The politicians have been honest

The green energy mirage will cost the earth - Telegraph

Another area where UKIP stands out against the three social democratic parties.

Climate 101

The usual wild claims are zipping back and forth - but doubt about the message brought by the Warmist zealots has now established itself.

For a quick introduction to why see this on the most excellent Watt Up With That ? ( H/T to Dr David M.W. Evans who is the orginal author of the material ).

BBC 'impartiality' on display again

Now I know some of us bang on about this a lot, and every so often we catch the BBC our with surveys like the BBC staff self identifying their political leanings through facebook. ( Which has lead to BBC issuing advice to its staff to be more careful about revealing the in built political bias of the staff who work there.)

But here's another strong whiff of smoke from the BBC impartiality gun.

Climategate 2.0 has given us an email of a BBC journalist explaining his allegiance to the AGW cause .. see the most excellent Watt's up with That blog post here. It shows a BBC journalist describing those who question the Warmist religion as Loonies and that they only occasionally allow one of their points through as they have to. But really they know they are talking through their hats. ( Just like the BBC knew the eurosceptics were insane to question the wonderful Euro of course. )

However I do wonder if some in the BBC aren't trying a little harder these days. There was at least the bird blender Panorama exposé and Nick Robinson's series on how govt spends our money ( though I must admit I haven't watched any of it yet, and lets face it they are probably trying to build up their case for continuing after the next licence fee review and charter review which must now be on their radar if - horror of horrors - Labour aren't in power to protect them ).

I suspect the BBC knows its under pressure here, as it knows the charge sheet against it mostly rings true and they suspect they won't be able to get away with their Guardian world view for ever.

Further: Today the BBC has its loyal spin on the discovery that the climate is less sensitive to CO₂ than thought. Yes the bit of research is reported by its swamped in warmist caveats, but never is the explanation that the case for damaging man made global warming relies on other unproven feedbacks. They just can't help themselves.

England's industrial death wish

The progressive establishment's green fantasy has reached the point that its starting to kill of the industry in our country. ( Or export it to countries that don't have such mind boggingly stupid people in charge. )

We are told that the economy needs to be rebalanced away from financial services back to manufacturing. But the extra energy costs and carbon taxes are strangling it.

Those with the wisdom of a PPE degree at Oxford tell us that the new "green industries" will emerge to compensate for these loses. But in reality studies have shown that for each green job created 3.5 are destroyed. And anyway why do our industrially ignorant rulers think that England will be manufacturing any green technology if we lose our capability in other areas of manufacturing ?

The French have signalled they won't be joining us on the Clifton suspension bridge for our industrial suicide bid, and that you can forget Kyoto 2 as far as they are concerned.

But we have that national disgrace Chris "I haven't been sacked because I'm a Lib Dem" Huhne announcing ridiculous "carbon reduction targets that are to be placed into law.

This has gone beyond husky hugging triangulation to mindless industrial suicide.

Add to this the fact we know much of the Global Warming industry have been lying to us and you end up thinking what we need is a few psychiatrists in govenrment to help our PPE Oxbridge wonders work out why they hate the country so much as to want to destroy it like this.

H/T to David Blackburn's article on Coffee House which some of this is based upon.

Further: "Currently, four out of the UK's eight refineries are in a sale process and all are under pressure from high-volume, cheaper rivals in Asia, which are not subject to the same £1bn green taxes on the industry." - Rowan Mason - Energy Correspondent at the Telegraph here.

A cold year - at least according to my gas bill

So according to my gas bill and gas usuage data - its been an expensive year to heat the house, even if #ManBearPig man made socialism forcing really is true, which of course it probably isn't.

My prediction for next year is the dropping by a major UK political party of the backing for man made catastrophic global warming and its industry.

Biodiversity - the new Climate Change, the same green marxism

Its not just Vince Cable who's been leaving policy skid marks. The political world is cooling on Global Warming Climate Change front. The failure and the fraud have become to widespread knowledge to be sustained in the minds of the public.

So how are the international systems of laws and obligations that allow the left to determine how we are governed and live our lives to be created now then ?

The answer looks like Biodiversity - a word the BBC's news outlets will be programming you with as often as they used to casually mention global warming climate change.

I'm guessing their grace period will be a lot shorter this time.

They will have to try something else than eco-fascism shortly. I wonder what they will come up with ?

