Beware the politician posing as a scientist

Ben

The only effective long term solution is to reduce the size of the human population on our planet. The news that China is abandoning its one-child policy is discouraging. In the Middle East, Africa, South America and Asia populations are expanding at a great rate. Up to now there has been a reliance on sociological laws to curb fertility as living standards rise, but this is clearly not working well enough. Proactive policies to emancipate and empower women are needed in addition.

Kate

Haha, I loved this. Global Warming is the biggest crock that has faced the world... ever. Fear mongering, money grabbing 'scientists' need to grow a brain and drop the whole thing.

George Steiner

There are very few areas of science that aford more than a glimpse into other areas. And surface chemistry is not one of them. But scientific specialisation is not in itself a bad thing. In fact it is necessary. But there are two problems with today's infatuation with scientific infallability. One of them is a lack of public understanding of how science works. The other is the very low standard of general education particulaly in the physical sciences. Both are the result of the highjacking of public education for political reasons. It is a system with positive feed back built in, it will get worse.

Rob Slack

Why should we care about the possibility of global warming? The human race will eventually disappear (if only because of global cooling when the sun burns up). Does it matter if the end is in 200 years' time or 10,000,000,000? The only real difference will be the number of people who have been born (and died) before it happens. If it happens in 200 years' time billions of "people" will not be born; will never exist. Why worry about things that never exist?

Tim M

Ben Did you read the article? If so, why are you going on about the only 'solution' being population reduction? Solution to what? The world got colder last year. The actual measured temperatures have disproved the temperature increases forecast by the political warmenists at the UN’s IPCC. 'Man made global warming' is the religious theory that underpins a political movement with political goals. It's nothing to do with science, facts or rationality. Progressives and socialists (now reinvented as tut tutting climate alarmists) have long campaigned for population reduction and cultural suicide to fulfil their anti capitalist day dreams. Turn your patio heaters on, have lots of kids, be happy. And don’t worry, it won’t change the weather.

Andrew Baker

Well done--thank God someone is pointing out the absurdity of this stupid man. Prime Minister Lord Salisbury had an anathma towards experts--be they scientists,doctors,priests or soldiers. I would suggest this be as true today as then in Victorian England. Todays papers blithely reprint every press release they receive qouting an "expert". Please keep up your efforts to expose and ridicule this awful state of affairs

John Bull

Its good to read another 'debunking' of this great eurovisionist fraudster. When the magnetic lure of incredible taxation funds is eventually withdrawn as politicians are forced to trim back their rapacious demands, we shall perhaps again start to see the emergence of real scientists whose observations are not through the rose tints of their political paymasters. Until then - anything having the 'support' or even tacit agreement of the EU must be regarded as very highly corrupt and probably fraudulent in origin.

chris

Mr Booker should look at the "Dr James E Hansen" site. Sophisticate society plods toward Easter Island.

RHK

Your opinion of David King may be accurate or not; I do not have the knowledge to judge. But even if the man is a total idiot, this has zero relevance to whether or not global warming is occurring. That can only be judged on the evidence. The trouble with articles like this is they appear to be lead by an unshiftable preconviction. Ironic that this is precisely what they seem to be accusing their opponents of.

Kate: I bow before the irrefutability of your tightly-reasoned argument. In all seriousness I do expect a higher level of debate in what purports to be an intellectual weekly.

THX1138

Here we go we go more irrational slagging off of of science by a right wing history graduate. What possible expertise do you have to pronounce that the considered scientific opinion of experts like the Royal, Society, The IPCC, The Hadley Centre, The Tyndall Centre & The American Association for the Advancement of Science ( I could go on & on) who all agree that AGW is happening & is a threat to us all. Climatologists maybe wrong about AGW & lets hope so but I know for sure they won't be proved wrong by a newspaper columnist. If they are wrong it will be shown by another climatologist who comes up with a better theory that survives a rigorous process of scrutiny by experts. In the meantime I intend to believe them over Christopher Booker Please tell me how your opinion differs from the man in the pub & why I should believe you over the Royal Society?

Dwight Vandryver

Virtually unreported in the UK press, this month the Heartland Institute in New York held the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change (Heartland is a non-profit, free-market oriented public policy think tank). About 500 delegates attended comprising climatologists, scientists and other experts. The result was the Manhattan Declaration asserting that global warming is not a global crisis. Thus, there is no general scientific agreement as to the cause of climate change. Most of present day research, with its computer modelling, starts from the presumption that climate change is due to man-made CO2 emissions: an assertion that has yet to be proven. The Conference concluded by declaring that scientific questions should be evaluated solely by the scientific method - in other words, a plea for the return of genuine scientific values based on unbiased objective enquiry. It follows that far more fundamental research, unfettered by preconceived ideas, is urgently required. Realising that climate change, per se, has always occurred, there are three scenarios that need resolving: either it is not influenced at all by mankind, or it is influenced and irreversible, or it is influenced and reversible. The essential fundamental research would determine which one of these cases is correct. If the last case is proved, then a decline in economic growth, and a reduction in standards of living, are a worthy sacrifice. But for either the first or second cases, there has to be a rethink of world's political systems to cope with the mass population migrations that would ensue.

