Climate change - most now dare to doubt

According to a poll in the Times, most people do not believe that human activity is responsible for climate change; "Only 41 per cent accept as an established scientific fact that global warming is taking place and is largely man-made."

Far from "still" questioning climate change, the number of doubters seems to be increasing. 

All those government awareness programmes don't seem to be working? 

Objective science and the flow of knowledge about it on the internet can prove inconvenient for ministers, eh?

Posted on 14 November 2009 by Douglas Carswell

Comments

Professor Richard Lindzen who, is one of the worlds best and most eminent Climate Scientist's and has over 200 peer reviewed papers has this to say :

http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-7715-Portland-Civil-Rights-Examiner~y2009m8d18-Carbon-Dioxide-irrelevant-in-climate-debate-says-MIT-Scientist

"Carbon Dioxide irrelevant in climate debate says MIT Scientist

"In a study sure to ruffle the feathers of the Global Warming cabal, Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT has published a paper which proves that IPCC models are overstating by 6 times, the relevance of CO2 in Earth's Atmosphere. Dr. Lindzen has found that heat is radiated out in to space at a far higher rate than any modeling system to date can account for."

Posted on 14 November 2009 10:46 by Yorkshireman

This "objective science" you claim shows climate change isn't happening - it's unsubstantiated echo chamber nonsense, and you should be ashamed of yourself for supporting it. I bet you think wifi causes cancer too.

Posted on 14 November 2009 10:56 by James

Those who think that it is safe to smoke dope and drive prob numbers up too . .

Sooo?

tonyjarrett_uk@hotmail.com

Posted on 14 November 2009 11:14 by Quietzapple

One of the things that brought down the USSR was that for about 2 decades (ie since the invasion of Czechoslovakia) it had lost its intellectual authority. Their media still pushed Marxist/Leninist slogans but people only paid lip service to them but nobody seriously believed or debated it, as they had done even to some extent under Stalin. I think we are seeing the same phenomenon over eco-fascism & big statism generally (I think eco-fascism is largely a cover story for big statism now rather than an independent movement).

Posted on 14 November 2009 11:48 by Neil Craig

I've seen graphs that show a cyclical variation in temperature and sure enough, we're on an upswing. The doom merchants predict that it will keep on rising, whereas if the cycle repeats, things will start cooling in ten years or so. Look back at history, where the Thames has frozen, and warmer periods before that over the last thousand years or so.

It is good that people are being encouraged to recycle and use less energy, because it does reduce waste and cost, but I'm yet to be convinced we're heading for meltdown.

Posted on 14 November 2009 11:49 by David Hough

"most people do not believe that human activity is responsible for climate change"

So? A great many people believed that the earth was flat, that the sun revolved around it, that women were made from the rib of a man. They were appalled, appalled that a man called Darwin might suggest we were descended from apes.

The science said otherwise. I'm broadly sympathetic to the incoming COnservative government but there is a very worrying strand of populist denialism in the Tories that this kind of blog post fuels.

That a majority of people polled don't understand or believe the science doesn't make the science wrong no matter how hard feet are stamped in blogs.

Posted on 14 November 2009 11:49 by Peter

This "objective science" you claim shows climate change is caused by human release of CO2 into the atmosphere - it's unsubstantiated echo chamber nonsense, and you should be ashamed of yourself for supporting it.

Posted on 14 November 2009 12:38 by AKM

Douglas, would you be so kind as to remove my email address from my previous post on this thread?

Thanks.

Posted on 14 November 2009 13:29 by Quietzapple

"human activity is responsible for climate change;"

I'll tell you one thing for sure. A country of 60million which is rapidly deindustrialising is not a significant contributor to anthropogenic global warming - even if such an effect were significant.

Posted on 14 November 2009 13:58 by APL

Even the doomsayers contradict each other whilst complaining that we don't understand their evidence.

Now research says that the oceans are far more impotant in CO2 absorbtion than previously thought.

However - let's stop cutting down the rainforests anyway.

Posted on 14 November 2009 14:49 by Disorganised1

"Oh no!" cried the shaman, "Look! the world is doomed!! Give me gold and I will make it not happen."

Remember the slogan, "Follow the money" (and the power). See who it's being taken from, and who it's going to, and that will tell you the story.

Climate change is a fraud.