Update: I see James Delingpole is getting with the program here. The Green marxists are going to have a hard job pulling this one off.

Damaging allegations about Warmism and Science

The following letter has been posted in full by James Delingpole on his blog in the Telegraph.

It speaks for itself and raises issue that really should ring alarm bells in our government with its plans to commit billions to the faith of Warmism at times on national financial austerity and when it will damage the chances of the growth we need to pay of the disastrous levels of debt Labour have saddled us all with.

Dear Curt:
When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago). Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence—it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?

How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d’être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.

So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it. For example:

1. About a year ago a few of us sent an e-mail on the subject to a fraction of the membership. APS ignored the issues, but the then President immediately launched a hostile investigation of where we got the e-mail addresses. In its better days, APS used to encourage discussion of important issues, and indeed the Constitution cites that as its principal purpose. No more. Everything that has been done in the last year has been designed to silence debate

2. The appallingly tendentious APS statement on Climate Change was apparently written in a hurry by a few people over lunch, and is certainly not representative of the talents of APS members as I have long known them. So a few of us petitioned the Council to reconsider it. One of the outstanding marks of (in)distinction in the Statement was the poison word incontrovertible, which describes few items in physics, certainly not this one. In response APS appointed a secret committee that never met, never troubled to speak to any skeptics, yet endorsed the Statement in its entirety. (They did admit that the tone was a bit strong, but amazingly kept the poison word incontrovertible to describe the evidence, a position supported by no one.) In the end, the Council kept the original statement, word for word, but approved a far longer “explanatory” screed, admitting that there were uncertainties, but brushing them aside to give blanket approval to the original. The original Statement, which still stands as the APS position, also contains what I consider pompous and asinine advice to all world governments, as if the APS were master of the universe. It is not, and I am embarrassed that our leaders seem to think it is. This is not fun and games, these are serious matters involving vast fractions of our national substance, and the reputation of the Society as a scientific society is at stake.

3. In the interim the ClimateGate scandal broke into the news, and the machinations of the principal alarmists were revealed to the world. It was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity. Effect on the APS position: none. None at all. This is not science; other forces are at work.

4. So a few of us tried to bring science into the act (that is, after all, the alleged and historic purpose of APS), and collected the necessary 200+ signatures to bring to the Council a proposal for a Topical Group on Climate Science, thinking that open discussion of the scientific issues, in the best tradition of physics, would be beneficial to all, and also a contribution to the nation. I might note that it was not easy to collect the signatures, since you denied us the use of the APS membership list. We conformed in every way with the requirements of the APS Constitution, and described in great detail what we had in mind—simply to bring the subject into the open.

5. To our amazement, Constitution be damned, you declined to accept our petition, but instead used your own control of the mailing list to run a poll on the members’ interest in a TG on Climate and the Environment. You did ask the members if they would sign a petition to form a TG on your yet-to-be-defined subject, but provided no petition, and got lots of affirmative responses. (If you had asked about sex you would have gotten more expressions of interest.) There was of course no such petition or proposal, and you have now dropped the Environment part, so the whole matter is moot. (Any lawyer will tell you that you cannot collect signatures on a vague petition, and then fill in whatever you like.) The entire purpose of this exercise was to avoid your constitutional responsibility to take our petition to the Council.

6. As of now you have formed still another secret and stacked committee to organize your own TG, simply ignoring our lawful petition.

APS management has gamed the problem from the beginning, to suppress serious conversation about the merits of the climate change claims. Do you wonder that I have lost confidence in the organization?

I do feel the need to add one note, and this is conjecture, since it is always risky to discuss other people’s motives. This scheming at APS HQ is so bizarre that there cannot be a simple explanation for it. Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they used to be, but I don’t think that is an issue. I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst. When Penn State absolved Mike Mann of wrongdoing, and the University of East Anglia did the same for Phil Jones, they cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for doing otherwise. As the old saying goes, you don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. Since I am no philosopher, I’m not going to explore at just which point enlightened self-interest crosses the line into corruption, but a careful reading of the ClimateGate releases makes it clear that this is not an academic question.

