, just move them from one place to another and/or if more or less disasters are likely. One must also think if warming has now reversed a far more dangerous cooling trend and that a warming trend might in fact be very good for us and the planet (see negative feedback, below, in regard to spiralling out of control).

"2. That manmade activities are largely to blame"

Proof please, as in the use of "largely". Correlation is not the same as causation. Man might have a singe digit % input into a system that has negative feedback. Given our climate has constantly recovered from all manner of changes, shocks, meteorites, volcanoes etc, I think it is not unreasonable to suggest the Earth's climate naturally has negative feedback loops within its system. If man is only contributing a little...

"3. That only radical decarbonisation can arrest this trend"

Define "radical". Define "decarbonisation". "Only" is a very dangerous word and is very absolutist, totalitarian and authoritarian hinting at a near religiousness in your stance.

"4. That this is an urgent matter, and that we are approaching some point of no return."

The latter is the driver of the former and is there any hard evidence for the latter? No. See comments on negative feedback, above.

Climate change is very different from AGW. Climate change needs mitigation activities, agreed - flood defences, awareness on farming flexibility, migration/urbanisation concepts etc etc. but that is a world away from the de-industrialisation and control-freakery that many pushing for this Canon desire, as that is based upon AGW.

Liz Brown

oh dear Fraser. I do respect your opinions on many subjects, but I fear that you have fallen into the Metropolitan web, No-one denies Climate change for all the well rehearsed arguments. what is denied is that it is man made. As i say until I am blue in the face, explain to me how Mars is also reputed to be hotting up when to the best of my knowledge, there are no coal fired power stations, no Chelsea tractors and more significantly - human life
Listen to the geologists, listen to Mr Watts, listen to the Canadians, Russians, Chinese and for goodness sake stop listening to the Beeb, Prof Jones, Michael Mann, Al Gore and the fraudulent Indian railway engineer - D, RK Pachauri
Bet you don't print this - Rod Liddle didn't seem to like my comments about Mars either

emil

As soon as Brown saw Copenhagen as a chance to prance around on the international stage in his "50 days to save the world" period (not a dicky bird from him since...) the alarmists must have known it wouldn't be long before the game was up.

For all our sakes if the politicians, and shameless opportunists like Al Gore, had kept their tax raising and business opportunity snouts out of it we might be having sensible debate about reasonable measures we could all be taking to preserve natural resources and ensure we all have enough energy in future. Some hope.

Dave B

Given that the Earth has been cooling since 1998, I don't see why you're so certain the Earth is warming.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8299079.stm

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1242202/Could-30-years-global-COOLING.html

njmayes

Well done to both the Guardian and Spectator for moving towards common ground based on evidence and away from tribalism and posturing.

Neil Turner

What are the certainties here ?

1. "They" want our money
2. "They" want to control us
3. "They" want to restrict our liberty

My point ?

No matter what the science says, somehow, the unelected "New World Order" will find some "scientific" basis on which to achieve the above. Airbrushing the arguments will have little effect to the average honest citizen

Tim Carpenter LPUK

...and now the Guardian version:

"1. CO2 levels are rising"

And?

2. CO2 trap heat in the atmosphere

By how much now, how much in the future and by how much more due to the believed rising? This is not quantified. It is like saying dihydroxide inhalation can kill...so ban dihydroxide. BAN WATER!

"3. The earth is warming."

See my response to the previous Canon.

"4. The warming is unusual, and not explained by natural cycles seen in the last few hundred years."

This is surely meaningless. It provides nothing, yet can be a basis for leading questions and disingenuous planting of memes. One must first prove that "a few hundred years" is a basis by which future climate can be predicted and that the cycles are known to be fixed and unchanging and not in any way accumulating over such timeframes.

The four statements to me appear to be a fall-back position by which a fresh assault can be made to control CO2. To control CO2, some say, one needs a "carbon credit card". To work, this will have to record all our activities, movements, transactions and for us to be called to account for them. A Fabian wet dream.

