Wednesday
Jan252012
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill War of words
Jan 25, 2012 Climate: Sceptics
The Express is covering the ongoing war of words over GWPF.
Lord Lawson had barely removed his microphone when the vitriolic attacks began.
The veteran politician had just taken part in a calm debate about the merits of extracting gas from shale. During the discussion on the BBC’s Today programme he stated his firmly held view that there has been no global warming so far this century.
It was the catalyst for an outpouring of venom on message boards and social networking sites. In a selection of the printable insults Lord Lawson was described as “a rabid climate change denier”, “a liar” and “a lone nutcase”. One listener even posted: “Why isn’t he dead yet?”
Update on Jan 25, 2012 by
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill
Ben Pile has an article covering similar ground over at Spiked.
Reader Comments (63)
In the Age of the Internet, intimidation campaigns have become a badge of honor for the victims of them.
"Maurizio Morabito
In the Age of the Internet, intimidation campaigns have become a badge of honor for the victims of them."
You are joking, aren't you?
Why? If people try to intimidate you, you can (a) tell the world about it and (b) rest assured your work is certified effective.
Since I am victim of an intimidation campaign myself, I know the feeling.
Lord Lawson was, of course, for many years one of the leading figures in the Conservative Party. It is probably safe to assume that the person who posted the comment "Why isn’t he dead yet?" is one of those people who regard the Tories as the Nasty Party.
Wouldn't life be wonderful if everyone was as nice as those hypocritical lefties who are so proud of not being "nasty"?
Maurizio Morabito
If you can see a positive in intimidation campaigns good for you.
Standard operating procedure for tyrants and the intolerant.
If you don't like the message, shoot the messenger.
The increasing intimidation and threats are indicative of increasing desperation by the greens that the climate change scam is coming to an end. It will get worse before it gets better.
A passing thought: It would be interesting to know just how many "lone nutcases" we are now at this point in time.
Caroline - anybody worried about intimidation campaigns should refrain from posting any thought whatsoever on the internet.
I'm afraid many already do exactly that.
And I am aware of the fact that the problem is much worse for women than for men.
"Lord Lawson fears that economies are being harmed by an obsession with so-called renewable fuels".
That's something the government should be reflecting on today, when it was announced that Q4 2011 GDP was down 0.2%.
I think Lawson is a great example of the tribalism of the climate debate, because he attracts vast amounts of hateful vitriol.....for being eminently reasonable. If the likes of Delingpole attract venom and hateful campaigns I very much think they ask for it.
I feel sure that even if I believed that the effects of a warming climate were going to be both negative and serious [neither of which I do] I'd still want to engage in a civil debate with Lawson. However, I suppose I have to doubt that, because I fail to see myself as profoundly different from the human beings who have become partisans in the debate.
Perhaps it is just like a religious conversion - following the successful displacement of reason, it subsequently seems quite sensible to demonise and sneer at anybody who hasn't been similarly converted?
From what I can gather he is primarily interested in pragmatic policy - irrespective of what we eventually learn about climate change. I've never shared any political perspectives with the man, but the GWPF strike me as Conservative only in a very broad sense.
@John in France,
I reckon there are quite a lot of us "lone nutcases" out here.
Time for an 'I'm Lone Nutcase' moment?
Lord Lawson went to and grew up in the 'school of hard knocks', even at his venerable age, I personally think he can ride the 'storm' and shed the water like a duck's back does and good on him.
Who is really in denial here?
It is the nay sayers who simply will not admit that the earth's natural terrestrial and solar forces warm and COOL the planet - our earth always seeks to natural balance, it loves equilibrium. Thus, it is the nay sayers, ie, that ever diminishing bunch of Socialist groupies who think that man is somehow 'changing the climate' - and that's not science - that's denying science with - a man made supposition.
AGW, has been thoroughly trashed by pure science.
The latest UN jamboree/political gabfest coming up in Rio, the Rio+20 - you will note that the idea of climate change and or man made warming and hyperventilation over MMCO2 has been dropped from the 'advertising billboard' - now it's just a conference on "SUSTAINABILITY" [whatever that means].
Now then, if ever there was a fillip to members of GWPF and to see how the tide has turned, then RIO+20 is it.
The nay sayers, can fill the 'airwaves' with every type of ad hom vituperation under the sun, because they and we all know that their alarmist position, AGW along with their big guns have been taken, their guns well and truly 'spiked'.
I think Lord Lawson can allow himself a small smile but only a small one. Because, the battle goes on, now it is the politicians who must be made to see sense and God knows in Britain, finding a logical and sensible politician as I am sure Lord Lawson will know full well, presently is a forlorn odyssey.
