The temple of science denial

Macca

See more Miliband tosh at http://bit.ly/6Llicj

Alfred T Mahan

I pretty much don't listen to the BBC any more. Its smug bias and refusal to accept any other point of view are a complete negation of its charter. How anyone can defend taking money from the poor on pain of imprisonment to fund it completely escapes me.

The sooner the BBC is broken up and privatised, the better - the technology exists for it to become a pay-per-view broadcaster, which is the fairest and least painful option.

John Edwards

Has anyone yet found out who actually paid the Russian hackers to break into the UEA computers?

Johnnydub

The BBC is in full propoganda mode..

On News 24 they have a 4 way conversation going on and the UK is represented by someone calling themsleves a "green activist".

But after five minutes listening to her, the agenda is clear - pure redistibutive marxist communism.

What's occured to me is that if they can't get the rich equal via money, they'll do it via carbon taxes - you know their zeal for "eqaulity"

What will happen though is the elites and the rich will carry on as before, the middle and working classes will just end up piss poor.

isaac

Leftists, politicians and media persons are never wrong. So they continue with that. When the ice covers earth, they'll argue their success.

jimbo

that's what you get for listening to the Toady programme. Waste of time frankly.

Ellen

I don't recall who first said this but, regardless of what is causing global warming, who's to say that this is the Earth's optimal tempurature. Maybe there will be more benefits to warming that there are consequences.

Hysteria

This quote from one of the CRU emails is telling....

"The results of this study will show that we can probably say a fair bit about <100 year extra-tropical NH temperature variability (at least as far as we believe the proxy estimates), but honestly know f***-all about what the >100 year variability was like with any certainty (i.e. we know with certainty that we know f***-all)."

read the while astounding thing here

http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=356&filename=1062592331.txt

(HT - Bishop Hill http://bishophill.squarespace.com/ )

Jonathan

It was utterly shocking. But what can we do other than send complaint after complaint after complaint (some of which are completely ignored, and others of which are airily dismissed).

In my view the BBC is now the single most corrupting influence in the body politic, inexorably shifting the nation's political centre of gravity leftwards.

Next are the state schools, where education has been replaced by social engineering at all levels.

We can't let this Gramscian march succeed. But have we left it too late?

flat-earther

Every sane person knows that the BBC will propagate nonsense for the next 2 weeks. They interviewed some woman from the Met Office (not at all a biased organisation of course!) who mentioned that it has been proven the glaciers in the Himalayas are melting. Not at all challenged by Jon Sopel that actually the IPCC got the figures wrong and wrote in their report 2035 INSTEAD OF 2350, that was in the original report. Not only that, other very credible reporting by scientists say that while some are retreating, a lot of them are not. It is just natural. Why doesnt the BBC always have a counter-argument? Because it doesnt fit with their marxist leftist agenda.

R Fairless

Brown is not very often right but he's wrong again. What has England done to deserve such a MORON as Prime Minister?
In a criminal trial, if a witness is found to be lying, the whole of his evidence is rejected and discounted. Indeed, the prosecution lose their case. This principle should be applied rigorously and the IPCC disbanded. The so called scientists involved in dishonestly malipulating evidence should be sacked forthwith and barred for life in holding any public appointment. I find it astonishing that supposedly intelligent men, even though they are not scientists, could allow themselves to be hoodwinked by the likes of Al Gore and his fellow charlatans.

Raymond Douglas

I sense that what Milliband is doing, is trying to secure "green" jobs for this country . To secure these jobs, he obviously feels that in order to maximise our chances, all disent here must be quashed !is this fair to miliband ?

A J Scott

STOP paying the BBC compulsory fee. Let them stew. Large scale "political disobedience" - as CND, Greenham Common etc is the only thing these "rulers" of ours understand.

Frank P

None of the perpetrators directly involved in the part of this global scam exposed by the leaked documents has claimed that the documents are forgeries; on the contrary they are desperately trying to explain them as having been 'misinterpreted for political reasons' rather than admitting that they are clear evidence of their guilt of deliberately falsifying data for both political gain and financial gain. These documents should therefore be used as a basis for a serious investigation into racketeering by a number of vested and ideological interests, including members of our own government and many other governments beside; the victims in this case being the citizens of numerous countries who will ripped off by this gigantic and cynical fraud.

All that is being considered at the moment in criminal terms apparently, is whether there was any criminal offence involved in hacking the emails.

Which is a bit like a petty burglar unearthing a horde of gold bullion filched from a security van in a gangsters lock up and the police completely ignoring the fact that the bullion was the proceeds of a heinous crime and only dealing with the perpetrator of the break-in at the gangsters garage. Par for the course these days with our Stasi, I suppose.

Stephen Rothbart

Ellen, there is actual proof that the Earth was a better place to live in during the warm period that according to Milliband could never have existed around 1000 AD. The Vikings actually farmed Greenland, and the cold spells in the 14th and 17th Centuries killed millions all over Europe. The stupidity of all these scientists is their belief that our current climate is the optimum for the survival of the planet, when it may very well not be. Of course, we may never know, because the world's leaders and freeloaders, er...sorry, scientists and media guardianistas, will never allow that debate to happen. It might stymie their research financing.

Augustus

It's all about mind control, and its truly sad to see how easy it is to control almost the whole world in this way. Both the IPCC and the US CBO put the direct, as well as the
peripheral costs of the COP 15 agenda in the tens of trillions of USD. It is surely crazy to impose such large costs on all the world's peoples for such an insignifcant and literally unmeasurable small gain. For even if human CO2 emissions were reduced to zero there would be hardly any effect on the climate. And it will be the developing nations who will suffer the most. These nations do not need reductions in CO2 emissions, or windmills, or solar panels, or other unreliable and expensive useless
energy systems, or any part of COP 15. They need good infrastructures with quality roads for transport and ubundant
electrical power which they can afford and which is reliable on demand. They need proper economic development to improve their lives in both human and ecological ways. They should pursue that goal without regard to atmospheric CO2. For the influence of carbon dioxide itself as a greenhouse gas is not that significant. On a normal day the atmosphere contains 20,000 p.p.m. of water vapour and about 300 p.p.m. of carbon dioxide. The government paid scientists tell us that an increase of another 100 p.p.m. of CO2 over the next 50 years would result in a catastrophic global warming. But the thermal
absorbtivity of water vapour is four times larger than that of carbon dioxide. It therefore follows that the CO2 increase will increase the overall thermal absorbtivity of the mixture by about one eighth of one percent. Even the production of methane from livestock flatulence and the rotting swamps (or wetlands in
environmentaltist jargon) vastly
surpasses any influence of human
production of CO2. That is why countless scientists have stated
that AGW is phoney (Global Warming Petition Project, 31,478 independent US scientists
of which 9,029 with PhDs. See also the Manhattan Declaration with more such signatories).

One day, Al Gore et al will be seen for the deceiving, power-hungry people who they are. People who will say and do anything to retain that power. Al Gore even once said that he invented the internet. Isn't it pathetic that the world bought the idea of global warming from this lunatic after he said something like that?

Chris

Essential reading is Sunday Telegraph 6 Dec. Christopher Booker¡¯s article ¡°Climategate reveals the ¡®most influential tree in the world¡¯¡±.

