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.