Another blow for the climate change lobby: Prince Charles

coyl

I may sadly be behind the game but have you/your readers read this wonderful piece Rod?

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/01/lord-moncktons-summary-of-climategate-and-its-issues/

porkbelly

"personal or political imperatives" - you forgot "financial".

Dixon

Well, add that to the dabblings of this "meddling buffoon". Britain still hasnt recovered from his interference with architecture and town-planning of thirty years ago. Then theres his organic cobblers. And his elevation to saint status of a certain South African scribbler who has been exposed as a fraud penning complete fictions as autobiography. This heir apparent ia a disaster in waiting.

Seems to get it from his fathers side.

However, when it comes to AGW home-goals I prefer the statement by the chair of the IPCC that he wasnt going to apologise about the glacier lies because the last report was 3000 pages long and he wasnt about to apologise for every mistake in it!!!!

DOH!

Eli

What evidence is there left to be "overwhelmed" by?
Or maybe being overwhelmed is simply the state he has chosen to be in, having eschewed the Enlightenment. Defender of faith, forever swirling in gushing waters.

Fergus Pickering

What procedures are demanded of us, Rod? As far as I can see it boils down to me taking a bus to the supermarket while various rich f*ckers take aeroplanes round the world to eat expensive dinners and pontificate, all of which makes them still richer. I, presonally, intend to do nothing at all. What do you intend to do?

Pete

"The less trident and cocksure the pronouncements from the climate change lobbyists, the more agreeable the rest of us may be to their demands."

Let me try it my way Rod!
If the so called scientists had not (I try not use the word lie) connived with each other manipulated data, broke the law (F,O,I,A,).
Agreeable to their demands? The demand fro these eco fascists that we move out lifestyle back to the Middle Ages? They can stuff their demands when their AGW sun does not sine mate!

Prince Charles (a man with a carbon footprint the size of a clown's shoe) opines:

“Please be in no doubt that the evidence of long term and potentially irreversible changes to our world is utterly overwhelming,”

Quite how his B.A. and two A levels (History and French)qualify him to make these assertions is a mystery but, as always with Charles, one does admire the mad certainty of his interventions.

Lee Jakeman

Charles, like his father, seems to immature with age.

Bill

The trouble is that no-one trusts "fact" when it comes from Gore, The IPCC, Pen Haddow, Glacial Melt.
The Climate Change stable needs cleaning out. Science is contaminated with the current bunch.

hiro

Is this the hillarious lunatic who loves a bit homeopathy (sp) and the like? Shaking in their boots.

David Ossitt

"their computers upon which they were, at that very moment, making things up"

It, says it all.

Simon Stephenson

"It still seems to me rather more likely than not that man-made climate change is taking place and that even if it were not, the procedures demanded of us are necessary anyway for a whole host of other reasons."

So if these procedures are necessary for a whole host of other reasons, why not have a proper, grown-up discussion about these, rather than treating the general public as five-year-olds and feeding them a scare story that isn't true?

Perhaps people will be more likely to behave like adults if they are treated like adults?

rod seacole liddle

As Jon Ryan has kindly pointed out to me, the word in the last sentence of my blog should be "strident" rather than "trident". I think trident, especially if capped up, would be overstating the case.......

John Holland

Pete- It's all right, dear, I don't think anyone is asking you to go back to the Middle Ages, it's just that there is a not unreasonable concern that we live on a relatively small, finite planet and it might be sensible to behave with intellegence and sensitivity.
Saying "stuff it up your bum" is your considered response, some might think that was cretinous.

RichieP

Well, speaking as a climate sceptic (sorry, denialist) and a firm ally of the Enlightenment, I can only quote Voltaire:

“I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: ‘O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.’ And God granted it. ”

Ian C

I am spotting a touch of wisdom 'overwhelming' you, Rod. Congratulations.

The certainty with which Prince Charles is proclaiming 'overwhelming' evidence is likely to be overwhelemed with evidence that the evidence for this has been cooked. This will be the final revelation sometime during 2010 that will shut the likes of him up.

Having said that we can agree, as you suggest, that we need to be less profligate in our waste of the worlds's finite energy and other resources. We can all agree around that.