Apparently CRU "cherry picked" data from the trees in Siberia, and one tree in particular ¡°YAD061¡å to support their case for global warming. This very worrying ¡°discovery¡± is also highly significant because it apparently "explains" the context for Prof. Jones¡¯s emails re ¡°Mike (Mann¡¯s) Nature trick of adding in the real temps¡±. To quote Booker:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/6738111/Climategate-reveals-the-most-influential-tree-in-the-world.html

¡°..The most quoted remark in those emails has been one from Prof Jones in 1999, reporting that he had used ¡°Mike [Mann]¡¯s Nature trick of adding in the real temps¡± to ¡°Keith¡¯s¡± graph, in order to ¡°hide the decline¡±. Invariably this has been quoted out of context. Its true significance, we can now see, is that what they intended to hide was the awkward fact that, apart from that one tree, the Yamal data showed temperatures not having risen in the late 20th century but declining. What Jones suggested, emulating Mann¡¯s procedure for the ¡°hockey stick¡± (originally published in Nature), was that tree-ring data after 1960 should be eliminated, and substituted ¨C without explanation ¨C with a line based on the quite different data of measured global temperatures, to convey that temperatures after 1960 had shot up¡­¡±

Sergey

"Undergraduates in calculus classes learn that nonlinear dynamical systems are unanalyzable. Introductory physics classes learn there is no solution to the three-body problem, and the atmosphere is a lot more complicated than just three asteroids cycling around each other in space. Metereologist Edward Lorenz rose to fame in science by dramatizing the nature of chaotical systems, physical systems that cannot be predicted from their initial conditions. The weather is one of the best examples, but the earth sciences and biology are full of them. So no sane scientist or mathematician could have believed the Global Warming scam. If any of them say they believe it today, they are either lying or incompetent."
Source:http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/12/donald_kennedy_and_the_corrupt.html

Oliver

"Has anyone yet found out who actually paid the Russian hackers to break into the UEA computers?"

It is funny isn't re Climategate. If you ask "cui bono" the answer is Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia. And so our Mel, bless her, has become a stooge for Putin, Ahmadinejad, and the House of Saud. Ironic, no?

Baron

Listened to it, too, but switched off after Miliband said:…when CO2 is emitted it traps the heat in the earth’s atmosphere…’, and nobody challenged him. It’s not the CO2 that traps the heat, the CO2 molecules pass the reflected radiation (kinetic energy) to neighboring molecules (mostly moisture), and these do the trapping.

It may be a minor point, but if I, a member of the flat earth phylum know it, perhaps the man who is supposed to interpret the science and convert its conclusion into policy should know it, too. We seem to be guided by faked science, and half-baked interpretation of it by politicians. We must be doomed, no question about it.

If you haven’t seen it yet, have a look at this. Priceless.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/12/understanding_climategates_hid.html

Fearless Frank

There's a lot to be said for the flat-earth position.
George Orwell defended it very thoroughly.

terence patrick hewett

I was listening when the late Cardinal Basil Hume was interviewed by BBC Radio 4. A condensed version was broadcast on the 6 o’clock news, which was skilfully edited to present his views as being diametrically opposed to that of the original broadcast. They didn’t do it to him once; they did it to him twice on separate subjects and on separate occasions. The BBC is as bent as a nine bob note.

Dixon

Someone needs to keep a video record of clips of all the people from Jon Snow to Ed Milliband uttering these dumbass assertions so that we can ensure they dont get binned when same people start changing their tune as the issue develops!

alan stoddart

I note there is a definite consensus between the BBC climate hacks and other campaigners on how to tackle the CRU emails...firstly they are 'stolen'; secondly they reveal nothing and are taken out of context; thirdly that such emails are the result of severe harassment of these scientists by American business and sceptics/deniers...producing exasperation.

Harrabin claims there are 'good' sceptical scientists who are unable to say if AGW is either true or untrue. The 'bad' scientists deny it utterly as a man made phenomenom.

Harrabin also slips in comments on pets and meat eaters as climate criminals....along with the need for a global government.

As far as I can tell the CO2 quantities produced by man are minute:

Miliband had clearly learnt a script…when asked anything off-script he merely repeated his script. He was unable to tell us the % of CO2 that was man made, nor the % of AGW that resulted from this man made CO2, merely that all of the rise in temperature was due solely to man made influences….as confirmed by science.

I believe the atmosphere is something like 2,500,000 bn tonnes in total. The total of CO2 emissions annually are 186 bn tonnes, of that man contributes 6 bn or 3.2%. CO2 equals 0.037% of the total atmosphere, so man’s emissions are a mere 3.2% of 0.037%(0.0012%) Around 387ppm in the atmosphere are CO2, man contributes around 12 ppm himself. Britain contributes 2% of that.

Of the total emissions of CO2 57% is neutralised by natural processes, which therefore reduces the quantities even further(leaving around 0.0006% of the total atmosphere derived from man made CO2 ).

Over 96% of CO2 emissions would occur regardless of man’s existence.

CO2 must be pretty powerful stuff to have such a massive effect.

These figures were taken from pro-AGW sites. Maths may be dodgy but you get the idea….man made CO2 is miniscule.

Peter Lewis

As Melanie Phillips says, the ignorance of Brown and Miliband about the climate science debate goes beyond belief. As for the CRU scam, some of these leaked e-mails are more like the stuff Goebbels used to produce than scientific exchanges. There is one in which an American university is urged to remove the PhD it has already awarded to one of its research students because the conclusions of his thesis are unacceptable to CRU.

Micky D

The BBC is a propaganda machine. It needs to be abolished or privatised asap. Dont ever expect impartial coverage from it .

hadrian

The usual shallow, herd opinions from our largely useless politicians whose answer to anything is 'tax it'.
All the more galling when one considers their utter incompetence at exactly what they SHOULD be responsible for- law and order and punishment of the criminal, not least murderers and rapists. If the law is an ass in serving up chaotic justice it is mainly down to our political dumbos.

The Moral Coward of Kirkcaldy

Ed Milliband :

"We also know from the physicists that the CO2 effect when CO2 is emitted is it traps the heat in the earth's atmosphere and then warms the planet. That is very clear and not in dispute."

Professor Richard Lindzen of the Massachussettes Institute of Technology and one of the worlds most eminent climate scientists...

http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-7715-Portland-Civil-Rights-Examiner~y2009m8d18-Carbon-Dioxide-irrelevant-in-climate-debate-says-MIT-Scientist

"In a study sure to ruffle the feathers of the Global Warming cabal, Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT has published a paper which proves that IPCC models are overstating by 6 times, the relevance of CO2 in Earth’s Atmosphere. Dr. Lindzen has found that heat is radiated out in to space at a far higher rate than any modeling system to date can account for."

Who in their right mind would listen to Ed Milliband....

The Moral Coward of Kirkcaldy

http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2009/07/resisting-climate-hysteria

Resisting climate hysteria
by Climate Scientist Professor Richard S. Lindzen

July 26, 2009

A Case Against Precipitous Climate Action

"The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope. The fact that the developed world went into hysterics over changes in global mean temperature anomaly of a few tenths of a degree will astound future generations. Such hysteria simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the substitution of repetition for truth, and the exploitation of these weaknesses by politicians, environmental promoters, and, after 20 years of media drum beating, many others as well. Climate is always changing..... "

or

Dr Leonard Weinstein (NASA)

Limitations on Anthropogenic Global Warming

March 1, 2009

http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/05/19/limitations-on-anthropogenic-global-warming/

"The magnetic field of the Earth has changed a lot over geological times. There were periods of weakening and then reversal occurring about every 200,000 years until about 780,000 years ago. At the present time, the field is again weakening. If the field weakens too much, the Earth’s magnetosphere would not block cosmic rays and Solar ions as well, and this could greatly affect cloud structure and thus weather. The Solar radiation and magnetic storms could also profoundly affect power transmission and electronics.
Preparing for the possibility of an impending ice age along with the possible consequences of a reduction in Earth’s magnetic field are real concerns. Concern with relatively small effects of possible anthropogenic caused global warming is a misplaced distraction, and will probably lead to the public losing confidence in scientists, and could weaken the support needed when real problems occur."

dominic lennon

Time to privatise the BBC and set Fox News onto it, methinks. And they could lose the shit for brains male and female bimbos as well. Wouldn't be much left after that.

James Murphy

Call me old-fashioned, but isn't it seriously time we 'heretics' opposed to the fatuous 3rd rate religion of MMGW got off our blasphemous arses and demonstrated in London? We need to be SEEN in numbers, so that Al Beeb and the rest of the MSM cannot ignore us. - I am middle-aged and therefore partially senile, but how does one organise and publicise such an event. It simply must be possible. We have to play (and beat!) these morons at their own monstrous populist game!

