With the passing of Britain’s first female prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, much will be heard from the conservative side of politics about all the good that she did. But for the sack of truth, something she cared much about [1], let us also consider her role in helping to build the illusion of catastrophic climate change.
Margaret Thatcher was no friend of science, but she was a friend of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) that was established in the School of Environmental Science at the University of East Anglia in Norwich in 1972.
This is the same institution that Climategate exposed as being up to its neck in scientific fraud.
The establishment of the CRU only just preceded Thatcherism. With Thatcher’s market economics applied to public science none of the scientists at the CRU were ever guaranteed a salary. They had to generate their own income through grants and contracts.
Much of their money did end up coming from government but it had to be earned, they had to show their value to the politician and this is now par for the course [1].
It was following the miner’s strike in the UK and Prime Minister Thatcher’s increasing impatience with Arthur Scargill, then president of the National Union of Mineworkers, that the first tentative links were drawn between coal mining and the possibility of a climate catastrophe.
Various luminaries from that time have told me that Prime Minister Thatcher was keen to reduce Britain’s dependence on coal. She drew the connection between rising carbon dioxide emissions and coal mining before it was fashionable because she thought there was perhaps some scientific justification, and because she was keen to find justification for alternative energy sources, particularly nuclear.
Indeed her government became a strong supporter of climate research in the mid-1980s. Mrs Thatcher visited the CRU and assembled her entire cabinet to hear a seminar on climate change at which Tom Wigley, then director of CRU, was the star performer.
***
[1] “Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope.” – on her election as prime minister in 1979
[2] Bob Carter explains in ‘Science is Not Concensus’ how during the 1980s there came a restructuring of the way in which government science operated. Public-good programme funding for the activities of government science agencies shrank, to be replaced by funding for individual projects with limited lifetimes.
http://members.iinet.net.au/~glrmc/IPA-RMC-03Reviewr.pdf
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Good leaders of the free world were always aware of the dichotomy of the scientist. As we became more science reliant to survive as a hugely populated earth, scientists became the new gods.
For instance, when we put a group of them in paradise and pay them handsomely to tell us if we have a problem with the GBR, can they deny their mere mortality enough to tell us the truth?
It’s hard for the best of leaders to deal with this.
Here’s some more…
“The year: 1990. The venue: Palais des Nations, Geneva. The star: Margaret Thatcher, conservative icon in the final month of her prime ministership. The topic: global warming.
Thatcher went to the Second World Climate Conference to heap praise on the then-infant Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and to sound, again, the alarm over global warming. Not only that, her speech laid out a simple conservative argument for taking environmental action: “It may be cheaper or more cost-effective to take action now,” she said, “than to wait and find we have to pay much more later.” Global warming was, she argued, “real enough for us to make changes and sacrifices, so that we do not live at the expense of future generations.”
The Iron Lady’s speech makes for fascinating reading in the context of 2013’s climate acrimony, drenched as it is in party politics. In the speech, she questioned the very meaning of human progress: booming industrial advances since the Age of Enlightenment could no longer be sustained in the context of environmental damage. We must, she argued, redress the imbalance with nature wrought by development.
“Remember our duty to nature before it is too late,” she warned. “That duty is constant. It is never completed. It lives on as we breathe.”
On climate change, Margaret Thatcher, who died on Monday aged 87, was characteristically steadfast, eloquent, and divisive. “The right always forget this part of her legacy,” Lord Deben, a member of the House of Lords and Chairman of the United Kingdom’s independent Committee on Climate Change, told Climate Desk on Monday. Lord Deben served in the Thatcher government and said she was crucial in raising the profile of climate negotiations around the world, even when it was deeply unpopular amongst her colleagues. “She was determined to take this high-profile position,” he said. “She believed it was her duty as a scientist.” (Thatcher studied science while at Oxford University). Barring a few members, “the rest of the cabinet were not convinced,” he said.
Thatcher also played an instrumental role in bringing the topic to the United States, said Lord Deben. “It was fair to say she got George [H.W.] Bush to go to Rio,” he said of Thatcher’s high-profile entreaties to convince the then-US president to attend climate talks in 1992. “She saw it as her duty to blow the trumpet.”
The Geneva appearance wasn’t her only speech about the need for strong international action. It was something of a theme across the latter years of her leadership. A year before, she shocked the UN General Assembly in New York by issuing a challenge: “The evidence is there. The damage is being done. What do we, the international community, do about it?” The news story in the New York Times ran with the headline: “Thatcher Urges Pact On Climate.” She called for the United Nations to ratify a treaty by…1992.
She also had a domestic plan. Thatcher told British parliament that her government would cut carbon emissions back to 1990 levels by the year 2005. This was met by skepticism by the opposition at the time (female politicians of all eras might be familiar with one such quip from the opposition benches: “The Prime Minister may talk green—she may even dress green—but there are the same old blue policies underneath.”) Lord Deben painted a picture to Climate Desk of cabinet discord over one of Thatcher’s decisions to allow for funds to protect military operations from rising sea levels. “She didn’t convince her Chancellor,” he said.
Thatcher even took denialists to task, telling a Royal Society dinner in March 1990 that the evidence is “undisputed.”
I think that most of us accept this diagnosis yet hardly had I got back when I found that there are researchers who argue—and some were quoted in our newspapers last week—that temperature changes over the last hundred years have less to do with man-made greenhouse effect than with changes in solar activity, something over which we have no control at all.
She thoroughly repudiated this, positing instead a sophisticated understanding of the greenhouse gas effect and the role of CO2 emissions.
Thatcher watered down her earlier statements, calling climate action a “marvelous excuse for supranational socialism.”
