How did they ever get away with this?

Rob

Nonsense. The fact that its remit is to study the risk of human-induced climate change means just that. It doesn't mean that it assumes that human-induced climate change is happening, or the only sort, or anything. It just means that the IPCC's remit doesn't extend to any other form of climate change.

In fact, the fact that it refers to "the risk of" human-induced climate change sort of suggests that the remit doesn't assume it to be the case.

Augustus

'The discredited ideology and business of CO2 driven global warming and climate change are part of the now disreputable bubble of false value creation. Just as the creators of false derivative and credit value have met their Nemesis, so the Green Bubble will burst and the businesses of carbon trading, biofuels, wind farms and any number of green scams and consultancies will collapse.

'Of course, there are many individuals and interest groups who know that CO2 climate theory is fatally flawed but choose to go along with it for other reasons - saving nature, public transport, stopping smoke pollution, supporting rainforests, making money from carbon fixing (oil companies), thrift, taxation etc., anything you care to label as 'green'...

'Is there any example in history where a 'progressive lie' (e.g. around a false bogey)
has benefited any other than spivs, warmongers or totalitarian regimes?'

Jenny

This is the thing. The IPCC will operate forevermore because it has to cover the backs of all the fools who fell for this.

How on earth have they been allowed to get away with it?

droog

What a way to delegate! Hand us 50 articles for us to read and be on your merry way.

I googled some of the authors and I am shocked to find them to be coal chemists, scholars with no qualifications in climate science, people receiving money from oil companies, people who reject the climate skepticism, etc. Nevertheless, I will plough on during the weekend and read all this stuff because Mrs. Phillips assures me it contains The Truth™!

Michael

What utter tripe.

Spike

Michael, what's tripe? Melanie's piece, or the nonsense written below it by Rob? For Goodness sake don't be a lemming.

N

Thanks, but we already know the Global warming thing is crap.

Richard

I'm just as puzzled by this approach as I was when writing to last week's thread. All the document does is define an area of investigation for the IPCC. It doesn't prejudge the findings. Melanie's crow of 'I told you so!' makes no sense at all.

Anyone with a bit of time can put together a set of websites representing just one side of this question. I'll have a look at some of them. But it would be just as easy to find as many, or more, supporting the other side. Why always stay in your comfort zone? Why not admit , as I asked last week, that there is evidence pointing the other way too, and that our collective dilemma isn't resolved by trying more and more desperately and flimsily to dismiss the warnings issued by a large majority of climate scientists? The serious question is, what is the prudent and moral thing to do when given warnings of this kind that may possibly turn out to be unfounded but may well turn out to be true?

Robbosleftpeg

Rob

You are George Monibot and I claim my 5 pounds.

james Murphy

Oh come off it Rob! They're looking for the 'risk', so they already have an a priori assumption that it exists.
And Michael, what is the tripe you're referring to? Melanie's averting us to the IPCC scandal or the IPCC scandal itself? Make yourself clear, man.

Dave

Cases of measles are on the rise it emerged today. Apparently poor reporting of the MMR scare is to blame. Poor reporting that will certainly lead to the deaths of a few unfortunate children.
So before we take this latest post too seriously, perhaps an apology first, Mel? And a pause followed by a bit of self-examination? Just how do you report complex science?
And when all that is done. Let's talk climate change.

keith

Rob and Michael are clearly true believers for whom man-made climate change has become a religion, much like those true Marxists who despite everything believed the statistics coming out of the old East Germany which "proved" to them that communism worked at least somewhere in the world. When the wall came down and the sham was revealed, people like Rob and Michael joined the green movement. No point in arguing with them. Just pray they never take over the world.

Fran

What's tripe Michael?

Barry Larking

It is very interesting to consider the very high emotions which dominate the climate change question. For many I feel the link is not in climate but politics; politics of very low intellectual merit.

The reasoning – if it can be called as such – goes something like this: G W Bush and the Neo-Conservatives did not believe in climate change by human actions. We dislike Bush and the Neo-Conservatives. Therefore climate change as a result of human actions must be real. If it is not Bush and the Neo-Conservatives are right. This cannot be allowed to happen. We will believe in climate change as a result of human actions whatever.

