As we are engulfed from all sides by suffocatingly one-sided coverage of the Copenhagen conference on climate change, three hugely important issues have been largely stuffed away from sight.
The first of these is the matter of cost: the scarcely believable bill our politicians wish to land us with as the price of their proposals to meet the supposed threat of global warming. Few people have even begun to take on board the astronomic scale of the sums involved – the International Energy Agency talks blithely of $45 trillion - because on this politicians and media have in recent days remained more than ever silent.
Already under last year’s Climate Change Act - on the Government’s own figures – we in Britain alone are committed to shell out £18 billion every year from now until 2050. That is £725 for every household in the land, which we will all have to pay in rocketing energy bills and regulatory costs, crippling ‘green’ taxes on everything from cars to airline tickets, subsidies to windfarms and heaven knows what else.
But even this may look like a gross underestimate when we realise that it is now the law of the land that, over the same 40 years, Britain must cut its emissions of carbon dioxide by a staggering 80 percent or more. Not a single one of the 463 MPs who nodded through the Climate Change Act, with only three voting against, could have begun to explain in practical terms how this target could be met.
Short of an as-yet undreamed of technological revolution, this could not possibly be achieved without closing down not just most of our transport system and electricity supplies but virtually all of our current economic activity.
What is being proposed at Copenhagen is that not dissimilar measures should be imposed on every country in the developed world, threatening to transform our existing way of life out of all recognition.
The second very important question which has received nothing like enough attention over what is happening in Copenhagen is how the politicians can hope to get round the yawning gap between the richer nations of the West and those developing nations led by China, India, Brazil and South Africa, with some of the fastest-growing economies in the world.
It is this seemingly unbridgeable gulf, at the heart of the international debate since the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, which has led even the organisers of the conference publicly to voice doubts that they will get the universally binding treaty they are after.
The Western nations want everyone to sign up to crippling targets for reducing their CO2 emissions (China having already overtaken the US as the world’s biggest emitter). But the developing countries argue that, since the ‘CO2 problem’ is historically all our fault, as the countries which led the way to industrialisation, there is no way they can agree to any binding targets until they have been allowed to catch up economically with the West.
The best they can offer is that, in order to bribe them to make at least token gestures towards curbing their own carbon emissions, we in the developed countries should pay them hundreds of billions of dollars a year - at the very moment when we ourselves are accepting targets designed to make our own economies progressively very much less productive.
In other words, as we are faced with yet another colossal bill, their own economies will continue to forge ahead, pouring out so much CO2 that the global level will almost certainly continue to rise, All of which leads round to the third hugely important issue which those organising the Copenhagen conference are only too anxious to brush aside – the inescapable fact that the science on which all this frenzy of activity is based has recently begun to look considerably shakier than it did only a few years ago.
The first thing any of us in the West need to be sure of, as we face by far the largest bill in the history of the world, is that the science being used to justify this is 100 percent reliable.
Ultimately the whole case for a Copenhagen treaty rests on the projections of the computer models relied on by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC). These show that, as CO2 levels continue to rise, so temperatures must follow, leading inexorably to catastrophe - unless mankind takes the most drastic action to cut down on its emissions of CO2.
But as more and more eminent scientists have recently been pointing out, the only reason why the computer models predict that rising CO2 must cause temperatures to rise is that this is what they were programmed to show.
What world-ranking physicists such as Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT and Professor Will Happer of Princeton have been arguing is that the models are fatally flawed because they do not take proper account of all sorts of other factors which play a key part in shaping the world’s climate - such as shifts in ocean currents, the effects of magnetic activity on the sun and the ‘feedback’ from clouds and water vapour, far and away the most important greenhouse gas in our atmosphere, which counteracts any impact from the rise in CO2.
The greatest ally this growing army of ‘sceptical’ scientists can point to is what has actually been happening to the climate in recent years. No one can predict with certainty where temperatures will be in 100 years time, But the one thing that is indisputable is that, as CO2 levels continue to rise, the trend in global temperatures has not recently been rising as the computer models predicted, but has been flattening out and even dropping.
In other words, it becomes increasingly clear that the models were wrong - because their programming was biased according to a theory which now looks ever more questionable. Yet it is on their projections that the world is now faced with by far the most expensive set of measures ever proposed by politicians in history.
