Remain sceptical at all times

Hugh Janus

Erm Rod, I think a little further examination of the emails rather than a brief perusal on your part might make you change your mind on this. It's not simply a matter of the five or six emails you may have read but also the enormous amount of data which is being scrutinized as we speak which may in the end lead to grave implications for these "scientists".
Not only that the law may well have been broken many times in terms of many freedom of information requests which were denied by this outfit. Pour yourself a drink and check out Bishop Hills blog which has managed to filter out alot of the boring stuff from the really important findings.

Lee Jakeman

So in addition to scepticism, we now have scepticism of scepticism.

Let's call it something - hyperscepticism?

James Murphy

What supercilious tosh! You can afford to be sceptical, Rod, you're a wealthy champagne socialist! Meanwhile, the rest of who don't live on some comfortable Islington fence are going to have pay through the nose for all the green taxes levelled by the bunch you help put in power all these years. Angry? Just a little. - Fiddle away, Rod, because Rome is burning in the light of Climategate - and scientific integrity with it! But don't you worry, you just go and have a nice little sceptical rest while the rest of us get on with tackling the blaze your lot of anti-capitalist moral arsonists lit!

A Nutter

Rod - Isn't part of the problem that 'conspiracy' has been so irredeemably linked to nutters that we are afraid to become associated with such thoughts? While I can appreciate that the e-mails themselves might not support Melanie Philips' position, when taken in conjunction with the history of evasion and distortion that has characterised the AGW position, there does seem to have been a concerted international effort to suppress and falsify evidence. How else to explain the almost universal acquiesence of the media to the exclusion of alternative explanations? How else to explain the effective blackout regarding this story while the pre-Copenhagen scares, no matter how ludicrous, continue to be churned out day after day? In statistical terms alone, how likely is it that just 3 of our MPs would vote against last year's CO2 reduction bill?

For what it's worth, Roger Pielke Snr - a respected scientist who believes that humans make some contribution to the climate - has gone on record earlier this year to say this about his attempts to broaden scientific submissions to the IPCC:

"Thus, the intensity of the dismissive and negative comments by a number of the [NRC] committee members, and from even several of the agency representatives, with respect to any view that differed from the IPCC orthodoxy, made abundantly clear, that there was no interest in vesting an assessment of climate to anyone but the IPCC. The IPCC is actually a relatively small group of individuals who are using the IPCC process to control what policymakers and the public learn about climate on multi-decadal time scales. This NRC planning process further demonstrates the intent of the IPCC members to manipulate the science, so that their viewpoints are the only ones that reach the policymakers."

The IPCC is an international body and has for two decades been skewing the message based on data supplied, in part, by CRU. That comes perilously close to the definition of an international conspiracy in my book.

One last point: on another blog you were asking why the Tories appeared to be slipping in the polls. Could it be their support for this nonsense and, by default, their support for the Copenhagen objective of yet another tier of unelected, unaccountable 'world' government with direct tax-raising poptential?

se1man

But Rod the problem seems to be that one is not even permitted to remain sceptical.

To even suggest that perhaps the jury should still be out deliberating the merit of man-made climate change theory is to invite scorn & derision from the true believers who have completely signed up to the apparent consensus that man-made climate change is a demonstrable fact.

If these emails can persuade more people (esp. in the BBC) to question the so-called scientific consensus then they will have served an honourable purpose.

But I expect that scepticism over man-made climate change will remain deeply unfashionable and something that the occasional loon is wheeled out to defend just so that we can all have a jolly good laugh at such flat-earthness.

hysteria

Rod - it's not the emails - it's the code and commentary in the code that is the imprtant bit. It also appears to be the case that the release is not a "hack", but is possibly a deliberate release of material collated for the FOI by a whistle blower (the poor shmuck trying to figure the code out?)

For those who want to get into the details see here - http://wattsupwiththat.com/ - particularly the comments many of which , like here in CH - come from people who know of what they speak.

All that said - I fear it is too late to stop the bandwagon.

