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.
Peter/Alex,
Seriously…………you guys be careful.
Hey Brute 16,000 police were on hand last night in London. Guess what there was no further trouble as far as I have heard. Just goes to show.
Poor Al Gore. The frustration is starting to affect his sanity as his climate fraud empire comes crashing down.
http://soundcloud.com/realaspen/audio-recording-on-monday
Hi ,
I just thought I’d drop by to see what your take was on the UK riots. I’m just a bit disappointed there is no intelligent comment. Just Brute mouthing off as usual.
It just strikes me that the government need to get a grip and it’s good that the opposition are urging them to do just that.
There may be those who would make excuses for mass criminality, and they may well consider themselves to be Marxist too. However, I would suggest that Marx would be a lot less sympathetic to this rabble than most of them might imagine.
They need to read up on what he had to say about the lumpenproletariat. “dangerous class” or the “social scum”.
http://uregina.ca/~gingrich/s28f99.htm
Peter M, I think Marx was accurate with his description of the lumpen proletariat; however, he was writing in the 19th century, and things have moved on a bit. This is perhaps a fanciful comparison, and might not hold up, but in 21st century Britain at least, I think we now have something of a “lumpen aristocracy” – unused to work, their material needs taken care of by the labour of others, and as we have seen – and also in the manner of traditional aristocrats – afflicted with ennui and not averse to raising hell in the midst of working communities they feel detached from and have no stake in.
There will be consequences in the UK, I suspect, where it comes to climate change policies. After Copenhagen and the last few cold winters, climate change was already becoming low in the public’s list of priorities. This year we have had announcements of major hikes in the prices of gas and electricity, petrol prices remaining high, and now a number of very serious breakdowns in public order. Who now, would be overly concerned by their carbon footprint, when faced with the prospect of being maimed and robbed in the street, or their home or business burnt to the ground, or their disposable income reduced to a fraction of what it was, due to fuel bills? What public appetite will there be for more of our resources to be channelled into building a low carbon economy, at the direct expense, perhaps, of bolstering our existing economy and providing such essentials as policing and infrastructure? I’m prepared to be wrong on this, but I think the answers to those questions are likely to be a) fewer people than ever, and b) not very much at all.
PeterM and Alex
Being a bit removed from the scene I may have gotten this wrong, but I have heard that the riots were caused by a grass-roots groundswell of public indignation and rage following the selfish and anti-scientific refusal of China, India and the USA to commit to drastic carbon cuts at Copenhagen and Cancun, coupled with the frustration that UK government support for aggressive climate change policies is faltering.
Am I wrong?
Max
Brute #4253
Here’s the transcript of Gore’s rant:
Max, re the groundswell of public indignation, we’ve had that already – that was Zero Carbon Britain Day, on July 16th! Scores of people – maybe even a hundred or more – took part, and it was splashed across the national press. And just look at these crowds!
Geoff, you have captured the man’s effortless eloquence, perfectly. “They have polluted the shit…” Such poetry.
PeterM You want to know what happened. It was easy. The police shot a known crim, after coming under fire. A police officer was hit, but by a police issue bullet: oops. Bit of a police balls up.
A protest was organised which was peaceful. A few stirrers turned up and the Police attacked some demonstrators whilst not having enough backup if things got out of hand. Whilst the Police were distracted some yobs looted some shops. The police stood back, being out numbered and others thought this is OK lets do it some more. There was no cause just some wanton destruction in the knowledge that the police would do nothing.
Now the recriminations start, but the root cause is a lack of respect for authority, and the fault for that are those in authority; our political leaders and their agents such as the police. Our Political leaders no longer represent our views, and the police spend all their time hassling the ordinary person pursuing all manner of minor issues with vigour, filling out their allocated numbers of stop and searches, whilst avoiding getting involved with rooting out real criminals. We have had too much left wing influence on schooling with no discipline, a curriculum that rewards mediocrity, sentencing that is no deterrent and public sector that has its snout in the trough. Of coarse the only people who can’t see this are the so call liberal left and our Politicians.
An over simplification of coarse, but never has the middle class had such a low opinion for those in authority. And if we feel this way then those at the lower end must feel a sense of complete alienation. And it is set to get worse before it gets better as the EU continues on its path to forced monetary union against the wishes of almost all those who they pretend to represent and to the ultimate destruction of Europe.