But then in 2003, Thatcher, perhaps seeing the conservative tide turning against her climate legacy, watered down the statements she made two decades earlier, calling climate action a “marvelous excuse for supranational socialism,” and accusing Al Gore—who gained worldwide recognition for similar calls for global cooperation—of “apocalyptic hyperbole.” She wrote in her 2003 book Statecraft that “a new dogma about climate change has swept through…
http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2013/04/thatchers-climate-change-greatest-hits
The law of unintended consequences strikes even the best of them.Who would have thought that a mere ploy to use against a ratbag union system gone feral, would cause so much trouble, & cost so much wealth for so long. Naughty Maggy, pity you didn’t see that coming.
Science will never recover now we have seen the scientists are no better than a used car salesman when they get a chance to rip off the tax payer. The fact that the “good” ones won’t stop their immoral brethren, & that so many theoretically smart, well educated, [at our expense] people are so easily taken by a bunch of shysters leaves them no where to go but down hill from here.
MT was wrong, badly wrong about AGW.
Should that taint her legacy?
According to Greer MT was a war criminal for ‘starting’ the Falklands war.
But then Greer is a burnt out harridan.
Cohenite
It has to taint her legacy.
Just as it should be recognised that John Howard was more responsible than any other prime minister for wasting billions of tax payers money closing down irrigated agriculture in the MDB. …he provided the $10billion to make it all happen. such terrible waste.
Indeed I have no confidence that the Abbot government, assuming there is one post September 14, doesn’t start paying money for carbon sequestration and more… when they should know better.
Howard, Thatcher… there is no great legacy in my opinion, they were political leaders that condoned the worse excesses of environmentalism.
She did some good. She did some bad.
I’m told only the good die young.
Nice post on facebook:
“let’s privatise her funeral. Put it out to competitive tender and accept the cheapest bid.
It’s what she would have wanted.”
Ken Loach.
Here is a crude timeline of man made global warming that might be relevant:
Comprehensive list of headlines 1970-1979 of man made ice age:
http://www.populartechnology.net/2013/02/the-1970s-global-cooling-alarmism.html
NO WARMING from 1979 to 1988:
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/03/30/no-warming-from-1979-to-1988/
1988:
Jim Hansen’s now famous congressional testimony given in the hot summer of 1988
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/hansens-1988-projections
Minus 9 years to discover “the trend,” 30-40 years to disprove it?
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nothing-off-limits-in-climate-debate/story-e6frg6n6-1226583112134
Cherrypicked – 1950 global warming:
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/03/30/us-weather-bureau-1950-global-warming-alarm/
Jennifer.
Hear, hear Jennifer.
Could not agree more with your comment.
John Howard has a lot more to answer for than that, but there is naught we can do about it now, I just hope we both
are wrong about Abbott, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
And I’m saying this as a dyed in the wool conservative. There is nothing conservative about this current “Liberal” party.
Some labor reps. sitting on the back benches are more conservative than a few leading liberals.
MT has done some good freeing up the English economy from the yoke of state and union control but the major beneficiary of those reforms was Tony Blair.
“major beneficiary” should read POLITICAL beneficiary
The full history of Thatcher’s attitude towards AGW is described by Booker:
“A persistent claim made by believers in man-made global warming – they were at it again last week – is that no politician was more influential in launching the worldwide alarm over climate change than Margaret Thatcher. David Cameron, so the argument runs, is simply following in her footsteps by committing the Tory party to its present belief in the dangers of global warming, and thus showing himself in this respect, if few others, to be a loyal Thatcherite.
The truth behind this story is much more interesting than is generally realised, not least because it has a fascinating twist. Certainly, Mrs Thatcher was the first world leader to voice alarm over global warming, back in 1988, With her scientific background, she had fallen under the spell of Sir Crispin Tickell, then our man at the UN. In the 1970s, he had written a book warning that the world was cooling, but he had since become an ardent convert to the belief that it was warming, Under his influence, as she recorded in her memoirs, she made a series of speeches, in Britain and to world bodies, calling for urgent international action, and citing evidence given to the US Senate by the arch-alarmist Jim Hansen, head of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
She found equally persuasive the views of a third prominent convert to the cause, Dr John Houghton, then head of the UK Met Office. She backed him in the setting up of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988, and promised the Met Office lavish funding for its Hadley Centre, which she opened in 1990, as a world authority on “human-induced climate change”.
Hadley then linked up with East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) to become custodians of the most prestigious of the world’s surface temperature records (alongside another compiled by Dr Hansen). This became the central nexus of influence driving a worldwide scare over global warming; and so it remains to this day – not least thanks to the key role of Houghton (now Sir John) in shaping the first three mammoth reports which established the IPCC’s unequalled authority on the subject.
In bringing this about, Mrs Thatcher played an important part. It is not widely appreciated, however, that there was a dramatic twist to her story. In 2003, towards the end of her last book, Statecraft, in a passage headed “Hot Air and Global Warming”, she issued what amounts to an almost complete recantation of her earlier views.
She voiced precisely the fundamental doubts about the warming scare that have since become familiar to us. Pouring scorn on the “doomsters”, she questioned the main scientific assumptions used to drive the scare, from the conviction that the chief force shaping world climate is CO2, rather than natural factors such as solar activity, to exaggerated claims about rising sea levels. She mocked Al Gore and the futility of “costly and economically damaging” schemes to reduce CO2 emissions. She cited the 2.5C rise in temperatures during the Medieval Warm Period as having had almost entirely beneficial effects. She pointed out that the dangers of a world getting colder are far worse than those of a CO2-enriched world growing warmer. She recognised how distortions of the science had been used to mask an anti-capitalist, Left-wing political agenda which posed a serious threat to the progress and prosperity of mankind.
In other words, long before it became fashionable, Lady Thatcher was converted to the view of those who, on both scientific and political grounds, are profoundly sceptical of the climate change ideology. Alas, what she set in train earlier continues to exercise its baleful influence to this day. But the fact that she became one of the first and most prominent of “climate sceptics” has been almost entirely buried from view.”
Of course by then the horse had bolted and the cost to the world has been almost incalculable.