Simon Denis

This is true. The warmists are certainly irksome and quite possibly insane, but the petty mean mindedness of two or three emails does not, alas, add up to the charges now being flung at them. I wish it did; I'd love the po-faced green puritans to be caught out, but if their crime is wishful thinking then let us not stoop to it ourselves. Conspiracy is rare and hard to prove and usually the figment of overwrought imaginations. A far more probable explanation for the warmists' attitude is that they are in the grip of a form of "group think" - all that "peer reviewing" of each other's wild predictions; it's gone to their heads. No, the best attitude is that of Lord Lawson, Mr Liddle's guiding star as we all know. The world might not be getting warmer; human agency may not be the main driver of such a process; winding down the economy is certainly not the best way to deal with warming, even if the green diagnosis is correct. Hold to the sanity of sceptical, classical liberalism and you beat off every challenge in the end.

Baron Pipin II

What’s your definition of ‘systemic’ then? The ‘three out of four e-mails out of a total of some 7,000’ doesn’t cut it?

More to the point, you’re right in a sense that the new AGR opium of the masses will continue to blind us, most likely more than before. It has too. Many careers have been invested in this pap, and a lot of egg would have to be removed from the faces of the anointed. It wouldn’t matter if the zealots were happy with our filling more of the colorful bins, and getting the supermarkets to stop dishing out plastic like confetti. It does matter because we are poised to relocate truly massive resources into a dustbin of future waste at a time when we can least afford it. Many of the unwashed in the prosperous West will grumble and squeal, but succumb; it’s the millions in the developing countries who may pay with their lives.

Mr Eugenides

It's the data. It's turning out to be all about the data. Damning as the emails are, they may turn out to be a convenient distraction from the bigger scandal.

More on this can be found at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/25/climategate-hide-the-decline-codified/

David Williamson

The spectator seems be in the company of worldwide MSM, where the readers and commenters are better informed than the "journalists" - e.g. Hugh Janus cf. Rod Liddle.

denverthen

There are 1073 emails in the file and 3485 other documents. The vast gap in between your number (7000!) and the true figure leads me to believe that you haven't even bothered to download it from a torrent, let alone been "trawling through" them. As for your "scepticism" - well, there's clearly two kinds: the lazy scepticism of idle journalist and the hard-working, active, informed scepticism of the investigative blogger - Bishop Hill, for instance.

I suggest you get over to his site right away, read what he has proved so far from these emails that these scientists are actually guilty of and then amend this woeful article accordingly.

A "systematic fraud" and an "international conspiracy of experts to distort, falsify or suppress evidence" is precisely what they show. Had you, in fact, done your own homework, you would have known this yourself.

"Nor, incidentally, does it disprove the notion of man made climate change."

Maybe not, but it severely damages that "notion" and certainly merits a few resignations and a government inquiry before one more pound note of taxpayers' money is spent on this scam.

I wonder why you didn't come to that conclusion...

dearieme

"Harry Read Me" is the file you need to look at. Or consult the Bishop Hill blog, where the discoveries from that file are listed. Poor Harry had a horrendous job to do, and was admirably frank in his chronicling of the doing of it.

Harry Flashman

Okay so I've had a busy week but this is the first I've heard of this East Anglia business - there's certainly one conspiracy, of silence going on somewhere that the man in the street isn't learning about this.

Fearless Frank

A lot to be said for Flat Earthers - torch-bearers of scepticism.
After all, how do you know it isn't flat?

Lungfish

I'v had a busy week too Flashman and this stuff had passed me by- just read this though.
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/11/25/357223.aspx

Dixon

Actually, its not the Centre for Climatic Research and its not in East Anglia. Its the "Centre for Climactic Research"...which we must hope is an apt name...and its in "East Angila"...Glenn Beck said so!

Ms. Rose

From the USA: Cap and Trade was passed in the House (currently in the Senate). It’s one of the worse dangers facing our country. This proposed law 1) is based on unsubstantiated theory that greenhouse gases are causing catastrophic warming of the planet. None of the 22 computer models used predicted the cooling experienced by the Earth over the last nine years, 2) has radical changes where businesses and individuals would be dominated by politicians, 3) makes businessman contribute to campaigns of political bosses, 4) energy matters would be given to environmental advocates whose goal is to return to the energy-consumption rates of 1867, 5) business, career and household decisions would be affected, 6) foreign relations, tariff considerations, and international commerce would be predicated, and 7) increased costs of domestic refining will make importing gasoline cheaper. It’s about big money, carbon credits, and consumption allowances printed on the government printing press. Obama initially wanted them all auctioned to the highest bidders, but the initial allocation allowances will be free, then they’ll decrease the “freebies” as the value increases and the transfer of wealth goes to the feds. Electric companies would receive 43.75% of the emission allowances for 2012-13, falling to zero by 2030 requiring suppliers to fight it out. As the costs rise, they are passed onto consumers, meaning thousands of dollars per year for the average family (gas, electric and most consumer products). As emission allocations become restricted, demand increases and value of the “carbon credits” increases. Political forces that have influence over who can obtain energy are now the de facto rulers of our economy. Obama will make us equal, equally poor while Gore becomes the first “global-warming billionaire.” Do they want to save the planet? Not at all. They want to trade “carbon credits.” Please call your Senators now.