I'm Spartacus ... ! ;-)
As this depression develops, the soft left middle classes whose existence has centred on NuLaber 'Progressive Politics' and 'Climate Change' propaganda are hitting the pain barrier. The sunlit uplands with lovely, clean windmills showing the supremacy of urban class warriors over local yokels haven't materialised and the part time trolling for CACC and UCS doesn't pay the rent.
If they had guts, they'd be true street warriors but they haven't. So, it's snide comments on the internet; an outpouring of light green bile then a bleat to mummy and daddy about how cruel the World has become, an implied appeal for yet another loan.
You can see this every day at Delingpole's DT blog, but he tends to invite it!
" I would give no thought of what the world might say of me, if I could only transmit to posterity the reputation of an honest man" Sam Houston
Oh dear, Express!
'Shale gas emits larger amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, than conventional gas but still far less than coal.'
Shale gas is methane
Conventional gas is methane
Coal is mainly carbon, but may be gassy, (firedamp- safety Davy Lamps etc), again mostly methane.
Pharos @Jan 25, 2012 at 10:21 AM
The Express, [mixed up about gases and gassing tho' it is] in its defence - has fallen into the trap set by the 'greenies', they have put about a fiction [mainly a born in the USA chimera] that the gas drawn from shale deposits is somehow dirtier and more nasty than 'natural gas' - total BS but yer know methane is well.................er methane.
I don't believe, "Why isn't he dead yet?" was particularly threatening, more a rhetorical question. It is the heart's desire of our own Sir Terry Wogan that he lives long enough for people to say, "I thought he was dead", on the mention of his name.
These emails came about through the deliberatedly misleading statements from the Met Office, who when asked about the temperatures tell the public that year 20XX was the Yth warmest on record, thereby giving the impression that warming is continuing, when they know full well that the temperatures haven't increased over a 13-15 year period. It would be a massive embarrassment to them if the general public were to find out that CO2 has increased in the atmosphere by some 6-8% and the earth hasn't warmed. Even some of our scientific illiterate MPs might start asking relevant questions.
I like it, geronimo.
@ Anteros
Perhaps it is just like a religious conversion - following the successful displacement of reason, it subsequently seems quite sensible to demonise and sneer at anybody who hasn't been similarly converted?
The comparison would be apt if it were inverted. In my experience the sneering comes largely from atheists who arrogantly assume that everyone who disagrees with them is being irrational.
I quizzed a chappie at a street table-top petition gathering just before Christmas and suggested that the hype on Climate was perhaps overdone a wee bit. I thought this was a fairly gentle way of addressing the subject, but he and his colleague became extremely agitated, and quite pointedly tried to stop me saying anything further.
The following advert shows the sort of thing that is being done to ensure that as many innocent and well-meaning folk are getting the message that the activists want in their heads.
http://www.charityjob.co.uk/jobs/226268/northern-mobiliser
Perhaps it's time we did something similar.
Many if not most of these self-anointed Green zealots can be characterised as malignant narcissists. They may claim to be acting on behalf of the planet, but mostly it's about themselves.
As US psychiatrist Pat Santy points out:
and
I have never believed that the AGW debate is about the basic science, but about personalities (and hence ideology). And the nasty, petty, vindictive and amoral personalites seem to exist almost exclusively on the Alarmist side.
Thank you, Anteros for your considered opinion that I deserve all the vitriol which comes my way. May I ask what leads you to this conclusion? If you have even a passing familiarity with the sorry story of the climate change industry - and if you don't, why do you feel in a position to make such airy ex cathedra pronouncements? - what you'll be aware of is that represents a massive conspiracy against the taxpayer, an abuse of the scientific process, an establishment cover up and an excuse for rabid green activists to impose their misanthropic vision of reality on free citizens who frankly deserve better. My only crime - if such it is - is to tell it like it is, in language less diplomatic than that used by Lord Lawson, who cannot help being a professional politician. Of course it's understandable that I get flak from the opposition for pointing out its many defects. But "deserved"? That would imply that I was trading in untruths, inaccuracies, ad homs, appeals to authority. If I call the deep greens eco-Nazis it's because I've read their key texts, noted their agenda and realised, yes, this is eco-Nazism writ large. If you think I'm wrong have the grace to say why I'm wrong.
As I noted yesterday on unthreaded, when Lawson pointed out that there had been no warming this decade, Tony Juniper described this factual observation as "black propaganda".