Howard was a small minded, suburban lawyer who transferred his approach to government; things outside that perspective he did not know about and would have trusted the experts. The question therefore to ask about Howard and no doubt Thatcher, is which expert[s] got in their ear; they are the ones to be held accountable.
I would suggest that Thatcher became a convert to AGW scepticism when she had no real political power and when it suited her… the reality is that in 1989 the same year she was entertaining Tom Wigley and indulging his CRU, John Daly published ‘The Greenhouse Trap’.
As regards Howard, he choose to throw money at the WWF and he choose to promote Peter Cullen and demonise irrigated agriculture because he saw political advantage. He and his cabinet knew better… indeed his Cabinet, in particular Alexandra Downer, actively worked up the Murray River issue because demonising upstream irrigators had local popular appeal.
And more, despite evidence put in front of him to the contrary, Peter Costello, continued to throw hundreds of millions of dollars at a non-existant rising salinity problem in the Murray River when he handed down his budgets… talking up the non-existant issue in his budget night speeches.
They are rotten to the core, both sides of Australian politics.
Blast From The Past: Christopher Booker: Was Margaret Thatcher the first climate sceptic? (June 2010)
Monday, April 8th 2013, 3:48 PM EDT
Co2sceptic (Site Admin)
Margaret Thatcher was the first leader to warn of global warming – but also the first to see the flaws in the climate change orthodoxy
A persistent claim made by believers in man-made global warming – they were at it again last week – is that no politician was more influential in launching the worldwide alarm over climate change than Margaret Thatcher. David Cameron, so the argument runs, is simply following in her footsteps by committing the Tory party to its present belief in the dangers of global warming, and thus showing himself in this respect, if few others, to be a loyal Thatcherite.
The truth behind this story is much more interesting than is generally realised, not least because it has a fascinating twist. Certainly, Mrs Thatcher was the first world leader to voice alarm over global warming, back in 1988, With her scientific background, she had fallen under the spell of Sir Crispin Tickell, then our man at the UN. In the 1970s, he had written a book warning that the world was cooling, but he had since become an ardent convert to the belief that it was warming, Under his influence, as she recorded in her memoirs, she made a series of speeches, in Britain and to world bodies, calling for urgent international action, and citing evidence given to the US Senate by the arch-alarmist Jim Hansen, head of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
She found equally persuasive the views of a third prominent convert to the cause, Dr John Houghton, then head of the UK Met Office. She backed him in the setting up of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988, and promised the Met Office lavish funding for its Hadley Centre, which she opened in 1990, as a world authority on “human-induced climate change”.
Hadley then linked up with East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) to become custodians of the most prestigious of the world’s surface temperature records (alongside another compiled by Dr Hansen). This became the central nexus of influence driving a worldwide scare over global warming; and so it remains to this day – not least thanks to the key role of Houghton (now Sir John) in shaping the first three mammoth reports which established the IPCC’s unequalled authority on the subject.
Article continues below this advert:
In bringing this about, Mrs Thatcher played an important part. It is not widely appreciated, however, that there was a dramatic twist to her story. In 2003, towards the end of her last book, Statecraft, in a passage headed “Hot Air and Global Warming”, she issued what amounts to an almost complete recantation of her earlier views.
She voiced precisely the fundamental doubts about the warming scare that have since become familiar to us. Pouring scorn on the “doomsters”, she questioned the main scientific assumptions used to drive the scare, from the conviction that the chief force shaping world climate is CO2, rather than natural factors such as solar activity, to exaggerated claims about rising sea levels. She mocked Al Gore and the futility of “costly and economically damaging” schemes to reduce CO2 emissions. She cited the 2.5C rise in temperatures during the Medieval Warm Period as having had almost entirely beneficial effects. She pointed out that the dangers of a world getting colder are far worse than those of a CO2-enriched world growing warmer. She recognised how distortions of the science had been used to mask an anti-capitalist, Left-wing political agenda which posed a serious threat to the progress and prosperity of mankind.
In other words, long before it became fashionable, Lady Thatcher was converted to the view of those who, on both scientific and political grounds, are profoundly sceptical of the climate change ideology. Alas, what she set in train earlier continues to exercise its baleful influence to this day. But the fact that she became one of the first and most prominent of “climate sceptics” has been almost entirely buried from view.
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=11471
“They are rotten to the core, both sides of Australian politics.”
Too true. Something has changed. Politicians once promised us things, now they protect us from threats. The politics of fear.
Ministerial accountability is a thing of the past. How many have recently fallen on their sword when their portfoloi fails? Now they simply employ more spin doctors.
The past – “Bridge collapse, Minister accepts resposibilty and resigns”
Now – “Bridge collapse, Minister announces new transport infrastructure opportunity”
The same with “climate change”.
No honour, no shame.
I am told politicians reflect their electorate, and electorates get the politicians they deserve.
We need to question all the current hyprocrisies, the equivalents of the 60s “peace offensive” or the “workers’ paradises” of National and Marxist Socialism.
Some of those hypocrisies: the locavore movement (one of the worst), the organic movement, water buybacks and living rivers, livestock removal from grasslands, impotent and super-expensive water and power provision, anti-GM…Need I go on?
They are hyprocrisies because most of us are prepared to indulge or toy with one of two of these green notions in the hope that they won’t all be brought together, or taken literally, or taken to their logical extremes. Each has a certain appeal and measure of plausibility, each involves undoing the very things to which we owe our wealth and well-being. The “modern world” is supposed to be “poisoning” us…it’s just that we live longer and longer in ever better health and comfort. Overpopulation is a catastrophe…which stops everywhere there is a prosperous middle class, in spite of massively enhanced survival rates.
How to ramp up the dying and suffering, so all these complacent aspirationals will realise how bad things really are? Easy…
Go green!
More slipping standards:
Questions to Ministers
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/4/9/questions-to-ministers.html
Well said Robert!