Posted on 14 November 2009 16:12 by Roger Pearse

This "well-attested thesis" as The Times refers to it is nothing of the sort. If you go back to when MMGW (as we then use to call it) first kicked off there was actually very little science to support it. Basically all the alarmists had was the hockey stick and a loudmouthed failed US politician to shout about it. Since then we've really only had numerous computer models - which are not science in any form - and a growing, very select, incestuous band of useful idiots to shout about them. Papers cross referred to by the same small band; IPCC reports doctored by this same small group; ad hominem attacks on anyone who doesnt share their view etc - hardly the hallmarks of a "well-attested thesis".

We still keep getting told about the CO2 link despite global average temperatures flattening and falling over the last 12 years. Just because two lines on a graph head in the same direction doesnt mean there is any causal connection between them. This is a supposition not a proven piece of science. For another perfect example go and look at the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster website to see the graph of rising temperature vs the number of pirates in the world....frivolous, but it makes the point.

It's only in the last few years that any real, peer-reviewed, evidence based science has managed to fight its way through the alarmist's shout-fest. The vast bulk of this new work shows that the "facts" so beloved of the ecochondriacs are nothing of the sort. Only today a paper from India's leading climate scientitst shows that the Himalayan glaciers are growing not shrinking, the complete opposite of the position taken by the alarmists.

Unfortuanately, and not entirely against their will, our leaders have been completely hoodwinked by the Climate Change lobby (note the cynical change of name since the early 90's) and are following policies that have no basis in fact but, conveniently, do work towards increasing their control over us all, what we do and how we live our lives.

Where are the men of principle in our political system who will stand against this fraud?

Posted on 14 November 2009 17:04 by JohnRS

I have never for one moment thought that GM was AGM. However I have always been conscious that raw materials had a finite life, which was reducing ever rapidly with population growth. The SAGM-ists have caused an interest in conservation of everything, for the wrong reason but with the right result.Thank heaven for small mercies.

Posted on 14 November 2009 17:59 by Peter Melia

There has never been a proper debate about this as the propaganda will not stand up to scrutiny. Come on BBC hold one rather than just dictate.

Posted on 14 November 2009 18:10 by Johnny Norfolk

"That a majority of people polled don't understand or believe the science doesn't make the science wrong no matter how hard feet are stamped in blogs."

Einstein and Galileo were scientists who were often derided by their scientific peers becuase they went against the consensus and yet their arguments and research prevailed.

Science is not based on consensus or flawed models, its based on evidence that can be proved and verified. It only takes one scientist to be right, whichever side of the divide they are on. Quoting ratis of 70 / 30 or 60/40 in scientific terms has no meaning.

Posted on 14 November 2009 19:10 by Yorkshireman

"The staggering cost of crazed quangocrats

It would be much easier to admit that the belief in manmade global warming arose through a very unfortunate scientific blunder "

"Then there is Lord (Chris) Smith, former culture secretary, now chairman of the Advertising Standards Authority and of the Environment Agency, who looks forward to wind turbines "all over the countryside" and wants us all to be issued with our own "personal carbon allowances". We would each, in effect, have a CO2 ration book, to be used every time we pay for petrol, an electricity bill or an airline ticket. When we exceed our allowance we shall then have to buy carbon credits from those who don't drive cars or fly off on holiday to the sun."


Flawed and exaggerated science masquerading as environment concern is being used to advance the over taxing / underperforming British state.

Posted on 14 November 2009 19:19 by Yorkshireman

Most of us are not "qualified" to judge the science, however those who do have exposed the deceitful academics who have perpetrated fraudulent misuse of data, and sought to conceal their misuse of data. Edward Mann's original "hockeystick" graph of future temperature projection (- still displayed to innocent children in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich as "Their Future") has been thoroughly discredited. More recently Briffa of the Hadley Centre at East Anglia University was found to have selected just one tree ring out of ten trees - a six standard deviation outlier - as the basis of his modelling of future temperature. The "evidence" for temperature models are fraud, commited by deceitful academics hoping not to get found out. Vichy scientists. We now have twelve years without warming according to good data, yet Gordon, The Great Climate Scientist, tells us we have fifty days to save the planet at Copenhagen. CO2 is only 0.3% of our atmosphere and is innocent. Its the sun wot does it and we don't control it and can't tax it.

Posted on 14 November 2009 19:46 by AndrewSouthLondon

Douglas, please inform yourself by regularly reading the website http://wattsupwiththat.com
This always has sound science postings (some a little difficult for the non-scientific mind to absorb) but it's not a "yah-boo; sucks you're wrong" site.
There are usually daily postings most of a sceptical but well-informed nature. If you can find time to track back - particularly the recent one of Christopher Monckton totally demolishing all pro AGW arguments (about 30 mins.)-it will convince you that eventually this whole "project" will be seen as the biggest world-wide swindle ever perpetrated on its people.
In the meantime you might like to find out why (for one example) Prof. David Bellamy disappeared from BBC TV screens - could it be that he wouldn't sign up to the BBC's strict non-impartiality where climate change is concerned?

