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)
Julian Flood
Sounds like flatulence -- in more ways than one. They do refine the gases somewhat before putting them in the pipe line. Nat Gas is between 70% and 90% with almost all the rest butane (like in your cigarette lighter), propane (which I use to heat my house), and ethane (which is hard to tell from methane)
What is Natural Gas?
John Shade,
CAGW has ridden the dynamics of a scare. The drowning polar bears, the posters about monkey's crying and leaves falling off trees, probably reaching its high point with Gore's film. There was also manipulation by guilt, carbon footprints and so forth. The scare is dying off and people are starting to laugh. Getting people to be scared by a dead scare is like trying to interest people in shares after the South Sea Bubble collapsed.
Ocean acidification, biodiversity, has all been tried and failed.
Sustainability is something we're seeing bandied about more and more. There's an Institute of Sustainability. The problem with it is the claims are easier to examine and test and the scare to reinforce it is more nebulous.
It's fairly clear that the government apparatus put in place and the structures built on CAGW are not going to be disbanded because CAGW has lost credibility. Some way will be cooked up to keep it. The first step is to insist it hasn't lost credibility.
John Shade:
I'm so pleased to find I'm not the only one with a copy of 'Limits to Growth'. I've had mine since 1972, when it first came out. I keep it on my desk, in view, to remind me of the stupidity, not just of the so-called scientists who made up the 'Club of Rome', but of those who fell for their fairy tales (and, at first, as a young man, I was one of them).
For me, LtG turned me into a natural doubter: I hate taking things at face value just because someone says it is. Perhaps it was the extraordinary unintended consequence of the DDT ban (much promoted in LtG) that did it for me, but then, I also realised that the 'limits' being spoken of were arrived at more from a position of ignorance and ideology than science.
@JD: Keep writing. Keep digging at the alarmists. One may know a man by his friends, but you can sure measure him by his enemies.
I'm a lone nutcase - in good company.
Roy @ 11-02
Fair point. I used the idea of religious conversion because it was cheap and easy. Perhaps much better would be the notion of blind fundamentalism because it can then include (as you suggest) the fanaticism of atheists like Dawkins etc. Equally, there is an absence of understanding and reason.
James Delingpole @11.32
As Paul Matthews correctly observes I didn't suggest you deserved "all the vitriol that comes my way. In a manner consistent with your profession, you simply made that up yourself.
I said you asked for it. It is the same for people who kick off their climate discussion with the idea that all "sceptics" [to imply fake sceptics] are liars, deniers, big-oil-shill bigoted morons. I think they ask for vitriol in a very similar way.
You give the impression that you believe all people who believe differently to you - your political enemies, as you seem rather uninterested in climate itself - are eco-Nazis [an expression you repeat in your response to me]. That is the reason I believe you attract vitriol. You are as rabid and dogmatic as the lunatics that oppose you.
I have nothing against telling it like it is, debating robustly and using healthy dollops of sarcasm in rhetoric - particularly in the blogosphere. I call out alarmism and fear-drenched doomism wherever I see it, because it seems to me to be a psycholgical dysfunction and unrelated to reality.
However, that paranoia-driven panic exists on both sides of the debate and in both cases descends into irrationality, hatefulness and fundamentalism. You just happen to represent that condition on "my" side of the debate.
Mike Jackson -
I agree. Sustainability and Biodiversity are the current choice of 'mad-memes'.
Sustainability is particularly pernicious. It seems to be the new 'righteousness', where it is tacked-on to any idea where it can possibly fit without looking ridiculous. Nearly 2000 years ago a group of writers nailed [one of the] problems with the first moral panacea - "Those who make a virtue of righteousness will never become righteous"
Sustainability is insidious for other reasons, too, and along with the other expression of fear and guilt, 'biodiversity' seems to be spreading, and positioning itself near the dying embers of the CAGW movement.
Tony Jupiter (FOE) is one of the most ill informed and
self-opinionated people alive on the Planet today.
He makes statements which are full of Aristotlean locical fallacies, & etc.
His rabid adherance to unproven propositions and hypothesis is almost
painful to hear, yet he himself does not, or will not acknowledge that he,
and all Mankind are indeed, CARBON BASED LIFEFORMS, which actually
rely on Carbon Di-Oxide gas, being photosynthesided into FOOD,
...... by the power of The SUN.
It is a FACT, that reduced CO2 in the atmosphere does lead to reduced
photosynthesis, and consequent reduction in food supplies, and coupled
with the fatuous "green" notion of creating so called bio-fuels from food
crops, has lead to millions of peoples throughout the Planet, being seriously
malnourished and even then starving to death. This policy is hardly friendly.
Tony Juniper raves on about Carbon Capture, without realising that in fact
this process does consume such vast amounts of energy, that if it were
possible and implemented across all fossil fuel electricity production, not
only would the reduction in free atmospheric CO2 cause famines, but also
that there would be very little actual electrical power output left over for use.
He asks about environmental damage, yet is oblivious to the environmental
damage caused by plastering hordes of wind turbines across the landscape,
which have devasted Bat populations, for instance, and kill large numbers of
Raptors and other Birds, to say nothing of the aesthetic damage to the natural
landscape, and deleterious effects upon both Humans and Farm Animals, and
notwithstanding the economic argument, that they rely on gargantuan subsidies.