Simon Denis

Thankyou for that, Miss Phillips. You are one of the few people with the energy to point these things out. Routinely I turn off Beeb programmes in disgust or despair, not because they include views opposed to my own but because views like my own rarely if ever get a look in. Andrew Marr has turned Start the Week into a smug, casual propaganda department for the upper middle class left. The Today programme beggars belief. Some whimpering ninny of a woman this morning explained that differences in wealth caused depression: the politics of envy in the raw. Humphrys' challenge to this grotesque opinion was half hearted and quickly succeeded by an attempt to assist her in expressing this view. What is so criminal about so monstrous a betrayal is the way we are charged for it. But what is the use of complaint? I am so weary of it all; nothing gets done, nobody is brought to book, the bias grows every day more blatant and insolent. I suppose we must simply keep registering our complaints and soldiering on.

david elder

Miliband seems unaware that increasing CO2 does not lead to a linear increase in temperature. The response curve for temperature levels off (a 'logarithmic' curve) as CO2 rises. This is one key reason why 'flat earth' sceptics are wary of alarmist greenhouse scenarios.

alan stoddart

Whilst people of Hull and Cockermouth and Boscastle suffer the deluges in this country Gordon Brown wants to send avalanches of money to fund fleets of gas guzzling Mercedes for third world dictators instead of shoring up our own flood defences. He cancels massive amounts of third world debt, he sells our gold reserves at huge loss, he lets the French take over the regulation of the one sector of our economy that brings in any money, he surrenders billions in rebates to Europe, he emasculates the remaining British industry with eye watering taxes and now crushes them further with eco-taxes and regulation. Just what is Brown's game?....it looks like economic sabotage from whatever angle.

Let's look at some interesting statistics...a correlation between CO2 and temperature. The AGW proponents tell us that temperatures have risen in line with increases in CO2 since the 1940s and thereby we can judge that there is a relationship between the two.
What have they missed out? Since 1940 the world population has doubled from 3 bn to 6 bn. Where have those extra 3 bn people been born? Mostly in third world or developing countries. The AGW proponents tell us that it is the industrial nations that have caused AGW. They tell us that this has only happened since the 1940s despite the industrial revolution starting in the 1700's. Any inkling where this is going?

It is clear then that the industrial revolution is not the cause of AGW...but huge population growth might be. The deforestation, the growing of rice and the raising of more cattle, the burning of fires for cooking and heating, all must contribute massively to the so-called green house gases. And a fact oft derided by AGWers is that each person produces 1kg of CO2 per day each just by breathing. So 6 bn kg per day. Which comes to just over 1 bn tonnes per year. Now man produces as a whole 6 bn tonnes from all sources per year...so population and yes even breathing plays a huge role in CO2 production.

This way of looking at events is anathema to the AGWers. They are a mixed bunch of eco-fanatics, anti-capitalists, anti-Western groups, communists, socialists and anti-globalists. They are more than happy to see the evisceration of the West, its economic power and progress, its diplomatic and military power neutered, its society turned to anarchy. Gordon Brown and his Labour government are at the heart of this destruction. How many communists, Trotskyists, socialist workers, and Muslim extremists are at work in the Labour ranks? Just how many took the same route as Jack Jones?

Is there any correlation, in graphical form, of the destruction and decline of Britain and a Labour government?....one of the most corrupt, dishonest and destructive governments we have ever had.

Raymond in DC

Unfortunately, it's not much better here in the US. Our own National Public Radio (NPR) has pretty much kept to the "party line" in several reports and interviews over the past two weeks. I expect more in coming days from them as well as the evening network news broadcasts.

More troubling, the US Environmental Protection Agency today announced they'll be issuing regulations on carbon emissions since they've deemed CO2 emissions a danger. This is irrespective of what happens with the cap-and-trade bill or the draft Copenhagen treaty. This is a power grab of the highest order as it could affect a broad swath of the country's economic activity.

Nick

For a fair reflection of the proportionality of the debate you would need 98 experts reminding of us the dangers of AGW and the need to act, and 2 arts grad bloggers noisily (and ineffectually) harrumphing off-mike.

And btw Sergey, 'weather' and 'climate' are two very different things. Climate is defined in planetary science as the structure of the atmosphere and the global and mean distribution of temperature and pressure as a function of height. Weather is what you see out of the window. You, and others, would do well to remember the distinction.

(I'm amused by Melanie's outright denial of the IR opacity of CO2. Perhaps next she'll be telling us that the Sun orbits the Earth. Facts are often inconvenient things)

Terry in Oz

Here in Australia we have pretty much the same thing with the ABC. It is ideologically committed to AGW and anyone who disagrees, even distinguihed scientists like Ian Plimer, just get trashed or ignored.

This touchy feely save the globe hot air fest in Copenhagen masks the reality. This is a concerted effort to kill western capitalism and democracy, nothing more, nothing less. The green fig leaf doesn't cover the reality, unless one has been infected with the sort of mass madness that enabled the Spanish Inquisition, communism and fascism. Such madness always ends in the degradation of democracy, rule of law, freedom and kills millions.

Kill Copenhagen or it will kill us. That's the choice.

Pete

John Edwards
December 7th, 2009 4:32pm

The "Russian Hacker" theory is just like the Global Warming theory.....Not Proven.

Nick

Baron, you are indeed a member of the Flat Earth phylum. The dipolar covalent bonds of CO2 absorb (not 'reflect') infra-red radiation, particularly photons with wavelengths of 10,000-20,000 nm. This is electromagnetic radiation, not 'kinetic energy'. Milliband was right in this detail. You're correct to state that water vapour is also a greenhouse gas, though (for the reasons that nitrogen, oxygen and argon, the other major constituents of our atmosphere, aren't. It all comes down to permanent molecule dipoles and structural asymmetry).

Linda Smith

And let's not overlook the fact that Professor Jones applied for and received circa 13 million smackers in grants.

Not bad in an age of cuts, budget slashing, and the general dismemberment of British science.

Watt Tyler

Oliver

go see WattsUpWithThat.com - they set out the case as to why the emails and code could only have been leaked.

chrisH

On the Toady programme this morning we got Ed Miliband holding forth with Humphrys-neither a scientist but somehow able to take up 15 minutes with quackery and smear!
On the same show we got the triumphant return of Grand Prix to Silverstone and the need for a third runway at Heathrow.
No irony or contradiction to be entertained.Just a schizophrenic jumble of hand wringing as they collectively surf the troughs we`ve filled for them.
"We are where we are eh?"-how did Miliband get to Copenhagen then...dog sled?

Daniel Lionsden

We all know that the BBC has long been the Pravda of the liberal elite. The good news is: that despite wall to wall propaganda, half the population retain the good sense as to not believe this stuff. Juts imagine how many sceptics there would be if there was a fully informed debate.

I agree with flatearther, this Copenhagen conference will be nothing but propaganda from the liberal media. I intend to take a holiday from tv news for its duration. I call this my Medieval Warm Period.

Baron

Nick @ 10.17:

If weather and climate are two different things, why bother about climate change, what’s the fuss all about? How could you decouple the two anyway? Aren’t we suppose to die because of nasty future weather, high temperatures, floods, hurricanes? I guess there is a coupling if it suits your argument, and there isn’t when it doesn’t. The Gods did make us mad, no question about it.

Nick

Alan Stoddart -
" And a fact oft derided by AGWers is that each person produces 1kg of CO2 per day each just by breathing. So 6 bn kg per day. Which comes to just over 1 bn tonnes per year. Now man produces as a whole 6 bn tonnes from all sources per year...so population and yes even breathing plays a huge role in CO2 production."

You misunderstand the carbon cycle there, old chum. It's a fact that respiration produces CO2. The CO2, of course, comes from the oxidation of carbohydrates during mitochondrial respiration. The carbon in these carbohydrates was fixed, recently, from atmospheric CO2 by photosynthesising plants. The cycle is neutral. There is no net gain or loss in CO2.

AGW is caused by burning of fossil fuels - the carbon here was fixed hundreds of millions of years ago by photosynthesis and locked away under the ground from the planetary ecosystem for this time. Releasing it back into the atmosphere profoundly disturbs the balance of the cycle.

