BNP leader launches into peak oil and climate change argument on the radio

Tuesday, 09 June 2009

Here's something that we're presumably going to have to listen to a lot more of as a result of the BNP's success in the European elections – Nick Griffin's views on climate change. As he was touring the radio studios yesterday morning, he popped in on BBC Radio 5 Live's Breakfast programme for a chat with Nicky Campbell. After a few minutes of fairly gentle jousting, Griffin interrupted Campbell as he tried to read out another text from a listener…

Griffin: The BBC is obsessed with race and immigration. It would be great to talk about something else for once.

Nicky Campbell: What would you like to talk about? What's the thing you'd like to say given this platform to speak to the nation this morning?

Nick Griffin: OK, how about the fact that I believe, along with the Czech politician [Vaclav Klaus] everyone is berating, that global warming is essentially a hoax. It is being exploited by the liberal elite as a means of taxing and controlling us and the real crisis is peak oil. We're running out of proper, real energy. And it is something with an immediate and catastrophic effect in a few years' time potentially — not worrying about floating polar bears in a 150 years.

(Go to 1.52:15 at this link to hear the interview)

My first reaction was: "As if there weren't already enough reasons not to vote BNP." But then another thought crossed my mind: isn't it interesting how he is convinced by the peak-oil argument, but still believes that global warming is a pinko conspiracy to squeeze yet more taxes out everybody?

Might it be that peak oil somehow fits into his far-right ideology (watch out everyone: let's burn our indigenous coal because we mustn't be slaves to the whims of those foreigners with big oil wells), whereas the regulatory politics of global warming rubs against his far-right libertarian instincts?

At 21:15 on 09 June 2009, Mike wrote:

I bought an incubator for some chicken eggs. The instructions said 38C. But when I checked the temperature it was all ove the place. Not only did it vary across the unit, but even my supposed clinical thermometers varied. So I thought: "human blood temperature is constant" - but it wasn't I was 0.5C lower than "normal". Eventually I realised the only way to get a proper measurement of the temperature inside that little plastic box was to buy a couple of thousand pounds were of high tech laboritory calibrated time-averaging kit ... so I stopped measuring and the chickens hatched anyway. That's what mankind has got to do. Stop worrying about a fraction of a degree change - that's the kind of variation you get simply by taking temperature a few minutes earlier in the morning, or getting to the meterological station a few minutes later in the evening ... and I know stories of people taking these measurement who just made them up - in the UK!

At 12:03 on 09 June 2009, Carol Allingham wrote:

'Global Warming' isn't a hoax, but it's played upon by politicians who refuse to accept that 'Global Warming' is something that has happened frequently throughout world history, and is nothing to panic about. I think Mr Griffin is making the point that politicians and industry are making money out of, and frightening people with what is an historically proven natural occurrence.

http://u.tv/News