This silly. I too did not admire Bush (though less hostile to him than some) and the Neo-Conservatives are irrelevant. One of the most agile minded sceptics of the climate change by human action I know of is as far from a Neo-Conservative as it is possible to conceive. There are many such people around, who object to the 'dragooning' of science for political ends by a powerful clique.

Today's sharp weather is a reminder that the Sun has entered a new cycle. These cycles are approximately eleven years long. The highly active period just finished included massive corona emissions. (I am in no wise a scientist and i should be happy to give way to others who are on the details.) When I learnt this from the admirable 'Sky at Night' some years ago I siuspected our weather might be affected adversely. The science is rather complex and, importantly, new and develping.

I have seen with my own eyes evidence for a warm phase in these islands several thousand years ago, long before industrialisation.

I have seen six decades of winters in the UK and only twice really hard winters. However, I welcome energy conservation and new technology it only to escape the cluches of Iranian clerical fascists or Russian dictators.

Doug

MMR. That's all you need to know about Melanie Phillips and her scientific knowledge.

Jenny

droog says: "I am shocked to find them to be coal chemists, scholars with no qualifications in climate science". Hang on. They are chemists and they are scientific scholars.

So what's wrong with their qualified scientific opinion? Why, just that they don't work in climate change or have qualifications in climate change. Of course, if you want to work in climate change or want to take a course in it, the chances are you certainly have to believe in such a thing. Why would you so much time doing such a thing otherwise?

So droog wants the only people to comment on the existence or not of climate change to be people who are predisposed to believe in it anyway.

And they say the global warming zealots aren't bullies.

EC

It puzzles me why the great global warming scammers, their clergy and apologists keep coming back for more. Melanie is neither turning nor warming to their advances. The eco-mentalists' overwhelming urge to proselytize is directly proportional to their self-promotion and inversely proportional to their evidence.

Straydingo

Doug, from your post I now know all I need to about you.

Nick

I find it odd that Phillips, who clearly knows nothing about science or the scientific method feels qualified to comment on climatology.

I'm not a climatologist either, but I do hold a doctorate in biochemistry, and at least I'm able to distinguish between good data and its interpretation and worthless junk science.

Mel, my advice to you is stick with what you know. Leave science to the professionals.

Richard

Is Melanie saying, then, that scientists shouldn't investigate the possible danger of climate change, and that governments shouldn't fund such investigation, and that public reports on it shouldn't be written?

Forlornehope

Only rational conclusion, Melanie is an agent of the Iranians, Saudis, Russians or all three. They see a low carbon economy as an economic and political disaster. Melanie's cover as a strong supporter of Israel is, of course, a clever ruse to hide her real objective; to keep the West, literally, over a barrel.

Following up the links she had on her last posting was interesting. Anyone who could draw the conclusions from that data that she drew does not understand enough mathematics to be discussing this subject.

fellow traveller

James Murphy: "Oh come off it Rob! They're looking for the 'risk', so they already have an a priori assumption that it exists."

But risk always exists. There's a risk that gnus might provoke civil strife, just not a very big one.

It's true that setting up a body to investigate a risk assumes that there's a risk worth investigating. But if we accept that some climate change is occurring, and that this climate change will affect the way many people live, it's worth investigating if there are things we could usefully change that would lessen the destructive effects.

Or, of course, we could have our science and technology policy decided by outraged bloggers - but that didn't work with MMR.

Jenny

MMR Doug? The people who are so confident the MMR vaccine have slammed the door shut on research so no-one can find out the truth.

Melanie Phillips has not withdrawn one syllable of what she's written on MMR. You seem to sneer at this. There are posts from parents on this site whose children changed after receiving the vaccine - they're not sneering. They just want to know why the door has been slammed in their face.

kitchener

Nick..you don't need to be a "professional" to reconise something like "global warming" as a bogus scam...all you need is GOOD PRACTICAL COMMON SENSE!!!

itlog95

Nick, I must conclude from your comment that you would not think that Al Gore should be commenting on climate, since he seems to know very little about the scientific method.
Richard - what is 'climate change', as opposed to the continuous change in climate that has been with us since our planet began? Can you specify for us at what point the climate of the earth should be 'frozen' and not allowed to change any further? What I am concerned about is the lack of balance in the way politicians and activists allocate priorities in the study of a perfectly normal phenomenon that has been with us forever.