I want no part of it, so please accept my resignation. APS no longer represents me, but I hope we are still friends.
Hal

Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, former Chairman; Former member Defense Science Board, chmn of Technology panel; Chairman DSB study on Nuclear Winter; Former member Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Former member, President’s Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; Chairman APS study on Nuclear Reactor Safety
Chairman Risk Assessment Review Group; Co-founder and former Chairman of JASON; Former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board; Served in US Navy in WW II; books: Technological Risk (about, surprise, technological risk) and Why Flip a Coin (about decision making)

Climate Heresy: The new certainty

Climate Heresy: The new certainty

A new post over at my Climate Heresy blog (which I've been ignoring a bit too much recently).

An independent line

It certainly felt good to see David and Sam Cameron enter Downing street. I'm a Conservative party member who campaigned for a Conservative government, and whilst this isn't precisely what I campaigned for it contains many of the key elements.

During the campaign I've mostly targeted my comments at other parties and avoided any issues I might have with my own, except for the English Question.

Well here comes the but - normal service will be resumed shortly.

I'm still a Conservative, but I'm not a slavish follower and we're not under election conditions so I'll be speaking my mind here.

I'm economically liberal, but socially conservative. I'm patriotic but pragmatic. I willing to give the benefit of the doubt but not to be taken for a ride. Lets see how the coalition works out, I won't hold back from criticism where I think its warranted.

Two major areas of disagreement I expect to have with the new government are on;

1) An English Parliament - its very clear we should have one. I also think this would make our country stable again and save the Union. A lot of Unionist seem to oppose giving the English their national recognition, but they are making a fatal mistake.
2) The Climate Change Fallacy - Sorry guys I am very far from being convinced that the Warmest argument is true, indeed the majority of reliable evidence (known as the geological record) points the other way.

These are the two main points but there will be others.

We are setting of into the unknown with the coalition - but independence of thought and opinion will continue here, though I'll not be unnecessarily unhelpful - apart from this ;-) .

PS I've a lot of work to make up after the last month, so forgive me if blogging is a bit more sparse. In many ways the next month or two will belong to Labour bloggers anyway as they try to react to their defeat and need for a new leader ( hint - this time try having an election ).

Petition to stop global warming propaganda to frighten our children

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Stop wasting taxpayer's money on climate change propaganda designed to frighten our children.

If your a UK citizen then go here to sign.

Update I should of course have made it clear that this has been driven by Steve Green over at the Daily Referendum who deserves the credit.

If climate change is such a threat ...

... why do we have 24 hours TV ?

Surely the BBC could save the planet by shutting down for 8 hrs a day ?

Perhaps the Guardian could stop murdering trees and contributing to climate change by turning them into drivel.

Think of all the plasma screens, LCD TV's, household lights ( as people go to bed ) and higher birth rate (especially amongst the extinction threatened middle class) that could be saved and would result.

Or perhaps Climate change isn't really what they are on about ?

Sir Frank Whittle on climate change

Some decades ago I was a young engineering student and my father send me a copy of a letter that Sir Frank Whittle was to send to the Washington Post. A few weeks ago I came across it in a box, along with the letter my late Father sent me. That letter was dated 1988, so the letter on the greenhouse effect must be earlier or the same date. What stuck me was how a man in the later part of his life could see so clearly to the weak points of the argument, then know as "the greenhouse effect" ( now its Climate Change after being rebadged from the Global Warming title, due to the need to explain why its getting colder - but of course its still our fault ). Anyway, whilst perhaps some elements of the letter can be challenged, I was particularly impressed by how he went straight for the obvious uncertainties and weak points in the warmists argument.


THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT NONSENSE

Almost every day we read about the "Greenhouse Doomsday Scenario (headline in "The Washington Post" of 31 July), i.e. the alleged trap ping of heat by 'greenhouse gases', chiefly carbon dioxide. We are told, that within a mere 50-60 years or so, all sorts of unpleasant-things will happen as a result of a world-wide rise in temperature: Holland, Bangladesh, and large areas of other lowlying land will be submerged by the rise in sea level, due in turn to the melting of the polar icecaps: droughts of increasing severity will occur, and so on. This sort of thing is being taken so seriously that two bills have been introduced in Congress relating to the subject.

All this is the kind of science fiction we can do without.

The whole business seems to be based on some very sloppy thinking. A N.A.S.A. scientist recently stated on TV that the world's average temperature has risen by six tenths of a degree centigrade in the last one hundred years. It would be interesting to know who measured the temperatures to this degree of accuracy over, say, the whole the Pacific Ocean, at all heights above it,at all hours of the day and night,and at all times of the year. Ditto for the rest of the earth's 197 million square miles. To measure the average temperature to this degree of accuracy over a single state of the U.S.A. would be quite a feat.