Sadly Mr. Juniper is either acting out of ignorance, or he is a knowing participant
in the fraudulent agenda, which is being promoted among certain persons with
vested interests in those so called "renewable" industries. It is one or the other.
Certainly he is not really a Friend of the Earth", in fact in mine own opinion, he is
actually an enemy of the Earth, of Mankind, and even wants to destroy the very
chemistry which sustains his own life.
Please see the very many videos about this Fraudulent Climate of Hokum Science
at the website linked with the name "Axel" above. Video Wall #1 has an especially
informative selection of videos, and I would recommend for new viewers, the two
videos by Willy Soon (Harvard) and Richard Lindzen (MIT) which explain the
issues in an easily understandable fashion, without baffling the viewer with too
much hard scientific & mathematical formulae and esoteric details.
The View from Galileo's Window - the Sun, the CO2 Monster, and Earth's Climate
- Lecture given by Willy Soon
Dr. Lindzen of MIT at the CEI - Real Facts about Climate Change
- Lecture given by Richard Lindzen
I wish that Tony Jupiter would watch just these two videos, then maybe
there would still be hope for him and his organisation to turn back
from this erronious agenda, and hopeless path that they have been
embarked upon during the last twenty years or so. To be a friend
of the Earth, you must care about the Whole Earth, and that will
include the inhabitants of the Earth, including you and me, and to
respect the biochemistry wich sustains our life here on this Planet.
I always thought that you were a pretty reasonable fellow James Delingpole, it is particularly hard for someone such as yourself to 'plane' across and against the grain. Writing as you do for the DT, which as we all know is owned by the Barclay Bros who have been bamboozled investors in all of the warmist guff, AGW nonsense, eco-propaganda, barmy renewable agenda.......etcetera etcetera.
What is telling though, is the undoubted popularity of your blog and how that must rankle with the editorial line and majority of the hacks at the DT - must make your job endlessly worthwhile;-).
Marion @ Jan 25, 2012 at 11:50 AM
Yes another strand below Marion,
I've no doubt in my mind that the UN/EU/Major bankers and some Big US figures [mainly Democrats but some 'wet' Republicans too] have a 'world agenda' on their minds..............Basel III is a big part of it and follow the links svp.
Despair not about powerful people pushing agendas ...the world's a mighty mess none's in control of...
Two things:
1) When I first read this, I misunderstood it:
"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."
My first glance reading of that was that Lawson was saying that there had been no warming for a century. I would bet that most of the vitriolic responders had similarly misunderstood the statement.
2) A thought has just occurred to me. If carbon is pollution, and we are carbon-based life forms, then not only do we breath out pollution, we are pollution. This isn't a very life-affirming thought.
3) Some people like a scrap. Nothing wrong with that. But we might as well be honest about it.
P.S. I lied about there being two things.
If the Bishop will allow a quote from Scripture:
Elijah replied, "I have been very zealous for the LORD God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, broken down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too."...
[The LORD said] "Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel˜ all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and all whose mouths have not kissed him."
1 Kings 19
@ John Shade
It's true about sustainability... And Frosty on Unthreaded is H/T'ing Murray Grainger on WUWT for this take on it... I think it's worth another quick plug:
http://xkcd.com/1007/
On a more serious note, I believe SD is the political framework that has enabled the global warming narrative/industry to flourish. The Brundtland Report where the term was coined, was published in '87, but commissioned in '83. Also, Gro's best buddy on it, was Bert Bolin - was rewarded with that input with the chair of the first IPCC:
http://www.scribd.com/decaline/d/24176124-Brundtland-Report-1987
The Scribd does not search well as it appears to be bitmapped, but there are very interesting associations with climate change, CO2, global warming and proposed emissions reductions and curbing economic growth, even before the main scientific case had been established. The political agenda was driving the science even then.
On doing some fairly simple research, I discovered that DB had made a simple typo in a report on Alpine Glacier melt.
Balony. In a letter to New Scientist he repeated the lie that most glaciers were increasing, initially published by co-liar Fred Singer, and failed to correct or retract it when it was pointed out. Here is an extract from Monbiot's piece:
So last week I telephoned the World Glacier Monitoring Service and read out Bellamy’s letter. I don’t think the response would have been published in Nature, but it had the scientific virtue of clarity. “This is complete bullshit.”(3) A few hours later, they sent me an email.
“Despite his scientific reputation, he makes all the mistakes that are possible”. He had cited data which was simply false, failed to provide references, completely misunderstood the scientific context and neglected current scientific literature.(4) The latest studies show unequivocally that most of the world’s glaciers are retreating.(5)
Source:- http://www.monbiot.com/2005/05/10/junk-science/
"latest studies", where, who, what?
"unequivocally" - brave statement that - are you sure if so - reference it.
"most"................................Qualify that, what is meant by "MOST" - references?
"Retreating"..................Since when? Do you mean since the LIA? Or, are you referring to the "retreat" at the end of the Devensian/Wurm/Wisconsin +/- 18,000 years ago?
Glacial retreat - it happens and the ICE will come again [bet on it] - until then, a little glacial ice disappearance here and there is, 'neither here nor there'.