Ms. Rose

More info from the USA. Global warming is a gimic to me. The Energy Bill passed in Congress and now has to pass in the Senate. The bill states every home owner will receive an energy audit. What is a home energy audit? It is an intrusive visit made by the bureaucrats at the Home Energy Team or a similar group. They will examine and report the way you live your life directly to RESNET (Residential Energy Services Network). Light fixtures, socket types, spas, hot tubs, windows, appliances, walls and roofs will all be under review. Energy tests will be conducted throughout your house. At the end of the visit you will receive a report and a rating. The report will focus on the changes you need to make and the rating is called a HERS rating (Home Energy Rating System). RESNET will perform the audits through authorized contractors. RESNET has adopted the Mortgage Industry National Home Energy Rating Standards. The standards set the national procedures for home energy ratings.
According to RESNET, an audit consists of:
Comprehensive Home Energy Audit - A level of the RESNET Home Energy Audit process defined by this standard to include the evaluation, diagnosis and proposed treatment of an existing home. The Comprehensive Home Energy Audit may be based on a Home Performance Assessment (Comprehensive Home Performance Energy Audit) or Home Energy Rating (Comprehensive HERS Audit), in accordance with the criteria established by this Standard. A homeowner may elect to go through this process with or without a prior Home Energy Survey or Diagnostic Home Energy Survey.
Regulations already in place in some cities for non-residential buildings already carry fines of $2000 a time for preventing bureaucrats from carrying out inspections. These will simply be expanded to cover all premises under the new climate bill.
Under the RESNET standards for a home audit, the following procedures will become law under the climate bill.
704.1.2.3 The Home Energy Survey Professional shall request copies of utility bills or
written permission to obtain the energy use information from the utility company, and use them to produce an estimate of generalized end-uses (base, heating, and cooling).
704.1.2.5. Minimum Procedures for an In-Home Energy Survey:
704.1.2.5.1.1 R-values of wall/ceiling/floor insulation
704.1.2.5.1.2 Square footage and approximate age of home
704.1.2.5.1.3 Type of windows: glazing type(s) and frame material(s)
704.1.2.5.1.4 Type, model number, and location of heating/cooling system(s)
704.1.2.5.1.5 Type of ductwork, location and R-value of duct insulation, and any
indications of previous duct sealing
704.1.2.5.1.6 Type of foundation is crawl, basement, or slab
704.1.2.5.1.7 Checklist of common air-leakage sites indicating likely opportunities
for leakage reduction
704.1.2.5.1.8 Estimated age and efficiency of major appliances such as
dishwashers, refrigerators, freezers, washing machines and dryers
704.1.2.5.1.9 Number and type of hardwired light fixtures and screw-in bulbs in
portable lamps suitable for energy efficient re-lamping
704.1.2.5.1.10 Visual indications of condensation
704.1.2.5.1.11 Presence and location of exhaust fans, and determination of whether
they are vented outdoors
704.1.2.5.1.12 Number and type of water fixtures (e.g. faucets, showerheads)
704.1.2.5.1.13 Presence and type(s) of combustion equipment; identification of
visually identifiable evidence of flame rollout, blocked chimney, and corroded or
missing vent connector.
As we have warned, the climate bill is nothing more than a feast for bloodthirsty government vampires, who are ready and waiting to suck off the fat hog of the American taxpayer once more.
Ohio Republican Senator George Voinovich says it will take a miracle for the Senate to pass the controversial climate bill next week, meaning that the legislation won’t be in place before United Nations climate talks in Copenhagen in December.
The Senator told Bloomberg News that the bill contains “a lot of crap” and that cutting CO2 emissions by 17 per cent before 2020 was an unobtainable goal.