Nick O'Hear

I live in the Netherlands. Sir David King only had to look here for effective management of Foot and Mouth, where vaccination works well. My neighbours found the British response to this disease beyond comprehension. The Netherlands is also instructive about rising sea levels. I live a couple of metres below sea level. At the current rate of rise (1.8mm/year), in 500 years time I shall live 1 metre further below sea level. I expect to be utterly dry although perfectly dead. I mention this and ask why would anybody expect rising sea levels automatically to flood land? Holland has reclaimed land up to 7 metres below sea level for the last few hundred years. During this entire time the sea has been rising. The science underpinning Global Warming Theory is not strong. The models vary quite wildly in their predictions and fail to model heat transfer between the earth's surface and the troposphere properly. In reality the troposphere is cooler than predicted. The models also don't deal with sunspots which are known to increase the earth surface temperature. For these reasons, the predictive power of the models is questionable but the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) simply averages these predictions as if they were actual measurements. Levels of carbon dioxide and its effect are not all that certain either. Credible chemical measurements in the last 200 years show that atmospheric CO2 levels have been higher than they are now. Ice core data shows that CO2 in the atmosphere follows the earth's temperature with an 800 year lag. For these reasons I don't plan to leave the Netherlands for the cool high ground of Switzerland any time in the next 1000 years.

Dwight Vandryver

Largely unreported in the UK press, this month the Heartland Institute in New York held the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change (Heartland is a non-profit, free-market oriented public policy think tank). About 500 delegates attended comprising climatologists, scientists and other experts. The result was the Manhattan Declaration that asserted global warming is not a global crisis. Thus, there is no general scientific agreement as to the cause of climate change. Most of present day research, with its computer modelling, starts from the presumption that climate change is due to man-made CO2 emissions: an assertion that has yet to be proved. The Conference concluded by declaring that scientific questions should be evaluated solely by the scientific method - in other words, a plea for the return of genuine scientific values based on unbiased objective enquiry. It follows that far more fundamental research, unfettered by preconceived ideas, is urgently required. Realising that climate change, per se, has always occurred, there are three scenarios that need resolving: either it is not influenced at all by mankind, or it is influenced and irreversible, or it is influenced and reversible. The essential fundamental research would determine which one of these cases is correct. If the last case is proved, then a decline in economic growth, and a reduction in standards of living, are a worthy sacrifice. But for either the first or second cases, there has to be a rethink of world's political systems to cope with the mass population migrations that would ensue.

Richard Lacy

Is this Royal Society whose sagacity is lauded by THX1138 the same Royal Society that insisted as late as the end of the 19th century that flight by powered heavier-than-air machines would never be possible?

Nick O'Hear

Refering to Richard Lacy's commment, the odd thing is that birds and insects, being the only flying machines of the time, were all heavier than air. The sciencists of the time were capable of extreme intellectual blindness. In the end engineers developed heavier than air flight. Of course those in favour of the IPCC will say that it is all different today but where's the evidence?

John Marshall

Keep up the good work. As a geologist I can understand the data and can assure you that CO2 has nothing to do with Global warming or climate change. The sun drives climate with Milankovich Cycle modifications. Solar scientists tell us that solar activity is running at a reduced level and we may be entering a Maunder Minimum. If this is true, and I don't doubt these scientists, then lets see how the alarmists explain the plunging temperatures.

Paddy

We have a situation in which a lion's share of research grants are doled out by governments. Those governments have well defined political agendas concerning anthropogenic carbon emissions. What has occurred is that many scientists are acting like politicians. Their "science" has become another form of advocacy in favor of their patrons political agendas. That is how the money changes hands. What else can be expected when scientists loose their moral and ethical compasses.

Pops

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Philip Lloyd

Well done, Christopher B. Sir David King is a good example of the scientist-turned politico, who comes to believe the message in the face of counterevidence. Science won its public acceptance by the fact that its' predictions came true. Few of the IPCC's predictions have come true, and some of them (like the warming of the troposphere) are demonstrably false. The politically drafted "Summaries for Policy Makers" differ in material ways from what the scientists actually said in their reports, and are tendentious in the extreme (whereas the reports are generally not in the least). When the flaws in the earlier predictions of the IPCC become apparent, they eggdance their way to "improved understanding". It is high time this fraud is exposed for what it is, before the politicians seize upon yet another phantasm to tax.

anna v

Let me give three scientific arguments why global warming is not due to CO2. They all hinge on the self evident statement that the IPCC models, which are the only ones implicating CO2 in the warming, have to be tested against real physical data. If they fail, then their predictions are also nonsense. 1) In paleoclimate data there is absolutely no correlation between temperature and CO2. ( a basic output of the models). Why are they not working then. Also in Ice core data CO2 rise LAGS temperature rise by 800 years or so. It is a cause and not an effect. The models cannot model that. 2) The past ten years, statistically, well measured from satellite temperatures show even a small fall of the global temperature trends. The Models happily predict rising. 3) The green house model as used by the IPCC models NEEDS higher temperature differences by a factor of 2.5 at around 10 k, of the atmosphere. This is absolutely not there, and is the death knoll of this form of computer models, for anybody who has workded with computer modeling. It is the basic premise that makes them a "green house" model, and the data absolutely disputes it. Have a look at http://nzclimatescience.net/images/PDFs/devansco2.pdf for damning plots from official data.