My real focus group scorned climate change

Miranda

100% correct

Woobegone

"We’re all doomed. It’s all our fault. Something needs to be done NOW!

Rarely if ever are these stories challenged, because it’s not in the interests of the in-house specialist — the environment correspondent — to do so."

Whereas op-ed columnists, naturally, are paladins of truth and reason - they never just hack out an easy 1,500 words that could be summed up as "Those silly scientists are wrong again!". They could never do that because they have a strong sense of the limits of their own expertise and an excellent sense of their own importance.

Whereas environment corresponds? Idiots the lot of them!

Credit Crunch Investor

Yes, the Credit Crunch might be useful for something after all.

Chris Miller

What a joy to read. I keep waiting for the tipping point; when the weight of evidence is understood by the public to demonstrate that the Gores of this world are talking crap. I think the first politician to take this by the scruff of the neck could turn out to be seen heroically. The NI Environment Minister had a go, but it needs someone bigger. David Cameron ?

Dwight Vandryver

An impeccable article that cannot be faulted. The problem is, of course, that the manmade global warming supposition now supports multi-billion dollar industries, and to hell with scientific veracity. The piece illustrates all the well-known disadvantages of the Great Green Scam, but fails to point out the advantages.
Without AGW, there would not be a revival of the nuclear power industry. There would not be the energy conscious approach to living and manufacturing, now that this country has squandered its North Sea reserves and has to import instead. There would not be the efforts to recycle.
As pointed out in the 1972 report "Limits to Growth", there will come a time when natural resources will no longer be able to support the world's growing population. Politicians cannot sell this idea to the public as such. Under the guise of an impending manmade climate change catastrophe, a political ploy has been discovered with which to "acclimatize" the public to the notion of stagnant, and possibly falling, standards of living.

sara

Global warming has all the earmarks of the newest religon on the block. Even down to the hysterical way that deniers are dealt with by the media. Like all successful religons there is a buy out clause for the really wealthy, while ordinary people pay the biggest price.

Peter

I don't think I know anyone who thinks that global warming - which is probably not happening - is human caused. Almost everyone I know thinks that it is just a great juggernaut that is providing a job for thousands and thousands of activists. They are not going to research themselves out of a job anytime soon. It is exactly the same as the 'We are about to be hit by a 20 mile wide asteroid brigade'. It is just a way of raising funding.

ian skidmore

Hear Hear. Well said

Bickers

Great article - bang on the money.

If you read the IPCC's last assessment report you'll find that the scientific contributions within it are genrally very circumspect about what has caused the recent gloabl warming (which satellite measurements indicate stopped 8-10 years ago), however the Summary for Policymakers (which is as far as most politicians and media go in reading the report) is not written by scientists but quangocrats and UN appointed personnel - not one of them a climate scientist).

The IPCC is a political arm of the UN and it was set up with the remit to show how man was causing global warming, not what causes global warming and climate change. It's in the IPCC's interest to keep the scare going, without which they serve no purpose and have no need to exist, however when did you last see a quangocracy vote itself redundant?

There is no evidence that CO2 has caused the recent warming and of the extremely small amount of warming that CO2 can cause the % down to man (circa 3% of annual CO2 emissions is manmade) is irrelevant.

CO2 is a trace gas making up less than 0.01% of the atmosphere. CO2 enhances plant growth so more CO2 will be beneficial.

A warmer world is a much more pleasant place to be than a colder one - significantly more people are saved from cold related deaths than heat related ones.

Quite soon (maybe after another couple of cold winters and cool summers - last heatwave in UK was July '06) the Gore lovers and AGW alarmists will be seen to be wearing the emperers new clothes - it can't happen a moment too soon in order to end the AGW scam, which unscrupulous politicians (Ed Milliband anyone?) are and will use to justify greenwash taxes

Alex Wishart

Good for you. The late Sir Fred Hoyle, writing about Ice Ages in 1981, stated, inter alia, that increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere 5-fold would make no difference at all to the CO2 greenhouse effect.

Ben

"...either believe the cant ..."

Whatever happened the "Dictionary of Cant" which was a staple of the Spectator in the not so distant past?

Cogito Ergosum

Despite all the money poured into education in science, in the state and private schools alike, we are still so unscientific as a nation. In particular, there is seldom any grasp of the variability of nature, and the need to distinguish random change from cause-and-effect change.

I conclude that for most people, education is a waste of money: my tax money, that is.

Dixon

My fear is this:
The absence of actual warming continues whilst CO2 "caps" are nonetheless imposed...then the Eco Fascists declare that the continued absence of warming was DUE to those CO2 caps! Like carrying a brick in Hyde Park to ward off the lions...there are no lions, therefore it must work!

