The myth of man-made global warming exposed?

I put a question mark at the end, because I still can’t quite believe that virtually the entire political establishment and (state-funded) scientific community have got it quite so wrong.

But that, according to Professor Ian Plimer’s book – Heaven and Earth - is precisely what’s happened.

Ever open-minded, I intend to read the good Professor’s book to find out more. Before you send an angry email calling me a “climate change denier”, I suggest you do too.

One thing I do know for certain; Current policy means that some of my poorest constituents have to pay much higher energy bills than they’d otherwise. The higher bills are being used to subsidise big corporations to build lots of large wind turbines around Clacton and elsewhere. Big profit margins. Guaranteed revenue streams. All very convenient for some large firms. 

This amounts to a regressive redistribution of wealth from poor pensioners to big business – all in the name of environmentalism. 

Besides, if man-made climate change really is such a problem, why aren’t we building more nuclear power stations?    

Posted on 19 July 2009 by Douglas Carswell

Comments

Suggest you also read "The Chilling Stars" Henrik Svensmark and Nigel Calder. And take a look at Weatherwatch - an accurate weather forecasting service done by watching the activity of the sun run by Piers Corbyn. I managed to get Piers to give evidence before the elect committee writing the Climate Change Bill but the MPs opted to continue the subterfuge for tax reasons.
If global warming/cliamte change is anything more than a tax raisers myth how come I'm wearing a vest in July?

Posted on 19 July 2009 10:51 by Sue Doughty

Spot on Douglas. Spot on about economics. Spot on about the changes required to our democratic system. Just need for you to show similar open-mindedness about the need for foreign intervention and the reasons for going to war.

Posted on 19 July 2009 10:52 by Thomas

DC: "I still can't believe [snip] entire political establishment and (state-funded) scientific community have got it quite so wrong."

There you have it. It is a symbiotic relationship between the political class and their pet scientists who, happen to be, by and large on the government payroll.

Which is to say it is a parasitic relationship to the rest of the economy.

Wind turbines, are a ludicrous waste of money. I can only assume that those folk who think wind energy can provide the continuous high quality power learned their energy from the Teletubbies.

In addition to the wind turbines we will need to draw power from a conventional source of power generation which may be coal, oil or nuclear. We may as well cut out the wind generation completely and go straight for the conventional power generation plant NOW.

Posted on 19 July 2009 10:58 by APL

I ordered Heaven and Earth over 4 weeks ago. It has sold so well in Australia, my copy has still not arrived. Everytime they reprint it, it walks off the shelves. It has been a massive hit down here. When it comes to putting your money where your mouth is, there are deniers in abundance.

Posted on 19 July 2009 11:02 by boy on a bike

Douglas,

Nigel Calder and Piers Corbyn have both addressed Ipswich CPF and were excellent. Scientists are not the problem because they are divided. Politicians are the problem - some actually believe the AGW rubbish, some pretend to and a few good ones resist the Gadarene rush.

Stephen.

Posted on 19 July 2009 11:03 by Super Blue

No, not exposed. Have a read of this:

http://tinyurl.com/cjqpn2

Posted on 19 July 2009 11:30 by Mark Fulford

This book has received pretty poor reviews for some of the scientific evidence it deploys. Certainly should be read with a pinch of salt, it appears the author has chosen sensationalism over rigourous scientific analysis.

Posted on 19 July 2009 11:56 by Bertie Stanford

The Manhattan Declaration lists prominent scientists who do not believe in man made global warming:

http://www.climatescienceinternational.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=37&Itemid=1

The attached link gives access to videos and presentations by many scientists at the recent Heartland Climate Sceptics Conference. In particular it is well worth watching Dr John Theon, the former Head of NASA's Weather & Climate programme who sharply criticises alarmists like James Hansen (Al Gores key scientist/alarmist).

http://www.heartland.org/events/NewYork09/proceedings.html

Posted on 19 July 2009 12:13 by Yorkshireman

simple ... localised power generation i.e. de-centralisation of the grid.

How?