Nick

What is even more worrying is that this is contrary to the BBC editorial guidelines on impartiality.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/editorialguidelines/edguide/impariality/

Their excuse is that a group of scientists have told them the science is settled.

So who are these scientists that set the policy? It's a secret. You can't be told. The BBC are refusing to tell people under FOI requests.

Sounds just like the CRU and their FOI denials.

Either they don't exists or more likely they are the CRU

Nick

Who says they were hacked?

Why not an internal leak?

Look at the contents. It's quite specific.

The CRU must be worried that lots of emails have been held back for later release. Drip Drip Drip. ...

daniel maris

Well I don't think there's any doubt that CO2 is a greenhouse gas (cf planet Venus - now a boiling hell thanks to CO2).

The issue is how a certain level of CO2 in Earths' atmosphere translates to temperature and the extent to which humankind is contributing to the CO2 level.

gary ashton

its the biggest scam in history, over here in oz the opposition were about to pass the ETS scheme with the govt. when there was a minor revolution and the deniers stopped the deal going ahead, it was amazing. yet still the media treat them like lepers, however a few people are waking up now and starting to think for themselves.

Lungfish

Baron- We need to meet in the Australian just off Cadogan Square to talk about this- I'm not queer or anything but I happen to think you maybe wrong on this- In fact I would like to organise a Rod Liddle bloggers Christmas pub session somewhere in West London , whaddya think? maybe include Mel's lot- (whatever you do don't invite the ------)

Lupus Lungfish

Calm down Mel.
The majority are with you.

Hanna

There has been an anthropogenic aspect to weather ever since mankind first arrived on earth:
it's called 'prayer'. In some societies: 'magical practise'. Small wonder some devout followers of man-made climate change see it as a religion. They are unconsciously touching
on these timeless traditions.
Hanna

Christina Faulk

Working in a small NGO in Thailand, which is funded by - among others- the Australian Government, I was suprised by the suspicion and near-hostility which with scientists were held by my Thai colleagues, until someone told me why. "Scientists provided the Nazis with credibility. We will never forget that." The speaker was a wheelchair user, yet she confidently drove her adapted vehicle - a gift from Japan- around Bangkok.
The group's motto was 'Nothing about us, without us". Might be a good one for us all to keep in mind re. climate change derbates.

Margaret

Melanie,

I don't know how you can continue to battle the battles needed to resist the Communist/Eco-Fascist/Muslim onslaught, but I thank God for your input and that of other writers, bloggers, talk show hosts and honest scientists.

To Mr. Murphy who asks what can be done, it might be time for the British people to have "Tea Parties" like we have done in the U.S.

Mass demonstrations of patriotic and peaceful and joyful citizens and then political action to target the worst political hacks. It takes time, effort, and money to defeat the enemy.

It's now or never.

JohnW

Melanie,

The Oregon Institute attracted 17,800 signatories to a petition in 2001 denouncing the conclusions of MMGW espoused at Kyoto 1997. None of this was reported in the media.

Some of the most prominent signatories complained to the Institute about the complete lack of publicity afforded to the sceptical camp, especially in the face of the overwhelmingly pro-MMGW media. A second petition was held, and this currently stands at over 31,000 signatures, including 1,000 scientists with PHDs.

How dare Millipede and the BBC speak such blatant lies, claiming that the scientific consensus is overwhelmingly in favour of MMGW? It simply is not.

How can we force an open debate on this issue before we are all bankrupted into submission?

tommy

The BBC licence fee--- An inrteresting point of view
http://www.tpuc.org/stoppayingtvlicencefees

Miranda Rose Smith

How can journalists cover the climate change conference in Copenhagen WHILE CLIMATEGATE (I don't like that name, but that's what everybody is calling it) IS GOING ON, and not laugh?
A bit off topic: Ms. Phillips, in your December 7th column, "Britain's Real Class War," you use the phrase "on the back foot." What does that mean? The only thing I can picture is a horse rearing up on its hand legs.

Bill

Brilliant comment on that Today interview. Melanie Phillips writes as I think I think. Wish I could exppress it so well.

D Knight

I agree

Evenm by BBC standards this was a travesty of jouralism - it verged on a polemic

I have complained to the BBC - I suggest other readers do the same

Although their editorial line is clear on this they have a clear duty to be impartial

shockwaver

The earth may or may not be warming. If the earth is warming, that may or may not be due to human activity. But I can assure you that the present public discussion on this subject is not a scientific debate. Rather it is predominately political and emotional. Special interest groups are driving the agenda, skeptics are treated like heretics, contrary evidence is ignored, and nonsensical solutions to the supposed problem are being proposed while obvious remedies are not pursued. I fear that the good name of science and the ability of science to impact policy in a beneficial way are being compromised by the sloppy way in which this topic is being treated in the scientific community.

Finally, many C & T proponents are not credible. Even the most heartless ideologue would not deny a massive push for nuclear power, the best carbon-free energy source, if it truly meant avoiding Armageddon. But they do and that suggests to me that there is really a different agenda.

http://www.conservativecabbie.com/2009/06/25/cap-the-demise-of-science-based-policy-development/

Trefor Jones

Excellent comment. I have an almost obsessive desire to kick the TV or shout at the radio whenever either Miliband is on. However, David seems to be learning his trade slowly,but Miliband junior comes over as an insult to the intelligence of at least 46% of the electorate.

Sergey

Oliver, Russia is the main beneficiary of cap-and-trade. It sits on a mountain of carbone credits due to collapse of its heavy industry in 1990. The problem is, nobody has enough money to buy all these credits. But if the West is ready to mortgage two generation of its citizen, Kremlin will be happy to dump all these credits on you.

John Levett

Unbelievably, the Independent - which has done even more than the Guardian to keep the CRU leak off the agenda - has published this excellent piece by Dominic Lawson today:

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/dominic-lawson/dominic-lawson-roll-up-roll-up-for-the-great-copenhagen-emissionsfest-1836067.html

As for the BBC, the age of unreason is truly upon us.

Neil Saunders

To "Fearless Frank"

To be strictly accurate, George Orwell did NOT defend the flat-earth position.

He merely pointed out that while the flat earth theory is flagrantly wrong, most people who accept that the earth is round do so on trust (i.e. because they are told that it is so), and would be likely to be bettered in argument by a flat-earther, who (despite having come to the wrong conclusion) had at least thought the issues through for himself.

Baron

Lupus @ 2.04:

You God my friend?, or have some connection to the only One who can furnish cure for my blindness? It would be a relief if you could turn me. I wish nothing more than to blame man for the rising sea levels and stuff; the bastard should have it coming.

Be warned, if the cure’s of the sort the clever Nick posted @ 12.33 I will refuse to convert.

The CO2 we breathe out differs from the CO2 that resulting from burning petrol. This is so unbelievably idiotic it doesn’t beggar belief, it begs the man should be carted into the nearest nuthouse, and not let out ever for his own sake. CO2 is CO2, there never have been nor will there ever be two different types of CO2.

I reckon the idea of a meeting’s brilliant, you should go ahead, I’m absolutely in favour, keep in mind though not all of us live a coupe of miles either side of the Thames. Getting to you from the deep wilderness of East Anglia requires some ingenuity. We should meet even if others decline: you call the shot, give us a couple of days to choose from, on Mel’s blog, Rod’s cutting me off..

Neil Craig

"How long is the pathetic BBC Trust going to be a party to this travesty?"

For as long as the BBC is a state funded propaganda organisation rather than a news service. It is certain that the statec is doing everything possible to promte warming scare stories to keep us obedient.

The only solution is independent media. Thank Ghod for the blogsphere, without which the emails would have remained a hidden story & the Mail, the only British newspaper which, if you define news as something important people don't want you to hear rather than something they have sent out as a press release, is the only consistent true newspaper in Britain.