Augustus

Let's just say it defies the 'garbage in-garbage out' paradigm and moves to truth in-
garbage out. there are all sorts of corrupted data. There are filters to keep data that tells the wrong story out. And there are fictionally created raw measurements conjured up out of thin air when needed. Not to mention special codes used to 'hide the decline'. And there appear to be many emails that do suggest that the global warming scientists manipulated data at will to achieve the desired political results. The conclusions that can only be drawn from all this is that climate alarmists are prone to making up science to suit themselves as they go along, and fit their 'facts' to reach pre-determined conclusions rather than to have objectively sought the truth. In other words, what they have been doing is politics, not science.

Richard Dale

Mr Liddle,

You are so out of your depth you are making an utter fool out of yourself. Those emails are damning. They reveal two conspiracies (to corrupt the peer-review process and to commit criminal offences against the UK and US Freedom of Information Acts) and scientific fraud.

However the emails are just the smoking gun. The mushroom cloud (not my metaphor, but an appropriate one) is in the data and the modelling. The data are in such a state that the group could not repeat their own modelling even with some unidentified unfortunate working for three years, including weekends, to try to make sense of it.

The models are openly fraudulent or unfathomable to the programmers working on them. They used third-party code the programmer complained he could not be sure what it did; the comments in the code confirm fraud, stating in plain English that processing stages were input simply to get the results the group wanted, with no basis other than that. This makes the models worthless. The programs continue to run after reporting errors, and allow negative squares.

You are not a mathematician, Mr Liddle, so perhaps you don't know how the square root of a negative number is known. These are the only numbers that when squared give a result that is negative.

They are known as imaginary numbers.

Fergus Pickering

Rod, I too think you are being a bit idle here. But hell, Im an idle fellow too. And you find all this science boring. You always did. Me too. So it worries you that you know nothing about 'the science' behind global warming or climate change or whatever it is. There we part company. I don't know anything about it but it doesn't worry me in the least. Al Gore is a posturing hypocrite.It needs no science to see that. George Monbiot is a preening, self-satisfied Grauniad loving twit. No argument there. And these guys at East Anglia are self-seving academics who will do anything to wring more moneyout of the state that employs them. Well of course they are. You see, it doesn't need any science at all. meanwhile, any bastard who tries to part me from my little car will welter in his own blood. George Bush had it right. American technology, or anyway somebody's technology will find a way. Don't you just LOVE technology? That's my kind of science. I might even learn how to text on my mobile phone. Got to keep up, you know.

Nicholas

Are you telling me that I've been forced to use crap light bulbs for nothing?

Naomi Muse

Could be incompetence as there seems to be a pursuit of processes rather than solving problems or achieving meaningful objectives prevalent at the moment in industry, science, politics and public services.

Otherwise it's scientists playing 'safe' so that they retain their funding but dumbing down their findings if they are political or policy hot potatoes...oh, human nature and self-preservation at the cost of the common good!

Ken

Come on Mr Liddle get your bile pen out, busy yourself with a thorough hatchet job on UEACRU and its co-religionists.

The twin forces of Mad Mullahs and Dodgy Dogmatists will surely ruin us all unless we can enjoy another winning and wonderful headline!

Quick now, Brown says there are only 11 days and 48 minutes to save the planet and he would know.

tipper

A celebrated climatologist
[Bianca Jagger] has announced
that the flooding in Cumbria
is proof of climate change.

Check out the Great Flood of
1953.

Angela

Says Rod: ‘it does not, as Melanie Phillips suggests in this parish, reveal a "systematic fraud" or appear to reveal an "international conspiracy of experts to distort, falsify or suppress evidence"’

Oh, so it’s a series of clumsily worded honest mistakes?

Yeah, right.

Next week, Rod Liddle teaches his grandmother how to suck eggs.

Angela

No systematic conspiracy, Rod?

Eat your words:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1230943/Climate-change-scandal-BBC-expert-sent-cover-emails-month-public.html

Wow.

rod liddle

Richard - I'm not a mathematician by profession, no; I'm educated only to degree level in the subject. You presumably have a degree in arrogance and certitude, and maybe a Dip Phil in Applied Stupidity.

The point is this; dig away at the emails and dig away at the data, but don't swallow the consipracy line, especially if the Daily Mail insists that there is one. These scientists are doing what pretty much all scientists do, which is allow their supposed neutrality to be compromised by their humanity. That's why we should always be sceptical.