On balance I admire both Howard and Thatcher. They both took on the totalitarianism of the unions and the clueless chattering classes and had some significant wins.
But Thatcher and Howard’s support for so called mitigation of AGW was a disgrace and was just ignorant of simple maths and common sense.
Of course Thatcher later woke up to the mitigation fraud and I’m sure Howard was a closet sceptic most of the time.
He just didn’t have the public or party support ( at that time) and didn’t think it was worth the fight to try and carry the day. But what a pity, just think of the billions wasted on this fraud and the problems now being foisted on farmers, small business, hospitals, households etc because of the introduction of Gillard’s co2 tax.
But Howard, Costello and the coalition worked their backsides off to pay off Labor’s 96 billion $ of debt and then returned at least 5 surplus budgets, plus paid 70 bn into the Australia fund to help fund future super payouts etc for federal employees .
They fixed our borders for years only to see it instantly wrecked by the Rudd, Gillard combo. We now have more boats arriving ( for years) weekly ( sometimes dayly) than annually under the last 5 years of the coalition govt.
I can never see a time when I would ever vote Labor or Green or any other party of the left. But I will fill out the senate paper below the line (again) and try to make sure all the stupid lefties are voted last.
BTW I probably won’t vote first for the coalition in the senate, but they will be near the top of my list.
@Jennifer Marohasy
“They are rotten to the core, both sides of Australian politics”
That’s not the problem, Jennifer
The problem is that you expect them NOT to be
Think about the nature of people who lust for power over others. They are, in varying degrees, all sociopaths – no shame, almost no guilt, just that insatiable lust
There are only three (3) Aus politicians that I can remember in my lifetime who showed *some* degree of intelligent enlightenment:
Steele Hall, then Lib Premier from SA, who deliberately destroyed his atrocious gerrymander
Bill Hayden, who abruptly quit the ALP leadership to let Hawke have a go at Fraser without ALP leadership ructions (Hayden then sullied this by accepting the GG position)
and Fraser, in a surprisingly twisted and quite useless way – following his electoral demolition by Hawke, his public utterances have been a slowly intensifying “mea culpa”, which I can only ascribe to guilt over the 1975 deferral of Supply in the Senate and the unmitigated wasteland he made of his crushing mandate in both Houses following the ’75 Double Dissolution … although I think he finally found his Memphis trousers 🙂
I’m sure many (most ?) people will disagree here, likely on the grounds of my perceived pessimism or cynicism. But I’ve observed the detailed parade of those in power for quite a few decades and have no illusions about their underlying sociopathic behaviours – it’s actually very predictable
The most recent episode in the EU, wherein people’s life savings were stolen from them at the point of a police gun (no, not the Russki Mafia, the actual blameless citizens) – now lauded by Gillard as a “clever way of resolving the issue” and touted by high-ranking, powerful Brussels bureaucrats as a “Europe solution” … and all justified in the MSM as it only happened to people with savings > EUD100,000, so it’s OK to perform State-sanctioned armed robbery upon them
A worthwhile read from Tony Brown:
http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/10/historic-variations-in-arctic-sea-ice-part-ii-1920-1950/#comment-310689
OK, so hands up everyone here who was a climate sceptic in 1989? I thought so.
Perhaps Thatcher can be faulted for not foreseeing what a monster the AGW cult would become, but in 1989 the only evidence that was in made it prudent to at least listen.
Brown’s research is excellent; some of that stuff I hadn’t seen before.
The best that the alarmists could come up with was to call Christy a liar because he had referred to anecdotal evidence about the Arctic being warmer before.
Brown vindicates Christy but we still had knuckleheads like NevenA, the Arctic expert, calling Christy a liar.
Comment from: ianl8888 April 10th, 2013 at 9:14 am
Before Brussels
Stealing peoples savings and assets are a feature ot the Beattie government’s vegetation management act in our experience.
Roger Pielke jnr catches one of the world’s largest re- insurance groups telling porkies about USA thunderstorm damage and humidity level increases.
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/fool-me-once-munich-res-thunderstorm.html#comment-form
Why doesn’t some level of govt charge these fraudsters, because the end result is we all pay more for our insurance premiums?
Michael Mann is at it again and Watts has a good rebuttal, plus a good graph showing temp changes over the first four IPCC reports and the REAL observations.
Some very good comments from the bloggers.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/11/michael-mann-says-climate-models-cannot-explain-the-medieval-warming-period-i-say-they-cant-even-explain-the-present/#more-83983
BTW some very good overnight posts at WUWT below the top sticky post.
Many recent studies show a MWP and LIA around Antarctica. More proof that there was a MWP and it was GLOBAL.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/11/evidence-for-a-global-medieval-warm-period/#more-83933
Great piece on Maggie by Conrad Black:
“When Margaret Thatcher was narrowly elected prime minister in 1979 over James Callaghan, the United Kingdom was on daily audit from the International Monetary Fund, currency controls prevented the removal of more than a few hundred pounds from the country, top corporate and personal income-tax rates were 80 and 98 percent, and those who had the temerity and persistence to enjoy a capital gain (which was hard to come by in Britain in that economic climate) were apt to enjoy the exaltation of soul generated by an effective tax rate of over 100 percent. The entire economy was in the hands of an intellectually corrupt, Luddite trade-union confederation, which chose most of the delegates to any conference of the governing Labour party, and whose shop stewards and craft-unit heads could shut down an entire industry in mid-contract for any reason, from an individual work grievance to the sour grapes generated by a poor round of darts in their local pub (on working hours).”
Put her record 3 terms as PM into true perspective.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/345054/margaret-thatcher-1925-2013-conrad-black?pg=1
Brilliant column from Lomborg on the futility of trying to cut co2 emissions. More R&D and adaptation is the answer.