The use of the word 'greenhouse' is very misleading. The glass of a greenhouse does not block outgoing radiation as the so-called greenhouse gases are supposed to do: it prevents the loss of heat by convection by enclosure, and, being a very bad conductor, it prevents heat loss by conduction. If glass blocked the longer waves of radiation the sunset would appear a different color when viewed through it.

The doomsayers seem to be blind to some major fallacies in their arguments: for one thing they seem to overlook completely the fact that the oceans contain many times more carbon dioxide than the' atmosphere and therefore tend to act as a 'buffer' to •regulate atmospheric carbon dioxide. They never mention (in anything I have seen) that the carbon dioxide produced in the combustion of petroleum, coal, etc. is merely returning to the atmosphere some of the carbon dioxide taken from it many millions of years ago. They assume that all the carbon dioxide so produced, stays in the atmosphere,which it does not. They do not stress sufficiently that carbon dioxide is the main 'food' of all vegetation and that, without it there would be no plant life. Indeed, since all food chains begin with vegetation, all life (except, perhaps, anaerobic bacterial depends on carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and ocean. Much of the carbon dioxide consumed by vegetation is, of course, returned to the atmosphere by the respiration of plants and animals, and by decay, but not all of it, because some is dissolved in ground water and ends up in the ocean.

One writer stated that there is now nearly twice as much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as there was during the last ice age. This just cannot be true: the very opposite is much more likely because carbon dioxide is continuously going out of circulation for ever by ending up in carbonate rocks (limestone, dolomite, chalk, etc.) coral etc. (it is. said that, on the Great Barrier Reef alone, coral is forming at the rate of twelve tons per acre per year; which means that more than five tons of carbon dioxide per acre per year is permanently removed from the atmosphere and ocean). The weathering of rocks is another mechanism by which carbon dioxide is permanently removed because it is caused mainly by the acidic effect of carbon dioxide dissolved in rain. The carbonates formed in the process being eventually carried off th-the<-»eceafc Us tVic Carboniferous period,atmospheric carbon dioxide must have been hundreds of times more than it is today, because vast quantities now 'locked up' in carbonate rocks were then in the atmosphere and ocean, and yet, then, there were great ice sheets over India, Africa, etc. I wonder how the doomsayers would explain that. Some greenhouse effect!!

Our use of fossil fuels (petroleum, etc.) may have temporarily suspended or even reversed, the long term depletion of the carbon dioxide, but when these run out ( and this will take a lot longer than other doomsayers predict) the net depletion will resume, It may well happen that in, say, rather less than a million years, mankind, if still around, may be driven to growing all his food in greenhouses artificially supplied with carbon dioxide produced by heating limestone- for which he would have to use nuclear or solar heat.

While one group is stressing the greenhouse effect, another is predicting another ice age. How confusing for the man in the street!! (to anyone who has experienced the last three summers in England, this latter prediction seems more believable).

Some people seem to think that recent record high temperatures in the U.S.A. confirm the greenhouse effect, overlooking the fact that there have been some record lows at night, which is opposite from what one would expect because the night-time loss of heat by radiation ought to be blocked by the greenhouse effect.

There are other questions the doomsayers might find it difficult to answer: has the color of the sky or sunset changed during the last few decades? Has there been a world-wide rise in sea level in the recent past?

Since there is no evidence that the dire events now predicted ever happened in the distant past when there was quite certainly far more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than there is today, it seems certain that they will not happen in the future.

"Like telling the truth about climate change

Mr Cameron is quoted as saying this in The Gordon Times today.

Dave,

The problem is there isn't one truth about climate change - or even man's contribution to it. So its impossible to tell the truth about it. And if you present what you are saying as "the truth" there is only one conclusion thinking people can come to - and its not about climate change.

This could be the greatest scandal of our time ?

There's always a problem with TV documentaries, in that they very rarely give both sides of an argument equal weight. Over the last decade we've had a load of them weighing in for man made global warming.

I've just watched one that goes the other way on Channel 4 ( if you missed it at your interested in politics then you *must* watch it on Channel 4's on demand facility. )

Its one of those "The king has no clothes" moments.