Dixon

Robs comment is actually quite funny if you think about it.

Droog is obviously one of those nits who likes to think whether a statement is true or false depends upon who says it! The whole point about science is that it doesnt matter who the author is, because if the experiment has been designed and interpreted badly that will be evident to anyone studying it and if it wasnt then the conclusions will be valid.

But thats the problem with "climate science". It ( so far ) has put forward neither experiments nor findings of experiments and therefore is not streictly speaking "science" at all.

People like Droog cannot understand the crucial difference between empiricism and the Popperian scientific process. "Evidence" is meaningless without a framework of testable predictions against which interpretations can be evaluated. So far, all the predictions of "climate science" have been very wrong. Rewriting the model to assimilate the inaccuracy of the prediction only constitutes the denial of the key feature of genuine science, which is falsifyability.

IPCC type mowats can never be "proven" wrong because they forever change their position retrospectively. Its like someone changing the questions asked in a test to make their wrong answers right for the new version. Its not merely cheating, its plainly unscientific.

Dixon

The question for all "Greens" is, "Do you have children?"

If they answer "No", then this prompts the query, "Why then does it matter".

If their answer is "Yes", then this prompts the response "Why the hell should I sacrifice my lifestyle for YOUR children?"

They then have to spew some codswallop about "Humanity". Which means they've lost the argument, as the species is utterly certain to become extinct shortly due to a natural disaster at some point. Be that millions or billions or ( if its an asteroid impact ) only a few years hence, its an interval that is utterly tiny against the timespan of cosmic events.

"Environmentalism" is just so prissy and small-minded. Look at the bigger picture, if you can fit it into your tiny horizons: nothing humanity will ever do will at all make any difference to anything, in the long run.

The Doctor

Nick, the IPCC are not professonals, but ideologues. If you know so much about data, prove it.

D. Reynolds

You don't have to be a scientist to point others to scientific debate against something that is unproven. You would need to be some kind of fool to believe that world governments do not listen to the IPCC and base their future tax regimes involving 'saving the planet', because the world governments created the IPCC in the first place to do just that - it's in the title - Intergovernmental.

If Miss Phillips has simply directed the reader to a host of information which would otherwise not have fitted into the column, it might simply be that she is showing opinions other than just hers.

The IPCC cat is well and truly out of the bag, off down the street and around the corner. Their doctrines bear no likeness to reality. It's a scientific provable fact.

Stephen Fox

Richard wrote 'Is Melanie saying, then, that scientists shouldn't investigate the possible danger of climate change, and that governments shouldn't fund such investigation, and that public reports on it shouldn't be written?'
Isn't it clear that if scientists are set to study an issue like climate change as part of a body like the IPCC, supervised by politicians who have no more grounding in climate science than Melanie, then we risk arriving at distorted conclusions? If there is no serious alarm about the matter, then those scientists and politicians are out of a job.
The chorusing that sceptical research must be funded by Exxon is laughable. The gravy train here is global warming alarmism. The grant money for scientists, and the rewards for politicians, journalists and media people, whether in the form of money, votes or kudos, dwarf the opposition by an order of magnitude.
There are many scientific research organisations already existing that could have investigated, without having such an interest in finding fire behind the smoke. But Government’s response to everything is to create more Government.
As for the argument that energy conservation and security are good in themselves, well of course they are. I'm all in favour. But lucidity matters. Attacking those who are active in our society by blaming them for climate change, while idle rich people who produce little or nothing will be able to pay higher taxes and buy carbon credits will just weaken further our already feeble economy. Stupidly, the Left either doesn’t care about that, or thinks it would be a good thing.