This column is well worth a read and he does cover some new ground. Solar and wind are a total farce and won’t make a scrap of difference to climate or temp at all.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/wrong-way-go-back/story-e6frg6z6-1226614414896
I’m sorry but Lomborg opens with this statement:
“Yes, global warming is real and mostly man-made,”
That’s BS and he knows it but he uses statements like that to get published in MSM. He plays the “I’m a believer” card to stay cool with the other believers.
He’s a scammer!
John in one sense I agree with you but in another sense I don’t. Lomborg has been upfront all along that he believes in AGW ( but never CAGW) but so does Lindzen, Spencer, Carter, Christy,Monckton, Watts, Pielke Snr and Jnr etc.
It’s just that all of the above don’t see an increase in co2 being a problem, because they believe the increase of temp to be about 1C for a doubling ( co2) or 560 ppmv.
But Lomborg’s contribution is to honestly point out the stupidity of so called AGW mitigation and also the benifits of some future warming.
He has assembled the largest group of specialists to look at the planet’s present problems and concluded that AGW mitigation shows a very poor return on investment for little return by 2100. Of course Flannery admitted the same to Bolt.
AGW mitigation comes near the end of his to do list and he has the economics and maths to back up his case.
So therefore I think he has been one of the best advocates for our side of the argument and he has given us reams of info in his books and through debates and columns in the MSM to help us to take the debate forward.
For anyone wanting a good grounding about the AGW mitigation fraud and con I would recommend ” Cool It” as their first cab off the rank.
John,
I think that is an honest summation by BL. I also think that the 0.1c [or whatever trivial amount you care to choose] increase in GAT since Hansen J did all the whinnying in 1988 is more than likely “mostly” man made.
It’s just that this trivial amount can’t be quantified.
I’m sure that you can’t have 7bil on the globe without some warming effect even though the ACO2 sensitivity factor might actually be negative.
At least this way he is allowed by “the other believers” [sceptic deniers] to be heard.
More proof if needed that the Rudd and Gillard govts are/were economic basket cases.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/labor_keeps_spending_faster_than_it_can_even_tax/#commentsmore
Just think what Howard and Costello could have achieved with these terms of trade over the last 5 to 6 years.
Over most of that 5+ years our terms of trade have been at 150 year highs and yet Swan and Labor have produced record deficits. Of course so much of the spending was on trash with nothing to show for it. Makes my blood boil.
A debate ? between Spencer and Schmidt (Real Science) on FOX. But cowardly Gavin wouldn’t face Spencer like a man.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/labor_keeps_spending_faster_than_it_can_even_tax/#commentsmore
I must replay this and check some of Gavin’s claims point by point. But a good finish by Ridley showing benifits of increased co2 as well.
Haitti and the Dom. Republic photo is a beauty. The Greens must be so proud of their legacy.
Sorry but I sent the wrong link, here it is.
I assume that G. Schmidt is funded by the American tax payer, yet despite that, he refuses to debate on a public media outlet with a credible opponent, so the ignorant masses who pay his wages, may be better informed, and because he, ‘doesnt want to get into making good TV”, or words to that effect.
What he wants is a forum where his and mates views can just imperiously hand it down as gold tablets from the almighty and all knowing NASA, via the mouths of Arch Angels Schmidt and Hansen, and you plebs should not argue with it.
The sheer arrogance is astounding.The yanks are dopey to put up withe crap
Are we any better here in OZ? ….well who in their right mind would rely upon the utterances of Flannery and the Climate Commision..so we are just as dopey as they are.
Its all a farce on so many fronts….but at least Spencer an Ridley were informative
Basically Schmidt is a liar; I’d had enough when he said the signature of fossil fuels in warming was well established.
That is just a lie.
Spencer is very impressive and should have had more time.
As a case in point; this where the THS is at now:
http://ghrc.nsstc.nasa.gov/amsutemps/amsutemps.pl
Cohenite – that’s why I object to Lomborg’s statement.
“Yes, global warming is real and mostly man-made,”
There is no evidence of man’s influence in global warming as there has been no warming for 16 years despite CO2 increasing dramatically. In fact I saw a chart the other day showing that the Northern Hemisphere has cooled over the past decade at a rate of -.27C per decade. Surely the whole AGW theory is proven to be false.
Following on from that bizarre set of interview with Schmidt, Spencer and Ridley.
If temperatures are basically stable for the time being,… but even if they were increasing it would have beneficial effects,…. AND Co2 IS increasing, and its beneficial effects are well documented and understood, that must be a WIN-WIN all around.
Well it would be, if we were dealing with rational people. But AGW has never been rational.
However, I do hope that the Gillard govts raid on the university sector to touch them up for $2bn for the Gonski supposed reforms, is not a poke in the eye to the academics across the board…but thats what it looks like.
It will remain to be seen, whether or not they slash the ARC grants to AGW con jobs and biases… because they should …but obviously can’t…
I reckon those people who say we are run by the worst collection elites ever, from academia, public sectors and politically do have a point.
It’s not about throwing money at education. It’s the system that needs changing.
Finland spends less per GDP than we do yet has the highest education standard in the world.
Yes John I heard that as well on Bolt, and also had read it some where before as well.
One wonders what ca 4000 beureaucrats in the Department for/of Education in Canberra are doing if they have such a successful model to show the best way forward ….best outcomes for least money. Thats a pretty good Cost Benefit rating.
But Labour luvvies dont know how to do CBA’s I am told
Malcolm – A meme that is floating around the interwebs claims that Finland’s education system outperforms the United States because “We pay teachers like doctors, students enjoy over an hour of recess, and there’s no mandatory testing – the opposite of what America does.”
That all sounds great … it just isn’t true.
In Finland general practitioners earn, on average, about $70,000 per year, which is less than half of what doctors earn in the United States. The average salary for primary education teachers with 15 years experience in Finland is about $37,500, compared to $45,225 in the United States. Moreover, the cost of living in Finland is about 30% higher.