For months in the run-up to Copenhagen we have been subjected to an unremitting bombardment of scare stories: how the ice caps and glaciers are melting much faster than predicted, how sea levels will rise much higher than anyone imagined, how we face ever more hurricanes, droughts, floods and heatwaves.
Yet every time one of these scares is subjected to proper objective scientific examination it can be found either that these disasters are not happening as claimed or that they have been exaggerated far in advance of anything the evidence can justify.
The importance of Copenhagen is that we are at last arriving at the moment of truth. On one hand we are waking up to the scarcely imaginable cost of what our politicians are proposing, just when on the other the reliability of the evidence on which all this is based is being called into question more than ever before.
Despite our having for years been assured by politicians from Al Gore to President Obama that ‘the science is settled’, it is now obvious that it is nothing of the kind. Not least has this been confirmed by ‘Climategate’ and the leak of that ‘dodgy dossier’ from the East Anglia Climatic Research Unit, for years at the centre of driving the scare over global warming as the most influential source of temperature data in the world. Far from Copenhagen being the end of the debate, the real debate is only just beginning.
Christopher Booker’s The Real Global Warming Disaster: Is The Obsession With ‘Climate Change’ Turning Out To Be The Most Costly Scientific Blunder In History’ (Continuum, £16.99) is available from Telegraph Books for £14.99 plus £1.25 p&p. To order call 0844 871 1416 or go to books.telegraph.co.uk
An extremely well written piece Kate. You are to be congratulated.
If only thicko's like EdMilliband would listen to reason, but when did a politician care abour reason or truth?
There may be a crack in the facade though, because this evening the Beeb gave almost a minute to the sceptics in Copenhagen, but not without first being sarcastic about the size of the meeting. Maybe Auntie has decided to hedge her bets?
Nice piece by Kate and exactly as I see it.
Just look who the idiots are who are pushing global warming none other than our OH! so honest politicians and their very well paid lap dogs.
Money is at the root of this as it is the biggest scam ever to be dreamt up.
The poor countries are using it as a way to get even more aid that they quickly steal or spend on weapons. A very small amount if any ever reaches those in real need.
Thankfully the politicians at Copenhagen seem to be listening to the scientists and economists more, and the rabid and ever more desperate internet bloggers less.
And Booker is left banging his same old head in the sand do nothing drum.
This report in WUWT analyses the way the data in Australia is adjusted in a bizarre way. Upward of course.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/08/the-smoking-gun-at-darwin-zero/
Its an important insight into the way the surface temperature is being manipulated.
Coooeee , Chris , hun !!
Down here , darlin :-)
Yeah , bit wordy but I managed to plough thru it , sweetheart x .
Look ; even tho I gotta degree in somethin scientific , I find this stuff bafflin .
So , let's look at the facts :
a) The climate is the most complicated thingy wot our noddles can't understand .
b) A butterfly in Dagenham can cause a whirlwind in Redbridge .
c) It seems to be rainin a lot .
d) D'ya think Stacey will win The X-Factor ???
e) I think Olly should x .
f) We ain't never gonna meet no target , sweetheart .
g) CO2 is the elephant in the room .
h) Methane is much more interestin .
i) Wait till the permafrost starts thawin .
j) We'll wonder wot's hit us .
k) We can't do nothin bout all this .
l) Let's jus sit back an enjoy the ride , hun .
m) If we fancied havin a go at tacklin this slight problem , we shoulda started in the 1910's .
n) The human bonce wozn't fully formed till 1966 .
o) Plus they woz tooo busy worryin bout the rise of complacency to have any common sense .
p) Then we got side-tracked by The Nasties in the thirties .
q) Then the Commies .
r) Nah , I think Stacey will sneak it , petal .
s) Interestinly , the fifties saw some kinda environmental awareness . Thousands shuttled off their mortal coils in the smogs wot penetrated evry orifice of our filthy capital and they brung in The Kleeenex Act wot meant any human woz entitled to free tissues to blow the soot , from outta their schnozzles , into . Hmmm .
p) My p is outta order .
t) Circa '61 , the government told everyone to breed like rabbits coz 'if you don't, we, as a nation, will disappear'.
u) They lied . They jus wanted to increase the tax-take .
v) The whole universe thought , 'That's a brill idea !!!'. Let's get breedin. There's no bigger picture an havin loadsa kids is kinda, like, havin two Morris Minors ; good for the ego .
w) You keepin up , darlin ??
x) So , the brain-dead humans pumped themselves stupid an , surprise , surprise , The Earth's population busted the 6 billion mark . I'm runnin out of letters , honey .
y) LOL . Then someone said , "Oooooo , I think Stacey's gonna do it" an everyone forgot bout gaseous chemical compounds an tuned into ITV .
z) We all lived happily ever after xxx .
