This is a continuation of a remarkable thread that has now received 10,000 comments running to well over a million words. Unfortunately its size has become a problem and this is the reason for the move.
The history of the New Statesman thread goes back to December 2007 when Dr David Whitehouse wrote a very influential article for that publication posing the question Has Global Warming Stopped? Later, Mark Lynas, the magazine’s environment correspondent, wrote a furious reply, Has Global Warming Really Stopped?
By the time the New Statesman closed the blogs associated with these articles they had received just over 3000 comments, many from people who had become regular contributors to a wide-ranging discussion of the evidence for anthropogenic climate change, its implications for public policy and the economy. At that stage I provided a new home for the discussion at Harmless Sky.
Comments are now closed on the old thread. If you want to refer to comments there then it is easy to do so by left-clicking on the comment number, selecting ‘Copy Link Location’ and then setting up a link in the normal way.
Here’s to the next 10,000 comments.
Useful links:
Dr David Whitehouse’s article can be found here with 1289 comments.
Mark Lynas’ attempted refutation can be found here with 1715 comments.
The original Continuation of the New Statesman Whitehouse/Lynas blogs thread is here with 10,000 comments.
Lets hope that more heavyweights weight in as the Government will do themselves a lot of harm calling this fellow a denier, and not only that, they can not ignor what he is saying too easily without explaining themselves, which we all know they cannot easily do. Finally it is all coming home to roost and as I have posted on numerous occasions it will be the money in our pockets that will finally focus the minds of the general public.
I am reminded of a question asked of Ian Plimer at the Spectator debate; when will the Climate change Con finish. His answer was “when the money runs out”
And with a growing reputation for U Turns the Government is in a real spot of bother. This is good because it will make them dig their heals in, making the situation worse, and discrediting the lot of them forever.
Peter G, 4126:
The Financial Times is carrying a sympathetic take on this story too, and I think that is very encouraging considering how stridently people like their Fiona Harvey have promoted alarmism in the past.
PeterG,
A heavyweight? Maybe he should walk to work more!
So, the “Climate change Con” will end “when the money runs out”. I thought it was all a hoax an excuse to raise taxes etc. A money grabbing exercise by the arrogant elites who’ve decided they are better equipped to spend your money than you are yourself? So shouldn’t “when the money runs out” be when it will really start in earnest?
Even by your own twisted logic it doesn’t make any sense. But, then, you are climate change deniers so I guess it doesn’t have to.
Just to say UK Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman has been on the radio this morning, blaming climate change for “two severe winters” (approximate quote). Will see if I can come up with a link, a bit later.
PeterM As usual you are 3 or 4 steps behind, and making even less sense than usual. The money is running out, and we are witnessing the death throws of the Euro in its current form, this will not be good for the UK. The US is looking as if it may double dip, which is not good for anyone.
Without all the funny money that was sloshing around there is no room for lavish climate research or for all the expensive policy responses such as the renewable obligation in the UK. We are seeing solar providers looking seeking a judicial review of the payments to “solar farms” after they were cut recently, because suddenly without all the excessive subsidy these useless contraptions are not competitive any more.
And our money is running out faster than anyone realises because our “official” rate of inflation bears no relationship the the real rate, because as the money dries up its those items that are going up fastest, food, clothing and energy that we have to buy, and all the items that are holding the figures down, we have stopped buying.
Its not hard to figure any of this out, nor is it hard to figure out that much of the inflation is self inflicted by our obscene energy policies in response to the non problem of DAGW.
The recent post by Richard Lindzen on WUWT demonstrates yet again the lengths that publications will go to to try and block what amounts to the only research into CO2 feedbacks. And guess what Peter the feedback looks to be negative or at worst nil. Are you going to accept this or are you just going to dismiss it as the work of a denier. I think we are going to have to find good name for you, some thing to do with Ostriches I think.
And perhaps you missed the experiment in Copenhagen where a particle accelerator was used to create aerosols from high energy particles in an experiment to verify earlier work on cosmic rays. And this before we get the full results from CERN that looks to have verified this work as well. Its all not looking too good for you Peter. Time perhaps to pull your head out of the sand.