Geo-thermal power. Southampton has had it for years, and the new Ordnance Survey HQ will be supplying its own power. Its not difficult and the rubbish spouted by the guardian in its top 10 ways to save the earth or some b***ocks is completely wrong on geo thermal .. its not done via 'natural water seepage through porus layers of rock' you just drill a hole in the ground, pump the water through and presto hi pressure steam to drive a turbine generator. This was standard Common Enterence exam stuff 20yrs ago and pretty much the cheapes renewable out there.

Posted on 19 July 2009 12:27 by Toby

Professor Richard Lindzen is also another eminent climate sceptic and his impressive credentials show :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lindzen

The following article by Lindzen is well worth reading

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-440869/Global-warming-bogus-religion-age.html

Also Dr Leonard Weinstein, for 35 years a NASA scientist is also a sceptic of AGW :

http://climatedepot.com/a/488/NASA-Scientist-Declares-Climate-Dissent-Scientific-analysis-must-conclude-the-basic-theory-wrong

There is no scientific consensus and science is not based on consensus - (Galileo, Darwin, Einstein went against "consensus")

Posted on 19 July 2009 12:48 by Yorkshireman

Delighted to see you speaking out on what is almost a forbidden subject! This 'crusade' against CO2 has so many implications for our future way of life, - higher energy bills for all, a less competitive industrial base and the desecration of our countryside.

It is based on unproven theories that our current way of life is causing the planet to overheat . Many computer models have been written that predict the Earth will steadily warm if we don't limit CO2 but they are computer models that illustrate theories, not a PROVEN facts. Little account seems to have been given to external solar influences and no attempts to match the models to known climatic variations in the last 10s of thousands of years.

Posted on 19 July 2009 13:00 by m wood

"Before you send an angry email calling me a "climate change denier","

As I guessed before opening comments, the only anger is at the alarmist politicians. I have noticed this for a couple of years now in the online section of newspapers (the only bits not heavily edited) where comment runs from largely sceptical to overwhelmingly so, even in the likes of the Grauniad where alarmists should be shoulder to shoulder.

I think the whole warming scam is revealing itself as a political/media version of the Emperor's Clothes. I hope it will discredit the entire eco-fascist movement (there are environmentalists who genuinely care but the most are Luddites flying a false flag & they, being organised, run all the organisations). I think it is clear Cameron's big mistake was to direct himself & the party to being Green & cuddly rather than to running the economy properly. In the end its always the "economy stupid" & the idea that we can cut fire (ie CO2) by 80% without destroying the economy is clearly clinicaly insane & thus unlikely to fly outside Westminster.

Posted on 19 July 2009 13:45 by Neil Craig

http://libertarianalliance.wordpress.com/2009/01/31/the-amazing-story-behind-the-global-warming-scam/

Also worth a read. How the architects of the AGW scam came up with the idea to extract more funding.

Posted on 19 July 2009 14:34 by John Walters

Whether it affects the poor adversely or not Douglas has no bearing on whether the global warming theory is fact or fiction. I suspect your motives are other than simply seeking the truth!

Posted on 19 July 2009 14:59 by Ben

I can also thoroughly recommend Lord Monckton. He came to talk at the Union, and managed to be very convincing, even if he was deprived of a projector to show us various slides, graphs and whatknot.

Posted on 19 July 2009 15:48 by Henry

Its also worth keeping an eye on http://wattsupwiththat.com/. I must admit that there is a lot of it that I can't understand, but that which I do seems to be honest and aboveboard.
Note also that we should no longer refer to the phenomenon as "Global warming", but "Climate Change", which of course covers the proponents all ways and saves them having to explain why, last year, Buenos Aires had snow for the first time in 89 years.
Personally, I believe that there may be Climate Change taking place, but if so, it is part of the ongoing changes that have taken place over the last few hundred thousand years and is not man made.

Posted on 19 July 2009 17:53 by Brian E.

All governments everywhere and at all times have two great ambitions: to increase taxes and diminish liberties. To accomplish these ends, modern governments employ bogeymen. The Great Terrorist Threat is the liberty-destroying bogeyman, and Global Warming the tax-increasing bogeyman. Which is not to say that there are neither terrorists nor global warming, merely that both phenomena are open to abuse by governments, and are so abused.