What this would do is endorse the fundamental drive of the Green Fascists to impose ever more restrictions in ever more areas of our lives.

Our only hope is that the caps cannot be maintained. We need a billionaire AGW sceptic to create a plant floating in International Waters dedicated to producing quantities of CO2 that vastly exceed projected limits so as to demonstrate their irrelevance in relation to the total atmospheric CO2 levels. Less than 10% is of Human origin.

Of course, it would need to be permanently roaming the oceans to escape the Stormtroopers of Greanpeace.

Woobegone

So you conclude that science education doesn't work, on the basis that most people agree with the scientific experts.

I think you might be more at home on a Texas school board.

Captain Coma

Music to the ears. The eco-mentalists represent crypto-communism's last assault on the free world; or if you prefer, as Hayek said, once something becomes the big idea, it's no longer the best idea.

[By the way, James, are you still after a hunting coat? I am almost sure I have one packed away (I am quite short, slim; the jacket is black, 38" chest and fits me snugly). If you're interested, drop me a line and I will check for you. Speccie has me email.]

Rory

You have a choice: believe the ten grumpy, and clearly quite odd, persons down the pub or these people http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

Are NASA airbrushing their satellite images?

Fear is now gnawing at those who nailed the "load of bollocks" flag to their masts on this issue as, on a daily basis, prominent sceptics convert to the belief that climate change is a real and urgent problem and the data just keeps rolling in.

A distaste for the bien pensant London elite should not blind you to the truth about the changes underway on your planet.

It is not just them who notice, you can ask the hardy farmers here on the south coast of Ireland who have to plant crops earlier and must deal with unprecedented distruption of the seasons and extreme weather events.

Or ask an eskimo, or come to think about it, just look out the window.

Rory

You have a choice: believe the ten grumpy, and clearly quite odd, persons down the pub or these people http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

Are NASA airbrushing their satellite images?

Fear is now gnawing at those who nailed the "load of b****cks" flag to their masts on this issue as, on a daily basis, prominent sceptics convert to the belief that climate change is a real and urgent problem and the data just keeps rolling in.

A distaste for the bien pensant London elite should not blind you to the truth about the changes underway on your planet.

It is not just them who notice, you can ask the hardy farmers here on the south coast of Ireland who have to plant crops earlier and must deal with unprecedented distruption of the seasons and extreme weather events.

Or ask an eskimo, or come to think about it, just look out the window.

Dixon

Neither "Woebegone" nor "Rory" address the actual issue raised in the article.

Rory misread it as about "climate change" when it was clearly about the "Anthropogenic Global Warming " hypothesis ( AGW ). These are two seperate issues. Whereas you may be on firm ground about climate change, the AGW hypothesis is sufficiently dodgy that most environmentalists have dumped the phrase "global warming" in preferance for "climate change" precisely for that reason.

As for Woebegone, it is precisely the lack of scientific education that results in believing that anything a person in a "scientific" profession asserts IS "science". On the contrary. Scientists are only Human. They are as prone to making unscientific statements as anyone. Specifically, the AGW hypothesis is not "scientific" because it fails the requirement of being "falsifyable". Like the case for God or Communism, ANY facts can be interpreted to support the belief system. Hence the revision of climate models recently to imply that the ten year hiatus in global warming is further proof that it is happening! A topsy turvy situation to say the least. In real science, the validity of a hypothesis is judged by the accuracy of its predictions. In environmentalism, the hypothesis is continually revised to allow for failed predictions. By that method, neither God nor AGW can ever be disproved. Like God, therefore, AGW is fundamentally outside of science.

As for Rory stating sceptics are being converted on "a daily basis", can he name one from yesterday?

John de Finchley

Straw man, of course, Rory.

The issue is not whether the climate can change - of course it can - but whether it is doing so as a result of human activity.

If it's not a result of human activity, then there is no reason to think we cna change i and good reaosn to think we can't.

You know this perfectly well, it's just that you're intellectually completely dishonest.

Rory

Hey, to clarify, I should have said that I'm referring to climate change being man made.

Which is certainly now a huge factor. If this movement has deveoped some of the characteristics of a religion, (although I feel like the heretic here!) it is perhaps bacause it is of existential significance, and it is a great truth being revealed. But scepticism is important to purify such a truth so go for it everyone!

Anyhow it's 5pm on a Friday and I need to get in to my land rover, drive one hundred miles down to West Cork, stoke up a coal fire and kick back with a bottle of wine flown all the way from New Zealand!