We can even agree that an increase in CO2 theoretically will warm the planet's atmosphere. The skeptic's fundamental case asks: by how much, over how long, with what consequences, and is it economic to do something about it now rather than spend finite monies on other things that may do more to improve the condition of mankind eg. by reducing/eliminating poverty/disease/water shortages first?

The science never was settled because the environment seems to be able to handle it by creating 'feedbacks' whose effect is to offset most of that warming and so, in the next 100-200 years or so at least, allow survival within a temperature range that is likely to be perfectly acceptable to mankind without undue alarm, thus giving us time to research it thoroughly rather than press ganging us into unnecessary expenditure by 'elitist' Prince Charles and the International Panel of Climate Crooks.

Dixon

Fergus Pickering...you got it well wrong mate: bus? Wopt Bus? A cycle rickshaw if you is lucky, walk more likely, and there wont be any "supermarket" when you get there anyway, dont you know they want us to live only off what we grow in our own excrement-compost in window-boxes.

After airplanes, cars, having baths and doing laundry, flushing toilets are next in the line up of the tools of genocide, so they reckon.

damon/nomad

monkey, got banned off your Millwall site today for some reason.

Was it something I said?

A C Osborn

Rod, re "the procedures demanded of us are necessary anyway for a whole host of other reasons"
If those procedures demand that we pay lots of extra taxes and very overinflated Energy prices, then you can pay mine for me.

A C Osborn

Rod, re "the procedures demanded of us are necessary anyway for a whole host of other reasons"
If those procedures demand that we pay lots of extra taxes and very overinflated Energy prices, then you can pay mine for me.

Old Slaughter

Rod,

I have the impression I am quite near your views on this issue.

The question for me is simply "what would it take?"

Your analysis of the non-scientific reasons for scepticism was spot on. But if this scepticism is justified we need to know what the acceptable of proof would be for action.

So Rod, what would it take for you to be a believer?

Hugh

"It still seems to me rather more likely than not that man-made climate change is taking place and that even if it were not, the procedures demanded of us are necessary anyway for a whole host of other reasons."

Could you briefly sum up why you come to this conclusion Rod?

DZ

#2. Hey! wait a minute, chaps! If HRH had said this 3 weeks ago you journos would all be cheering and congratulating Prince Charles on his perceptive observations. But today he is a clown wearing silly shoes with a big carbon footprint.

What happened? In the recent past, almost unanimously, the journos swallowed the AGW stuff, ridiculed everybody in sight except oil and gas geologists (who know stuff) and astrophysicists (who know stuff). Vicious wasn't it? Deniers! But now, all is sweetness and light, the journos are now converted and as pure as the driven slush. Of course, you all knew, really, AGW was a slush-fund tax scam. You learnt all about it in Media Studies 1, or Psychology 2, isn't that right?

Cobbler - stick to your last. Avoid science. You don't get it.

Chris

>we live on a relatively small, finite planet and it might be sensible to behave with intellegence...

You might want to try it, then, instead of swallowing any old crap that the AGW fanatics sling at you.

C Powell

A man who takes homeopathy seriously is a man whose opinion on scientific matters should be given no credence whatsoever.

The main reason for reducing our dependence on fossil fuels is that they come from countries we either cannot entirely trust or which are run by loonies/unstable tyrants/malevolent regimes. It is also generally sensible not to waste resources or live our lives in such a way as to ruin the environment around us. If the green lobby made the case on these bases, no-one would bat an eyelid. But they won't because, at heart, they like the idea of some doom-laden scenario to justify drastic control measures over the rest of us.

Best ignore them and take sensible measures for the right reasons.

DougS

Fergus Pickering
February 5th, 2010 3:31am

Well said, I'm with you all the way.

I'm a total sceptic but if I was wavering at all, Prince Charles's rediculous statement would have clinched it.

Rod seems to be softening his line on AGW, is this yet another tilt towards the Indie job?

biggestaspidistra

I'd become accustomed to the new (for me) use of the word trident. I'm disappointed to see it go.

Balham Bugle

Wait a second, Will Straw says your a rabid climate change denier. How dare you be reasonable!