Posted on 14 November 2009 19:56 by Mike Spilligan

Actually the poll you link to says that only 23% believe that either the world is not warming or it is environmental propaganda to blame Man.

Perhaps you were misled by The Times (Murdoch publication) headline, Douglas?

Posted on 14 November 2009 21:26 by Quietzapple

Quietzapple - no, you can't claim the don't knows either.

Your argument is not won. If there are "deniers" it is the econutjobs who deny global warming doesn't exist.

Posted on 14 November 2009 22:14 by AndrewSouthLondon

Oh, and Bellamy was misled it seems by someone whose claims turned out to be false:

"Singer claimed to have obtained these figures from a 1989 article in the journal Science, but no such article exists.[4] Bellamy has since stated that his figures on glaciers were wrong, and announced in a letter to The Sunday Times that he had "decided to draw back from the debate on global warming".[5]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bellamy#Views_on_global_warming

At 76 he may be happy Not to be on TV.

He has varied his view since then, more than once.

He was a brilliant lecturer, a botanist.

Posted on 14 November 2009 23:10 by Quietzapple

Please see this important news report by the Finnish Broadcasting Co. YLE, TV1 (Nov 11th 2009), in regards to the global warming debate:

http://ohjelmat.yle.fi/mot/taman_viikon_mot/transcript_english

Posted on 15 November 2009 07:05 by Paul Z.

I think that the debate should be on, whatever is happening to the earth's climate today is man made or a natural re- occurrence needs to be seen. The topic should be open for discussion and not interpretation.

Posted on 15 November 2009 07:16 by nancy

Some regions around the world are facing draughts where water used to flow and some are facing unprecedented floods. The direct impact is on the agriculture based regions because they are getting affected socio-economically - mostly in the poorer countries. Is this all due to Volcanic eruptions or man-made industrial establishments and toxic wastes. The world's population has grown many a fold since the previous centuries and with it the consumption pattern has also grown. We are producing more food, electricity, cars, buildings than ever before. Yet we are still dependent on fossil fuels. This creating a huge imbalance and impacting the environment be it forests, trees, soil or water. Time to rethink and focus on curtailing man-made issues.

Posted on 15 November 2009 08:26 by nancy

Climate change is affected by all activity on earth, whether human or otherwise. The question is to what degree.

What we need to do is to manage finite resources (eg fossil fuels) to a point whereby we can leave them in the ground.

The biggest human effect on climate change is simply population growth. The Optimum Population Trust have shown that the UKs optimum population is about 27 million people, but we are increasing its size at a rate of knots.

And its more that dealing with the net migration. Its to do with no controls over birth rate (child tax credits and child benefit do not discourage having children) and a vastly improving standard of health creating an aging population.

The problem is that the only way to deal with a growing population is to increase the death rate or reduce the birth rate. Which would you choose? Both are political suicide, and neither party would take the bull by the horns. I would suggest the latter is clearly immoral, but the former possible by, say, removing any financial advantages for large families.

Posted on 15 November 2009 09:55 by David Filce

Interesting to see David Bellamy cited above - he also made it clear that the label "denier", much loved by the AGW lobby, is wholly inappropriate because that turns upon a refusal to accept settled fact. In his view the correct label is "heretic" - one who goes against orthodox opinion but who may still be proved right.

Repugnandi sunt citrulli: virides extra, ruberes intra.

Posted on 15 November 2009 10:19 by David Cooper

AGW ? There are three possibilities.

1. There is no AGW, it is all a conspiracy with thousands of scientists in the pockets of those who will benefit from the conspiracy.

2. We are causing AGW, but its effect is trivial and insignificant in our lifetimes. The science is right but the scale and timescales are wrong.

3. AGW is a fact and is happening as fast (or even faster) than projected, but science has not proven the case yet.

Which of these is most likely to be nearest the truth?

Well, it is a fact that we are putting a LOT of CO2 into the atmosphere, and it is a fact that CO2 is a powerful greenhouse gas. It is a fact that the greenhouse effect of our atmosphere traps the suns energy and keeps us warm (otherwise at night and in the shadows we would rapidly freeze as on the moon). And finally, it is a fact that large quantities of water and methane exist which could be released by a warming atmosphere in a 'Tipping Point' manner, creating a runaway warming well in excess of the projections based on CO2 alone.