TGF UKIP

Sorry Fraser, but you've fallen for it. A post on another website (can't remember which) in the last few days had it on seemingly good authority that the Guardian's investigation by Fred Pearce etc was nowt more than a Monbigot/Rusbridger set-up.

Apparently the ruse is to mount this investigation, to do a bit of tut-tutting over the deletion of e mails etc, but then the for investigation to conclude that lo and behold, nowt to worry about, the headbangers are spot on and that unless Europe and America, and especially a GOP America, do all the daft things the ayotollahs require of them there will be famine, drought, floods and locusts coming to a town near you soon.

Of course none will be cheer this more loudly than those green spivs of The Clique, for isn't it The Mekon's ultimate wet dream to get the electoral backing of the Grauniad?

It really is impossible to be too cynical about this lot.

English Electric

Personally, I wouldn't give Monbiot any credit on this. He has been one of the main culprits in establishing the term 'denier' to equate sceptics with holocaust-deniers. That in itself has caused the debate to become over-heated.

Many of his antics are neither professional nor serious. See his 'top 10 climate change deniers in playing card form' for a good example:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/mar/06/climate-change-deniers-top-10

TGF UKIP

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear! Apparently your mate Charlie Whelan gloating on Twitter, Fraser, over an ICM poll tomorrow.

5% dare I wonder. How will Tiberius and our Political Editor attempt to spin that?

denis cooper

Actually even "3. The earth is warming" is not an entirely unqualified certainty.

John Levett

Fraser - why do you agree that the warming is unusual? On what basis? Why can it not be explained by the natural cycles observed before Mann & Co fiddled the figures to produce the infamous and discredited hockey-stick? And if the climate is so clearly being affected by human activity, why do we not get the evidence instead of the constant lies - Climategate, Darwingate, Glaciergate, the_missing_Russian-and_Chinese-weather_stations_data-gate?

As for rationality entering the argument, why would any rational person believe in AGW when the only evidence we've been given is clearly unreliable, from an unscientific political lobbying organisation, fronted by a railway engineer who stands to make a packet from persuading us to pay through the nose while pretending to control a harmless, life-giving trace gas.

Perhaps you could produce a blog soon to show us just how much we're already paying in 'green taxes' and energy bill supplements with some indication of where that money is going.

I'll give you a clue - it certainly isn't reducing CO2 and that's because those who are behind this scam know that CO2 is just a convenient cash cow that can be passed off as a threat to the scientifically illiterate..

BrianSJ

I don't mind the warmist having their religion so long as
a) they stop pretending it is science
b) they stop making me pay tithes to it.

TGF UKIP

If in c 1990-93, China had been the biggest CO2 emitter we wouldn't have heard a dicky bird about AGW or "climate change". This was always the international Left, typified in the media by the Guardian and the BBC, out to get Western capitalism and the USA in particular - 5% population 25% emissions and all that mantra.

Summer

Will there be a category in the 'religion' section on the 2011 census for 'global warming believer'?

How about this for alternative thinking:-

The global warming data was cherry picked to show, ummmmmmm global warming. We don't actually know what the temperature is doing.

The climate model is made up, a 'sky fairy', it ignores previous warm periods so that it shows - ummmm global warming.

The Met Office has not got one of its forecasts right, using the model, in 5 years.

The peer review process was a 'Spanish Inquisition', against alternative views - of which there are many. This alone is disgraceful

The empircal evidence put forward to prove global warming, polar bears, glaciers, sea- levels etc. Is debunked - NONE of it is happening.

The IPCC have 'lied' in their reports, using proaganda from non-scientists eg WWF to back their claims. Meanwhile UK sponsored research which has disproved favoured icons of global warming eg glaciers - were ignored.

The people pushing global warming, have been shown to be liars and/or have vested interests.

And finally, we have had our coldest winter in the northern hemisphere for very many years, following another cold winter in 2009.

THEREFORE;-

There is great cause for doubt about global warming, let alone the place of Carbon Dioxide - which, as every schoolchild used to know, is a necessary plant food for a green planet.

Any responsible Government would stop the tax, and carbon trading, until the situation is clearer.