Yes Peter AGW is alive and well in amongst all this real turmoil. Remember I said it won’t be until we are out of money that we rid ourselves of AGW. Well we are all out of money, and even China, which has much of our cash, is in reality out of money, as it will have to bail out all its regional governments.
I wonder how much evil CO2 and other “greenhouse gases” were released wantonly into our precious atmosphere over the course of the rioting?
Will the London town fathers issue citations for excess carbon emissions?
Maybe PeterM can explain to the rest of us the reason for the looting and destruction……..after all, it was his like minded comrades that committed the acts.
geoff and Alex
Regarding Gore’s outburst, I’d say it looks like he is “losing his cool” as the world is beginning to see through the “dangerous GW” fallacy.
But why should he worry?
He got an Oscar (and even a Nobel Peace Prize) for his sci-fi movie plus made close to $100 million since he left public office and moved from being “the next President of the United States” (as he put it).
OK. The really big bucks have moved out of reach as his carbon trading venture has collapsed, but he shouldn’t be greedy – and instead be satisfied for the millions he has been able to milk out of DAGW while it lasted.
Max
Peter Geany,
Well of course you’ll know better than me what’s going on there. From what I’ve seen from afar, it looks like the civil disorder has harmed people who don’t deserve to be harmed, and I guess that’s the nature of civil disorder. The wrong people get hurt so it is to be avoided at least IMO.
Also looking from afar, it seems noticeable that civil disorder has returned to the UK after a long period of calm. Is this connected with the nature of the government, would you say? Is there more civil disorder under the Conservatives?
Max,
I see you’ve taken up my suggestion about sticking to ranting about Al Gore. You are much better at this than the mathematical stuff, so I’d say it was a good move on your part.
PeterM
No “ranting” about Al Gore needed – as you can see, he’s doing all the ranting himself!
Max
PeterM Civil disorder is not directly linked to the conservatives, especially at present as we don’t have a conservative government. If anything the Coalition is worse than Labour was. All the talk of reducing government and putting local people back in charge has been thrown out the door because we invariably chose a course that doesn’t fit with Cameron’s grand plan.
Despite the BS you may pick up in the news down under there have been no cuts. and the public sector is still dragging the country down. Its not the bin men or nurses or teachers that we are feed up with but it seems every council MD is earning more than the PM and all the Quango’s and consultants they use some of whom are earning thousands of pounds a day. None of this can be justified, and we were promised it would change but it hasn’t.
We have a climate change officer in every council!!!!!!!!!!! Prey tell me what they do!!!!!!!!!!! Nothing as I can see because we certainly have not got any global warming and have had yet another disappointing summer with temperatures only occasionally getting into the mid 20’s and cloud that is 20,000 foot thick.
The only cuts Peter have been to the front line to preserve the bloated salaries of the new breed of public servant that was created by Labour. This the party that is supposed to represent the working man. All they have done is reward their cronies and the un-working class. The real working class and the middle class are now suffering with no political party prepared to represent them.
Peter Geany
Isn’t that a sign that all those “climate change officers” must be having an impact?
Max
Hi Max perhaps what I was alluding to (rather poorly) was that they have nothing to do as we haven’t warmed. But the real point is the chronic waste of money that we the tax payer are powerless to prevent.
But it appears that the Euro only has a few more days or a week or so to live before either Germany bails it out unequivocally, Germany leaves the Euro, or they muddle on and cause catastrophic failure of the Euro and Europe’s banks.
2 of these are decisive and one is not. 2 will work and one will not. Which one will the politicians chose?
Hi PeterG
My remark was tongue-in-cheek, of course.
What will the politicians do?
Based on past track record I’d guess option 3: “muddle on”.
But back to the UK: the new government has not embraced the past one’s madness regarding the “climate catastrophe” quite so eagerly (no more “50 days to save our planet”), but why has it not totally rejected it? Is it not true that public (i.e. voter) sentiment has swung against the past government’s AGW hysteria? If so, why are the MPs not getting the word? Why is taxpayer money still being squandered chasing windmills? Is this simply a matter of time lag or is the democratic system broken?