Climate realist down under

Paraphrasing of Nick @ 8.38:

"I find it odd that Al Gore, who clearly knows nothing about science or the scientific method feels qualified to comment on climatology.
..........
Al, my advice to you is stick with what you know. Leave science to the professionals"

Elizabeth

Doug and Dave, Why don't you try to find credible reasons why the diagnostic rate for autism spectrum disorders is now running at 1:100 when it used to be a very rare diagnosis? Why aren't parents who report adverse vaccination reactions following MMR (and other triple/multiple vaccinations) being believed (even if the AVRs are those acknowledged on the vaccine manufacturers' websites)? What will it take for the UK's newspaper editors to realise that SOMETHING is going on that is bigger than thalidomide? Why can nobody take an overall look and compare the introduction of triple/multiple vaccines with the rise in ASDs? Why don't you both go and ask a special needs teacher with more than twenty years' experience how they used to cope with ASD children in the 70s? Where is the medical research team in the U.K. that is willing to examine allegedly vaccine-damaged children and publish their findings (clue: the Medical Research Council won't fund anything of this nature)?

Melanie, my apologies for going off-topic but Doug and Dave need to be "enlightened".

leo solomon

Particle polution ,that deflects the suns rays, seems to be effecting the rate of oceanic evaporation and might be causing the severe droughts that are being experienced in many countries . The very extreme winters that many other countries have endured,in recent years,could also be being caused by particle polution.Those who monitor these conditions claim that evaporation is down and ocean temperatures are down.The data gathered by those who test these things does not seem to be entering the equations of those who hold the prevailing point of view.

Nick

Jenny, scientists don't undertake an investigation 'wanting to believe' in something.

We form hypotheses, design experiments to test these hypotheses, collect data and analyse it and submit it for peer review. We reject, accept or modify our hypotheses on the basis of the above.

It's a simple enough procedure, but it's amazing how many people don't get it.

Christine Parsons

Dear Melanie
Re your article concerning the G word it has now been used by every newscaster publicly since
and I have not heard that anybody has been offended.What is going on?

arnoldo

Mmmm... I wasn't aware of the gnu risk. I watch the 24 hour gnus channels and it wasn't on there.

Robin

Nick,
"Mel, my advice to you is stick with what you know. Leave science to the professionals."

Ah... that'll be the scientists (disguised as Doctors) who told pregnant women that taking Thalidomide was fine.

Shakassoc

Fellow traceller wrote: 'There's a risk that gnus might provoke civil strife, just not a very big one.'
I see it now: herds of feral wildebeest rampage across major British cities, protesting about the use of animals in scientific research. It is rumoured that elks, moose and even some deer may 'come out' in sympathy. Imagine the civil strife as they all congregate for a rally in Trafalgar Square and then stampede along Whitehall to beseige Parliament. The government will begin to wonder if its anti-terrorism legislation has been sufficiently broadly cast so as to include species native to sub-Saharan Africa.

Dixon

Elizabeth
February 7th, 2009 9:49am
Doug and Dave, Why don't you try to find credible reasons why the diagnostic rate for autism spectrum disorders is now running at 1:100 when it used to be a very rare diagnosis? "

I've been diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorder, I am 48! I didn't suddenly develop it. Rather Ive had it all my life but the diagnostic paradigm of this syndrome has onle recently appeared. Theres your answer.

You might as well ask "explain why there were no hate crimes thirty years ago?" Simply there was no such category.

Jenny

Nick, February 7th, 2009 10:38am, scientists are just as subject to conflict of interest as the rest of us. If you are in the pay of an organistation whose very existence relies on global warming being real, that is bound to affect the weight and prominence you give to this or that strand of data. This is how scientists' theories often fall apart. Someone says yes all of x,y and z does amount to that, but you've not got the full picture.

Likewise, if you go on a course on global warming, the course will accept it as a fait accompli, will it not?

The global warming zealots will simply brook no criticism from outside their own fold. We even have 'droog' saying the opinion of a coal chemist is worthless. I mean, what would a coal chemist possibly know about carbon?

It's beyond a joke.