Edwina Seacole

Oh dear....judging by the comments of the majority here, you're way out of your depth, Rod. Does this mean I must be skeptical of your skepticism?

paulgilboy

your right Rod! and to the spectator don't ever censure my comments or, i'll tear your article to bits. And You will believe your arse is shining bright blue if you do it again!

Jim Ryan

Rod, good measured response and scepticism is usually healthy but on the issue of AGW and especially in the context of the paranoid dimwits posting here, it is not to be advised. The vast majority of climate scientists (97.5%, hundreds if not thousands of professionals)accept that global warming is happening and is largely attributed to human activity. They could hardly think otherwise, the data is overwhelmingly in favour. The fact that AGW is treated as a 'controversey'is down to vested interests promoting the 'controversey', media commentary from those unqualified to comment i.e. non-scientists and a rampant and occasionally idealogical blogosphere not interested in scientific discourse. A few unsavoury and perhaps ambiguous phrases from a few scientists does not alter this fact one iota. In science one must always distinguish individual scientist, who are just as fallible as anyone else, from the peer reviewed process of science itself. Scepticism on this issue is akin to scepticism on the theory of evolution, it's just not rational. No amount of evidence will convince AGW sceptics which is why they are referred to as deniers. Curious how they are fond of quoting (cherry picking) quotes from isolated but 'respected'scientists while whilst ignoring the output of the vast majority of scientists and the scientific literature. Rod, you visit a 100 tumour specialists and 97 tell you you require an operation to treat the condition. The other 3 say it is benign and does not require any treatment and many of your friends agree with this position because they don't want to help pay for the expensive operation - well they are laissez faire friends afterall. What do you do? For one thing you'd come off that fence and look at the science!An increasing body of observations gives a collective picture of a warming world and other changes in the climate system... There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities.

Since 2007, no scientific body of national or international standing has maintained a dissenting opinion.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007
U.S. Global Change Research Program
Arctic Climate Impact Assessment
European Academy of Sciences and Arts
InterAcademy Council
International Council of Academies of Engineering and Technological Sciences
Network of African Science Academies
Royal Society of New Zealand
Polish Academy of Sciences
National Research Council (US)
National Academy of Sciences
American Association for the Advancement of Science
European Science Foundation
Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies
American Geophysical Union
European Federation of Geologists
European Geosciences Union
Geological Society of America
Geological Society of Australia
International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics
National Association of Geoscience Teachers
American Meteorological Society
Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences
Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
Royal Meteorological Society (UK)
World Meteorological Organization
American Quaternary Association
Quaternary Research
American Association of Wildlife Veterinarians
American Society for Microbiology
Australian Coral Reef Society
Institute of Biology (UK)
Society of American Foresters
The Wildlife Society (international)
American Academy of Pediatrics
American College of Preventive Medicine
American Medical Association
American Public Health Association
Australian Medical Association
World Federation of Public Health Associations
World Health Organization
American Astronomical Society
American Chemical Society
American Institute of Physics
American Physical Society
American Statistical Association
Engineers Australia (The Institution of Engineers Australia)
International Association for Great Lakes Research

EyeSee

The point is, that a relatively small number of people control the agenda, through the IPCC. These emails support that assertion. Distortion and outright lies (partly through witholding) is also part of this groups activities, suported by the content of the emails. The models didn't predict a cooling phase, but as it is now cooling they claim that is 'expected'. So yes, it is a conspiracy. Not least because it conforms with the truism, if it looks like a duck......

AGW is man made. It is a lie, as Melanie said. The Warmists claim Big Oil is behind the anti's. Why would it be? There is plenty of stupid money in the stupid measures proposed to defeat 'climate change'. What they would really fight would be an inter-governmental push to find alternate, clean ways of producing energy (not windmills, the reason they are to the fore is because they are pointles). Something I think that will coincide, strangely, with the oil running out. Everything has energy in it, we just need to learn how to control it. If we could each have, say hydrogen fuel cells powering our houses we would be relatively energy independent. Which electricity company is going to vote for that? Conspiracy? You bet.