James, anteros did not say you deserved it but that you asked for it. You are doing so again here with your use of the N word!
Well said James D and keep on saying it. There is a veritable army of us Lone Nutcases.
James,
Don't mind Anteros. Right now, he is the stage of believing that strong ideas should only be expressed in 'moderate tones'. He'll wake up when the carbon credit card comes in his mailbox.
Re: Jan 25, 2012 at 10:14 AM | Athelstan
"The latest UN jamboree/political gabfest coming up in Rio, the Rio+20 - you will note that the idea of climate change and or man made warming and hyperventilation over MMCO2 has been dropped from the 'advertising billboard' - now it's just a conference on "SUSTAINABILITY" [whatever that means]."
This is all part of the UN's agenda 21 campaign, 'sustainable development' is their buzz word and 'just' isn't exactly the word I would use for it!!
They are using it to entrap 'innocent and well-meaning folk' into supporting them in their ultimate aim of 'global governance'. One of the areas they see as 'unsustainable' is private property. Yes, I know, sounds very much like a 'conspiracy theory' but just try searching the internet for 'name of your local council (whatever that is) 'agenda 21' and 'sustainable development' all together - I think you will be surprised to what extent the UN's aims are being accomplished. The same is happening in the US and Australia and many other countries as well.
E.M.Smith has an excellent post on the subject at Chiefio.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/tag/agenda-21/
It is no exaggeration to state that we could all wake up one morning and suddenly find ourselves in a Fascist World State. Meanwhile the rest of the population sleeps on totally unaware!
And for those who think it couldn't happen just look at how we have become enmired in the EU. The UN are using similar tactics.
Pharos wrote
quote
Oh dear, Express!
[]
Shale gas is methane
unquote
Oh dear, Pharos.
Shale gas is not just methane -- it contains some higher hydrocarbons, ethane, propane etc. I've seen some figures for the US where it's up to 20%. You can work out the burnt gas greenhouse potential by looking at the proportions of hydrogen to carbon, CH4, C2H6, C3H8. They are all better than coal if you believe the AGW hype.
The more the better, the heavier gases can be compressed to LPG and used in central heating systems*, car, trucks, buses, much better stuff than petrol or diesel. Let's hope the UK shale gas has lots.
JF
*specifically mine if it looks like the price is going to come down.
Good to see you here, James - not that you have any need to defend yourself or well-founded opinions and beliefs - I think that they're shared by most sensible, right-thinking folk. It must be so frustrating when you witness a ludricously dangerous situation develop because of misinformation or ideology, and you altruistically shout "look behind you", and the blind don't or won't see your waving arms, the deaf can't or won't hear your warning, and the stupid just routinely ignore you.
The "I told you so" moment, hopefully, is just around the corner.
Geronimo,
Hemispheric and large-scale land surface air temperature variations: An extensive revision and an update to 2010. (CRUTEM4)
JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, doi:10.1029/2011JD017139
Temperatures haven't increased until the data is adjusted to maintain warming. Perhaps a related scientist could provide some detail for the changes?
Re. Jan 25, 2012 at 11:32 AM | James Delingpole
Well said!
And thanks for being one of the very few reporters who has the courage to tell it as it is.
Some on this board don't seem to understand we need to fight this creeping fascism at all levels and in all age groups.
and in what was does the GWPF 'deny' climate change, or 'cast doubt' in climate change?
They seem to like reporting peer reviewed science - goon on them.
and they are way ahead of the pack when it comes to the devastating halt in global temperature increases this century.
In defence of vitriolic attacks:
It was a nasty article by the Moonbat in the mid 2000s that initially made me wonder why someone as nice as David Bellamy was attracting such opprobrium.
On doing some fairly simple research, I discovered that DB had made a simple typo in a report on Alpine Glacier melt. Surely not enough to cause such a reaction, but enough to make me wonder why I'd not seen DB in recent years on the media. And also enough to make me follow up on the attacks on the "top ten deniers" that Moonbat had listed.
This in turn led to the discovery of the background to the "denier" meme, and to the number of serious scientists who doubted the entire CAGW edifice. Up till this point, I had assumed that AGW was real, and that some of the CAGW claims (e.g. Hanson's) were overblown but just to make a point so could be forgiven, but watching a Christy lecture was a real eye-opener.
So in summary, without the vitriolic attacks, I wouldn't have been prompted to investigate and discover that the whole pack of cards was about to collapse. So they do some good ;)
The mentalists must be crapping themselves at the thought that over 100,000,000 "lone nutcases"
have visited Anthony Watts' site alone.