And as for the Tories, the fact they do not let their MP's represent their constituents, is reprehensible. And, the reason why I will not vote for them.

THX1138

TGF UKIP Dave is having poll trouble because he hasn't moved far enough to the left :-)

Kittler

If it is true that man made climate change is wrong, then we have had an unprecedented failure of scientific methodology.
This would be as worrying as climate change itself.
A numerous and diverse world wide science community have got it wrong.
Science does not usually get things completely wrong, errors are usually of scale.
Like everyone else here I have not examined the evidence and am not qualified to do so.
With complicated scientific and technical matters, we can in reality, only accept what the expert consensus decides.
I am not going to believe the prejudices of the uninformed.

Rick Naylor

Fraser - if CO2 is the problem, how about stopping baking bread and brewing beer - CO2 is given off when yeasts ferment - we never here about this.

TGF UKIP

THX 1138, glad to see your analysis agreeing as usual with that of The Mekon and Daft Danny - N. London boys with their N. London agenda.

ktjt

Kittler 6.56 and Fraser: Oh dear such belief without question is a worry. Science is scattered with dishonesty and when politics are involved extremely untrustworthy. The IPCC is clearly political and has done its best to take advantage. Peer review is the only way forward using untarnished data. Hopefully the setting up of an alternative evaluation by the Indian Government of the Himalayan glaciers will see progress towards sensible debate and evaluation.

Not a good idea to wring ones hands and say leave it to the experts as interpreted through government organisations.

terence patrick hewett

Both the Grauniad and the BBC have modified their output on this subject of late. Like Dr Faustus they have been tempted by Mephistopheles and are having Doubts. They both are preparing fall-back positions in case, heaven forfend, they may be in theological error. All very amusing.

Dirty Euro

But if we have debate about it, then we let global warming happen and billions of people die.
Nuclear is not the answer it does not reduce CO2 enough, plus is dangerous, and expensive, the answer is a massive hydro electric plant build. It is the cheapest safest and most reliable energy source there is no alternative.

Kittler

ktjt: I am willing to accept the opinion of the scientific establishment in preference to the views of just who, exactly.
For example, I accept the Theory of Evolution although I know little of the detail of evolutionary biology, but I prefer to believe scientific scholarship to the claims of some hillbillies who think the world was made 6000 years ago.
It's just that some sources are more credible than others, and science, which has made our modern world, has proved itself time and again.

TGF UKIP

Most interesting post on telegraph.co.uk by Christopher Booker "climate money moves in mysterious ways." It details how huge wodges of taxpayers money has been doled out by the FO, DEFRA and DIFID to sundry groups all over the world often accompanied by great opacity.

At first I wondered about all the secrecy and third party channels, but then a light bulb lit up. The recipients all clearly know the origin and this was all about Gordon greasing the slipway to an international job for him or one of his placemen.

Mind you I don't doubt that Dave would do exactly the same - that's how their world works.

Watt Tyler

@Liz Brown

Did you see the news about the change in colouration of Pluto that (from the Mail)
"suggests that natural cycles alone can cause unexpected and dramatic climate changes on planets."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1248682/Pluto-blushing-Nasa-scientists-capture-detailed-view-dwarf-planet.html

Frank P

"We do like to tease George Monbiot" fwahh, fwahh, fwahh!

Who are we? Most people I know detest the tin-foil hatted little twat and believe he should be put down for the protection of both the planet and our economy.

The Western World's taxpayers, their children and many future generations of children are being conspired against and ripped off by him and commie con-men like him.

Tease him? He should be throttled , not teased! If you want to tease him, tickle his nuts with a cattle prod next time you invite him to OQS. Then use it as a thermometer to test his colon for global warming and excessive methane emissions.

Another cup of tea, vicar?

MikeS

The IPCC has tainted all the climate science that it has been associated with. All of that should be redone under the strictest scientific scrutiny, before we can come to any conclusions.

anne allan

William the Conqueror: The climate is warming and it's not explained by natural cycles.
Pope: It's all the fault of those Anglo-Saxons with their open fires and meat eating.
William the Conqueror: Right, we need to save the planet. I'll invade England and put them all to the sword.
Pope: Go easy on the north, they have some lovely vineyards around York.

mitcheltj

Tim Carpenter - a couple of EXCELLENT posts. Good stuff.