Teacher salaries in Australia start at $56,829!! with a secondary school principal getting $145,675, over 3 times a teacher in Finland.
http://www.cato.org/blog/no-teachers-finland-are-not-paid-doctors
http://sydney.edu.au/education_social_work/future_students/careers/teacher_salaries.shtml
As has often been stated, even though the earth has been COOLING: for the last 4.6 billion years, for the last 2.4billion, for the last 800 million, for the last 50 million, for the last 10 million, for the last 1 million and for the last 10,000 years.
And:
There has been no ice at the poles for at least 80% of the earth’s existence and we are currently in a cool period and getting cooler. This process is mostly entropy. It strains credulity to believe we are in danger of catastrophic warming.
I’m sure Lomborg knows this but is probably smart to refer to the warming at the end of the 20thC as being mostly man made if he wants to “cut any ice” and be listened to by both sides of the argument.
SD
There is a downside to that argument SD and that is that one runs the risk of neither side will take you seriously, and I think Lomborg is rapidly approaching that state.
One can ride the barbed wire fence only so long!
“if he wants to “cut any ice” and be listened to by both sides of the argument.”
That’s exactly my point SD. Surely it’s time for people to start speaking out and to stop pandering to the warmists. Freeman Dyson has, yet the MSM ignored him. We need more and more to speak out.
Well it’s still a rabid little microcosm for the disaffected isn’t it? Population 10-12
We’ve got the unpublished Cohenite calling Gavin a liar. Tell it to his face – I reckon he’d drop you. But it’s easy to say that on a backwater with 0.000000000000001 recognition isn’t it.
Malcolm – we’ll all be rooned – when you’ve never had it so good.
Sayers on the not warming despite stats tests saying the opposite. He’s probably deaf from listening to too much Barnesy and AC/DC back in the day.
Jen of course talks the cake spruiking about “fraud”. Jeez – anyone in jail? Oh I forgot – it’s a massive conspiracy. How could I forget.
But relax Abbott will be in soon. Streets will be full of sacked of Fed public servants with bad attitudes.
Strange stuff though – LNP seems to be back in the climate business – http://blogs.abc.net.au/queensland/2013/04/environment-minister-andrew-powell-talks-green-tape.html?site=brisbane&program=612_morning last 2 minutes of interview)
“…States role is now in climate change adaptation and that’s very much the field that we’re working in. And you would have heard the Premier and Minister Crisafulli talk about the word resilience – that’s our focus.”
Anyway something for everyone – the debate – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6t2D74UcrY&list=PL2A2806650027F9E8 I just kacked at the sledging and one liners (from both sides). Love the cosmic ray dropkick. 10 of them if you can stomach sceptics looking very ordinary. But hey debates really don’t solve anything. The tactic for both sides is to gish gallop the other side and then not let them off the deck. And never answer a question. Ask another one. It’s all good TV and theatre. Solves nothing but fun to watch.
On the MSM – well you have to blame what they’re taught – this is the 8 key points http://suite101.com/article/the-eight-news-values-a255406#.UWo6AbU09yI AGW gets the nod for conflict and the “unusual”. Just have a look at the sceptics for starters !
And they don’t get out anymore – they just tweet !
“We’ve got the unpublished Cohenite calling Gavin a liar. Tell it to his face – I reckon he’d drop you. But it’s easy to say that on a backwater with 0.000000000000001 recognition isn’t it.”
You noticed.
I explained why Schmidt is a liar. And he knows he is lying too; look at his body-language; classic “I’m lying but I’ll be earnest so you won’t notice or care if you do”.
another Luke drive by shooting – as usual he hit nothing.
John there isn’t a person the alarmists fear more than Lomborg. He is hated by them but is very matey with all the prominent sceptics, because he has a very similar message.
He believes in AGW but not CAGW and no one has more strongly attacked the mitigation fraud than Lomborg.
Just read his book and you’ll understand what I mean. His strength has always been the complete exposure of the “do something stupid brigade.”
Alan Jones and Bolt have interviewed him on a number of ocassions and they are on very friendly terms.
Jones has by far the biggest consistent audience on radio and the Bolter is the most read journo in Australia.
Bolt has also interviewed Lomborg at least a couple of times on his TV show and they both laughed together at some of the warmist nonsense.
I’ve only seen Lomborg lose his temper and that was in a debate between Lomborg and Lawson VERSUS the Canadian greens leader and Monbiot, just before Copenhagen.
Note he appeared with Lord Lawson one of the most famous UK sceptics and not the other side. In fact he has always supported the sane, sensible and factual side of the debate.
I know all that Neville. I’ve heard him on Jones and Bolt and I know his background.
But Jones says outright it’s a fraud and a hoax! yet when Lomborg says: “Yes, global warming is real and mostly man-made,” he does Jones and other sceptics no favours. He’s a liar and he lies so he can retain MSM publishing.
“I’ve only seen Lomborg lose his temper and that was in a debate between Lomborg and Lawson VERSUS the Canadian greens leader and Monbiot, just before Copenhagen.”
Do you have a link for that Neville?
This is the debate Cohenite but I’ll need time to find the right place.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HhSC9XRaIg It’s a long debate and the Green dill baited Lomborg over some point and he reacted.
Mind you this silly fool would test a saint.
Sayers still can’t read – are you that thick John. Like what’s the problem. Probably no idea about stats except what you’re told eh?
Cohenite – tell us here why he’s a liar. Go on …. we can add it to your credibility file. Like all those embarrassing op-eds – what a hoot. I hear they’re now collectables. Is rabies curable?
Neville’s source – Bolt and Jones – HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA
http://mumbrella.com.au/2gb-guilty-of-failing-to-ensure-alan-jones-was-accurate-on-climate-change-but-cleared-over-pm-chaff-bag-comment-97069
Jones insists that he is a commentator and should not be held to journalistic standards. Last year he told Mumbrella editor Tim Burrowes: “It’s called the Alan Jones Show for one very special reason – this is what Alan Jones thinks. I’m a broadcaster – I don’t pretend to be a journalist.”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA
Your standards mate. It’s a show mate – theatre – survives on conflict. Like snotty Bolter.