Clearly and logically the first option is not true, so we are left with an effect the magnitude of which we have no previous experience of and no proven science to guide us.

Now consider this - you are driving towards a bridge - there are indications that the bridge might be out but as yet there is no proof.

Do you keep driving on the basis that the bridge has been there for the last 50 years and there is no PROOF that it is out? or do you slow up and approach with caution so that you can take effective evasive action as the situation becomes clearer. Remember, that if the bridge is out, just the weight of your car might be enough to tip the rest of it and you into the swirling waters.

There is a sensible logic that we are having an effect and that that effect could be very dangerous for us. Isn't it wise to proceed with caution to ensure that we can take effective precautions before it is too late?

The world might have a highly effective negative feedback system in reserve, or it might have a (for us)catastrophic positive feedback system waiting to be triggered. Me? I tend to think some intelligent 'slowing up' would be the wise action while we take time to see where the science and the world takes us. After all, if we were wrong, we can always speed up again... but if the bridge IS out...

Posted on 15 November 2009 11:27 by Derek Smith

Quietzapple - You've not read the articles properly. A total of 55% either 'believe that the link is not yet proved', 'say that it is environmentalist propaganda to blame man' or 'say that the world is not warming'.

That definitely bears out Douglas' statement that 'most now dare to doubt' the government's line on climate change.

Posted on 15 November 2009 11:32 by Tim Wallace

"Limitations on Anthropogenic Global Warming"

Dt Leonard Weinstein, ScD (NASA)

http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/05/19/limitations-on-anthropogenic-global-warming

"The magnetic field of the Earth has changed a lot over geological times. There were periods of weakening and then reversal occurring about every 200,000 years until about 780,000 years ago. At the present time, the field is again weakening. If the field weakens too much, the Earth's magnetosphere would not block cosmic rays and Solar ions as well, and this could greatly affect cloud structure and thus weather. The Solar radiation and magnetic storms could also profoundly affect power transmission and electronics.

Preparing for the possibility of an impending ice age along with the possible consequences of a reduction in Earth's magnetic field are real concerns. Concern with relatively small effects of possible anthropogenic caused global warming is a misplaced distraction, and will probably lead to the public losing confidence in scientists, and could weaken the support needed when real problems occur."

Posted on 15 November 2009 14:03 by Yorkshireman

2008 saw what NASA called the Sun's "blankest year" where 266 of the year's 366 days, there were no sunspots. Sunspot counts for 2009 have been very low, too. This all begs the question: does solar activity have a long-term effect here on Earth? Times of depressed solar activity correspond with times of global cold. From 1645 to 1715, few if any sunspots were seen and Western Europe entered a virtual deep-freeze known as the Little Ice Age. Times of increased solar activity have corresponded with global warming. The 12th and 13th centuries, when the Sun was active, European climate was quite mild. Experts predict that the current solar cycle will peak in 2013 with a below-average number of sunspots. The Sun should remain calm for at least another year. Of course, all this disruption is caused by the lighter-than-air carbon dioxide America has produced in the past few decades. These light gases rise to the sun and disrupt the magnetic causes for sunspots, altering the averages of sunspot activity. The effects on the under developed world is extreme, causing wars, famines and revolutions which disturb the compassionate dictatorships and the order they provide. It must stop! America must be shut down by the Obama Administration, beginning with elimination of the middle class and all its outrageous demands for goods and services.

Posted on 15 November 2009 17:39 by Clay Barham

Monday, 9 November 2009

"The Truth About Arctic and Greenland Ice - by Dr Leonard Weinstein, ScD" (NASA)

http://climatecooling.blogspot.com/2009/11/truth-about-arctic-and-greenland-ice-by.html

"In this paper, former NASA Senior Research Scientist Leonard Weinstein, ScD uses the melting of Arctic and Greenlandish ice to show how CO2 can not cause catastrophic melting in the future. In fact, both areas are well within the norm of natural variation."

Posted on 15 November 2009 19:39 by Yorkshireman

If one can stand back from these squabbles the only thing that matters is that 1/ the earths resources are finite 2/ human population and resource use are rising exponentially. 3/ The worlds resources are not distributed evenly across humanity. he human race is obviously soon to outgrow its environment with the usual natural consequences (dire to us but normal to nature)

Posted on 16 November 2009 08:08 by Chris Southall

Mr Carswell,

As Policy and Communications Director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science, can I express my shock to find a Member of Parliament so publicly parading his ignorance of climate chnage.