That is my magnum opiss , darlin .
Byeeee E x .
I'm sure that millions must be aware that our political class are spending ever more time attending international meetings which discuss every subject under the sun.
To the political class money means nothing, just words spoken or written, six billion. twenty billion, one point four trillion, who cares, its just money ? They talk, they blather, they drink, they eat, always in the best most luxurious places which we, the people of the world, pay with our taxes.
Its a never ending roundabout blather blather, yak yak, and now Global Warming has become the new religion.
In the 14th century the catholic religion was treated the same way, the Great and the Good pontificated about their rightness, and everybody elses wrongness and when these religious zealots reached the New World those who would not accept the words of these zealots were tortured and killed in the most horrendous ways by those who carried God's love. Some love, but not of their fellow men, who they regarded as of lower importance than their attack dogs.
So today we have the principal leaders of the world, bowing to the new god in Copenhagen. Amazing how it always involves money, shiploads of it, amazingly like the religious leaders of centuries past. Bringing gold and silver and jewels from the New World to adorn the citadels, show their wealth and power to the poor so that they could watch with amazement and compare it with their wretchedness.
This is why half of the people in Britain don't believe the words of these political scoundrels, they have seen it all before, the lies, the bigotry. The politicians are using this new religion to take even more money and control of the peasants, but of course their only interest is in saving us from the dreadfulness which will occur if we don't comply with their deliberations.
The world is getting warmer, but its nowt to do with the people, it never has been, its the way the world in the universe works. It goes hot and cold when it decides and we can just stand an watch
Kate - I love you. Brilliantly articulated.
Well done Chris too. You've been a beacon of sanity.
God Bless,
De Rigueur
Superb article Mr Booker, concise summary of the financial implications of Copenhagen.
There is no need for carbon trading, energy metering or satellite surveillance, those using energy and resources must merely be expected to pay the market price.
Carbon trading is a scam designed to replace the shortfall in revenue when motor cars are no longer viable in 10 years time due to an oil crisis.
Despite all the talk of oil sands and gases, in all cases the cost of recovery and processing is at best marginal and in most cases more expensive, than final product delivered.
Bear in mind that if AGW is defeated the collapse of the carbon trading market and the hyped “green” economy will plunge the world into a major recession.
If AGW is defeated then a coal economy could return together with associated gas and allied products, since Co2 will no longer be the dominant concern. The combination of coal and nuclear would allow the continuity of electricity supplies.
Conservation and recycling remain important, and reconditioning rather than buy new must replace our mad consumer society. In this context the car scrappage for example makes no sense since the energy to replace, far exceeds the energy saved by continuing the useful life of the car for a few more years, before the oil runs out.
"Its all bollocks,its just another way to control people and tax them its as simple as that,take no notice,carry on doing what you have always done"
It's worse than that, Lord Barnett.
Not only are we going to be taxed within an inch of our lives, all that money of ours is then going to be given to the Indians, the Chinese and anyone else capable of stoking a chimney.
All to further an insane cause founded on a discredited, ridiculous theory peddled by bent scientists and conmen.
There are 31468 including 9029 with PHD signatures from scientists worldwide on a petition called The Oregon Petition which says that there is no evidence for man-made global warming theory nor for any impact from mankind's activities on climate.
Many scientists believe that the Kyoto agreement is a total waste of time and one of the biggest political scams ever perpetrated on the public ... as H L Mencken said "the fundamental aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary" ... the desire to save the world usually fronts a desire to rule it.
Blimey - Kate's comment was longer than the article!
On the one hand you have the media pumping out that the noughties were warmer than the 90s which were warmer than the 80s so it must be us causing it. Yes possibly, but nowhere near definitely.