Fabian the Fabulous

Something missing on this thread - where are the lengthy, erudite, citation-laden posts assuring us, with papal certainty, that climate science is settled?
They used to turn up regular as robins at Christmas whenever a note of caution was sounded over AGW - whether or not it was relevant to the argument.
Are we about to enter a new Silent Spring - the silence of the warmists?

Sir Graphus

Someone wrote of HRH a few years ago; "if it weren't for who he was, he'd struggle to get a letter published in a newspaper, but he's been allowed to imagine himself a bit of a sage".

Lately, despite his enormous privilege, he seems to be nursing a quiverful of grievances; that he's not king; that his subjects don't show him due deference. He doesn't seem to like modern life, where the rest of the world can jet about, just like him (albeit with less comfort). He has a strong affinity with the AGW issue as it agrees with him; that all his subjects should get back in their place, where they'll burn fewer hydrocarbons.

I ought to send back my K.

Rex Burr

Rod, why do those who can afford to live a life of excess assume that the rest of the population do also?
Speaking as a member of the ignorant masses I resent being told to ‘cut back’. To do so would mean going a little hungry and a little cold.
If my Carbon Footprint were larger that that of Prince Charles or Al Gore I might be inclined to listen to them but why would I spoil my day to make them feel better?
The amount of Co2 added to the atmosphere by man’s activity is such a small percentage (0.0002% / year), and its effect on warming is subject to a logarithmic rule.
It is suggested that a small temperature rise will trigger a positive water vapour feedback leading to a large temperature rise.
Well, the evidence is that a higher temperature in the ’Middle Ages’ did not have that effect and recent research has shown the probability of a negative water vapour feedback.
Wind turbines are an idealistic waste of money. Just check their contribution to our energy supplies during this recent cold spell against their cost.
Current PV Cell technology is hardly better and decisions to build Nuclear power stations are above my pay grade. I contribute to the pay of other people to take these decisions and they aren’t doing it.
So please detail those changes that I must take to make my peace with Mother Nature or whoever it is that my very act of living is giving offence to.

Lonnie Schubert

"I’m not willing to play Russian Roulette over climate change." Prince Charles
-------------
So, we have a revolver pointed at our head; we have our finger on the trigger. Interesting dilemma. We know we have a trillion chambers in the revolver, and only one bullet. If we pull the trigger and fire the round, well...

However, if we fail to pull the trigger, our legs are cut off, and we run the risk of bleeding to death.

I think I'll pull the trigger.

Brian H

Au contraire, Mr. Liddle. The 'procedures demanded' are quite specific to cutting CO2 emissions. If that is shown to be pointless, the entire edifice falls. CO2 is NOT pollution; the issues are totally distinct.

Given their inefficiency, renewable energy sources do far more short and long term harm than good.

Radgie Gadgie

"the procedures demanded of us"

Indeed, and who by? Eco fascists and West haters who still havent got over the collapse of the Soviet Bloc (hello Guardian and Indie readers)and a dysfunctional 3rd World eager to blame the US and UK etc for their own self inflicted ills and to pocket bribes (aka more Aid and carbon credit sales). One lot anti-technology and progress and the other lot too lazy and/or stupid to earn their place at the table.

John Holland

Chris- what makes you think I'm "swallowing any old AGW crap thrown at me"?
I guess what you mean by this dribbling outburst is that I havn't made a knee-jerk head in the sand assumption that all evidence that doesn't flatter my prejudices is worthless, and everything that does is rigourous and pure. Thereby avoiding all that difficult weighing up of probability stuff.
The problem is, truth isn't solely defined as the proudly ignorant outpourings of your brain, though life would be so much simpler if it was.

rod seacole liddle

Old Slaughter - I wouldn't become a "believer". I think, in a sense, that's the main problem I have.

Hugh - leaving AGW reasoning aside, the rapid shrinkage in biodiversity does it for me.

Damon/nomad - no idea mate, I'll ask 'em.

Will Straw, meanwhile, strikes me as an imbecile. Probably all that puff.

rod liddle

Simon Stephenson - yes, exactly, that's my point.

coyl - yes, um, I did look at that.................