Dixon

"Scientific consensus" had it only twenty years ago that we would by now have millions of people dying of JCD!

Did we ever hear anyone in the media who had bought that view pipe up and say "we got it wrong?"

History is littered with "consensus" opinions based on cod-science that were never declared to have been wrong but quietly forgotten.

R.V.Jones in "Most Secret War" recounts how he was unable to convince fellow scientists in briefings of Churchill that what was plainly visible in aerial photos of Peenemunde was a gigantic ballistic missile. That was considered to be "scientifically" impossible! The "consensus" was that it must be a new type of torpedo...even though there didnt exist an airplane big enough to carry such a 46 foot behemoth. Not long later, the first of some 1400 of these "torpedoes" ( the V2 ) began to rain down on London.

At the end of WW2 it was scientific consensus in the UK ( reflected in a famously "scientific" declaration from the Royal Society ) that it would be impossible...yes IMPOSSIBLE...to place a spaceship on the Moon, for a series of axiomatic and "scientific" reasons. Noone ever owned up and said "Iwas wrong" when the Russians did just that little over a decade later.

Then more recently George Monbiot has on CH4 news in argument pulled out a piece of paper and read from it a declaration affirming the apocalyptic reality of man-made climate change, published under the auspices of none other than the Royal Society. as though that trumped all other argument.

Nobody learns. Meanwhile, the Royal Society has barred Susan Greenfield from ascending to its chairmanship on the grounds ...basically...that she is a working class woman who likes to wear short skirts! ...Such a "scientific" body to have on ones side.

Malthus created a "consensus" of "scientific" opinion in his day that by the 1900s we would all be starved out of existence.

In the 19th Century, it was predicted that the industrial revolution and economic expansion was doomed because of the "scientific fact" that it would be impossible to breed enough horses to keep up with demand. Henry Ford had yet to make his mark on the world.

It was also predicted that with the rapid urbanisation of Manhatten Island there would be an environmental disaster ...so consensus had it...caused by the accumulation of horse dung faster than it could be removed.

In Opthalmology there is a "consensus" that the alleged phenomenon of dual cortical mapping associated with Anomalous Retinal convergence ( ARC ) is a fact whilst in neurology there is a concensus that the same effect is a myth! Two valid scientific fields in one of which "consensus" is diametrically the opposite of that found on the same topic in the other!

All the twaddle about "hes a scientist, shes a layman" boils down to merely "hes anointed high priest and she should know her place". It has no place indeed, in any intelligent debate. Especially when those who try to pull authority in terms of "science" seem to know so little about its nature and history and the nature of knowledge itself.

jane

As someone trained in environmental science many moons ago, I used to be a firm believer of Man's adverse effects on ecosystems including the climate - until the extraordinary coincidence of nearly all world leaders simultaneously agreeing on AGW struck me as odd, after some 30+ years of lobbying by environmentalists urging development of alternative energy sources. Doubts grew after reading that AGW was discussed at the 2007 Bilderberg meeting, followed by the EU's inane carbon credits policy/taxation. Moreover, the AGW brigade have not produced a convincing explanation for all the previous periods in Earth's history of global warming/cooling when Mankind was not around. Finally, though it makes utter sense to reduce dependence on oil & pollution generally, it does seem more probable that earth's climate is more likely affected by sun activity, since climate change has recently been observed on other planets, such as Mars, Jupiter, Saturn etc.

Jean-Marc

The whole global warming farce is politically managed by various left wing world governments who want an excuse for even tighter control and taxation of their population. The population is beginning to see through the sham and may soon rise up and rebel against it

Dr Richard Lawson

If we take action to avoid climate change, we also diminish the crisis of Peak Oil. If we take no action, and Ms Philips should happen to be wrong (not outside the bounds of possibility?) we not only get catastrophic climate change, but also a worse crisis with Peak Oil.

Michael

Hey Spike...

me? a lemming? Take a look around, not exactly in the company of history shaping trailblazers are we?

Get a grip.

Jay

MMR, Melanie, MMR.

MMR.

Tony Allwright (Tallrite Blog)

Melanie, I am with you on this topic.