“we are witnessing the death throws of the Euro” Really? Want to bet 100 of them that they’ll be around this time next year?
PeterM Look carefully at the words I used. You have left off the important qualifiers.
I’ll take that as a “no” then. Should be “throes” BTW
PeterM Its been my experience that the most annoying and nauseating people in the world all…………………no I won’t go there. The Euro in its current form is in its death “throes” I don’t have to answer any more questions about it. That statement is clear enough.
You can chose to believe all the pretend politicos from the EU and elsewhere if you chose, but it’s like filling a glass with a hole in the bottom. You may fill the glass by pouring in lots of water, but it will continue to leak out requiring constant filling. If you say enough then very quickly there is no water. To fix the hole you have to switch off the water first to let it dry out. But once you have even a small trickle will soon fill the glass.
Change the water to money and try and understand the point. The sooner the politicians understand that they have to fix the hole, the less it will ultimately cost the Greeks.
At some point the burden of printing money will fall on the head of the masses in Europe in a greater way than it is already. At that point they will revolt. There are rumblings all over Europe. Greece is about to default, albeit strenuous efforts are being made to make it look like something else. The word restructuring is being used a lot, and haircut is another, although I don’t see what help hairdressers can be.
Global Warming Panic explained
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdxaxJNs15s&feature=related
Peter Geany,
I don’t believe a haircut in this sense has anything to do with hair or hairdressers. It is financial jargon and simply that some holders of bonds won’t get all their money back. It won’t be the first and it won’t be the last time if this happens.
California probably has a worse financial deficit than Greece. It doesn’t mean that the US dollar is in its ‘death throes’ although its value may well change relative to other countries because of financial problem in California and other States. Its the same story in Europe. The creation of the Euro has effectively made it one large country. I’m not sure that everyone appreciated that at the time. Its not likely that California will leave the US, nor is it likely that Greece, Portugal or Spain will efectively leave the EU, which is what they would be doing if they re-introduced drachmas etc.
So, lessons will be learned and the problems with Greece etc will be solved in exactly the same way as problems with any technically insolvent State or City will be dealt with in the US. Neither the US$ nor the Euro are in quite as bad a state as you might imagine.
PeterM The UK is in the EU and not in the Euro, so Greece or any other country could follow suit.. The Euro has failed some countries as the only way it could be successfully is by full political union, which we don’t have. Every crisis in the EU and with the Euro has been used as an excess to force through extra powers for the commission without democratic legitimacy. This is why the edifice will tumble down.
By the way Peter, I do know what a hair cut is, my current employer being a financial institution, I was drawing attention to the absurdity of the situation.
PeterG,
Yes the UK is in the EU – but only sort of. It still has its own currency which makes a big difference. Pulling out of the EU would be relatively straightforward if the UK chose to do so.
But say Greece wanted to just go back to having drachmas. How would that work? What about all the bank accounts that are held in Euros? All government debt – still in Euros. All mortgages and loans to banks – still in Euros. The problem is still there just as it was before. Add in an almost certain threat of a general strike by the Labor unions -they won’t like to have by pay Euro debts and Euro prices out their drachma incomes – and it’s relatively easy to see that no democratic Greek government is ever going to do it. It would need a swift military take over and coupled with the repression of the population. It is possible but not very likely IMO.
PeterM
A number of countries should never have joined the Euro as they broke many rules such as that of existing indebtedness. They were allowed to join as the EU wanted credibility by having the maximum number of countries participate. The EU ‘rulers’ will pay any price to keep it together as the political/credibility fall out would cause widespread damage in all sorts of EU institutions.
The EU can only work with political AND Monetary AND Fiscal union. That is to say there has to be a common set of rules on such things as tax and budgets and policy. Contiuing as they are won’t solve the Euro crsis-which is very much bigger than you seem to realise.
I can see a two tier Euro with one group clustered round Germany and the other clustered round a fluctuating exchange rate that may be based on the euro or may require reversion to national currencies although you are quite right to point out the potential consequences.