Julie Woods

Can I ask a question, please? If carbon emissions are cut, does that mean all the problems will stop? What will happen to the carbon already there? Does it go away? Or are we all doomed regardless?
Thanks
JW

Fearless Frank

Eye See>
"If we could each have, say hydrogen fuel cells powering our houses we would be relatively energy independent"

How? - where do you get the hydrogen from?

Baron Pipin II

Jim Ryan @ 3.44:

sorry mate, I confess, I was one of the deluded sceptics, one of the abhorrent deniers. Your post has turned me at a stroke. I repent, and thank you from the depth of my heart for finally removing the darkness that has blinded me.

Would you now be very kind and trawl also through the archives of the former Soviet Union and post the list of the institutions and other esteemed bodies that endorsed the communist doctrine, the massive mountains of scientific papers that proved conclusively that no other societal arrangement but communism could possibly lift the mankind from the limitations of the human condition. This the country needs it urgently, too. Will you, please?

Fergus Pickering

Rod, what do you mean by humanity? The word is ambiguous. Do you mean these guys cheat and lie because they are humane (AGW is so important that you HAVE to cheat abd lie to get it accepted) or because they are human (they take bribes etc in order to keep their fat bums on comfortable seats). For myself, it is not science I distrust, but scientists. A GOVERNMENT scientist is someone who does the government's bidding as far as I can see, similar to any other GOVERNMENT arsekisser. I really did not know you had a degree in mathematics. Good for you. Quite irrelevant here of course. Like mine is Sanskrit.

Lew Stalwarter

I'm sceptical , and so's my wife. I don't think you need to analyse data to realise our winter are milder than they were 30 years ago and this year I still have dahlias flowering in the garden. (Midlands England). It is the cause I am Sceptical about. The earth warmed up and cooled down long before man started burning carbon, so to say man is entirely responsible is to grossly exaggerate man's significance. It's akin to creating a god in his own image.

Baron Pipin II

rod liddle @ 2.14:

you seem to have few pet hates, the Daily Mail amongst them (cannot mention the others because you would most likely censor the stab). Why? You’re by far the wittiest, most talented and able of the lot, and not only on the Spectator, and lately the one who displays common sense at its best (that’s genuine compliment, no irony here). I often twist with envy comparing what I (and many others) are capable of with the easy flowing, witty and penetratingly accurate observations of yours. Relax, you cannot win them all. I reckon not even your heroine Secole could.

EyeSee

FF. I take your point, it would be most obvious that some kind and obliging multinational would bottle it and sell it to us. But, being the most abundant substance in the Universe, I'm guessing that it might be price sensitive, as they say. Worst case you may have to have an additional gizmo and get it piped to your house. As water. The idea I saw mooted was that each house provided for it's own needs and sold surplus to the grid for high energy users, such as industry. But, that seems to me a way to almost empower the people. Antithetical to a Statist mob like we currently have. I really think we should be seeking such a technology based answer to our problems and I don't see it happening, which makes me think 'why not?'. Quo Bono? Doh! That would be hard to guess. It's a bit like the inheritence tax thing. Everyone gets fixated on toffs and Camerons mates being the only ones who would profit from it (Lord, Lefties do tell the most obvious lies don't they?). But if the money your parents had (after paying tax) was left in its entirety to you, pretty soon you would have wealthy and highly independent citizens and you can see straight away who can't see the benefit in that! I want people to be optimistic, and push for a better, brighter future. So no, I don't vote Labour.

R Richards

Take a look at the BNP website and listen to Mr Griffins speach about climate change at the EU, and I belive he is correct.

anne allan

Britain during the Roman era was warmer than now. 400 years later it was so cold the rhine froze over and the barbarians crossed it and struck at the weakened Roman empire. 600 years later, Greenland was rightly named; 200 hundred years later it became too cold for all but the most resolute of settlers. The Tudor and Stuart period have been called 'The Little Ice Age'.
No cars, no power stations, world human population a fraction of its present size. So how do we account for these climatic swings?

rod liddle

Baron - kind of you, thanks. But I don't censor anything on here and, if I had my way, nothing would be censored. I accept that is an extreme position, mind.

I've just watched Melanie Phillips and Marcus Brigstocke battle it out on Question Time on this issue. Two people patronising and condescending to the public, but utterly convinced of something which, scientifically speaking, one simply can't be convinced of.