Cassandrina

The Today Programme on Radio 4 has so far this week fully earned its real name of the Toady Programme.
I had to turn it off for the bile and bias coming out, not only from Climategate, Afghanistan, and Eton playing fields, but also the unique revelation that this incompetent government is trumpeting saving 2% of GDP while putting us so far behind the economic curve that it will take 5 years with a strong following wind for us to get to where we were 3 years ago.
To quote an old saying, they are not on this earth, they are on Fuller's.

Bewick

Quite right Melanie. In fact the Beeb continues to present highly partial reports and there were at least 2 more similar in the last day. Problem is I no longer listen. I have, for more than 10 years, considered the AGW argument to be total nonsense and unlike Miliband or Brown et al I DO have some training in science AND a mind.
I understand that there is a scientific theory, claimed to be proven, which says that the atmosphere has a self regulatory mechanism which effectively limits the amount of CO2. The claim is that this level has frequently been reached during history but CO2 never passed "the bar" whatever happened. The regulatory mechanism kicked in.
Nobody tells me that, apart from the Devil's Kitchen.
World Leaders don't want to know since it could stymie their tax plans.
Let us for one moment though accept that AGW is true. What then is the true cause? Certainly not cows farting or even 4x4’s (much as I hate them).
Humans exhale CO2. I have seen calculations that suggest that 1 billion people will exhale 1 million tonnes of CO2 per day. World Population has almost trebled in the last 50 or so years and will increase nearly 50% in the next 40. All at a time when CO2 absorbing forests have been decimated. More humans cause more other CO2 emissions apart from breathing
The increase in population since 1950 now means that the extra 4 billion are producing 1.4 BILLION tonnes of CO2 per year just by breathing. What next then - a breathing tax?
Only CHINA has taken steps to limit population. The rest of Asia just breeds uncontrollably (fact not racism) causing further and increasing demand on scarce resources and demanding yet more aid and adding yet more CO2 even without even using fossil fuels.
Sad to say but Mother Nature may once again correct the balance with a pandemic. I even almost hope so.
More practically IF man-made CO2 is such a problem then an unstoppable change has already started such is the force of nature. Alligators and swamps spring to mind?
Slightly off topic I also oppose GM crops for the simple reason that there is no scientist alive who can accurately predict the effects of interfering with the processes of nature. Law of unintended consequences. New Zealand has almost lost its flightless birds because of the introduction of predators; the UK and Australia have suffered because of non indigenous rabbits. And so on.
Politicians are total idiots and charlatans. Bring on the Revolution.

Miranda Rose Smith

I'm (sic.) It should be "hind legs."

Sarah

I have no idea how British journalists get through their day by listening to the Today programme.

The only time I've ever had the misfortune to hear snippets of it is when I've been in other people's houses.

The screaching, waling sanctimony of John Humphrys, James Naughtie and the rest of them.

They all belong on The Guardian where they would suit that paper's loss making. Such nonsense would never make a profit in the real world.

As it is, even if I don't listen to them, I have to pay - on pain of going to prison - for their Lefty propaganda dressed up as 'news'.

This from an organisation that declares itself devoted to 'fairness'.

Nick

You completely misunderstand the concept of the carbon cycle, Baron. Re-read my original post and it should become much clearer to you.

Julian L

To Miranda @ 7.48 - "On the back foot" means to be on the defensive - it seems to originate from sport, probably either cricket or boxing.

Bloggs, J

Redress is easy, Melanie.

Simply don't pay for a TV licence. (I know a bloke who has refused for several years to support this blatant bias with financial reward.) The ultimate sanction, I think they call it.

Russell Beeson

Whilst I agree with your article in most respects, it is important to note that the institution which is the subject of "Climategate" is the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, not The Hadley Centre which is a quite different organisation, run by the Met Office.

Baron

Nick @ 2.05:

am fully aware of the argument, and will never buy it. The CO2 I breathe out is just as likely to end buried for centuries as it is to be absorbed by a green leaf or whatever. Nuffsaid on this.

FaustiesBlog

The media doesn't seem to ask the question "who benefits?".

Goldman Sachs are beind the whole scam. They stand to make hundreds of billions and that sum is GUARANTEED to rise.

http://bit.ly/8h04eu

This is the scandal of the century and governments are playing along.

You have to ask yourself why that might be.

R Mitchum

I cannot understand why any intelligent individual watches or listens to BBC Current Affairs. Did any of you read "Pravda"? No, well why pay any attention to its British equivalent.

phil

Any of you know what lemmings are ? or even the pied piper ?.I just wonder how so many intelligent people can be so out of step with the rest of the world- Over 100 governments gather in Copenhagen with the aim in their own words on a mission to save our planet and yet we hear from so many bright minds hypnotised into putting down authority and what for you all is the plus side? .saving some money ,maybe, but gambling your children's lives -definitely.!

Irresponsible is an understatement --and yet I know you will continue to ignore what I have said .Perhaps some of you will survive long enough to say sorry to those children and explain why your grandchildren have no future-Harsh words ,yes ,and you should think carefully about them ,because if I am wrong it may cost you some money but if you are wrong we will all die .

D KNIGHT

The MSM needs to wake up to the deconstruction of the warmists' case

Like here

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/08/the-smoking-gun-at-darwin-zero

It is shocking that policy makers are meekly accepting such poor science

numberdevil

Miranda Rose Smith (Dec 8, 7:48am), "on the back foot" is a metaphor from cricket and means being on the defensive. The batsman(sic) is playing the ball defensively by taking his weight on his rearmost foot and just holding his bat stationary in the way of the ball. "On the front foot" means he is going forward to thump the ball aggressively and try to score.

Nick - are you speaking up for your 98 experts(Dec 7, 10:17pm)? What gives them such confidence? Is it the fact that the earth was probably warming up slightly according to CRU et al for a couple decades up to 1998 but not warming before and after, while CO2 levels rose thoughout? Do they know that the IR opacity of CO2, upon which this whole political fever depends, can by itself only account for a negligible rise in temperature, unless they make other assumptions? By "expert", do you mean they have all studied this property of CO2 as a component of the planet's atmosphere, or are many of them no more expert than your "arts grads" as far as this aspect of their script is concerned?

Philo

Sergey,
I had a question for you but it appears to have got lost.

We agreed earlier that chaotic processes make forecasts of climate change very uncertain and justify scepticism about such forecasts. Does the same not apply to those who question man-made climate change as well as those who believe in it?

As I understand it, the climate scientists model the natural processes that contribute to the climate and find that in the last several decades there is a growing residual which they cannot explain by these natural processes. This they posit to be caused by things man-made; and they infer that if man continues as before this residual effect will become ever bigger.

Are the sceptics not putting forward an argument very similar to this: the behaviour seen in the last several decades is in their models entirely consistent with natural causes, so there is no need to posit man-made effects.

Both rely on statistical models. Both make predictions based on those models.

Does this not call for a genuine debate, instead of each side slagging the other off? In particular, would it not be of general benefit if this blog were to advocate such a debate rather than gleefully pillorying those with different opinions? (I think Samuel Brittan, for example, has produced a very responsible article.)

andrew adams

What is even more worrying is that this is contrary to the BBC editorial guidelines on impartiality.

Right, so every time they run a piece about evolution they should have someone arguing the case for creationism or ID.

andrew adams

Baron,

Carbon has different isotopes which will be present in CO2 from different sources, so it is very easy to tell whether increased levels of CO2 come from the burning of fossil fuels.

Fergus Pickerting

I think 'on the back foot' is from cricket. Of course it means 'on the defensive' as opposed to 'on the front foot' which means 'on the attack'. It will have occurred to all cricket lovers that it is a rotten metaphor. Bradman, the most attacking batsman ever, spent most of his time at the crease on the back foot, whereas Trevor Bailey, very possibly the most defensive batsman ever, spent most of HIS time very much on the front foot. But that is the way with these sporting metaphors. They are flogged to death by people who don't know what they are talking about.

alan143

One thing is clear from Ed Miliband's disgraceful radio interview: the truth or falsehood of global warming has NO relevance to his ACTUAL intentions.