“John there isn’t a person the alarmists fear more than Lomborg. ”
HAHAHAHAHAHHAA – who – this is obviously wanker hour. And the star – Neville – this is just puerile dross Neville. Where do you come up with it.
“John there isn’t a person the alarmists fear more than Lomborg. ” HAHAHAHAHAHAHAA
Look out – don’d go into the woods. Lomborg’s gonna get ya.
As your were creeps – carry on ….
Cohers it seems that a large chunk of that debate has disappeared from youtube. Lawson and Lomborg won the debate and shifted about 8% more of the audience to their position.
http://www.munkdebates.com/the-debates/climate-change You can only watch the debate here if you’re a member.
But I’ll keep trying to find it. Geeezzz Luke you’re hopeless, but good for a giggle.
Thanks Neville; I’d like to see Lomborg annoyed; you can learn a lot about a person when the veneer slips. For all that Cool It and The Skeptical Environmentalist are great achievements.
Luke, you dill, Schmidt lied about the THS being proof of AGW.
He also said the most stupid but revealing thing when he said the world society was built on the assumption of a stable climate; if that is the case we are buggered even if AGW is not real unless you believe in the fairy tale that the climate will stay the same for ever unless humans change it.
I don’t trust the guy, but he has lost some weight.
Cohers if you look at the first 3 minutes 30 secs of this part you’ll see what I was talking about.
But I think I’ve done Lomborg an injustice, because she just lets fly at him and the moderator but they’ve turned down her sound. But what a clueless fool she is, typical green.
Sorry try starting at 50 secs through to 3 minutes 30 secs. That’s if you can stomach this woman.
Neville, thanks for that link. BL came across very well controlled in spite of the green stupidity I thought.
Good analogy on how to deal with hiv-aids.
Lindzen, Stott and Crichton won the debate Luke linked to by 46% to 42%. That was a big shift in numbers.
But what a joke the other side were. They talked as if there really was a dial that could be adjusted if we’d only make a start and try hard enough.
Lomborg has covered this all through his book and there is zero we can do for hundreds of years to alter the temp or climate by any useful amount.
Just for example if every country signed up to Kyoto straight away and achieved all the goals we would postpone temp rise and SLR by just 4 years.
Or if we did nothing we would have the same temp and SLR in 2100 instead of 2096 and at a cost of endless trillions of dollars flushed down the drain for that ridiculous miniscule gain of 4 years.
These people are barking mad and haven’t a clue how ridiculous they are.
More from Steve McIntyre on the REAL scientists and their careful selection of proxies to produce the desired result. What a con.
http://climateaudit.org/2013/04/14/tingley-and-huybers-exclude-mt-logan/#comments
Thanks Neville; ha, what a waste of space, the green and monbiot were!
Cohers how would you like to be marooned on a desert island with that woman? I think I’d top myself.
Meanwhile back at the science – http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1863.html
Nota bene Cohers – they’re published – you’re not.
History will just piss on your graves. Here lies a denier….
“Nature” always starts with a dogma and work back from it. A silly rag for pretentious hicks who are easier to impress than educate.
So the heat is hiding in the oceans, especially in the tropics.
Hmmm…. sounds a bit dodgy, but for the sake of argument, what do the models predict for 2020?
‘… the 1995/96 La Niña created the warm water that fueled the 1997/98 El Niño. In turn, the 1997/98 El Niño released enough of that naturally created warm water from below the surface of the western tropical Pacific to temporarily raise the sea surface temperatures of the East Pacific (90S-90N, 180-80W) about 0.5 to 0.6 deg C.
‘Keep in mind the East Pacific from pole to pole covers about 33% of the surface area of the global oceans. And there was enough naturally created warm water left over from the 1997/98 El Niño to cause the sea surface temperatures of the Atlantic, Indian and West Pacific oceans (the rest of the global oceans) to warm about 0.19 deg C, where they remained until the next strong El Niño in 2009/10.’
Bob Tisdale in a guest post at Watts
Is Bob published yet? Alas no ….. sigh. So meaningless in the big swim – echos on a blog cosm – lost in time by tomorrow’s sooking.
But how about something more vivid http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2013/04/15/3730941.htm
Devastating rebuttal Robert. Bit hard to beat that.
Nature. Giggle.
‘While I don’t necessarily buy Trenberth’s latest evidence for a lack of recent surface warming, I feel I need to first explain why Trenberth is correct that it is possible for the deep ocean to warm while surface warming is seemingly by-passed in the process.’
April 8th, 2013 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
Readfearn is a ratbag….lift yer game Luke.
“Is Bob published yet? Alas no ….. sigh. So meaningless in the big swim – echos on a blog cosm – lost in time by tomorrow’s sooking.”
Is Jesus published yet ? Alas no . Just a load of hearsay – echoes in a chatter cosm- surely lost in time.
As people like John Pilger, Ian Wishart, and Jesus have found , getting published is sometimes not an easy thing, but in the long run the truth WILL out
luke, my computer security describes Nature as a risk and won’t show it.
You’ll have to describe the paper you link to yourself;
“Nota bene”
Wanker.
Cohers and crew,
How do you put up with the whining from Little Lukey. That is just like having to babysit the neighbors spoiled brat. I’ve never had the patience.
I don’t know whether luke is Eccles or Bluebottle:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tjHlFPTwVk
Maybe he’s the piece of paper.
Global warming is a total crock of shit.
http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=4abc39fc-99fe-43a2-a169-9e52a8148a38&k=70647
“Is Jesus published yet ” – yep same goes for him. Not a lot of peer review there ! And some miracles difficult to reproduce.