There will be a furious counter spin from the environmental lobby, but eventually the truth will out.

The danger for the Conservatives is as the Green brand gets associated with deception and lying, then Vote Blue go Green could become a millstone. At least Gordon Brown will have the Stern report to explain ! But that won't save David Cameron if this is true - and I'm inclined to believe it is.

Executive summary of the documentary is as follows:

1) Global Warming causes CO2 production, not the other way round ( and they have the evidence to back it ).
2) The climate is driven by the Sun stupid ( and yes they have evidence for that ).
3) A lot of people will lose their jobs if man made global warming is discredited.
4) It gives lefties another way of changing the world and cover to do it.

I worry for what the greater population will think when they realise that Global Warming caused by humans has been made up.

Update: See this from YouTube ( for those who can't get Channel 4)


Update: A good summary of the program has been posted by Thomas Papworth here.

Also see Melanie Phiilips on the same subject ( she has been making points on this subject for some time - pointing out the case is not proven ).

Other parts of the doc here .

Further updateIain Dale is posting related to this and the green taxes fiasco here ... he has a link to the whole programme here ( for those of you outside the UK ).

80% of scientists are not right just by defintion

I mentioned Channel 4's upcoming documentary tonight on those who disagree that man causes global warming.

And I've just been listening to John Humphrey's interviewing a few scientists on what politicians should believe.

The problem is that you can't have an opinion poll of scientists on an issue to determine truth. The one in a million may be right or indeed no one may be right.

As I have said before Climate Change has proven to be very useful politically for politicians trying to justify their role in the world. Its the new cause celeb for "campaigners" ( many of them rich people who can't find meaning in their life) to make themselves feel good.

In the mean time what if global warming is true but man isn't causing it ? Instead of spending money intelligently on coastal defences and reservoirs we will have pissed it away on damaging our economy.

This is why there should be more scientists and engineers in parliament whom understand risk and proof and less career politicians. ( By the way Engineers with practical experience would be far better than scientists as they live with the consequences of their professional decisions ).

We should stop going on about tokenism like career women to win and start thinking about a wider body of talent and experience into the commons. Unfortunately it looks like the precise reverse is to happen as the those with talent and merit are forced out of the Lords to be replaced by more career politicians.

Remember science is not a democracy, but a democracy without proper understanding of science will become a failed society.


Update: The most excellent First Post has an article titled Global warming: Nature goes against Science which reports one case of excessive claims and the acquiescence of a scientific magazine in making that case. A good - but not to heavy read.

Global warming backlash is buidling up steam

We have all got so used to being told that Global Warming is a fact and those who argue against it are evil Luddites that we may have lost sight of the science. And worse its now being used as one of those political issues politicians use to justify their existence and why they should take our money.

Journalists are now starting to question all this received wisdom - and about time too !

The following program on Channel 4 in the UK on Thursday looks good;

Channel 4 Thursday 8 March at 9pm

In a polemical and thought-provoking documentary, film-maker Martin Durkin argues that the theory of man-made global warming has become such a powerful political force that other explanations for climate change are not being properly aired.

Should be worth a watch ! There's a trailer here ...

Here come the camouflage taxes !

We've all grown wise to Gordon Brown's stealth tax rises - where he took advantage of the fact the public so much wanted to believe in NuLabour and the no one was interested in finer details. Until now that is when they have risen so high. Terms like fiscal drag and stamp tax relief for pensions didn't seem to impact anyone - only they have.

So having vastly expanded the parasitic nature of the state - but simultaneously allowing its productivity to drop what the new plan ?

Green Camouflage taxes :- Like the retrospective airport duty - which by its very definition wasn't green when it was implemented ( and maybe wasn't legal). The excuse - save the environment - the reality - more money to the government.

Current ploys being tried are:

• Road pricing.
• Congestion charging.
• Putting Ken Livingston in charge of charging the home counties to subsidise his transport policy.
• Airport duties.

And there will be more. As politicians bang on about climate change - many of them are really just setting up a direct debit to your bank account which they think you'll be happier with than income tax.

So Green issues are the new campaigning rally call that makes it look like government is important and could do something - whilst at the same time fleecing the taxpayers of their case.

I would like to say the Conservative party has woken up to this - but I'm afraid that's just not the case. People will however, once they realise they are being used, get very angry about this new taxation ploy.