I have analysed in some depth data published by the Energy Information Administration, which lists the CO2 emissions of every country in the world each year from 1980 to 2005. I have compared the emissions performances of Kyoto ratifiers (eg the EU) with non-ratifiers (eg the USA), over the period 1997 (when Kyoto was formulated) to 2005.

And guess what.

The 61 non-ratifiers increased their emissions by 5%, but the 162 ratifiers increased theirs by an astonishing 29%!

The EU as a whole went up by 6½% but under that toxic Texan the USA went DOWN by nearly 1%.

The more you ratify, it seems, the worse you perform.

But what is important is to advertise your virtue by ratifying Kyoto (and then virtually ignoring it), rather than to proclaim your non-ratification (but quietly getting on with reudcing your CO2).

Not that man-made CO2 has anything at all to do with climate change.

All this is not informaton that the impartial ICCC is going to tell you.

Details here

Tony Allwright (Tallrite Blog)

Seem to have got the link wrong. Try the one below.

Details here

Dixon

Dr Richard Lawson
February 7th, 2009 6:57pm
If we take action to avoid climate change, we also diminish the crisis of Peak Oil. If we take no action, and Ms Philips should happen to be wrong (not outside the bounds of possibility?) we not only get catastrophic climate change, but also a worse crisis with Peak Oil."

Peak oil is another myth. Obviously, everything runs out eventually. But the timescales are such that humanity will probably be extinct by the time it would matter.

Consider this. We dont REALLY know how hydrocarbons are formed. the picturesque fairytale about it being compressed biomass is pure tribal mythology. This is easily demonstrated by asking where the largest known reserves of hydrocarbons that have ever been discovered are? Arabia, no. Russia, no. Asia, no. You have to look considerably further than that, to a place where there never was any biomass: Titan, the largest moon of Saturn.

Yep, the largest "oil" reserves discovered are on a lifeless body several hundred millions of miles away.A place where oceans of it move under a crust of ice through which geysers of methane burst hundreds of miles into space. Methane, according to conventional wisdom is like oil a product of biomass. But even if there is perhaps life on Titan, there is no biomass there to speak of.

So much that passes as "science" in the"Green" agenda is simply codswallop.

However, I will hand it to you that all Western states want to get off their Arab oil addiction. CO2 hysteria is a good way of packaging this drive. What an intriguing coincidence?

I would love to see the Saudis plunged into poverty by their reliance on our buying something for which there is a diminishing market. Lets face it, their unearned access to immense reserves of our money is underpinning most of the geopolitical conflicts in the world today.

Unfortunately, that too is a fantasy. Like a hooker dreaming of getting off her crack addiction. Oil may yet destroy the civilisation it has fuelled.

Original Tony

It's all about Tax and nothing else!

Crawford

Nick, none of us approach anything completely open about what we'll find. To suggest that scientists are different from all other human beings, in that they can suspend their pre-suppositions, is really not on. We are all contaminated in that respect.

gobbycoot

Here are some questions:

Even if climate change isn't man-made and even if there isn't going to be a catastrophe, why dirty the environment we live in?

Even if climate change isn't man-made, why don't we find alternatives to oil so that we aren't dependent on middle eastern oil? Why do we keep pouring so much revenue into and keeping a big presence in that region? We could be free of that yoke if we simply find alternative energy sources, anthropomorphic climate change or not. I personally don't like giving my money to people who probably want to kill me.....

Mike

I have definitely never been a supporter of Obama or the liars that he has added to his administration. I can definitely say that I have been lazy in researching the truth. For the past week I've been reading a ridiculous amount of articles and I have to say this is one of my favorite yet. I hope that these uneducated ignorant people need to open their eyes to the truth. I hate sounding harsh. I'm not ashamed of being American by any means but I am ashamed of living in a country where people believe what they hear and never put any effort in finding out the facts. I appreciate your stance for morality and the good for mankind. I'm sure that I'm incorrect, but I just always assumed the British were predominately liberal and supported Obama. It's nice to know I'm not correct or at least entirely correct.