Dixon

"EyeSee
November 26th, 2009 7:18pm
FF. I take your point, it would be most obvious that some kind and obliging multinational would bottle it and sell it to us. But, being the most abundant substance in the Universe, I'm guessing that it might be price sensitive, as they say."

Franks point, if I may spell out what should be obvious, is that to produce hydrogen, liquify it and distribute it, all requires energy from somewhere.

However, the entire "hydrogen economy" fantasy is one of the most hilarious, ludicrous gags of all time. If you want to know why, look at the rocket propulsion industry. They have used hydrogen as fuel for half a century. Their technology is as "mature" as its going to get. They have found that liquid hydrogen is so dangerously volatile and difficult to handle that they have been striving for years to remove it from the picture. Hence Russian boosters rely on a kerosene/oxygen mix instead of hydrogen/oxygen whilst American companies have developed hybrid rubber/oxygen engines and the replacement for the space shuttle ( Ares ) is solid fuelled. If even the likes of NASA have decided they cannot cope with the inherent difficulties of using liquid hydrogen, how the hell is every motorist and homeowner supposed to manage it? Your notion of millions of houses tanked up with the stuff is utterly potty!

daniel maris

Is Brigstocke going to give up the hopeless struggle to make us laugh and become a full time politician? His attempt at gravitas would suggest so.

His inability to match the demands of radiating political gravitas were mirrored by Melanie's inability to radiate certitude about the lack of global warming.

I am rather with you on this one Mr. Liddle. No one can be sure of what the effing ell is happening to the climate at present. And that's despite Brigstocke's assurance that 2010 will be one of the hottest years on record.

For what it's worth, the cherry blossom has appeared recently in my local park. November - bit early for that, even in tropical London.

Lungfish

After watching James May build a Scalextrics track around the Brooklands circuit the other day it occurs to me that we merely have to scale up the cars and all our transport problems are solved. I really am a genius- do I win a prize?

EyeSee

Dixon. For clarity. I wasn't suggesting that hydrogen fuel cells are the answer. As I said, I don't see us developing credible technological answers to our problems. What I was saying was, IF we all had the ability to procure our own energy in such a way it would be a) fabulous for us, b) fabulous for 'the planet' and c) wholly at odds with the ideals of government led society.

Classic Brigstocke on QT. To prove AGW he quotes the discredited people's stats! And Melanie, Melanie, Melanie. OK, so you understand what is going on. You know the media have swallowed the nonsense 'science'. So why wind up Dimmo and patronise the audience?? In that fair and balanced way impossible at the BBC, he then tells her 'well get on with it then', though happy to let Falconer ramble on and interrupt at will. The way the audience is picked for this debate show is clear from the almost universal support there seemed to be for AGW. And the basis for that was proven by the thoroughy nice seeming lady who said "if there is no global warming, how do you explain the floods at Cockermouth?" Well, for me that would be, because-a-lot-of-rain-fell. But the audience felt that staement was enough evidence in itself. For me, I like the facts that disprove AGW, rather than just saying the cold winter last year and all that snow prove it isn't happening. Although I know proof etc is not the modern, scientific way of going about things.

Baron Pipin II

Lungfish @ 8.36:

of course you do, Lungfish, my friend, choose something the country can afford though; hard to believe that the fertility of your mind failed to sprout an equally brilliant idea of doing just the opposite: shrinking the people. From my own experience chopping is so much easier than building.

You watched the QT? A rather unsatisfactory performance all round, I though. The titled one did well considering he defended the indefensible, as a comic MB makes one puke, and as a budding politician he seemed even more out of his depth; Melanie, well so-so, not enough time, and largely irrelevant questions for the connoisseurs of transitional politics; who surprised was DD, quite a courageous stance on AGW, and altogether he seemed to have ‘matured’ after the failed election contest; the Scottish lassie wins my vote, even though I had no idea what she was about half of the time (only joking).

Fearless Frank

EyeSee
FF. I take your point, it would be most obvious that some kind and obliging multinational would bottle it and sell it to us. But, being the most abundant substance in the Universe, I'm guessing that it might be price sensitive, as they say."