Enough people like me will prove the point in the end!

ps - Dixon, my mate Dave converted yesterday. ;-)

Phillip Reece

"Climate change" is utter Bollock's , it's as simple as that.

Dixon

Nice try Rory, but like the many journalists who fashionably use the phrase, you don't seem to understand what is meant by "Existential". It is not a reference to continued existence but the horror ( or "nausea" as Sartre put it ) of HAVING existed!

As far as continued existence goes, what are you expecting, eternity? The entire planet WILL for absolutely certain be swallowed by the sun a few billion years from now. In less than a million years the Earth will long have become uninhabitable. Even if Humanity and its works dissapear long before then.

Like death, extinction IS INEVITABLE. To pretend otherwise is the real "denial". Morality and policy ought dollow from such realities, not the Canute like attempt to turn back the tide of cosmological processes.

Anyway. you again conflate "climate change" into "global warming", which are two different thibgs, whether "mand made" or not!

Meanwhile, if Dave converted to "belief" yesterday, I converted the lad in Sainsbury's in the other direction! Who converted to "belief" the day before, or the one before that. Can you name any of the hundreds of others you say are converting "on a daily basis" over the last year?

Rhoda Klapp

Most people I meet would agree with the load of bolx position to some degree. When you've lived through a few scares that come to nothing you bound to need a bit of convincing, and the AGW case seems weak when the main argument is 'look at all the scientists who agree with me'. In fact any warning there is (not much here lately, is Oxfordshire's CO2 no good?) is probably mostly 'natural'. And even if it wasn't, warmer is generally better than colder. The variability of temperature where people live is vast. There is no ideal, and no historical right temperature. The warming postulated by the AGW crowd is really a temp difference which would be equivalent in the northern hemisphere to moving say 200 miles south. Big deal. No need to retire to Spain, their weather is coming here.

TTT

"Try pretending to be a second world war GI"

Because real 80-year-old coots aren't scientifically illiterate enough--you have to find someone who just PRETENDS to be one.

Yawn.

sandy

Good article.

And if you asked the same people their views on the other great media/political quasi-religious obsession,Multiculturalism,I'd bet you'd get the same contrary opinions.

Geoff Chambers

Excellent article. To those who think “green is the new red”, there are plenty of climate deniers coming from the left, ready to swallow our pride and subscribe to the Spectator and Sunday Telegraph, in order to register our opposition to the ecofascism which now dominates all mainstream political parties, (plus the trotskyists and the anarchists). It’s not a question of left versus right, or even of the people versus the establishment. Global temperatures are not rising. That’s it.

The Engineer

Thank you. You have reconfirmed my faith in Joe Public, and inevitably in democracy itself.
The real problem here though is not climate. Yhe real problem is the role of the media in a democracy, a role which has changed dramtically since the internet evolved into its present form. I find it extremely worrying that newspapers no longer consider truth (PRAVDA) a relevant sales argument. All newspapers seem to think they have to regurgitate politically correct propaganda to survive these days - and that scares me more than 0,2 degrees warming every 10 years.

David B. Chapman

My hope is that I live long enough to see the hypophysis of anthropogenic global warming debunked as the rubbish it really is. In the meantime I don't want to see the world economy wrecked by arbitarily iccreasing the cost of, and decreasing the availity of energy by government fiat .

Tom McCarten

A superb piece of journalism and you might add another observation to your very astute collection. Canada just buried, with the biggest loss since the mid nineteenth century our dear beloved Liberal leader and his party of environmental terrorists.
An incomprehensible man with an equally incompressible environmental plan called "Green Shift", a national carbon tax that promised to be neutral with corresponding deductions. Thank goodness most Canadians saw through the nonsense and realized that no government on earth has ever taxed a nation and repealed it but only added the tax to the bloated burden of unaccountable revenues currently destroying our economy.

Charley C

Rory, Woebegone, I'm giving you a chance to convert me right now: all you have to do is provide a convincing answer to two related questions. Firstly, what caused the Roman and medieval warm periods; secondly, how can we be sure that any rise in temperature we may be experiencing at the moment is not caused by similar factors? I'm willing to renounce the heresy of denial if you can convince me...

Sergey

To prove that climate hysteria is a political scum, you need not be scientist or understand a bit in climatology. Simply compare what scientists really said in IPCC assessment report, and what UN bureaucrats said in their resume for policy makers. They hyped and cooked up it so shamelessly, that no additional proof is needed.

Rory

Damn, poor Dixon, you are afflicted with one gloomy perspective!