City Seacole Boozer

Sir Graphus,

"if it weren't for who he was, he'd struggle to get a letter published in a newspaper, but he's been allowed to imagine himself a bit of a sage"

That is, as you point out, a brilliant observation. If Prince Charles wasn't Brenda's son, he'd be David Lindsay.

Cb.

jon ryan

"The amount of Co2 added to the atmosphere by man’s activity is such a small percentage (0.0002% / year)"

Citation, please

a whacko right-wing headcase

Cobblers my man!

That's enough of these treasonable postings. We may have to send you to the Tower

Fergus Pickering

Good Goid, Dixon, can this be true? The Supermarket is the greatest invention in my lifetime. I love my little car and a world without a hot bath every day, a nice deep one with refills, is not a world I want to live in. The Romans had that one right. Slaves would also be nice. They can do the washing. Are slaves ecological? I must confess I'm a bit of fan of flushing toilets. Do you remember the Duke of E and his bloody bricks? I think up their bums is about the long and the short of it - a reasoned rebuttal.

Dixon

"John Holland
February 5th, 2010 11:03am
Pete- It's all right, dear, I don't think anyone is asking you to go back to the Middle Ages, it's just that there is a not unreasonable concern that we live on a relatively small, finite planet and it might be sensible to behave with intellegence and sensitivity."

Oh but there ARE such people John. You seem to be completely innocent of their existence, but, believe me, there are hordes of them, especially in California, Im told, and the West of England. There are even official campaigns for neo-Ludditism ( hes now considered a saint ) and a return to pre-industrial existence. I may joke about WC's, but it is a fact that environmentalists want to see an end to flushing toilets ( they advocate chemical shit-boxes instead, and apparently many of the dirty barstrds allready use them ). So Petes comment seems just to have gone over your head. In a way, you are lucky...you dont know what lunacies are yapping like stoned terriers at the hem of civilisation.

He does.

Dixon

Fab Fabius, now look what you have done, youve brought back that "John Ryan" ( does he really think hes an action hero out of the eponymous spy series ). Now hes asking US for citations. Must have got tired of running round the internet trying to dig stuff up before its discredited.

As for there being good reasons other than AGW to quit the hydrocarbons, well only partly true. In the case of oil, we need to stuff the Arabs by getting off it, yes. But as for coal...of which even BBC Newsnight had to admit there are known supplies for the next 10,000 years, do we really need to spend billions developing and deploying carbon sequestration, entailing a national grid of pipelines to collect and re-locate the stuff? Tell us what practical use that has if AGW is not valid? Even if AGW IS valid, tell us what value it has to anyone in a broader picture in which China and India are opening at least a thousand new coal-fired powert stations in the next decade, with zero carbon-sequestration among them? Tell us why we should give a monkeys in any case?

As for homeopathy. Theres a great bit of news on the New Scientist (pfah) web-site about an international sceptics protest in which people took vast overdoses of homeopathic remedies to prove, most graphically, that they have no pharmacological effect whatsoever. However the sugar from which the pills are made may have made them run about like a five year old for the rest of the afternoon!

Dixon

Fergus, you CAN get slaves, if you join the right web-sites. But be warned, one in the US sued her "owner" recently because she discovered he was just using her for housework and wasnt in it for the sex!
I guess she was after something better than married life!

RichieP

Fergus, you're absobloodylutely right.

"I think up their bums is about the long and the short of it - a reasoned rebuttal."

Rex Burr

jon ryan
2 ppm increase per year.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/

Noa'm not burning the Zrk

I'm starting to worry about you Rod.
Its not just the Knighthood you've just blown, and the free homeopathic medicines straight from HRH garden. Its not just the fat arsed would-be comedian Farcus Gobsplatt, who wants to keep warm by boxing with you. It's not even the mad sad fat hypocrite MP who keeps pinning pretty boy Portillo into the corner of Andrew Nields studio sofa.
No, its simply that you left the door even half open to the unreasoning, gobulous climate changers by ending on such a weak kneed, facile, really pathetic comment as " The less strident ...etc.. the more agreeable the rest of us may be to their demands...". No, no and thrice no!
Never ind their bullying or your half baked intuition. Insist it be proved, beyond doubt, before we are irrevocably committed.

jon ryan

Dixon claims:

"...but it is a fact that environmentalists want to see an end to flushing toilets..."