Franks point, if I may spell out what should be obvious, is that to produce hydrogen, liquify it and distribute it, all requires energy from somewhere.

well, thanks for your continued interest - my point, really, is that although hydrogen may be abundant, it's not freely available. You can separate it out from water by putting in more energy than you will get back by burning it; or you can extract it from hydro-carbons - eg, oil - leaving you with the unused carbon.
At best, it's an energy storage medium, not an energy source.
As of course is coal, oil etc

John McLean

Are you sure those emails were hacked? I'm wondering if the files were being moved to another machine away from FOI gaze and someone wrote .ru when they meant .cru. The hiding of files seems consistent with the content of some emails.

Barbara

Broadly agree that scepticism is a healthy attitude in all things, at all times. Science is based on just this premise. No such thing as 'proof', except in higher mathematics - for all else, there is only evidence, and probability.
And herein lies the problem - it's the grey areas (the probability and even more problematic, the causality) that is being argued over.
Having said that, these documents - especially the comments on the code - are really serious. The whole 'man-made' causality theory relies on the temperature record CRU was tasked with compiling - and what these documents show is that their temperature record is corrupt.

Baron Pipin II

EyeSee @ 10.45:

Why not take a common sense view, unless the scientists do come up with irrefutable evidence, or a logical and testable doctrine of the GW mechanism proving that we are indeed the culprits. The earth climate has gone through ups and downs and mammals, us including, have survived. Stopping GW whilst we aren’t sure that we are to blame rather than adapting to it seems somewhat the wrong strategy. The Red Menace that ruled over the Slavs wanted to ‘command the winds and the rains’. It didn’t get them very far.

Yours is an excellent summary of the QT. Except for the guy who asked the question on GW, most of the audience appeared to blindly endorse the anthropogenic component whilst polls after polls show the majority of people remain sceptical.

Lungfish

Baron- Lateral thinking is needed on transport, after a few pints of Slovakian lager the cable car seems an under-utilised mode of city transport. Simply choose a central hub, say Marble Arch for example, and build a series of radials outward with the necassary circular connections etc all powered from a tidal generating station on the Thames. Are you listening Boris?

Dixon

Eyesee, fair point. Perhaps I was a bit harsh, misunderstanding you. But my comment nonethelessapplies to all those people who really do believe that cars and houses can be run on personal tanks of liquid hydrogen.

A potential "Hindenberg" in every car-port. A million fingers lost to cryongenic frostbite. Lovely.

Dixon

Frank, thats exactly what I was saying, wasnt it?

EyeSee

Frank, I'm an optimist. Where you see water I see potential!

Dixon. Fear not, I am slow to take offence. (Some say I could have left it at the first bit). Oh yes, I wholeheartedly agree. The article I was thinking of was from years ago and it was the political idea of people free of centralised energy provision that struck me. If I remember right they tried to include some suggestion that they would add something to stop it being explosive. Bit dismissive I thought at the time. I mean, when LPG was all the rage (?) I thought, hmm a bomb in your boot, handy. When LPG explodes they have a special word for it; a blevy. It is a big bang.

Energy is all around us and we just don't seem to be trying too hard. Solar, wind!! It is almost as if we are being mocked. I don't know enough about science (I thought digital watches a pretty neat idea) but have seen enough to know that neccesity is the mother of invention and it seems to me, with oil in the ground, ships at sea, refineries humming and a massive infrastructure, the necessity just isn't there. When the predictable drip said that the Iraq War was about oil on QT she was right, but not in the way she meant. At present we cannot, for national security, have some maverick treaten the Middle East and disrupt our oil supplies. We had to go to war. Blair could have told the truth but it wouldn't be his way. And he really isn't a Jack Nicholson -'you can't handle the truth'.

Richard Dale

Jim Ryan, living proof that 83.3% of statistics are made up on the spot!

Not only is it completely false to say that 97.5% of climate scientists are convinced, any such statistic is massively corrupted by the funding given only to people who pretend to be true believers, by the CRU Cabal defining anyone who disagrees ass not being a scientist and by the fact that believers are far more likely than non-believers to go into such studies, both by their own choice and by selection. So even if true it would be essentially meaningless. There are lies, damned lies and statistics, and

Peter Main

Rod, Did you not notice that, when reading those emails, you feel like you are hearing one side of a telephone conversation?

Even though they are in email chains the context was missing. Many reference previous emails/conversations and, more importantly, the attachments that weren't there.

I hope that this hack/leak will start an investigation that will lead to the revealing of ALL of the CRU's emails, not just 1000 selected email chains. Then we will find more than just a few references to unscientific behaviour.