Fraser - the trouble with non-scientifically qualified journalists such as yourself, is that you swallow without any personal scrutiny what "climate scientists" tell you - if it were an economic subject, or one you felt at home with, you would do some homework, would you not? There is NO substitute for having a look yourself on the topic change etc; you dont need a degree in a science subject, just a willingness to try to understand and ask intelligent questions. So, please, no more blogs about your climate change "beliefs" - do some spadework for goodness sake!

Simon Stephenson

Fraser

What can you tell me that will help me to believe that you have reached your position from a study of the information available, and from a personal conviction, derived independently from this study, and this study alone, that man-made global warming is a serious problem needing to be dealt with?

And not:-

1. That mankind's obsession with ever-increasing consumption is not a healthy recipe for our future, and that a policy that obstructs the continuation of this obsession is a welcome one, even if the arguments supporting this policy are speculative and inaccurate.

or

2. It would be harmful to society for the AGW case to be exposed as nonsense, not because it isn't largely nonsense, but because too many leaders' reputations are inextricably tied in with the general public acceptance of its validity.

Just as the major obstacle to withdrawal from Afghanistan is not a military problem, nor any consequence to our national security, but the perceived need to protect the political leadership from having to admit that they should never have taken us there in the first place.

or

3. That so many people have structured their entire lives around the fact that AGW is fact that there would be social turmoil if authoritative government came out starkly with the truth that it's almost entirely based on myth. The gullible need to be let down slowly.

or

4. That whatever the rights and wrongs, you personally are not at the moment happy to be associated too strongly with the sceptic camp. The level at which you are willing to be identified as a sceptic depends primarily upon the stance of your identified peer group, and only minimally upon what you, yourself, have chosen to believe.

Fergus Pickering

Dirty Euro, pray tell me WHERE these hydro electric infernal machines be? They need mountains, don't you know? We don't have any where I live. So how doyou get the electricity from the Lake District to me? How much will that cost and will there be enough? Have you got figures and costings for all this? Thought not.

John Bowman

The Guardian list shows the flaw in the reasoning, it correlates CO2 increase and increased warming to imply causal link: it is a principle of science that correlation may not be used to imply causality without corroborating evidence. There is none.

CO2 does not "trap" heat, it attenuates outgoing long wavelength radiation, preventing some reaching Space. Its ability to do this is logarithmic, declining as its concentration increases.

CO2 is not the only nor the most important element to affect the heat fluctuation of the Earth's climate, so to consider it without taking into account other elements is a flawed approach.

The behaviour of the heat fluctuation over recent decades is readily explained by natural cycles over time.

There is no evidence which supports the claim only CO2 controls the Earth's climate.

mitcheltj

A PS to my earlier post.

Fraser - the essential reason that you simply MUST examine evidence yourself is that it is the integrity of the climate scientists themselves that is at stake here.

Have you not been struck by the deafening silence of prominent scientists, climate or other disciplines, as more revelations come forward about the tawdry practices of IPCC and others? Where is the Royal Society condemnation? Other professional bodies? All you are now getting now from the scientific establishment, and its fellow journalistic travellers, is grudging sotto voce acknowledgement - in the face of the now overwhelming and incontrovertible evidence - of IPCC/UEA wrong-doings, but coupled quickly with unconvincing assurances that they are an isolated case and the remainder of the evidence for AGW is "overwhelming" etc. The trouble is that as soon as anyone examines another bit of "overwhelming" evidence in detail, it somehow crumbles to dust. You certainly would not be trampled in the rush of prominent scientists speaking up loud, clear and repeatedly for the importance of integrity in science.