Citation, please

jon ryan

Dixon Says:

"...now look what you have done, youve brought back that "John Ryan" ( does he really think hes an action hero out of the eponymous spy series )..."

It's `Jon` old love, not `John.` Do try to get ONE fact right, hmmm? I know that's a heeluva ask, but do give it go.

jon ryan

Rex Burr, in reply to my request for a citation says:

jon ryan
2 ppm increase per year.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/

Cheers, Rex!

But there are a couple of lines from that very site I think may just have a touch of relevance:

"The last year of data are still preliminary, pending recalibrations of reference gases and other quality control checks."

and

"This variability would not be representative of the underlying trend for the northern hemisphere which Mauna Loa is intended to represent."

So I reckon thayt the jury is still out.

My own view is that this needs more investigation, and drawing a conclusion, particularly of the hysterical type issuing from both sides of what, for want of a better word we may term a `debate,` is premature.

N J Mayes

Dixon: "Britain still hasn't recovered from his interference with architecture and town-planning of thirty years ago." Utter nonsense. Britain is still recovering from modernist ideas about 'cities in the sky' that left us with crumbling tower blocks, sink estates and all the social problems those have led to. Prince Charles' 'new urbanism' is one attempt to give people more pleasant, neighbourly and greener environments than those deluded '60s idealists left us with.

Archie

Oh dear! Up to now I've been vaguely in favour of the pronouncements of HRH, especially those on modern architecture and organic farming, but this nonsense, I'm afraid, will completely alienate others like me, who resent being lectured by the likes of Zac Goldsmith and Jonathan Porrit to abandon our cars and live on raw vegetables. There are those of us who wish His Royal Highness well, but he is in danger of losing all credibility, and that is not a good place to be in today's sceptical and increasingly republican world!

xmfclick

I still reckon Charles is pretty sound on some stuff, mostly architecture, but this latest pronouncement does make him look like a total dingbat.

I think people should be taking more notice of Bjørn Lomborg. Although he is mildly Warmist, he makes the very good point that the money currently being funnelled towards CO2-related projects, many of which are long-term and have projected outcomes that can't be proved, would be better spent on short-to-medium-term projects based on proven experience and whose benefits we can be pretty sure of.

Also, for an excellent analysis of the pros and cons of various sustainable energy options, see David McKay's book at www.withouthotair.com

Private Widdle

Yeah, right on, Ro. "Procedures"? A bent raffle involving so-called "carbon futures", a global tax which is really a penalty on enjoying a Western way of life whilst simultaneously sacrificing billions of GDP by giving it to crackpot Third World dictators? For "other reasons" such as satisfying an inarticulate and discredited Socialist agenda?

Helen Wright

Charlie also praised the Indian hovels, shown in slumdog millionaire and said they should be a blueprint for the rest of us. He should lead by example.
Every time he opens his mouth, I become more and more republican. When his mother goes, that should be the end of the line. He shouldn't be given anymore airtime, let alone taxpayers money and a throne to lecture us from.

Richard

"It still seems to me rather more likely than not that man-made climate change is taking place..."

Why? There is no evidence. Prince Charles's Comment is all we get, a statement that the evidence is overwhelming. We never actually get to see any of that evidence. Every bit of real evidence that has come out way has been crumbling as it was exposed by sceptics. The hysterics never actually present the evidence themselves, so that those like I who have the knowledge to make a reasoned judgement can assess it.

So where, Mr Liddle, is this evidence you have seen?

Richard

John Holland

You might live on a 'relatively small' planet, but I don't; I live on Earth.

The Earth is immense, incredibly large. It is all-but impossible for us to imagine the size of it, we are just not evolved to consider such scales. Three years studying it barely allowed me the perception to understand such scale.

That is the fundamental error of environmentalists. Take for example the ban on dumping mercury at sea. If we dumped the entire world production of mercury over 1000 years in the world's oceans then the level would rise by 1% of its current level.