Without a fluctuating exchange rate it is hard to see how countries such as Greece can get out of this. However having a fluctuating exchange rate-with all the other consequences you describe-is arguably as bad.
Probable short term solution-keep applying the sticking plaster and hope the world economy improves. Medium term-our rulers will throw everything at keeping it all together.
Longer term? The collapse of the Euro as we know it unless there is closer integration of fiscal policy to form a genuinely more cohesive single state.rather than a collection of disparate countries all at different stages of threir economic development.
Incidentally, the UK pulling out of the EU is not relatively straightforward as there are numerous treaties ebedded in UK law.
Tonyb.
The Keynesian model fails again…………
TonyB, I’m not sure that rules are any good is this case. Yes, I agree Greece very probably broke the rules more than most, but what does the EU do about it? Fine the Greeks? That just makes the problem worse.
Let the Germans annexe a few of their favourite Greek islands? I can’t see it happening.
What would happen if ,say, Yorkshire were to overspend and technically be declared bankrupt? Would the local politicians be held accountable? That might be possible in the UK but it is politically impossible for Greek politicians and civil servants to be tried in somewhere like the Hague for economic crimes. I agree it is a bit of a problem with no obvious solution other than to muddle through which I’m pretty sure is just what will happen. The Greeks, and others, will end up being bailed out despite a lot of huffing and puffing from everyone else.
The Californians will recover from their problems without having a separate currency and so will the Greek, Portugese, and Irish. Lets see what happens in one, five, ten years time. I hope you remember this prediction then.
Incidentally I remember using English pounds in Ireland in the mid 70’s and that was some 50 years after independence. Its a lot harder to separate currencies once they have been unified than achieve political independence.
Brute,
WW2 was actually won with the benefit of Keynesian economics which, incidentally, doesn’t necessarily mean higher and higher levels of deficit spending.
His pamphlet “How to Pay for the War” , published in 1940, argued that the war effort should be largely financed by higher taxation and especially by compulsory saving (essentially workers loaning money to the government), rather than deficit spending, in order to avoid inflation.
Of course, all countries did run up large debts during the war and according to classical economic thinking the postwar generation should have had a hard time repaying those debts. Isn’t that an argument in the US now? However, I don’t think we’ve done too badly. Do you?
PeterM
The point I was making was that the Greeks-amongst others-broke the rules BEFORE they were admitted to the Euro as regards the level of their debt. If the EU was willing to break those rules from day one it should have given a steer to what was likely to happen when things got tough. Hopefully Yorkshire would be reined in by the auditors before it went bust but the the analogy is poor as Yorkshire is an integral part of the UK whilst the individual countries of the EU are never going to achieve the same status within the EU. History tells us that there are far more countries in the world than there were 50 years ago and the EU is trying to defy that movement in attempting to create one unified block. It can’t do that unless all aspects of the state are subsumed into the whole and the people of Europe seem to be saying they have had enough of this centralised control.
I’m not so sure the Greeks will be bailed out. On the one hand you have the German govt who are the lynch pin of the EU for all sorts of reasons and the German people who are angry at the profligacy of their neighbours that they are supposed to bail out. Its all very messy and can’t continue in the same way as it has in the past although HOW it will be resolved is difficult to forecast as the political elite won’t want to admit to their mistakes.
tonyb.
PeterM Much of what you say is correct in a way and is what our masters in Brussels would like us to think. However at this point in time Greece is broke, as are Ireland, and Portugal. Spain has hidden debt and a collapse in its property market. It has invested heavily in green energy and is now backing out of paying. Italy has many debt issues that are hidden.
Now the only way this lot can stay together is if Germany, France and the UK pay for them to do so, being the three economies that are big enough to pay. The coalition are facing opposition from the people here about this as are the Germans. As I have said and tonyb repeated above it just won’t work without full political union.
And just for your information the cuts are yet to bite in Ireland, a country that has fought a long fight to be free of political control from a foreign power. The irony of their current situation is that Brussels now has total control of their economy and I wonder how long it is before they wake up to this fact.