(I'm a Lone Nutcase by the way)
Once upon a time we had a hole in the ozone layer. We still have a hole in the ozone layer, one at each end when winter comes but most of the general public think that this is no longer the case because we got rid of CFCs from refrigerators etc. It all goes to show that it is possible to fool most of the people most of the time or maybe even some all of the time. It is going to be a long battle over CO2 in spite of the cracks that are appearing.
Rick Bradford,
"I have never believed that the AGW debate is about the basic science, but about personalities (and hence ideology). And the nasty, petty, vindictive and amoral personalites seem to exist almost exclusively on the Alarmist side."
##########
I've always thought a large part of it is the idea of totalitarianism in a new form. The idea that the state is perfectible and can and should control everything as the only way to create a sane and just society. CAGW is perfect for state control and the furtherance of a world state.
My view is that states don't do anything very well and the more they take on, the worse they do it. The experience of the 20th century showed totalitarianism tested and found wanting, certainly not creating sane or just societies.
There are all sorts of other aspects to CAGW; a mass scare, a job creation scheme/racket, characteristics of a religion. The science it's supposed to be based on is the least important part.
Interesting event, and informative. Many decades ago I knew someone very interested in psychology and personalities, and he felt he learned a lot from others by provoking them. For example, in a campsite he threw a pot of water over a nearby tent and declared that it was urine in order to study the occupants when they emerged outraged, as indeed they did. ‘Just testing your reactions’, he’d say by way of explanation. Now it is of course very easy to provoke zealots – the merest hint that you do not take their dogma at all seriously will suffice. But what do we learn from their reactions? I have no coherent idea, but I do hold on to the hope that there are better observers than me who will learn a lot. The only good thing that can come from the past 30 years of the deliberately engineered alarmism over CO2 is enough progress in understanding human nature to reduce the chances, or the frequency, of such episodes happening again.
Anteros gives us a fine phrase (Jan 25, 2012 at 10:09 AM|):
Perhaps it is just like a religious conversion - following the successful displacement of reason, it subsequently seems quite sensible to demonise and sneer at anybody who hasn't been similarly converted?
‘the successful displacement of reason’. How was such a thing engineered? What skills and insights were deployed? How much was luck, how much was the unfolding of a plan? My hunch is that the disproportionate impact of ‘Limits to Growth’ and the associated tablets of computer output brought down from on high to infantilise an innumerate media/political class, was noted by plotters such as Maurice Strong who had the foresight to see the great potential of the Mauna Loa CO2 data and the speculations of a few in the climate field that it could lead to a detectable, possibly worrisome, global warming.
Thomas Sowell (http://www.freedompolitics.com/articles/age-3096-difference-wall.html) has some more felicitous phrases:
This may be the golden age of presumptuous ignorance. The most recent demonstrations of that are the Occupy Wall Street mobs. It is doubtful how many of these semi-literate sloganizers could tell the difference between a stock and a bond.
and later in the same piece
Presumptuous ignorance is not confined to politicians or rowdy political activists, by any means. From time to time, I get a huffy letter or e-mail from a reader who begins, "You obviously don't know what you are talking about..."
and
At one time I was foolish enough to try to reason with such people. But one of the best New Year's resolutions I ever made, some years ago, was to stop trying to reason with unreasonable people. It has been good for my blood pressure and probably for my health in general.
and
One of the reasons for so much presumptuous ignorance flourishing in our time may be the emphasis on "self-esteem" in our schools and colleges. Children not yet a decade old have been encouraged, or even required, to write letters to public figures, sounding off on issues ranging from taxes to nuclear missiles.
Our schools begin promoting presumptuous ignorance early on. It is apparently one of the few things they teach well. The end result is people without much knowledge, but with a lot of brass.
[In the UK, we’d say ‘brass neck’ to convey the same meaning, since here ‘brass’ on its own in such a context is slang for cash.]
It is well established that CO2-driven zealots target the young to win recruits, and they do get them to ‘write letters to public figures’. Check out this pdf by the WWF for example: http://www.worldwildlife.org/what/globalmarkets/Climate%20Change/Climate%20Cirriculum/WWFBinaryitem5972.pdf. They do indeed have some brass neck.
I have great sympathy with the view expressed by Rick Bradford above (Jan 25, 2012 at 11:29 AM):
I have never believed that the AGW debate is about the basic science, but about personalities (and hence ideology). And the nasty, petty, vindictive and amoral personalities seem to exist almost exclusively on the Alarmist side.
