This is the first paragraph of a message from David Cameron posted on the Conservative Party website. Apparently it was also emailed to members:
In nine days time, representatives from 192 countries will meet in Copenhagen for the UN Conference on climate change. This summit is of historic importance. It is an opportunity for the world to take bold action to deal with the real danger of climate change.
http://blog.conservatives.com/index.php/2009/11/27/the-copenhagen-summit-is-of-historic-importance/
The rest is fairly predictable, but it is worth reading in full.
When I first looked at this page on Sunday evening there were just over two hundred comments, most presumably from the Conservative faithful – otherwise known as their core vote. As I ran my eye over them, I searched in vain for any that might support the leaders take on climate change. I did eventually find a few.
Most seemed to be written more in sorrow than in anger, explaining that the authors simply did not buy into their leader’s climate change alarmism. Some were from lifetime Tory voters who warned that they would be voting UKIP at the coming election because of the global warming issue. Most tried to explain that there was a perfectly rational alternative to that of the party leadership’s views on climate change, and that the debate is certainly is not over. The recently leaked emails from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, which seem to indicate a most unhealthy groupthink at the heart of the climate science establishment, are mentioned everywhere.
Presumably there will be people at the Conservative Party’s head office who monitor such comments for useful feedback on what voters really think. I certainly hope so.
In a recent interview on Newsnight, Al Gore smugly told an unusually restrained Jeremy Paxman that the UK was lucky because all the main political parties agreed about climate change. He was wrong. Democracy only succeeds when government policies are vigorously questioned and opposed by those who may replace them at the next election.
Britain is not lucky to have political unanimity on climate change because this only further indicates, if more evidence was needed after the MP’s expenses scandal, that our parliamentarians have lost touch with the electorate. In other word, once again they just don’t get it.
This is from an opinion piece by Anne McElvoy in the Evening Standard:
“Don’t you think it’s scary,” a minister said to me yesterday, “that 55 per cent of people don’t believe global warming is man-made?”
Well no I don’t, I think it is a thoroughly benign and very healthy situation, except that it means that the main political parties are out-of-step with more than half the electorate. Only UKIP and the BNP represent their views on this subject, and that is certainly scary when there’s an election just round the corner.
I actually drafted this post on Monday morning and then forgot about it until a few minutes ago when I saw the headlines in tomorrow’s Independent.
Tony I added my comments to Cameron’s blog. Like you I couldn’t find any posts that supported his stance. I wasn’t at all surprised that so many are warning him they will vote UKIP as he is currently doing a Blair, and doing everything in his own image instead of how the people he represents see it. The man has to be stupid if doesn’t change direction.
2 months ago I would have bet my house on the Tories walking the next election, but I think Cameron has been sucked in by the press writing about him becoming the next PM and he is currently foolishly complacent. It will not make comfortable reading for him today or yesterday.
I don’t think he understands any better than Gordon Brown that the MP’s expenses row was not just about the money or actual expenses, but was a vent for us to express our total dissatisfaction over the entire political process. He needs to understand that Climategate is a serious problem for him, and is by-passing the MSM as they are also part of the electorate’s total dissatisfaction, and have played their own part in our current malaise and by not holding the Government to account with critical examination of policy.
By the way is there a list of MP’s email addresses anywhere?
Has anyone come across an on-the-record comment on Climategate by a front bencher of any of the main parties yet?
Peter:
I did finally find one or two supportive contributions towards the bottom of the list which now stands at about 250 comments.
Unless one or other of the main parties takes a stand on Climategate, on either side of the argument, I’m afraid that it will have the same effect on the electorate as the expenses scandal. It will simply turn them off politics and politicians. Given that all three parties have important policy agendas wedded to AGW alarmism, it’s very hard to know what any of them could say. The least breath of criticism of climate scientists will undermine their own proposals, while overwhelming evidence suggests that defending the CRU team would be flying in the face of the facts.
This is not a good state of affairs, but I suspect that the situation could change dramatically once Copenhagen is out of the way. It will be particularly interesting to see how nuanced Conservative reaction to the outcome is.
Great work TonyN. You and Bishop Hill are leading the way for us lay-scientists and otherwise openminded individuals.
A few questions: if Climategate has changed the balance in the global warming debate, is this not time to challenge supporters of AGW to a mediated internet debate?
Does the blogosphere and real-time video conferencing not allow us to get together people on both sides of the equation and have a debate plus arbiter hosted on the internet page/platform?
If it’s possible, it’s a gauntlet worth throwing down and is bound to generate publicity. Granted it may be both positive and negative but I think it was PT Barnham that originally said “say what you want, just spell my name right.”
The comment: are there five words that do more damage to the AGW consensus than “POST HOC ERGO PROPTER HOC“?
I think that it is much too early try and anticipate what impact Climategate will have in the long-term.