On the other hand the deleterious effects of man on the environment are plain for all to see - so it may be wise to expect us to have some effect on the climate. But how big is the effect? Nobody knows!
So should we do something? Well yes probably, and using resources more sustainably seems sensible.
But does this justify the massive extra costs to be pushed onto people? Or the huge transfer of money from West to East? Probably not, particularly if politicians are behind it all.
Keep up the good work, Christopher.
Check out the Times tonight: "Copenhagen sceptics have a slogan: 'The world isn't getting warmer, it's going mad'
Philippe Naughton in Copenhagen "
( INTERESTINGLY, this was on their front page until just now - it has been "disappeared" to the environment page now 8/12/09 2005)
Thank goodness for these people - the only ones with integrity, not out to milk the research "grants" system and build a lucrative career on the £millions pumped in to this sham of MMGW by the IPCC.
The corruption, dogma and pure propaganda on show via the UEA emails and at the lavish MMGW Copenhagen conference is truly amazing - I suppose many careers now rely on it.
There were far warmer conditions during the last post Ice-age ( not long ago in terms of the Earth's life and climate variation - unlike 150 years which is nothing), late Neolithic and Bronze-ages, Roman times and Medieval times, and no doubt there were others.
To suggest that Man causes warming is completely mad, and now clearly reflects the manic pronouncements from Copenhagen and some of the unbelievable schemes proposed by "scientists".
Of course, for any warmist whose job depends on "warming", it is almost impossible to backtrack. The same goes for the establishment and MSM who will not dare to lose face now:
...expect even more crazy pronouncements!
At least there is a group there to refute the pronouncements of this mind-blowingly mad gathering of carbon burning delegates and "scientists".
Remember the Global Financial Crisis? The mathematical theorists and PhDs on Wall Street told us beforehand that their computer modelling of financial risk dispersion was flawless. As a result the new financial products they were selling based on sub-prome mortgages and other securitised junk could be rated AAA. Guess what? The risk analysis and the computer modelling were completely wrong!
As a consequence of this the British Government may lose its own AAA rating.
Something tells me that we are looking at a re-run of this theoretical disaster in Copenhagen.
Having stuffed up the global financial systen the PhDs are going to fix the whole thing by taxing the air we breathe. Yes folks, its another AAA rated stuff up.
Time to send the 34000 lunatics at Copenhagen to a purpose built Gulag and throw away the keys.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/08/the-smoking-gun-at-darwin-zero/
This is a MUST READ document! SERIOUSLY.
More than just a smoking gun, and I am sure, the first of many to come.
They have been fixing the data to fit the theory.
We need a complete audit, of all surface stations, and we need it in public and open to everyone.
The science just stopped being settled the consensus is dead. Anyone that believes the temperature record now must be doing so purely on blind faith.
Well said. These people have greater potential to destroy civilisation than climate change.
The problem in this debate--if you can call it a debate when it seems so one-sided--is that politics has been conflated with science. So the Right tends to be climate-change skeptical and the Left climate change fearful. The two sides accuse each other of lies, inaction or conspiracy. Its really an acting out of the political divide of our generation on the subject of climate change. There's not much real science in the public debate. What makes me skeptical is the group think that seems to have taken hold. And the fact that skeptics are pilloried as criminals who desire the end of the human race. There's a religious, fanatical fervour that is at work here. I wouldn't be surprised if at some stage climate-change skeptics and Greens end up killing each other over this. Human beings always look for excuses to hate each other and demonize our enemies. This is the latest excuse--whatever the facts will end up proving to be.
I see the Met Office propaganda machine is at it again with their misleading headlines about the last ten years being the warmest. Of course they would be.If you cross a mountain summit the last 5 steps up and first 5 down are the highest. The CRU data - the evidence for warming,has been thrown into serious question because of Climategate but I would accept it as a basis for discussion. Because of the thermal inertia of the Oceans the best indication of what has been happening is their SST data. It shows the following : 2008 was cooler than 1997 - 11 years with CO2 up 6% and no temperature increase in complete conradiction to the Gore IPCC paradigm. 1998 was the warmest year - due to a Super El Nino.
The basic warming trend peaked in 2003 and the earth has been cooling since then.