Moving on to 'climate change'. The entire human influence on the greenhouse effect is about 0.3%, or just under 0.1 degree Celsius; burning all available fossil fuels at current rates of increase is unlikely to more than double that, as it is a dynamic system with carbon removed as well as supplied. The popular perception simply fails to take into account the scale of the atmosphere, and of the continents and oceans that are making their own contributions on either side of the carbon dioxide flux.

maddy

There is a touch of the Mayerling or even strange parallels to Arch. Duke Ferdinand about this Jonah!
We need him out the system.

Rich de L

Prince Charles may be a bit doolally, but he's nowhere near as bad as Ed Millipede, Gordon Brown, Obama, Gore, the IPCC, the Green Party, Giles Coren, Hari at the Indy, the UEA... Oh sod this. Life's too short.
Suffice to say, there were already too many liars and loons behind the AGW propaganda, and the addition of Prince Charles is like the 89th-minute substitute you bring on when you're 3-0 down, just to give him a run-out.

michael

Q:Will the way we treat our environment affect our way of life?
A:It already does.

Q:Will the way we treat our environment cause a plethora of biblical disasters.
A: What's it worth?

Fay Kelly-Tuncay

CONSENSUS ON CLIMATE CHANGE IS LITTLE MORE THAN GROUP-THINK Politicians have lost the ability to think critically outside of the orthodox box- we need more scepticism not less. The House of Commons, was designed to be a house of dissent and debate? To gives us the checks and balances to government policy. - On the Climate Change Act who peer-reviewed the Stern Review? Only Lawson and he claims its another doggy dossier. Scepticism is what science is all about, testing hypotheses, evaluating degrees of certainty, - there is no general law of climate change. So why do we need the Climate Change Act. We must dissent and debate surely this is what democracy is all about. We must disentangle the public from this sloppy policy cock-up.

Naomi Muse

Missing the point really, isn't he?

The world has irreversibly changed many times, from what geology tells us and that it is changing now is not in question. Man's involvement is.

Man's involvement in getting together data and misquoting it to make a political point and calling it 'science' is what must be debunked here.

Man's involvement in trying to, effectively, sex up the dossier, is bound to bring real science into disrepute too.

All so called 'science' needs to do for most people to take it seriously is get facts and data peer reviewed and checked.

All that also needs to happen now is for so called, 'science' to do that retrospectively to all the data that has been acted on by governments and business the world over, so that they can adjust plans and expectations.

A little truth at this juncture might save 'science' from licking more egg off its face.

Viktor

Rod

¨It still seems to me rather more likely than not that man-made climate change is taking place¨

Aussie scientist Ian Plimer proved every single word of this sentence wrong (in Ḧeaven and Earth). Our climate may actually be cooling, and mankind cannot possibly seriously think it can influence it. Check this out: CO2 is less then 2% of all total greenhouse gases, 0.117% of CO2 in the athmosphere is man-made. Can this trace amount induce irreversible changes? Not very likely, if you ask me...

Viktor

@ jonh ryan "Citation, please"
Ok, here we go: the mass of the atmosphere was estimated by Trenberth, Christy and Olson: Global atmospheric mass, surface pressure and water vapour variations.
CO2 is a trace gac, it's current concentration is 582 ppm by mass, so about 3oooo billion tonnes. Humans produce about 29 billion tonnes per year. Animals and microbes produce 22o billion tonnes per year. A quarter of all CO2 is scrubbed from the air every year (Lal, R.: Global potential of global carbon sequestration to mitigate the greenhouse effect)

John Holland

Richard- The earth may be unimaginably vast to you, but that seems to be because you seem to live in the pre-industrialised world, before we could travel round it in a day, before the human population sped past seven billion, and before the current staggering scale of industrial activity- hence your strange statistic concerning mercury production for "the last 1000 years", as if the first 900 of that made any difference.
We live on a planet on which the life-supporting part has a ratio to the whole roughly the same as the skin to the rest of an apple.
The oceans that you think are so big as to be infanetly pollutable already have large areas where fish stocks are a fraction of what they where only a short time ago, and large scale pollution exists in many places on this apparently inviolable planet.
Claiming that it doesn't matter what we do because the earth is so big it can never have any effect is just a wierd, lazy form of superstition.

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