You see Peter the medicine currently being handed out on the insistence of Germany is that Greece, Portugal and Ireland all face their medicine alone and experience severe cuts whilst the richer core of Europe carries on as usual. The Euro was sold as all for one and one for all. This is not the reality and these counties face the next 2 generations in the doldrums.
And no matter what they do, the situation will continue to get worse until it either collapses, or they cut Greece Portugal and Ireland free. And the reason this will happen is the bureaucrats in Brussels are trying to redefine economics by ignoring all the lessons of the past all the way back to the Romans.
.
Pete,
So your favored economic model is to stimulate the economy by building weapons, destroying half of the world in order to rebuild it? (Not to mention killing 70 million people).
Seems somewhat wasteful don’t you think?
Maybe you’d have roving gangs of government paid workers roaming the countryside vandalizing and destroying property and then hiring additional government paid workers to come along behind them to repair the damage that the first group caused?
Makes perfect sense Pete………..
http://www.fff.org/freedom/0395d.asp
I continuously laugh at these enviro nut jobs……..Now, come to find out, the coal fired cars (electric) emit MORE CO2 than their conventionally powered counterparts………..you can’t make this stuff up folks………
Electric vehicles found to be not so green
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/electric-vehicles-found-to-be-not-so-green/story-fn59niix-1226073265676
ELECTRIC cars could produce higher emissions over their lifetimes than petrol equivalents because of the energy used in making their batteries, a study has found.
An electric-car owner would have to drive at least 130,000km before producing a net saving in CO2.
Many electric cars will not travel that far in their lifetime because they usually have a range of less than 145km on a single charge and are unsuitable for long trips.
Even those driven 160,000km would save only about a tonne of CO2 over their lifetimes.
The study, the first analysis of the lifetime emissions of electric cars covering manufacturing, driving and disposal, undermines the case for tackling climate change by rapid introduction of the cars.
The Committee on Climate Change, the British government watchdog, has called for the number of electric cars on the roads to increase from a few hundred to 1.7 million by 2020.
Start of sidebar. Skip to end of sidebar.
End of sidebar. Return to start of sidebar.
The British Department of Transport is spending £43 million ($66m) over the next year giving up to 8600 buyers of electric cars a grant of £5000 each towards the purchase price. Ministers are considering extending the scheme.
The study was commissioned by the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership, jointly funded by the British government and the car industry.
It found a mid-size electric car would produce 23.1 tonnes of CO2 over its lifetime, compared with 24 tonnes for a similar petrol car.
Emissions from making electric cars are at least 50 per cent higher because batteries are made from materials such as lithium, copper and refined silicon, which require more energy to be processed.
Many electric cars are expected to need a replacement battery after a few years.
Once the emissions from producing the second battery are added in, the total CO2 from producing an electric car rises to 12.6 tonnes, compared with 5.6 tonnes for a petrol car.
Mitsubishi Australia, which has about 100 electric cars on lease in Australia to fleets and local governments, said the findings were “diametrically opposed” to their understanding of the situation.
“Our information is that manufacturing lithium ion batteries accounts for a small fraction of the lifecycle environmental impact of an EV,” a spokeswoman for the company said.
In addition, a vehicle was expected to need only one battery during its life.
The Mitsubishi iMiev, a city runabout that has been available on lease for almost a year, will be available to the public for about $50,000 from August, the company said this week.
The only other electric car available here is the Tesla sportscar, which costs more than $200,000, although Nissan plans to offer a hatchback called the Leaf next year that is expected to undercut the iMiev.
Greg Archer, director of Low CVP, said the automotive industry should state the full lifecycle emissions of cars rather than just the tailpipe emissions to avoid misleading consumers.
Drivers wanting to minimise emissions could be better off buying a small efficient petrol or diesel car.
Oh dear Greece has been downgraded again, with the resultant knock on effect to the others. You can’t buck the market if you want to trade in the real world.
Our PM is coming under intense pressure now, which will make him dig in further, which I think is the only way we will get rid of him. Mind you is that the sound of steel on blade I here coming from the 1922 committee? Just in case they are needed I’m told.