Solar activity ( the main climate driver) has practically disappeared and suggests at least 20 - 30 year cooling trend.
CO2 is not a pollutant - it is the main plant food - if the cooling trend actally develops we should put more CO2 into the air rather than less to help mitigate the shorter growing seasons which are probably at hand.
I saw the Milliband - Lawson TV discussion. It is astounding that a person like Milliband ,one of the chief architects of Brown's lunatic climate policies , appears to keep himself obstinately unwilling to confront the facts stated above.What will it take before reality intudes on the conciousness of the devoted AGW ecoreligionists?
I can see a couple of huge obstacles against stopping this unbelievably expensive gravy train.
Firstly politicians very rarely admit to making a mistake and, secondly, the investigations will turn out to be complete whitewashes, especially the one instigated by the UN.
You deserve a knighthood Christopher, please keep fighting against this tide of propoganda. I notice The Telegraph is also carring the story of the Met Office claiming we've just been through the hottest decade on record. If that's the case then my name's Al Gore. Hopefully it won't be too long before some real scientists examine their data and modelling and reveal their claims to be utterly basis. It's just so annoying having to dig out this news from credible scientific sources on the internet, because the mainstream media won't touch it with a bargepole.
You deserve a knighthood Christopher, please keep fighting against this tide of propoganda. I notice The Telegraph is also carring the story of the Met Office claiming we've just been through the hottest decade on record. If that's the case then my name's Al Gore. Hopefully it won't be too long before some real scientists examine their data and modelling and reveal their claims to be utterly baseless. It's just so annoying having to dig out this news from credible scientific sources on the internet, because the mainstream media won't touch it with a bargepole.
Its all bollocks,its just another way to control people and tax them its as simple as that,take no notice,carry on doing what you have always done.
Keep it going, Christopher!
Have any of these politicians really considered just what they want us to do, financially, based on this incredibly spurious, highly questionable IPCC data - where it is obvious that these "scientists" are clearly "in it" for the money/grants/careers/pensions, and will stop at nothing, it seems, to destroy opposition from other scientists or detractors/ realists.
Take a look at the slightly heartening report in the Times this evening ( 8.12.09)
...."Copenhagen sceptics have a slogan: 'The world isn't getting warmer, it's going mad'
Philippe Naughton in Copenhagen"
This historical carbon dioxide puzzles me. We are told that the oceans and land absorb half of the carbon dioxide produced each year. On this basis carbon dioxide produced last year represents 50% of the carbon dioxide in the air and carbon dioxide produced two years ago 25% of the total and so on. Continue this back to 1997 and only 0.024% of that year's carbon dioxide is still in the atmosphere. So all that Victorian carbon dioxide has long since gone to the bottom of the ocean or become part of the biosphere. In other words it is really recent carbon dioxide producers who are to blame. That would be burners of forests and of course those countries which are currently the big users of fossil fuels. I think the UK safely plead not guilty and save our billions to tackle our debt problems, rather then give it away.
The crucial issues at Copenhagen are;
Why have New Labour funded a multi billion pound family law trade that continues to snatch children from fathers in secret family law courts that do not allow separated fathers a defence, do not allow fathers to adduce evidence, do not allow fathers a jury, do not allow children to say who they want to see and lived with, and do not allow fathers a right to appeal.
These are British children being snatched not by the evil Taliban but by their own British peers.
It is totaly evil for New Labour to fund this evil family law slave trade and that is the crucial issue that should be debated.
Why are New Labour funding this evil family law slave trade?
The Copenhagen circus represents the very highest point of the Global Warming Scam.
The propaganda frenzy, aided by compliant media like the BBC, is at its very peak.
The warmists are desperate to get a deal signed before the people of the world wake up to their chicanery, dodgy dealings and ouright lies.
Sadly, it is too late.
Climategate popped their big empty balloon.
In America there is now no possibility whatsoever that the US Congress will implement any meaningful legislation that reflects the pack of warmist lies that is Copehagen.
And without America it is over for the warmists.
The future is now very bleak for them.
More and more evidence will surface that their science is not only wrong but bent.
The CRU is finished.
The University of East Anglia, a fourth-rate, jumped-up poly that leapt onto the warmist bandwagon will be forgotten.