So far as a debate is concerned, there never seems to be any problem finding sceptics who would like to debate with warmists, but finding warmists who will even speak to sceptics is difficult.
Write an email to your MP with this clever website
Saw a good video of Peter Lilley today – interview on a Russian TV prog (?)
Jack Hughes (#4); just to say – excellent website!
If Kevin Rudd decides to have an early election in Australia, it will of course be a de facto referendum on AGW. That might focus your Tory policy goons somewhat.
2 months ago Rudd would have been confident of winning a general election, and possibly with an increased majority. Climategate if nothing else has engaged people who otherwise were counted as pro AGW simply by not actively dissenting. Things may be different now. If everyone is forced to choose they may just choose differently.
Jack Hughes #6:
I’d be very grateful if you would post a link to that video.
Ayrdale;
I know that you are in the Antipodes, but not whereabouts. Any first hand commentary on political developments down under will be particularly welcome during the next few weeks. I think that you are right; European politicians are going to be watching your part of the world very, very carefully.
The days of climate change providing risk free politics are well and truly over. I’ve just been watching our Ed Miliband, our energy and climate change secretary, giving a presentation to school children live. Whatever else you may say about him he is usually confident, alert and very mush on top of what he is saying. Just now he looked shattered – as though he had been up all night and was about to fall apart.
A few months ago I would have said that attacks on the scientific consensus were politically motivated arguments covered with a pseudo-scientific veneer. That veneer is getting thinner by the day. The UK Tory party look very likely to follow the Australian Liberals and US Republicans into the sceptics camp. Those sensible right of centre politicians like Malcolm Turnbull and David Cameron will have tough decisions to make.
The battle lines are becoming clearer by the day. Science and progressive political attitudes on one side. Big business, their vested interests, bigotry and ignorance on the other. Bring it on!
Peter M
I think you have some things back to front here. Any changes are going to be a victory for democracy, a victory for the small person. It will be the start of the process of making the MSM irrelevant until they re-invent themselves.
Hopefully Politicians will finally start to listen to their constituents and working for what they want rather than reading fanciful liberal elite book of etiquette and trying to apply it without reference to anything real.
David Cameron is currently doing exactly what Tony Blair did, and the Tory faithful are not happy with this. On the environment Cameron is completely confused with his constituent’s legitimate desire to care for the environment and Climate Change that has hijacked almost all environmental policy. He has relied on others who have not been practically qualified to think things through and as a result has had the tap on the shoulder from the Grandee’s. Just remember, what are the Tories better at than any other Party
Peter Geany,
“A victory for democracy, a victory for the small person.” ?
Sensible politicians, and there are still many in the Tory party, have to listen to the best scientific advice available and act on it. With all due respect to the Tory faithfull, who are probably more aligned to the policies of UKIP than their own party, they aren’t, with very few exceptions, able to give it.
If I thought I could vote climate change away, I’d vote Tory, (or Liberal in Australia) too.
Peter M:
There have been some shattering surprises in the last couple of weeks, but this ….. from you?
What are you imbibing this afternoon and can you send me some?
TonyN,
Its natural that there should be a range of political opinions in any democracy. At one time I did think that the political right would have advocated a market approach, cap and trade, to encourage CO2 reduction, but that the left would have favoured more direct methods.
There are pros and cons to each approach and either could be considered equally sensible.
However,it hasn’t worked out like that. The left has accepted the idea of cap and trade and the right have stuck their heads in the sands which is not sensible at all.
I’m not sure where this leaves people like Malcolm Turnbull. He really doesn’t belong in the same party as dimwits like Wilson Tuckey and I expect that events in the UK Tory party could follow a similar course and leave David Cameron with the same problem. Maybe even before the next election?
Here we go – Peter Lilley interview on RT (Russia Today)
TonyN, you wrote in part in your 10:
Last night I had difficulty sleeping, so I put-on the BBC World Service radio, which for me usually guarantees sleep fairly quickly. I recollect that an expert correspondent, name unregistered in my half-sleep state, came on but then alerted me into more consciousness when he implied that the main focus of attention in the Climategate Emails was the word ‘trick’. He then went into a painfully long-drawn-out mumble bumble erh uhm, I mean, if I can explain uhm, that is to say, to avoid misunderstanding, blah blah blah, and moreover however, erh uhm what I mean is, clearing throat: (words to the effect): ‘Trick’ means a mathematical treatment which elaborates the evidence more clearly. (something like that)
What was rather interesting was not so much what my half-sleep recollection was of what he may have said, but the almost painful to me difficulty he had in enunciating it.
tt has raised a good point.
If your position is always “there is no problem so we don’t need a solution” then you will never be involved in the choice or implementation of the “solution” or “solutions”.
This leaves the field open to quacks and simpletons and the gullible.