Sir David King is a prime example of a leading scientist whose integrity should not be trusted. He had to retract, almost immediately, his unsubstantiated contention that the climategate leaks (or hacking according to him, again no evidence for this) from UEA were the work of foreign agents. This is a man who was, for god's sake, a Chief Scientific Advisor to the Government. How can you trust someone like him? I would not take his word, nor the word of others like him, for anything scientific. Neither should you.

oldtimer

The HoC has lost its reputation on the back of the expenses scandal. I expect that UK climate scientists are on the point of losing theirs on the back of the Climategate scandal.

Frank P

oldtimer

Neither the HoC nor the UK climate scientist have lost their reputation: as conniving, thieving, scaremongering, scamsters and traitors. Moreover, it is unlikely that they ever will. And if you really are an 'oldtimer' you also know 'twas ever thus, or you have been living on a different planet to me.

TrevorsDen

You talk about debate but you are totally ignorant of the parameters around which this debate should be founded.

Do you even understand how CO2 is supposed to work. (I'll give you a clue: real greenhouses work mainly by modulating convection while the 'greenhouse effect' works by modulating radiation. Oh and much of the wavelength bands where carbon dioxide is active are either at or near saturation. )

Do you realise that water vapour is by far the biggest constituent of 'greenhouse gas' effect? (though its not as virulent as say methane).

Indeed do you know that 500 million years ago CO2 levels were likely 10 times higher than now. In fact higher (much higher) CO2 concentrations are thought to have prevailed throughout many pre historic eras. with ice ages in between.

And we are still here. Do you really think that if the earth were predisposed to be so sensitive to higher CO2 levels that we would still be here? The idea of dangerous 'run away' warming has no sound basis in fact.

Also there is a lot of science around to show that CO2 does not have a significant effect on temperatures. Its not being debated. Its being silenced. Read Lord Monkton.

The warming is not unusual. We have had higher temperatures in the 'medieval warm period'.
This is the whole point about the notorious Mann Hockey Stick. Mann used tree ring proxies to go back in time and these showed a much lower temperature.

The only trouble was that these proxies did not match modern actual temperature readings, they actually fell. In other words these proxies were totally unreliable in trying to show medieval temps.

So in order to 'hide the decline' they strapped modern real temperature readings on to this to purport to show a massive rise in temps. Totally bogus science - if you trust these people then you are a fool.

So there is nothing unusual about current temperatures and indeed world temps have been flat for 10 years. All the scares from the IPCC are daily being proved to be bogus.

Sara

The most rich and powerful of the world want this "religion" enforced and imposed on the people of the world. It gives them an new avenue to control the wealth of the world and to control the people of the world. People are idiots not to have the brains to "follow the money" in this scheme especially now that the "scientists" have been shown to have cooked the climate data, manipulated peer review and taken on the "openness" of a communist party "debate." Al Gore is a total, greedy wacko and the world is following him. That is too funny.

Mike Spilligan

Fraser: Do study this subject in some depth before blogging on it again. You're far too trusting of Monbiot, the Guardian, "scientists", and the politicians who make up the vast majority of the IPCC.
The only thing I'd like to add to the majority of realist (not "sceptical") comments here is that there is evidence that the natural warming cycle (after cooling) is likely to trap CO2 (which has been as high as 4,400 ppm in the past) this being the reverse of what Nobel Gore said, with nary a challenger at the time.

Ian C

The world is warming unusually. Is it ?

That appears to be in grave doubt. And is the eseence of the whole climate "debate" for which read hocus-pocus.

Sometime in the not too distant future will be revealed that the database of world temperatures, that on which most climatologists have innocently based their research, will be provably faulty at best.

At that point, the clamour will be for the science to go back to square one, and rightly so. They might as well start now because there is no credibility in the "settled science" at present.

The rest of your assertions Fraser are correct, but the 'unusual warming' piece of wisdom is very far from proven at tops.

THX1138

Finally, "rationalism seems to be entering the climate change debate."

Not on this comment thread it hasn't - 2009 was the 2nd warmest year on record at the end of the warmest decade on record.. But some are to blind to see what is in front of their eyes, because their denialist faith blinds them to reason.