I can assure you that while the UK public may be confused about the causes of climate change, scientists are not. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and increasing its concentration in the atmosphere should cause the Earth to warm. The levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have increased by more than a third since industrialisation. The Earth is getting warmer. All these facts are undeniable. The uncertainties are over the amount of greenhouse gases we will continue to pump into the atmosphere, how much the Earth will warm as a result, and just how big the associated impacts on the climate will be.

Therefore, I suggest that you accept your responsibility as a Member of Parliament by firstly ensuring that you are properly informed about this issue (say by seeking a tutorial from the Met Office or the Royal Society), and secondly by resolving to help your constituents to understand what needs to be done. Better to do that than to continue to promote political denial and complacency through your blog.

Posted on 16 November 2009 08:32 by Bob Ward

@ Bob Ward

What a complete load of anti scientific, marxist on message drivel. No scientist , none , ever thinks that science is settled.

Greenhouse gases being present in the atmosphere would be pretty important don't you think? As without them the planet wouldn't be inhabitable.

Bob as a member of the wealth creating class and a payer of substantial amount of tax can I express my shock that our money is wasted paying complete charlatans like you when it could be being spent on people who need and deserve our help.

The Green movement is populated by two groups of people. Ex CND, Marxist/communist agitators who have hijacked the Environment agenda AND big politico/business who are making billions of dollars from this ponsi scam. Strange bedfellows indeed.

Which camp are you in Bob?

Posted on 16 November 2009 11:02 by libertarian

@Bob Ward

I have seldom read such arrogance!

Are your 'beliefs' promulgated by the size of your paypacket?

Posted on 16 November 2009 11:03 by Pete

What a wonderful post from "Bob" Ward. Bubbling with the self-importance so typical of a quangocrat. And from such a cutting-edge scientific institution as the "Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science" no less!

"Bob Ward joined the Grantham Research Institute in November 2008 from Risk Management Solutions, where he was Director of Public Policy. He worked at the Royal Society, the UK national academy of science, for eight years until October 2006, where his responsibilities included leading the media relations team. He has also worked as a freelance science writer and journalist.

Bob has a first degree in geology and an unfinished PhD thesis on palaeopiezometry. He is a member of the executive committees of the Association of British Science Writers and the World Conference of Science Journalists 2009, and is a member of the board of the UK's Science Media Centre."

So he has a Bachelor's in Geology (somewhat outranked by Prof. Plimer, methinks) and is basically a meejah manipulator. Looking at the blurb on the Institute, it is headed by "Sir" Nicholas Stern and appears to be, as its parent's title suggests, concerned entirely with the economic impacts assuming that AGW is a fact. He therefore has nothing useful to say about whether of not it is.

The old lies about all scientists being in no doubt about the reality of AGW are trotted out, ignoring the likes of the 450 peer-reviewed papers just listed on Wattsupwiththat. In fact, there is a very small but noisy clique of computer modellers making all the running with the mainstream media and politicians who can see the advantages to them in claiming that "We are all doomed unless you give us all your money". For a couple of real scientists, i.e. those who work from observations via testable hypotheses and real data, try Prof. Richard Lindzen (MIT) and Roger A. Pielke, Sr. (U Colorado) among many others that I can't be bothered to list.

As for his "undeniable facts", like all such they must be seen in the round. CO2 is certainly a "greenhouse" gas, but the atmosphere doesn't work like a greenhouse. Yes, according to AGW theory increasing concentration should cause temperatures to rise. How embarrassing, then, that it hasn't. During the period 1940-1970 temperatures fell, yet CO2 kept increasing, and ever-improving records from ice cores etc. show that CO2 concentration lags temperature rise by about 800 years. I'm glad he noticed that the Earth was getting warmer - nice, isn't it? Does he know the meaning of the Latin term "Non sequitur"? As for his uncertainties, I should bet the answers are infinitesimal to nil.

As for his last paragraph, I must endorse his encouragement to get better informed, but skip the RS, many of whose members have resigned over its blatant abandonment of science (as described above) and the Met Office, whose members deliberately withhold data in flat contradiction of normal scientific usage.

Keep it up, Douglas, but be aware of Prof. Plimer's limitations.

Posted on 16 November 2009 11:23 by Disputin

To those posters asking "so what" to only 41% believing in AGW. So you abandon the very costly measures involved. This is called democracy.

PS - I have a physics Ph.D.

Posted on 29 July 2010 09:04 by EJT

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