I do hope perceptive and detached observers, with skills in such as psychology, sociology, and politics, are watching all of this closely and will report soon. The climate system itself is routing the alarmists’ technical position by contradicting just about their every verifiable claim, but the social system has no simple equivalent of this. There we shall have to rely more on our own analyses.
@cosmic
From the same Dr Santy
I think it is important to understand that the people on the other side of the debate are not simply those who disagree with us about the science -- it goes much deeper than that.
Foxgoose: '(I'm a Lone Nutcase by the way)'
Always a fan of oneupmanship: there are two of me........
The link leads to the GWPF.
The following link is to the Express article itself:
http://www.express.co.uk/features/view/297859/The-hounding-of-Lord-Lawson
Foxgoose Jan 25, 2012 at 12:30 PM
No - it was one lone nutcase over 100,000,000 times.
Julian Flood
Yes, there will always be a range of higher end gases, but that's equally true of natural gas, which after all, typically are sourced from the organic content of the shale anyway.
geronimo
It would be a massive embarrassment to them if the general public were to find out that CO2 has increased in the atmosphere by some 6-8% and the earth hasn't warmed. Even some of our scientific illiterate MPs might start asking relevant questions.
Jan 25, 2012 at 10:31 AM
--------------------------------------------------------
True. I would also love to see footage of the average know-nothing politician (and big-mouthed celeb for that matter) being asked by how much they think that the Earth's average temperature has risen.
I am sure that there would be some hilarious, jaw-dropping over-estimates/guesses even compared to the alarmist's "worst case" figures.
James, you wrote recently that you were going to stop posting as regularly about AGW.
Please don't, you're one of the few in the press getting the word out and a _lot_ of people here in the UK still don't realise we're being shafted over 'carbon'.
Nial
As I have said before, I spent 20 years of my life opposing a local claque of eco-loons whose main uniting force was to be negative. Whatever anyone outside the group suggested, they were agin it. If in the fullness of time you came round to their way of thinking then they seamlessly switched to opposing what they had originally supported quite shamelessly.
At the same time they themselves proposed grandiose schemes (all for the benefit of the community, of course) which would have cost thousands (in one case well over a million) and closed their eyes and ears to the realities. The money would come from the Lottery or it would come from the local council (this in spite of being persistently told in plain English that no such thing was about to happen). They were always just on the point of succeeding.
Eventually we stopped trying to persuade people not to get involved. It was like a cult. Nothing you could say made the slightest difference but after between a year and 18 months the recruits would return shamefaced to the real world (or the pub on a Friday night) and apologise for being such pillocks.
AGW is following exactly the same pattern over a longer timescale.
Oh dear, Express!
'Shale gas emits larger amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, than conventional gas but still far less than coal.'
Shale gas is methane
Conventional gas is methane
Coal is mainly carbon, but may be gassy, (firedamp- safety Davy Lamps etc), again mostly methane.
Don't they have a qualified science editor at the Express?
Jan 25, 2012 at 10:21 AM | Pharos
It may be that the body of evidence against alarm over CO2 is becoming so great, and the alarmist position not only scientifically untenable but also politically embarassing, that the 'activists' will ditch the AGW alarmism in favour of going really big on 'sustainable development'. As the man once said, the issue is not the issue when some comrade was getting too engaged with some 'issue' rather than seeing it merely as a stepping-stone, a means to an end. So the superficial 'issue' may move from being AGW, and become 'sustainable development' instead. The thinking being perhaps that the money and political support raised through the AGW wheeze is more than enough to be getting on with, that dealing with the objections to alarm around it is actually impossible, and onwards and upwards to the sunlit uplands of 'sustainable development'! Rally under this banner now, all ye faithfull!
At least that is how I am reading this recent post by Lubos Motl: http://motls.blogspot.com/2012/01/sustainable-conference-in-rio-finds-agw.html
John Shade
Hilary Ostrov had an excellent piece on the same subject at about the same time at http://hro001.wordpress.com/2010/10/20/move-over-ipcc-here-comes-ipbes/.Way back in October 2010 I blogged on what was likely to be the next big thing once CAGW came unstuck (http://standstoreason.wordpress.com/2010/10/21/the-king-is-dead/) only my prophecy was for Biodervsity since this was just about when the UN had created Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).
So: biodiversity, sustainability. Take your pick.The Greenies will continue to try to drive us down a road that only they want to go down and will move swiftly and cleanly from one scare and scam to another as soon as the first outlives its usefulness.
Same ol' same ol'
Happens all the time and for thousands of years: Trial_of_Socrates