It is baffling me, as a Swiss.
Max
[TonyN says: That’s a very shrewd question, or series of questions, and I’m sure that finding answers is what UK climate sceptics should be focusing on at the moment. Perhaps clues lie in the very disparate political aims of the two parties that form the present coalition, and the transitory nature of an administration which is probably the best that could be cobbled together at a time of crisis rather than what the country needed or wanted. Dumping the green revolution would be high risk at the moment, and no party in the UK is in a position to take risks of any kind. The public may be becoming cynical about what they are told about AGW, but it would still be all too easy to make any party which tries to forge new, and less politically correct, policies on this subject look uncaring and irresponsible. Then there is the immense political (and very well resourced) clout of the eNGOs which may now be wielding power over public policy in the same way that the unions enjoyed pre-Thatcher.
It’s all rather baffling to this Englishman too!]
Welcome back TonyN.
We missed your comments and active participation (on your blog).
It almost seems to me that a groundswell needs to occur to force a change in the timid, AGW-inspired or AGW-corrupted politicians.
The UK public has a history of “stiff upper lip” silent suffering. One could argue that this appears to have disappeared as witnessed by the recent riots, but these may well have had more of a criminal “flash gang” root cause than general public dissatisfaction with the government.
The facts of the matter are a) that most of the major industrial nations of the world have no intention of curtailing their economies to reduce CO2 emissions and b) that the CO2 emissions of the UK are so insignificant (1.7% of world total) that completely shutting them down completely today (at immeasurable cost and pain to the UK public) would have an imperceptible impact on global temperature by the year 2100 (using IPCC assumptions, the averted warming would theoretically be 0.03°C).
There are certainly thinking people in the UK who see that the “PC” climate hysteria is driving a weak (and divided) government to pursue silly and economically unaffordable “green” pseudo-solutions (which are no solutions at all). It would seem logical to me that these thinking people would form a grass-roots opposition to this potentially disastrous direction and apply pressure on their MPs to change government policy on AGW when there are much more pressing problems to be addressed.
There is no question that there are very powerful interest and lobby groups working to keep the current status quo in place (viz. your earlier thread on the “very convenient network”), so it would take a very strong groundswell to counteract all this pressure.
It appears that in the USA such a grass-roots movement (the “tea party”) has been able to become a very influential voice opposing government policy even without a single strong leader.
I do not know if such a thing would be possible in the UK in view of the different historical backgrounds.
Nor do I know who the leader would be if one were required.
But I am pretty sure that something should be done before you are all sold down the river by a weak and poorly informed government that is trying to do the “PC” thing without having a clue.
Just my thoughts on this, as an outsider.
Max
Case in point………………..
OBAMA’S GREEN PET GOES BANKRUPT…
Got stimulus money, promised 800 jobs…
http://www.bostonherald.com/business/technology/general/view.bg?articleid=1358998&pos=breaking
Seattle’s ‘green jobs’ program a bust
http://www.komonews.com/news/local/127844048.html#idc-cover
PeterG,
You may say there have been no cuts but that’s not the way the kids see it in London.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI2fJmr7GPI&feature=related
This video pre-dates the riots but they are predicted on it.
Many of these kids look perfectly Ok to me, but if they don’t have a job and don’t feel a part of society then they are going to get themselves into trouble and cause trouble at the same time.
So, I do agree that the UK government has to draw the line and say that rioting is unacceptable, but they need to look at the underlying causes too.
Problem with Link. Try This one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI2fJmr7GPI
Brute
I liked the phrase “a time of eco-giddiness”. I rather hope that is how the last decade will look in a few years!
Peter M,
So I suppose that the “underlying causes” must be government paid food, government paid healthcare, government paid education, as well as numerous other social protections (funded by working Brits).
Britain…………..a fine example of a socialist Utopia…….where your every need is paid for by someone else…….and yet these savages are still prone to steal televisions, designer clothes and electronic equipment given half an opportunity.
http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/are-the-uk-rioters-disaffected-poor-or-just-criminals/question-2072761/?slide=-1
Here we have a millionaire’s daughter, a ballerina and a university student caught in the act of looting.
Here’s a video of these poor “disenfranchised” people swilling stolen wine and causing mayhem.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBWs302fb0o