Jones, Mann and all the other dodgy scientists of the warmist movement will be disgraced.
This episode will be viewed by history as one of incredible scientific madness, an utter disgrace that will serve as a warning for countless future generations.
Tony Blair claimed Saddam Hussein could deploy WMDs at 45 minutes’ notice because intelligence was “lost in translation”.
WMD. Climate. Same Difference.
If global warming were real then it would be even more important for free markets to be left unrestrained in order to maximise production and ensure everyone gets fed.
Socialism fails when resources are abundant, but it's failure is much greater when they are scarce.
So man-caused global warming - on the small probability it is real - would have no real consequences if we simply did nothing.
The economic suicide being proposed in Copenhaged on the other hand is guaranteed to create scarce resources, starvation and war.
Ah, the Brokenhagen greeniefest.
As we look forward to some severe wintry weather here in France, a little earlier than usual, I just sit in wonderment at the sheer, crass stupidity of it all - let alone the cost.
And don't get me started on the hypocrisy of it. Let's all jet into Copenhagen in our private jets, swan about in our limos, and tell the plebs what to do (or what NOT to do).
And guess what - I've learned from some stupid American today, that carbon dioxide is poisonous.
Well that scared me a bit, so I'm breathing out into a polythene bag, then letting it out outside. Oh, I see - I musn't exhaust the bag outside, I must bury it somewhere.
I can't stop laughing, but then I exhale even more of the nasty, poisonous gas.
And now the Met office/WMO tell me that the last ten years are hotter than ever, just when I'd been reliably informed that they were in fact, cooler.
I wonder if they used the same figures that had already been doctored by that nice Mr. Jones.
I wouldn't put ANYTHING past these fraudulent, money grabbing bastards.
We musn't fly, but I notice that China is building 90 new airports.
Tell you what, China is the place to be.
And whatever happened to news reporting? The bias is tangible.
Bonkers, bonkers, bleedin' bonkers, all of it. Leave the blasted climate alone, it's doing what it does pretty well already.
Roll on the day of reckoning.
Excellent account as ever. You are right on the money, this is deed a watershed moment in the history of AGW. When the dust has settled from the events over the last few weeks, hopefully 'cooler' minds will prevail.
One hopes the truth and common sense will prevail over the next few weeks, but I have a nagging doubt that the bandwagon will roll on for years; such is the momentum it now has. Sadly, the "big lie" theory seems to have worked.
When I hear phrases such as "overwhelming opinion" or "science is robust" I wince. None of these claims ever uses the required word: "proof". Until some clever scientist somewhere does just that, the propaganda will continue unabated.
Mr Booker - your articles are a shaft of light in the gloom and doom "green noise" I read and hear daily in the main stream media. Please keep up the excellent work. I look forward to reading your book soon.
Let me raise a few personal issues:
How many "green" taxes are there?; How much revenue has been raised from "green" taxes?; What has the money been spent on?
Final question. How did all the icebergs melt when the last ice age ended tens of thousands of years before the population explosion?
Mass lunacy has taken over. There is only one answer: A mass purge of the imbeciles ruining our lives and an independent, thorough investigation into this insane phenomenon.
Charges must be made. The guilty must be brought before justice - irrespective of rank and position.
http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2009/07/resisting-climate-hysteria
Resisting climate hysteria
by Climate Scientist Professor Richard S. Lindzen
July 26, 2009
A Case Against Precipitous Climate Action
"The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope. The fact that the developed world went into hysterics over changes in global mean temperature anomaly of a few tenths of a degree will astound future generations. Such hysteria simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the substitution of repetition for truth, and the exploitation of these weaknesses by politicians, environmental promoters, and, after 20 years of media drum beating, many others as well. Climate is always changing..... "
or
Dr Leonard Weinstein (NASA)
Limitations on Anthropogenic Global Warming
March 1, 2009
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/05/19/limitations-on-anthropogenic-global-warming/
"The magnetic field of the Earth has changed a lot over geological times. There were periods of weakening and then reversal occurring about every 200,000 years until about 780,000 years ago. At the present time, the field is again weakening. If the field weakens too much, the Earth’s magnetosphere would not block cosmic rays and Solar ions as well, and this could greatly affect cloud structure and thus weather. The Solar radiation and magnetic storms could also profoundly affect power transmission and electronics.