But the word "existential" does not solely refer to the thoughts of other miserable folk - it can also mean:

adjective
Definition:

1. relating to human existence: concerned with or relating to existence, especially human existence

If we all be cool and get together in a harmonious way, and care for our planet and each other and keep on advancing scientifically and technologically, we may get in touch with lots of other civilizations, develop and share the means to travel very far and to grow morally and spiritually far beyond our present state. If we keep our planet's biosphere stable now, surely we can within a million years or so learn how to keep our star stable - anything is possible! We are not doomed mate! Go out in to the mountains and spend one night deep in the forest, under the stars alone, and tell me then if you see only a small and sad future! Tell me then if you feel besieged by the petty and the self righteous ways of this world.

For you will see the infinite above you, and feel the warm ghost of life in the trees, you will hear the rustle of the creatures, you will say "me arse is damp", but more than that you will say:

"O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!"

as you feel all flow, star and shrew, in orbit, in motion, in the subtlest unknowable unity - just then, an ancient gnarled oak will turn to you and say:

"And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Dixon,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Charlotte Flyte

Good piece, James. Even if it is basically identical to a dozen or so that you've written before. But never mind. You're making a damn good point.

J. Bolind

It is interesting how Group Think now spreads to the world.
One question I have is about Al Gore. I do remember his book he wrote before he became VP. Now he has created this presentation that shows in every school here in Canada. Does he have a Venture Capital/Private Equity firm that specializes in biofuel and green energy companies? Ia hia movie a way to promote his fund? I would like to know if it is spiking the next bubble - the gree bubble.

Herbert Thornton

To me, the most laughable part of this Climate Change scam is the absurdity of New Zealand's taxing of farmers because their cows fart.

Dodgy Geezer

It is good to see more journalists recognising that the AGW hypothesis is incorrect. As the science crumbles we may expect more to do so. But the real story is the evil combination of scientists and establishment figures who, for their own ends, have been lying about it for the last ten years or more.

The story of the suppression of Steve McIntyre's revelation of fraud in the 'hockey-stick' maths (though he would be far too much of a gentleman to use that term), of John Daly's treatment over ocean levels, and of Anthony Watts'single-handed Surface Stations audit all show how easily truth can be sacrificed for short-lived fame.

Now that the failure of the IPCCs projections is becoming impossible to deny, I expect to see Nobel prizes for the deniers who steadfastly upheld the principles of science, and major changes of leadership in the Royal Society, Nature, the APS.....

Not Even Likely

Woobegone, if it's creationism you're thinking of, it's Kansas. And they lost; creationism was removed from school curriculum because it is considered a religion. Which it is. Just like global warming, er, climate change. The great thing about climate change as a religion, is that it always has been, and always will be, true.

WW Rutland

People induced climate change my ass! Global warming is real and a natural cycle. The little ice age (1300 -1850) ended a warming period and Greenland was green then. The Roman empire ended when global cooling 400s to 900s made the dark ages dark. We have no control over nature and when it turns cold again millions die from lack of food and cold illnesses. The warmer it is the more food is grown. We all love the warmth of the sun and most of us detest the cold. You poor Brits live in a cold wet world so why are you worried about getting warm? Move to the Med or Florida like me and stay warm year 'round. http://wwrutland.wordpress.com

R Godfrey

How true. All we hear is the wailing of the greenies and the climate change idiots who have been conned. There is no climate change. This country is still 2 degrees cooler than when the Romans were here. We are the problem, there are too many people in the world. We are breeding like rabbits. The population of China has doubled in the last 50 years and India is not far behind. That is the real problem. All that human excrement and waste to be got rid of and using of Earth's resources. Wind farms are a total joke and a complete waste of money. Do people realise that each wind turbine is anchored to the ground by 1000 tons of concrete, think of the damage to the environment of producing that, also that the turbines only last 25 years, they can't operate in high winds and that even if the country was covered in wind turbines we would still need to keep all our power stations on standby in case of wind failure. We have been conned and consistantly lied to by people with political agendas.

Patrick McCourt

I would refer you to a website,
Junk Science.com who believes as you do.

mal

The unspoken issue in all this guff is population. If there is GW, and I don't know one way or the other, then maybe it's because this world has too many people on it. There are too many people here and too many people everywhere else. Climate change isn't responsible for loss of Amazon or Indonesian rainforests. It isn't responsible for the increase desertification in Africa. It is too many of us trying to live on and off land that isn't suitable for human beings to thrive in large numbers. But, nobody - politicians, churches, NGO's - will not raise the issue unless they want to be sat on by the fat a***s of the Environment storm troopers. Thankfully I haven't got long to go before I'm off this mortal coil, but it makes me weep to see the self-delusion of nations, groups, and individuals. Ah well. The earth will look after itself... it's people who will lose out in the end. Serves us right for our population incontinence