Let’s get something absolutely straight about the climate debate, and the government propaganda that fuels it. Britain’s Climate Change Act 2008 has not made us the world leader in Co2 reduction legislation. There cannot be a leader in a one horse race. In a one horse race, there is no one to lead. With a field of one, there is no race in any real meaning of the term. Other competitors have failed to show up on the starting line.
Last week the UK government announced carbon reduction targets for the period 2023-27, in accordance with requirements set out in the Climate Change Act 2008. At the time that this extraordinary piece of legislation was going through parliament, we were repeatedly told that it would make us the world leader in de-carbonisation and the battle against climate change. There may have been some justification for such a claim then, but there is absolutely no justification now. The chaotic collapse of the Copenhagen summit, and the acceptance at Cancun that no global agreement on emission control is even in sight, have changed ‘the environmental’ landscape completely, and seemingly irreversibly.
Yet the government, and of course the rest of the media who regurgitate its press releases without a thought, are still trumpeting the old mantra, except that the tense has changed. No longer are we to become the world leaders, but according to Roger Harrabin’s BBC report on the new carbon budgets this is a “world leading agreement …”. Leading who? Who is following?
Similarly motivated climate legislation has been contemplated in other countries including Australia, America and France, but none has been implemented. Today brings a report that the oh-so-green Canadian’s climate legislation has hit the buffers too.
Three years after the Climate Change Bill was enacted, Britain isn’t a world leader in this field, it is just way, way out on a very precarious limb all by itself.
Now is the time for critics of climate policy to start asking everywhere that they can get a hearing; “If we were supposed to be world leaders in 2008, why has absolutely no one followed us? If what we are doing makes sense, then surely out of the world’s approximately 200 nations, with all their diversity of self interest and ideals, at least one would have managed to enact the same kind of legislation by now? What is the Climate Change Act for, why do we need it, and what effect will it have on an economy that is already in a parlous state?”
How about starting with your MP? Or a letter to the local newspaper? Sooner or later, people are going to have to start thinking about this.
And there is a petition that you can sign here:
http://www.gopetition.com/petition/43914/sign.html
Spread the word!
PeterM Here is my prediction. CO2 has absolutely no influence on the direction the earth’s temperature moves. Yes it is a “green-house gas”, a very much misused and misunderstood term as our atmosphere is not a greenhouse. CO2 adds a small increment to the warming of the atmosphere most of which is accomplished by water vapour. And the reason I can say this is because most of the warming that could ever be attributed to CO2 under the earth’s atmospheric conditions is accomplished within the first 100ppm or so. The effect of increasing concentrations of CO2 follow a logarithmic curve which is well on its way to being flat by the time we get to 300ppm. We could quadruple the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere without any real demonstrable greenhouse effect compared to the first 100ppm.
No one has been able to provide even the merest shred of evidence that the feedback mechanism is real, and this casts doubt on the whole AGW greenhouse theory. After all this time and all the money you would think there was someone out there who was able to demonstrate this. Remember Peter, correlation is not causation, besides which we know that most of the correlation has been contrived and is the result of either poor science or deliberate misdirection.
So Peter, what temperature would it be without humans? I would say exactly the same as it is today, with perhaps some minor regional variations due to deforestation. You see I believe that CO2 concentration could be the same, higher or lower, no one can tell, but one thing is for sure, the puny amount we contribute as compared to the entire biosphere is not capable of the huge potential changes attributed to it. But we know those changes that are often spoken of are not actually happening are they. It must be galling to see the temperature flat lining; the sea level not accelerating in its 1 mm a year rise, and Polar bear populations not changing to name but a few so called AGW indicators.
Peter there are a host of other physical influences on our climate that have a great deal more plausibility than CO2 induced GW. These include the ocean oscillations, volcanic activity, gravity via orbital changes and the biggest of all the Sun, which has a number of mechanisms that can directly influence the climate. I rate all of these ahead of any effect that CO2 can have, and is why I say CO2 has no real influence beyond it initial direct warming effect caused by the first 100ppm or so.
PS Given the exceedingly poor rigor applied to climate science in general, and the temperature record in particular, I have no reason to be confident that the concentration of CO2 is higher now than in the immediate past, or that the current increase can be solely attribute to man. I don’t think for one second that this subject has been studied carefully at all, and that in the current environment it would be impossible to study it with any objectivity so we will remain ignorant.
So to keep this thread on track what are our politians doing leading the UK down the track to rack and ruin?
Peter G,
You write “I don’t think for one second….”
Don’t worry you’re a denier. It’s one of the advantages. You don’t have to :-)
PeterM evidence evidence evidence. There is none, and your answer is that of the class smartalec. How about adding something tangible to the debate. If my line of thought is wrong and CO2 is directly effecting the climate, then present to me your evidence. Don’t quote the IPCC as we have been over it time and again and it contains no direct evidence. And yes my post was a deliberate challenge. Are you up to it?