It isn't relevant to any government at the Copenhagen summit either, because what they are actually DOING is implementing the 'Rimini Protocol' (a.k.a. Uppsala Protocol), devised by the geologist Colin Campbell in 2003. Compare the protocol with Copenhagen's published agenda and you'll see the similarity:

http://www.oilcrisis.com/Uppsala/

http://en.cop15.dk/news/view+news?newsid=876

So, while the UN tries to guide western prosperity peacefully to its close, Miliband and co. would much prefer us to shut up and believe the 'Climate Change Fairy' story still, and look at the pretty pictures of windmills, baby bears, rattles etc., which accompany retail-level greenie puff pieces. Meanwhile our rich are bribed - with our tax money - with the carbon credit scam...

James Hodson

John Edwards - December 7th, 2009 4:32pm: "Has anyone yet found out who actually paid the Russian hackers to break into the UEA computers?"

I think this is called shooting the messenger.

God

I don't believe in AGW!

Tom

phill .. good words totally agree with you. If wrong its costs little money but if we are wrong our children will be on rowing boats. I do love these people that say Global warming is a hoax. how long did it take before Big tobacco companies admitted that cigars are bad ? anyway different subject. I dont understand why these people support poison gas. What is wrong trying to clean up earth? Then again there are people too that think saving whales is bad :)

James Hodson

gary ashton - December 8th, 2009 1:30am: "its the biggest scam in history, over here in oz the opposition were about to pass the ETS scheme with the govt. when there was a minor revolution and the deniers stopped the deal going ahead, it was amazing. yet still the media treat them like lepers, however a few people are waking up now and starting to think for themselves."

I think it was in Christopher Booker's latest book where I heard of this. His (if it was him) suggestion was that the bill was defeated by AGWists who wanted even more extreme measures to be taken.

James Hodson (feeling pedantic today)

Nick - December 7th, 2009 10:17pm:
"Perhaps next she'll be telling us that the Sun orbits the Earth."

They both orbit round their common centre of gravity but "Facts are often inconvenient things."

mcmrjp

No point even complaining about these people, they are zealots and will not change their mind. yesterday a full front page of the Guardian representing 57 european newspapers spreading the word re climate change propaganda. Even last Saturdays X factor had a song with global warming pictures of floating icebergs and polar bears in background. Even Louis Walsh said"Simon what's that all about?"

John Levett

Tom @ 5.49

To what 'poison gas' are you referring?

If you mean carbon dioxide, can you give us an example of atmospheric CO2 poisoning?

boxermk

Flat-earthers (otherwise knows as people who buy into the Global Warming hysteria) can't even distinguish between Carbon Dioxide, which is what we exhale and is what is necessary for plant photosynthesis, and is thus the basis for all life on earth, and Carbon Monoxide, which is, indeed, a pollutant.

The anti-scientific flat earthers are the people who believe the anti-scientific hoax of global warming propogated by the likes of the BBC and Al Gore.

phil

Tom
December 8th, 2009 5:49pm Is it not strange that here we seem to be the only ones who are concerned that these people display such irresponsibility -They are all agreeing with themselves, yet anywhere else they are being treated in a similar way to those who deny we landed on the moon .If it was not so serious I would laugh ,but they are desperately trying to persuade others that they are right and that we must do nothing .It is a lonely furrow here, and there are many whose opinions I usually respect ,but here each one seems to be competing to show how clever they are and all at the expense of the world ,regardless of our future -One even has decided to blame it on Goldman Sachs .,why them is a mystery surely the blame lies with Barclays :)

boxermk

Phil,
I don't know who first referred to Goldman Sachs, but perhaps you should be aware that financial institutions like Goldman Sachs have contracts with the U.S. government concerning Cap and Trade, the result of which will be billions of dollars in profits for each "carbon trade" that occurs, all at the expense of the world poor, who will not be harmed by rising sea levels, but by the poverty forced onto them buy self-aggrandizing ignoramuses.

Fearless Frank

Neil Saunders, December 8th, 11:36am
To be strictly accurate, George Orwell did NOT defend the flat-earth position.
He merely pointed out that while the flat earth theory is flagrantly wrong, most people who accept that the earth is round do so on trust (i.e. because they are told that it is so), and would be likely to be bettered in argument by a flat-earther, who (despite having come to the wrong conclusion) had at least thought the issues through for himself.

Well yes, exactly... most people accept that the earth is round purely on trust, just as most AGW believers accept the science on trust.
Flat earthers are torch bearers for scepticism, and George Orwell implicitly acknowledged this.

Baron

Phil @ 17.12: listen, my responsible friend, humans have been around for a while. If they didn’t survive the ups and down of temperature and anything else raw nature threw at them, you and I wouldn’t be here. Our burning fossil fuels gets anywhere near to harming the power of nature. Ours is only a fractional contribution to the aggregate discharge of CO2 (around 4%) anyway. Every living organism that drops dead releases it, and there’s lot of dead stuff around. The AGW creed is attempting to challenge the nature’s powers beyond this planet, whilst we cannot stop hurricanes, or even ensure that it rains where we want it to rain. When the mini ice age hit us, people didn’t run around hoping to warm the planet up, they put on another jacket, and got on with it. Adaptation was, and should remain the response to changes in the earth’s climate. Please, get a grip.

And another thing. It doesn’t strike you that the politicians keep telling us how much we must change, and what it will cost, and at the same time the reality of every day life forces them to consider the 3rd runway at Heathrow, three gas powered stations and the rest, does it?

MartinW

To those who feel weary and discouraged, I say - keep up the pressure. The momentum is on our side. The AGW farce WILL end. Just think of Mao's China and all those automatons waving the Little Red Book. Once the critical point was reached, that mass hysteria fizzled out remarkably quickly. Eventually, the same will happen to AGW, and the warmists will slink away.
Those crooks deserve to be arraigned before the International Criminal Court, but I would settle for a major, public, televised, 'congressional-type' hearing in UK into the scam, with witnesses subpoenaed and forced to give evidence under oath. Ah well, one can dream!

andrew adams

The anti-scientific flat earthers are the people who believe the anti-scientific hoax of global warming propogated by the likes of the BBC and Al Gore.

Well you have to hand it to them - they managed to get the vast majority of the best qualified scientists in the field of climate study and physics (including some living in the 19th century!), the world's most prestigious scientific institutions and all of the most respected scientific journals to go along with it. That's quite a n achievement.

phil

Baron
December 8th, 2009 8:27pm

Phil @ 17.12:" listen, my responsible friend"-thats exactly what I am ,so how about telling us what your qualifications are to expound scientific theory here ?

John Harrison

John Levett -

"If you mean carbon dioxide, can you give us an example of atmospheric CO2 poisoning?"

I'd be happy to. The most obvious example is the Lake Nyos disaster in Cameroon, August 1986, when 1700 people died from CO2 poisoning after natural release of the dissolved gas.

Gaia

Met Office figures confirm noughties as warmest decade in recorded history. The past 10 years have been the warmest decade recorded in 160 years, despite 1998 being the warmest year on record.

tom

John what about this ? is this conspiracy too?

The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday issued a final ruling that greenhouse gases posed a danger to human health and the environment,

and naturally if you think they are wrong.. go put your face next to a car exchaust pipe and suck on that :) see how you feel afterwards :)

Baron

phil @ 9.52:

no, no scientist I, but it shouldn’t stop me from taking an interest, reading about things, thinking. Surely thinking isn’t the prerogative of scientists only, is it? I admit I will listen to what you have to say more, if you tell me you research in any of the disciplines that matter. If not we are about equal. I happened to have a doctorate. True, only in economics, so you can have a go at me as one of the people who, if you forget your telephone number will estimate it for you, I mind not.

Look, I have no intention to fall out with you, it’s a debate. Let’s just have a go at each other’s views in a civil manner, I’m a great believer in thrashing ideas abuot.

Peace?