Brute,
I notice your Dr Higgs suggests that: ” If workers want to work but cannot find an employer willing to hire them, it is because they are not willing to work at a wage rate that makes their employment worthwhile for the employer.”
He’s advocating the classical economic solution for under employment which is to drive wages lower and lower. Marx actually thought the same, and he therefore argued that an organised working class wouldn’t just sit back to let this happen but instead they would overthrow the system and replace it with a new one under their control.
Keynes, who was always keen to oppose Marxist ideas, would have realised that Marx was well on the way to being proved right if that kind of economic thinking had been allowed to continue unchallenged. So, I would say there is a strong argument for suggesting that Keynes wasn’t quite the villain you make him out to be even from your own POV. He may well have saved the system you claim to support.
TonyB
After reading your 4139 plus the other posts related to the various EU crises, I can only thank the Swiss voters for having decided not to join this club several years ago – and having resisted more recent attempts (primarily trom the left-leaning parties) to reconsider joining..
The economy here is not booming, but it is growing slowly and there is no real unemployment, the currency is strong (too strong), there is a continuous wave of immigrants from EU countries (both with high qualifications/competences and less qualified), housing values are booming (possibly too much). Polls in neighboring regions (part of EU nations around Switzerland) show that a majority of these people would like to join Switzerland rather than staying in their present nations, etc.
The European Common Market was a good thing.
The political union with open borders and free access was an idealized pipe dream of a few influential politicians.
We see how the EU defense policy has de facto been abdicated to NATO (with France staying out, but Canada and the USA included).
The Euro as a common currency (with no common financial or fiscal policy) has been a disaster.
The governing officials and bureaucrats sitting in Brussels are not elected by the people and are not directly accountable to anyone.
The EU is an organization, which is moving Europe away from a grass-roots democratic society with representative governments, to an oligarchy ruled by a few powerful elitists.
But, as you have written, Tony, it is growing like a cancer and gradually becoming entrenched into the local legal structure, so that it will be very difficult for individual nations to break out and regain their independence.
Max.
Brute
Your info on electric cars just shows how all these “green” plans to “solve” the “carbon problem” are full of holes when it comes to actual implementation.
Energy savings, less waste, better insulation, some domestic solar panels, etc. – these “common sense” solutions can reduce our dependence on expensive imported fossil fuels, but will never shift us away completely.
Nuclear power generation has been dealt a major political blow by Fukushima. Whether or not this is only temporary, no one knows today.
“Green” alternate energy is a pipe dream, which the politicians still combine with promises of new “green” jobs, but almost every serious study shows will bring nothing.
The best solution for countries that have ample natural gas supplies (like the USA) is combined cycle gas-fired plants (ideally combined with industrial, commercial or domestic heating supplied by the low pressure steam, in order the improve overall thermal efficiency).
For mountainous countries like Switzerland it may be new or expanded hydroelectric capacity.
TonyB has mentioned tide or wave power as a possibility for nations near the sea.
For locations, which have no mountains, no coastline, no natural gas – but do have access to coal, this will probably remain the most viable source of energy for the foreseeable future, until nuclear fission can get rid of the current political opposition plus the spent fuel disposal problem.
All the blab and political posturing in the world will not change this for now. In fact, based on the topics being considered for the upcoming Rio+20 conference, the politicians of this world are apparently beginning to realize that a global agreement on carbon reduction will not happen and that smaller, more easily achievable targets should be set (to set global efficiency standards, cut back emissions of NOx, fluorocarbons and methane, rather than CO2, etc.)
http://judithcurry.com/2011/06/09/rio20-earth-summit-what-can-we-expect/#more-3516
IMO the politicians and bureaucrats should stay out of “global” energy policy with enforced “top-down” solutions and leave this up to individual markets to handle as it makes best sense locally or regionally; I also believe that Rio+20 will be another flop like the Copenhagen and Cancun already were.
What the future will bring in the way of new technologies, etc. is anyone’s guess. (but it’s very unlikely to be a solution based on plopping windmills all over the landscape).
Max