To quote Johann Hari on AGW "deniers, for that is what most of you are:

That's why I won't use the word "sceptic" to describe the people who deny the link between releasing warming gases and the planet getting warmer. I am a sceptic. I have looked at the evidence highly critically, desperate for flaws. The overwhelming majority of scientists are sceptics: the whole nature of scientific endeavour is to check and check and check again for a flaw in your theory or your evidence. Any properly sceptical analysis leads to the conclusion that man-made global warming is real. Denial is something different: it is when no evidence, no matter how overwhelming, could convince you. It is a faith-based position.

Also to quote Tory PPC Louise Bagshawe debating with me on Twitter, discussing The Coffee House Commentors & the Speccie Editorial position.

"they're all UKIP voters who think David Cameron is a hippie. But we mean it on conservation. Conservatives conserve"

Thanks goodness main stream Tory opinion is on the side of rational thought and not a "faith-based position"

And it keeps getting WARMER...

Linda Smith

"Keeps getting warmer" !!?? Bloody cold round here.

TGF UKIP

THX 1138, noted that you choose to come in right at the fag end of this thread to leave the customary headbanger's bile and abuse.

dgress

THX1138 (good film, by the way), remains a true believer. Something must be impelling these people, who have no immediate economic interest in the AGW mythology, to believe it. I suppose it's a form of sadism: make the others pay for over-consumption and generally being bad; meanwhile I, the AGW true believer, can feel good even while becoming poorer. Strange.

There is no AGW. There is no problem with CO2. Climate changes, as it always has done. Get over it. Relax. And vote out the criminally inept fools who want to take your money, in a world crisis, to line their pockets, give themselves more power, and fool all the rest of us. I say no.

Tom Forrester-Paton

Fraser, your credulousness is astonishing. You seem to be reasonably au fait with the Climategate emails, yet unable to see that they cry out for adverse inference. Surely you can see that what was presented as a variety of independent strands of scientific enquiry coming to similar conclusions was in fact a Bombers-over-Red- Square parade of the same regurgitated, "value-added" (sic) data, the raw version of which (presumably un-value-added) has been destroyed?

Robin Guenier

THX1138: do pay attention. It’s warm now because for about 250 years we’ve been recovering (thank goodness) from the Little Ice Age, the lowest point of which, in sixteenth century, was probably the coldest experienced for about 10,000 years. Immediately before the LIA, it was almost certainly warmer than it is today. There’s no evidence that the current recovery has been significantly affected by mankind’s CO2 emissions. (For an overview of the science, read TrevorsDen at 2:21pm yesterday.)

Cuffleyburgers

I disagree.

1) There IS doubt that the planet is actually warming - the abuse of the temperature data (urban heat islands, upwards adjustments, dudgy tree ring data) is documented in detail on blogs such as WattsupWithtHat

2) The greenhouse effect has been proven not to exist. What is the mechanism by which CO2 traps heat? The reply of wll of course it does seems an inadequate justification for impoverishing the planet and causing millions of deaths

3) What is the best course of action? In "The Sceptical Environmentlist" Bjorn Llomberg (who believes in warming) argues that the best choices are generally adaptation rather than mitigation. Given that the mediaeval warm period (which the IPCC wold have us forget ever happened) was marked by an unprecendented increase in agricultural output and wealth generation, perhaps a few degeees of warning isn't an unmitigated disaster.

Ben Elford

I'm not sure we can be reassured by this slight shift in the Guardian's position, or by the BBC's new willingness to report some counter evidence to the IPCC's alarmist propaganda (notice, they always tendentiously show background archive film of melting ice whenever a reporter is speaking about revelations of fraudulent claims).

It should encourage the rational among us that there is growing evidence of a large body of educated (including some scientifically literate) people who are not persuaded by the hype and will not be willing to dig ever deeper into their pockets to fund politicians' whims in the name of carbon reduction.

Joyce

Oldtimer, you're right about the new poll tax. The science may have been proven dodgy but the spectre of additional tax revenue is too much for the government to quit, now. I saw a blog the other day complaining that the high commissioner to Canada, unable to get anyone to listen to his regular media operation, has gone so far as to spend additional funds to hire a professional spinner to sell climate change as a security issue to Canadians. This government will stop at nothing.