Tom

boxermk
December 8th, 2009 7:51pm

Did you know that In europe they have traded Co2 certificates for years allready. Options futures and so on . Maybe not the best system but at least Europeans are trying.. If you use coal gas to make power.. energy companies have to buy certificates against this. And no one in Europe is complaining about this :)

Tom

Baron .. if you are talking about the ice age in middle ages i would do a bit of reading how many people died at winter times in the middle ages. So they just didnt put another jacket on :) quite poor point to make :)

and as you say when plants die co2 pops up . usually new plants and trees would grow and tie the co2 again... So what about the massive deforestation goin on .. So when this balance becomes unbalanced... IS this man made in your statistics. :) ANd you know Coal . That nasty black stuff that been burried for millions of years. that been holding that co2 underground now coming up to the atmosphere.

TOm

Basically my ranting and raving. Can some of you anti global warmers answer me this. I am scandinavian. So nature is close to us and we known how to recycle for tens of years allready. Ive seen the warming happening for years allready with warmer winters and so on but this is not what i argue.
My Question is why dont you care about the planet? When in reality it requires so little from you. Look at the London Smogs when everyone had coal fireplaces... No one was complaining when we took the Lead out of gasoline. NO one complained when they removed asbestos. How many years it took before Big Tobacco companies admitted that cigarettes are bad for you ..

My question is you clean your house.. you vacuum and keep it clean . Because your house feels nicer then . Why not the outside of your house. And Another point.. ALL this will save you money on the long run . THats it .. my rant is over :)

boxermk

Saying over and over that ALL the best scientists ascribe to global warming hysteria is meaningless, because it is utterly false.

There is no scientific consensus. At all.

Climate computer models that reduce the entire climate to a small number of variables are not science.

Jimmock

Pachauri said last week that the UN would investigate Climategate. This week he prejudices any objective investigation with a rant about 'stealing' emails and 'trying to discredit scientists'. Throw him out. Disband the IPCC. Say no to further imposts, treaties and regulations based on the fraud of catastophe science.

Miranda Rose Smith

Dear Julain L: Thank you.

GeoffM

This scam is all about global business, state control and third world wealth transfer.

The future looks very bleak - Planet Earth turned into a giant Socialist Gulag.

A world run by people like Brown, Miliband and Straw? I feel physically sick...

Thank God that I will not live forever! It seems death will be our only escape.

GeoffM

Tom
December 9th, 2009 12:27am

Sorry but you are not "getting it".

No-one objects to anti-pollution drives/recycling. No-one objects to stopping deforestation, reducing dependence upon fossil fuels, developing stable green energy and so on.

We could have all of that. A clean environment and renewable energy is something we can all agree upon.

What this is however is massive redistribution of wealth and power. It will be the death of the West,its people and freedom.

And, ultimately, the death of our Planet.

If you want to look at a graph then compare environmental degradation with population growth. The conclusions are inescapable. The Third World population is growing exponentially. Our food and aid fuels it. For example - since Bob Geldof "fed the children" in Ethiopia 20 years ago the population has doubled - yes doubled; and they still have starvation, just on a grander scale. The same can be seen elsewhere.

Now we have unsustainable populations, more people in cities than in the countryside, massive aid budgets, GM crops, mass migration and so on.

Its not about environmentalism - its about Marxism and the drive to create a "New World Order".

The future could not look bleaker.

phil

Baron
December 8th, 2009 11:45p-I didn't think we were being uncivil ,merely very direct :)..I well understand the need for discussion ,but not assertiveness when most of us have not got a clue about the science -I certainly have not .

I write here a lot because it gives me the opportunity to express my views, but only on subjects that I think I understand and on these recent threads many are coming here mocking climate change scientists without knowing the science, and I believe it is very dangerous to our future .I am particularly concerned because these columns attract people with a much larger degree of intelligence than the average comment section and may well be read by those who will be influenced because of that .

My education and qualifications were not too dissimilar to yours and I remember it not affording me time to make weather predictions but telephone numbers were never a problem :),but do not worry Peace was never at risk :)

phil

GeoffM
December 9th, 2009 10:07am -You are obviously a worried man and no doubt a sincere one .Can you tell me who these Marxists are ? surely not Obama ,Brown ,Merkel ,Sarkozy,Cameron etc ,and I do not understand how it is going to affect their pockets by reducing carbon emissions..

Animals naturally reduce their birth rate when their habitat is taken away ,so maybe by stopping deforestation we would influence our own birth rate -who knows but we could try .

Sergey

Nick, I know perfectly the distinction between weather and climate, being a science observer for Russian Academy of Science peer-reviewed journal and following the debate for 5 years. Weather, just like climate, is a statistical concept. The only difference is time scale of averaging: half of the day for weather and 10 to 30 years for climate. But the most prominent feature of chaotic systems is their scale invariance: they look qualitatively the same on every time scale. Climate prognosis for 50 years is just the same nonsense as weather prognosis for a month. It is mathematically, not just computationally, impossible. But most physicists are simply ignorant about the very basics of chaos theory, they believe that all physical systems are deterministic in their nature, if not in details, but at least in their statistical properties. Mathematicians know that it is not the case; but almost everybody else don't. As for opacity of CO2 for microwave radiation, at lion's share of this range CO2 is as transparent as the main gases comrising the atmosphere. Again, the problem of radiation transfer in real atmosphere CAN NOT BE SOLVED at present level of knowledge: the CO2 contibution to it is a subject of speculation, not of calculation. Here I am true agnostic: I have no way to know is it of any importance or not, and if it is, to what extent. I do not want to speculate on this subject: this is an article of faith, not a subject of rational debate.

Derek BLADES

Augustus, 7 December, may be interested to learn that the currently high levels of carbon dioxide (and methane) in the atmosphere stimulate the emission of water vapour from land masses and the oceans. But please, Augustus, don't let a little science damp your enthusiasm for burning up the planet.

Baron Pipin II

Tom @ 12.17:

am all in favour saving rainforests, reducing waste and all that; am against trying to beat nature, it’s akin to someone pissing against the wind, good only if one doesn’t mind wearing wet trousers.

Phil @ 11.19: thanks, agreed, let’s debate, and as the impaired of vision said, let’s see what comes out.

Sergey @ 12.17:

You seem to know more than I (and many others) do, and I have saved your response to use under ‘the view of a science observer for the Russian Academy of Science who blogs as Sergey’, if it’s OK with you. Thanks anyway.

Bickers

So much for scientific consensus!!

No doubt only a small sample of eminent scientists who don't buy the AGW alarmism - are you listening Millipede and Brown? Of course you don't want to; you know a racket for control and tax when you see one - after all NuLabour have introduced many such schemes in the last 12 years

http://climaterealists.com/?id=4603

Frank P

For 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).

I have posted this also on Amanda Baillieu's thread on climate change which has just disappeared under a tsunami of bullshit about the PBR over on Coffee House.

Spread the word!

Augustus

Derek BLADES, 9 December -

Although I am by no means an expert in the field of climate science, what you refer to is, I believe, the effects known as
'positive feedback', i.e. when a warming trend results in effects that induce further warming. So, because water vapour is a greenhouse gas, and because warm air can hold more water than cold air, the primary
positive feedback involves water vapour, or as you put it, stimulated by the effects of other gases and therefore these effects are to induce further warming. But, again as I understand the science, this positive feedback does not result in runaway global warming, or as you put it
'burning up the planet', because
it is offset by other processes
that induce negative feedbacks, the results of which are to stabilize average global temperatures.

Sergey

Augustus, this combination of positive and negative feedbacks is a manifestation of so called Le Chatelier's principle: stable systems react to external forcing by adjusting their internal parameters so that it counteracts the imposed changes. This principle is not exactly universal, but applies to the most of observable systems. The reason for that is that systems without this property tend to be inherently unstable and so unobservable: they perished too fast. All really complex systems obey this principle, because complexity needs a lot of time to evolve and so requires a good lot of stability. For me the most convincing proof of homeostatic nature of climate system is the existence of tropical rainforests in practically unchanged shape for at least 30 mln years. Drastic changes took place in higher lattitudes, including ice ages and deglaciations, but the tropical flora was almost unscathed by them. That is why it has many thousand times richer biodiversity then all other ecosystems combined. If in climate system positive feedbacks dominated negative ones, this all would be impossible. For me tropical raiforests are exhibit A to calm down alarmists: biosphere and climate are very hard to damage by any human means (except for direct destruction of rainforests for firewood, timber and agriculture).