Preparing for the possibility of an impending ice age along with the possible consequences of a reduction in Earth’s magnetic field are real concerns. Concern with relatively small effects of possible anthropogenic caused global warming is a misplaced distraction, and will probably lead to the public losing confidence in scientists, and could weaken the support needed when real problems occur."
Ed Milliband :
"We also know from the physicists that the CO2 effect when CO2 is emitted is it traps the heat in the earth's atmosphere and then warms the planet. That is very clear and not in dispute."
Professor Richard Lindzen of the Massachussettes Institute of Technology and one of the worlds most eminent climate scientists...
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-7715-Portland-Civil-Rights-Examiner~y2009m8d18-Carbon-Dioxide-irrelevant-in-climate-debate-says-MIT-Scientist
"In a study sure to ruffle the feathers of the Global Warming cabal, Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT has published a paper which proves that IPCC models are overstating by 6 times, the relevance of CO2 in Earth’s Atmosphere. Dr. Lindzen has found that heat is radiated out in to space at a far higher rate than any modeling system to date can account for."
Who in their right mind would listen to Ed Milliband....
Global Warming -The Biggest Scientific Fraud in History
Perhaps it's comforting to believe that science is an absolute discipline: immune from fads, fanatics and frauds, untroubled by extremists, evangelists, glory-seekers and bigots. But it is not. It is as vulnerable to the vested interests and biases of its practitioners as any corporate entity or political party. Uncomfortable truths are suppressed and dubious evidence given undue prominence.
Nowhere is this more worryingly obvious than in the science of climate change. As a field of research it has become so heavily politicised that opposing views are spoken of in terms of religion: believers and non-believers, with the accent being on the righteousness of the former and the benighted state of the latter. Those who believed scientists to be relentless seekers of the truth will have been shocked by the row sparked by a hacker (or was it a leaker) who got hold of emails sent by staff at the University of East Anglia.
It has been claimed that the emails exchanged by members of the university's Climate Research Unit showed statistics had been finessed using 'tricks' and material that didn't fit the computer model of Climate Change presented to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was allegedly suppressed.
Those that hinted at the existence of this sort of activity and were pilloried by people who have everything to gain from keeping the climate-change gravy train rolling. Because that is what it has become.
Sensationalist theories are generated by scientists who have evolved into professional alarmists who can influence the IPCC and reap rewards in research grants and fame. The trouble is that the only way to protect this position - and transmit their message of doom and gloom - is for the little coterie of climate comrades in the UK and United States to ignore geology, archaeology, history, astronomy and solar science. You see, these are all the things that don't fit.
The reality is that the Earth has been here before, it has been here through worse and it is still, resolutely, here today. Climate-change theory and the dire prognosis given by its proponents is just wrong.
Look at the facts. Earth is a warm, wet, greenhouse planet. There has been ice on its surface for less than 20% of its history, and in the geological past there have been six great ice ages. Two ice ages were characterised by ice at the Equator, with sea levels rising by up to 5,000ft. That is sea-level change!
Five of the ice ages saw a far higher atmospheric carbon-dioxide content than at present. So carbon dioxide could not have caused past climate changes. Indeed, early Earth had 1,000 times more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than now - yet there was no runaway "greenhouse" effect, "tipping points" or "acid oceans".
The initial source of the two main greenhouse gases, water vapour and carbon dioxide, was volcanoes. Water vapour is still the main greenhouse gas. Once oceans formed and life appeared, carbon was then recycled between the oceans, atmosphere, soils, life and rocks. Carbon dioxide is a plant food, not a pollutant.
Human activity produces only 3% of the world's carbon-dioxide emissions each year. One volcanic belch can emit as much as that in a day. Carbon dioxide has a short life in the atmosphere and is absorbed by natural processes that have been taking place for billions of years.
At the normal past rates of absorption, even if we burned all fossil fuels on Earth, the atmospheric carbon-dioxide content would not double. In past ages it has been naturally absorbed into everything from limestone reefs to soil, rocks and living things. For example, limestone is a very common rock and contains 44% carbon dioxide.