I wonder if David Mackay (author of Without Hot Air ) is a secret skeptic but has decided to join the church so he can keep tabs on the vicar and try to steer the congregation in a sensible direction.
Maybe draw a domestic analogy.
Your wife has decided to buy another useless gadget – say an electric jam maker. You know how this will play out: used every day for a week then a gap of 2 weeks then used twice over 6 months, then it goes into the attic with all the other gadgets.
If you let her go alone to buy it the outcome will be dreadful – she will buy the betamax version with all kinds of useless features.
Or do you play along and help her to buy the cheapest model or even one on approval for 2 years so you can get a refund ?
Peter M, #11:
See here, last few paras. You are really pushing it if you try to make that case now.
Peter M, #15
But they are using the market approach and I’m sure that they are very grateful to you for the kind of advocacy that has made this possible. See previous link again.
Peter G #12
That is a very, very good point. The MSM are far behind the blogosphere with the Climategate story and it is unlikely that the public will ignore the fact.
Jack Hughes, #16
Thanks for the link. I hadn’t seen Lilley in action before, nor did I know that he trained as a physicist. No wonder he doesn’t appear on UK television; much too well informed, rational and in command of the arguments. With that level of expertise he really would stir things up.
Now if Lilley was shadowing our present secretary of state at the Department of Energy and Climate Change we might have a meaningful debate about current policy.
Bob, #17
One of the features of the MSM that I’ve noticed in the last few days is how little the journalist and presenters know about the content of the emails. Given the extent and complexity of the raw material I suppose that is hardly surprising. I hope that during the next few weeks that will change as more and more accessible commentaries by specialists appear in the press, spoon-feeding the content to them.
TonyN,
Can you give any examples of who you consider to be the “bad guys” of industrial capitalism who you feel may have seen a business opportunity in ‘green’ technology? I seem to remember you describing yourself as Classical Liberal so I’m surprised that you’d have a problem with manufacturers of solar panels, wind turbines or even nuclear power plants. They would rank much higher in the public’s estimation than the crooks of the financial sector for instance.
I’d have to have a bit of a think who I would consider the worst of the bad guys who have a vested interest in discrediting the IPCC and mainstream science generally, but how about this one?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Aramco
Publicly owned too! How do you feel about being on the same side as the Saudi kleptocracy?
Peter M
I haven’t described anyone as ‘bad guys’ nor is that how I see Richard Lambert and his delegation lobbying Gordon Brown. It just amuses me when I come across people spouting mantras like:
Haven’t you noticed that the game has changed?
I certainly haven’t ever described myself as a ‘classical liberal’; I haven’t got a clue what the term means.
I’m not on the side of the Saudi’s, although just at the moment they may be under the impression that they are on my side.
TonyN,
Yes, you’re right. The term “classical liberal” was used in an article written in July of this year, not by you as I’d thought, but by John A. If you didn’t know its meaning you might have asked him. It means someone of the persusion of Hayek, or his disciple Mrs Thatcher, rather than Al Gore.
You can’t just dismiss concerns about the influence of Saudi Arabia as part of a mantra. I was wrong to write that Aramco, the world’s most profitable company, are publicly owned. I should have said ‘state owned’ but we all know who owns the state of Saudi Arabia and it isn’t the public!
There may have been too much of a focus on the activities of companies like Exxonmobil. I must say when I heard some Saudi prince complaining of “bad science” and “climategate” on the radio the other day I had an “Ah Ah” moment. Why didn’t I think of that before?
A couple of new twists in the Conservatives winding green road to election victory:
DAVID CAMERON FACES GREEN REBELLION FROM TORY MPS
Daily Express
TORY CANDIDATES SENT ON GREEN ‘RE-EDUCATION’ COURSE
Financial Times (via the Global Warming Policy Foundation)
I looks as though the road could get a bit bumpy too. One thing seems certain, if the Conservatives come to power next year the days of political consensus in the UK on AGW will be over.
TonyN
There’s a fascinating debate to be had on the effect of the current global warming catastrophe on British politics and media coverage, but its unfortunately happening on about four different threads here at Harmless Sky. (Guenier on the NS thread, Peter Geany on the Hockeystick thread, and others). Anything you can do to focus it?
I recently had a go at Brute for what I considered a somewhat bizarre comment, and Manacker took me to mean that all politics should be off-topic. Not my idea at all. This blog seems to me an ideal platform for discussing the political implications of the current cultural revolution (I don’t think that’s too strong a term) with the Benny Peiser/Lord Lawson initiative linked to by Peter Geany on the Hockeystick thread being a useful jumping off point. I’ve often felt the rough and tumble of blog discussions reproduces the long-lost art of political all-in wrestling, of the kind you see in Hogarth’s illustrations of 18th century election campaigns. The point wouldn’t be to score party political points, but to get some heat into the discussion and exercise our prediction muscles. Why should Warmists have all the best (i.e. worst) future scenarios?