Anyway speaking of emissions – I thought you guys would love these
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuDN2bCIyus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btViXvIDsi0 Bates Hotel – is the guy at the trunk Cohers? hahahahahaha
Pimp my ride guys.
You’re going to be a real nuisance when you reach voting age luke.
Who cares if the miracles cannot be reproduced, Luke. All the Climate Commissioners’ stuff can’t either and they are ” PUBLISHED ”
Seems that ” love your neighbour ” and stuff seems to have worked and the marsupial hunter’s predictions about no rain didn’t.
In 2,013 years , you and the ” Climate Commissioners” , will be an example of how you can’t change the world, if you throw everyone out of work and some virgins down a well
Oh Ian what twaddle – do you lot actually worry what Flannery may or may not say. Do you think serious water policy is based on his “Advice”. Perhaps you also believe in miracles eh?
It’s just a talking point for sceptics to fuss over. Meanwhile back at the science you’re all nowhere to be seen or having a little squawk over 0.001% of the literature. How dreary.
“Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour” also applies to sceptics and includes sophistry.
“In 2,013 years , you and the ” Climate Commissioners” , will be an example of how you can’t change the world, if you throw everyone out of work and some virgins down a well” ahhh a prediction for the Abbott government I see.
Good post by Jo Nova on the Antarctic ice mass.
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/04/antarctica-gaining-ice-mass-and-is-not-extraordinary-compared-to-800-years-of-data/#comment-1265858
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/antarctic/Antarctic-ice-balance-A.gif
Looks like it’s Combet and Luke who are the biggest BS artists and certainly not Tony Abbott.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/combets_carbon_system_scheme_rocked_budget_to_lose_billions/#commentsmore
The EU co2 price will be low for years and therefore from 2015 our companies will be able to purchase these fraudulent credit certificates for about 3 or 4 $ from Europe.
Meanwhile while Luke and Combet promote Labor’s plan ? our budget will be in hock for years and years.
That’s if people are MAD enough to vote for Labor or the Greens or other morons of the left.
But could Swan’s once surplus budget now show a deficit of 15 to 20 billion $?
We should know in a months time. Whatever it will be a monster turn around.
But you have to laugh. Their ABC on AM are wringing their hands about the collapse of the co2 price in Europe.
Also ABC are showing concern because the co2 obsessed EU is such an economic basket case. BOO HOO.
Cohers,
based on the circular logic, he could sub either of them and they could sub for Schmitt, Hansen, Mann…
Thanks for the laugh. Never saw them before.
Little Lukey,
““Is Jesus published yet ” – yep same goes for him. Not a lot of peer review there ! And some miracles difficult to reproduce. ”
Dang, ya mean there were no buddy reviews for Jesus?? Not surprised. He was never PC.
Another new paper shows low sensitivity to increased co2 emissions.
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/4/16/another-paper-finds-that-climate-sensitivity-is-low.html
Fracking lowers US emissions to 1995 levels.
‘One can virtually prove that shale gas has been the major influence driving the fall in US emissions. Just ten years ago, the natural-gas industry was so sure that domestic production was reaching its limit that it made large investments in terminals to import liquefied natural gas (LNG). Yet fracking has increased supply so rapidly that these facilities are now being converted to export LNG.’
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/world-business/the-green-side-of-fracking-20130417-2hzb9.html#ixzz2QgfgPBgP
Sinclair Davidson shows by use of one graph why Fairfax is going broke. Unbelievable rubbish is allowed in their newspapers.
What an embarrassment to Australia.
http://catallaxyfiles.com/2013/04/17/budget-in-a-parallel-universe/
Solar activity over the next 500 years is down, but not a Dalton or Maunder.
http://nextgrandminimum.wordpress.com/2013/04/16/paper-predicts-a-sharp-decline-in-solar-activity/figure-4/
Could someone explain how the European collapse of the ETS effect us?
‘Without some intervention to reduce supply, “the ETS will almost certainly collapse,” said Kash Burchett, a London-based analyst at consulting company IHS Energy.
“Prices will likely sink below €1 per ton as participants recognize that there is no political will at present to restore the market mechanism to functioning order,” he said.
‘The collapse of the European price has been so severe, however, that the investment incentive component of the trading scheme has been seriously undermined. Funds in China and elsewhere that were set up to create green projects assumed a much higher carbon price than now applies, and the profitable sale of carbon credits that enabled their projects to hit their rate of return hurdles. They are now stranded, and their investors have retreated.’
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/carbon-trading-scheme-facing-strife-20130417-2i0k0.html#ixzz2Ql9qpYHr
Dont worry – with Julia and Australia leading the way and setting an example the rest of the world will be shamed into following us in reducing the planets temperature.
Julia and Combet will issue a new statement to set the world straight and get the carbon price back up. Simple.
Much amusement…
As we suspected, the models are flawed.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/CMIP5-global-LT-vs-UAH-and-RSS.png
Jen
FYI
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2013/4/18/booker-on-thatcher-on-climate-change.html
Looks like everyone owe us DENIERS an apology!! 8>)
Solar Storm Dumps Gigawatts into Earth’s Upper Atmosphere
“Carbon dioxide and nitric oxide are natural thermostats,” explains James Russell of Hampton University, SABER’s principal investigator. “When the upper atmosphere (or ‘thermosphere’) heats up, these molecules try as hard as they can to shed that heat back into space.”
“For the three day period, March 8th through 10th, the thermosphere absorbed 26 billion kWh of energy. Infrared radiation from CO2 and NO, the two most efficient coolants in the thermosphere, re-radiated 95% of that total back into space.”
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/22mar_saber/
NASA appears to be changing with James “coal trains of death” Hansen leaving as another indicator.
Don’t know if this has already been posted, but interesting in light of SD and my efforts over at Deltoid:
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2013/04/23/nicola-scafetta-major-new-sea-level-study-finds-c21st-rise-likely-to-be-less-than-a-foot/