Dissolving carbon dioxide in ocean water has not created ocean acidity. The constant chemical reactions between ocean water and sediments and rocks on the sea floor have kept the oceans alkaline. When we run out of rocks on the sea floor, then the oceans might become acid. Don't wait up!
We are still in an ice age that started 34 million years ago, with the climate driven, among other things, by the Earth's orbit, the Sun, oceans and volcanoes. It is vital to remember that time, in a geological sense, is a far broader canvas than any of the detailed vignettes upon which the prophets of doom would have us focus.
There have been long periods of warm times during this current ice age, yet the ice sheets did not melt. They waxed and they waned, as ice sheets still do today.
Ancient climates can be revealed by drilling deep into the Antarctic ice for samples of what was snow thousands of years ago. These show climate cycles have a temperature peak at least 800 years before the peak in carbon dioxide.
So climate change evangelists who insist that carbon dioxide drives climate change have turned the truth on its head - the rise in atmospheric carbon-dioxide content followed rather than heralded temperature increases.
Climate is cyclical. The current cycles follow a pattern of about 90,000 years of highly variable glacial conditions followed by around 10,000 years of benign interglacial conditions. The current interglacial period started more than 12,000 years ago. We are due another glaciation.
At the end of the last glaciation, temperature fluctuated wildly. At one time there was a 15°C natural temperature rise in 20 years. Now THAT is global warming. Yet still, humans thrived.
The peak of the current interglacial was 6,000 years ago when the sea level was almost an inch higher than now and temperatures were 5°C higher than at present. The rate and amount of temperature change at present is no different to past times.
Sea levels rose by 2cm per year between 12,000 and 6,000 years ago - still part of the present interglacial - a degree of change far greater than anything observed today.
During the last glaciation, land loaded with ice sank. That land is now rising. For example, Scotland and Wales are rising and eastern England is sinking. During the last glaciation, people walked from Europe to England, from Russia to Alaska and from Papua New Guinea to Tasmania. The English Channel was a river.
During previous interglacials, coral reefs and other life thrived. Each time sea level rose, coral atolls expanded. This may be startling to those fed a diet of climate change by scaremongers, but it is not new: Charles Darwin was writing about it in 1842.
There have been smaller-scale climate changes in the present interglacial. Some are cyclical and driven by solar, ocean, tidal and orbital cycles. Others, such as volcanically driven changes, are random.
Life thrived during warm times and life suffered in cool times. Great civilisations collapsed when it was cool.
It was so hot during the 600-year-long 'Roman warming' that grapes were grown as far north as Hadrian's Wall. Sea levels did not rise and polar ice did not vanish. Some Alpine glaciers disappeared, only to appear later. The cold Dark Ages followed: starvation, rampant disease and massive depopulation occurred.
A 400-year warm period followed. The Vikings grew barley and wheat, and raised cattle and sheep in parts of Greenland that are now uninhabitable. During this 'medieval warming', there was so much excess wealth generated from generations of reliable harvests that the great monasteries, cathedrals and universities were built. Yet sea levels did not rise and the ice sheets were not lost. And, significantly, humans could not have driven the Roman and medieval warmings by carbon-dioxide emissions, as there was no industry.
The Little Ice Age followed. There was famine, disease and depopulation. Ice fairs were held on the Thames up until the 1820s. The Little Ice Age ended in 1850. It is no wonder that temperature has increased in the past 150 years - this is what happens after a cold period.
The temperature increase was not even. There was warming from 1860 to 1880, cooling from 1880 to 1910, warming from 1910 to 1940, cooling from 1940 to 1976, warming from 1976 to 1998 and now cooling from 1998.
Each warming period was at the same rate. It was only during the warming from 1976 to 1998 that carbon dioxide increased in parallel with temperature - all other modern warmings and coolings show no relationship to carbon dioxide.
This is the reality, these are the vacillations of the evocative story of our ever-changing planet derived from observation, measurement and experiment.
Why is this story contrary to what we hear? Because sensationalism is so much more lucrative. A climate catastrophe was provided for an anxious public by scientists who had everything to gain by frightening us. They put forward an ideology that is blind fundamentalism, unrelated to scientific facts. Politicians build new bureaucracies and pose as environmental saviours without having to face the consequences of their actions. Heads must roll. Meanwhile, the planet will do what it has always done: change.