J D

It's quite sad that the BBC continue to pump out the same line day after day accross most of their adult radio stations. They give hours of air time to global warming fanatics who can articulate their views well and virtually no air time to anyone who disagrees with the theory of man made climate change. One thing is beyond dispute... and thats the fact that the BBC are being one sided, biased & have assumed the role of state propoganda machine when it comes to the global warming myth.

Tom

JD how many news services you saw supporting the big tobacco companies?

Derek BLADES

August, 9 December told me that emissions of carbon dioxide and methane and the release of water vapour which they induce will not result in runaway global warming because (Hold your breath everyone) "... it is offset by other processes that induce negative feedbacks, the results of which are to stabilize average global temperatures."

Whew! Although you did not tell us what these "other processes" might be, your response has reassured me. I will stop worrying about global warming and adopt your own ostrich approach. So much more relaxing. Thanks again Augustus.

PS. Global temperatures have stabilized????

Wookey

I am amazed how many climate-change denialists and conspiracy theorists we have here. I guess that's the sort of people who read melanie philips.

OK, so maybe you don't believe in AGW. There are plenty of other reasons why we need to clean up our act: the oil/gas will run out (sooner than you think, unless you follow the oil drum) and become far too valuable just to burn. Energy security is another reason to use some of our huge renewables potential (we have 60% of the wind reserve in Europe for example).

As others have mentioned the risks of inaction are huge comared with the costs of action. (Do you all think that Stern is part of the conspiracy too?)

And there is sustainability in general, which I'd hope most people thought was a good thing.

The time for arguing about AGW is past - it's time to take action. Pick a justification you like and get on with it. Anything else is astonishingly irresponsible.

Angela

Melanie,
No, in fact NOT 'the very same Hadley centre' at all. It is only the 'very same' centre to you as think that two different centres are one in the same place- and have even made up a name for this ficticious unit but the 'Hadley CRU' does not exist and never has done- check it out for yourself.

Lungfish

Baron - you're a Fenlands man?- I'm in Stamford most of the time- Dammit man, I'll meet you and your uxorious Mrs. in The George for a seafood platter and a bottle of Chablis, Whaddyasay?- Let us know over on contryvershall Liddles blog!

John.

The main complaint of those who are against the people who are against AGW supporters is that they cannot possibly know first-hand what they are talking about. This is a legitimate complaint - (even though scarcely anything people talk about is based on first-hand experience). It seems to me that if such people, (me among them), are to have any clout then they must muster the first-hand evidence from the mouths of actual research workers and climatological specialists so as to be to quote chapter and verse for everything they say. They need to be able to refer to the actual articles or research papers in which a certain specialist has written up the results of their research on the percentage of CO2 present now and in former ages in the atmosphere,on the fact that even when there was 12 times asmuch CO2 in the atmosphere there was, in fact, an Ice Age, on the actual percentage of CO2 emanating from human beings comprised within that total percentage in the atmosphere, on the fact that the percentage of CO2 only increases after and never before a global temperature rise, on the fact that methane and water vapour are the big atmospheric temperature rise agents - not CO2 - , on the fact that changes in the cosmic/magnetic radiation ratio are the principal factors involved in climatic change and temperature rise, on the fact that the insane rate of human population increase with the resultant disappearance of forests and the growth of deserts is also a very significant factor to be considered, on the fact that even were the collosally expensive measures proposed to arrest climate change implemented they would not do any such thing - all they would do would be to delay the onset of undesriable changes by 5 years in a century, on the extreme difficulty being experienced by the AGW opposition in publicising their evidence - even to the extent of being given death threats. The experts who have discovered all these things need to be quoted chapter and verse and to co-operate themselves in actively attacking what, on the evidence, seem to be lies, and often deliberate lies. It is of no use the opponents of AGW talking without the back-up of readily available expert evidence and the support of the specialists themselves responsible for producing the evidence. Without this none of us is ever going to get anywhere, however convincing the arguments are that we have read and talked about together. I may add that some scientists HAVE actually written in these columns but no-one seems to take what they say into account!

John.

Wookey: Most people - probably as many pro as anti AGW supporters agree that having cleaner air in big cities and being responsible about using finite energy resources is a commendable thing to be concerned about, (though there ARE immense reserves of untapped petroleum - beneath the Gulf of México,(not tapped because the Mexican gov't refuses to employ a single foreign oil company to drill the necessary deep-sea wells),and in Alaska, for e.g. Breeding far fewer of ourselves is another prime consideration that no-one seems to mention. But this is not the point. Having a pleasanter and more energy efficient environment is one thing, being bullied by a new Inquisition, indeed persecuted, is another. To be taxed to death on the basis of very dubious science in order to pay for totally futile measures supposed to control climate change and temperature rise is what people are cross about, not having cleaner air in cities and fewer forests cut down and so on. We don't like seeing people growing fat, at our expense, on lies and deceit and enforcing their falsehoods and the expensive consequences on all of us. Who can control the sun? Who can alter the amount of water vapour in the air? Who can stop the poor of the world from doubling their numbers every so many years? No one, I would venture to say. Yet these are the factors really involved - not this spurious business of CO2. So, it's not that people disagree with what you say - they agree - it's being bullied by liars thieves and their innocent dupes that they deeply resent.

John.

The people who are against the people who are against AGW supporters are regularly accused in these columns of not having first-hand evidence for what they say. This is a legitimate complaint. The only way to counter it is to be able to quote chapter and verse for every contention they present. They must know where to find the relevant articles and research papers and which are the paragraphs and chapters that support what they wish to put forward. Of course much of what people ordinarily talk about is not based on first-hand evidence, but here, scientific fact must be supported by all the evidence. That CO2 comprises only 0.037% of the atmosphere, that the percentage of that percentage produced by humans is tiny, that in a former age when there was 12% more CO2 in the atmosphere there was an ice age, that methane and water vapour are the real atmospheric agents of temperature rise, that changes in the cosmic/magnetic radiation ratio, caused by changes on the surface of the sun are the most significant agents of climate change - coupled, to some extent, with the disappearance of forests and the growth of deserts caused by the huge increase in the human population in poor countries, that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere only increases after, and never before, a temperature rise, (and cannot therefore ever be a cause of such a rise), that the average global temperature has been going down not up over the past ten years or so, that most of Antarctica is getting much colder and that glaciers are not universally receding, that publicising these alleged facts is extremely difficult - even to the extent that scientists have been threatened with death should they do so, that even were the measures proposed to arrest climate change and temperature rise implemented they would only delay the onset of the supposed disasters by five years in a century and definitely not avoid them, that sudden climate change in the past has been precipitated by the release of gigantic quantities of methane from the bed of a much shallower sea - and so on - all these things must be backed up by reference to the exact papers, books and articles in which researchers and climatological specialists have presented their findings with the actual chapter and verse being referred to. Otherwise the anti AGW lobby will never get anywhere. I may add that some scientists HAVE written to these columns but this seems never to be taken into account by the anit-anti-AGW correspondents, heaven knows why.

phil

John.
December 11th, 2009 12:37am One of the problems that you highlight is that scientists have written here, but they do not present their credentials ,so how am I to evaluate who is talking sense and who is just talking .I am fairly certain that the latter outnumber the former ,but I for one still retain an open mind on this subject .

John.

Phil: Good point - you're right.

Simon Canning

Don't get hung up on Climate Change.

There are other concerns.

"The Ooze"
Infinite Growth vs Finite Resources (+ subsequent resource wars)
Sea Acidification (fish biology effects, eco systems)
Cadmium Levels in Soil
PHB (plastics and industrial diseases)
Mercury/Bad chemistry in the Leechite/Water table.
Overpopulation.

So even if the climate talks fail, there is a weighty list.

Lest we forget the difference between the capacity of the human mind, and it's abstraction from the minute in minute out existence of the earth and the universe outside of it.