Posted on 19 July 2009 18:03 by eeyore

Douglas,
The same mass political hypnosis was displayed over the totally ludicrous Y2K millenium bug scam.

It is climate realism that we are into, how anyone can be expected to be taken seriously when they claim and as Obama has done declare C02 a toxic pollutant is beyond me. Without C02 no life on planet Earth.

Read also Chris Booker and Richard North's Scared to Death a history of political Scare Stories and scams.

Or read Prof S Feldman and Prof V Marks Global Warming and Other Bo**ocks

Other mass political hysteria that has caused untold human damage

Banning of DDT causing millions of unnecessary deaths due to malaria, banning of GM food ( our food has always been modified) has caused widespread malnutrition in the developing world. Anti Nuclear power has caused us to be on the verge of an energy crisis with costs of energy at extortionate levels. MMR etc etc

Posted on 19 July 2009 19:06 by paul

Well done on putting your head above the parapet. Any student of history knows that climate has varied widely in this country - the Romans were able to grow grape vines successfully, as were the monks in the 11th and 12th centuries (I think that's right, though unlike climate change "scientists" I could be slightly wrong on my dates). Add to that the "mini ice ages" we have suffered over the last two thousand years, none of these can be the fault of industrialisation.

It is the computer models that are the problem - the Met Office cannot forecast the weather with sufficient accuracy for most of us a week in advance, yet they want us to believe they know what the climate is going to be in 2050 (and where's the hot summer we were promised?). They make a lot of assumptions which are not scientific, and often ignore lessons from weather patterns in the past.

I believe in saving energy, developing renewables (especially small scale, home-based) as these are generally good things as oil diminishes. But I really don't subscribe to the panic on global warming - ice cover has actually grown this year, the glaciers on the Alps are also growing, for example, confounding the global warmists.

Posted on 19 July 2009 19:34 by Ruth

Douglas,

May I point you to a post I made on 10th June:

http://witteringsfromwitney.blogspot.com/2009/06/global-warming-missing-science.html

Plimer has some delightful quotes and the video of his interview is well worth watching!

Posted on 19 July 2009 19:37 by WitteringsfromWitney

Jolly good (what took you so long?)
For an excellent daily dripfeed none better in my view than Anthony Watts at wattsupwiththat.com
Some of the science is beyond the layman, but by no means all. His commenters are good, too.
Cheers, Douglas. Keep digging, you're not in a hole.

Posted on 19 July 2009 20:17 by RobinL

BrianE got there before me, not up before I posted -

Posted on 19 July 2009 20:46 by RobinL

"Well done on putting your head above the parapet."

Hmmm. A right-wing politician suggests on his right-leaning personal blog that man-made global warming may be a myth, to universal applause and praise from his readers.

Posted on 19 July 2009 21:22 by Steve

If CO2 is the problem (which it aint) then every hedgerow, kerbside and back garden throughout the western world should have tree-planting non-stop for the next generation.
This climate-change nonsense is very convenient for the pro-nuclear lobby (spit on them) and also the carbon-credit vultures, who both want as much disinformation and panic as they can get.
Can't trust our scientists, can't trust our financiers, can't trust our politicians.
And you wonder why religious fundamentalism has taken such a hold in anti-western cultures.

The real issue for the next 20 years is food and water for the 7 billion of us.

Posted on 19 July 2009 21:46 by the pro from dover

Good post. The fact is we need a guaranteed 24/7 supply otherwise hospital patients will die, banking systems collapse and huge amounts of food will spoil. Wind turbines will never be able to provide this.

Much like the deluded fools that think they can predict stock market movements, such pronouncements on what the weather will be doing 10, 20, 50 years from now are the height of arrogance.

But I would not expect anything less from our political elites. An Incredibly ignorant bunch of people.

Posted on 19 July 2009 21:49 by Andy

"I still can't quite believe that virtually the entire political establishment and (state-funded) scientific community have got it quite so wrong"

The reason you can't believe that is that (quite reasonably, this is not to criticise you) you don't understand the way the issue developed, and the way science is funded.

A few people, not necessarily climate specialists, in key positions were persuaded by some rather loose science that human activity was causing climate change. These people had control of peer-review journals. Apocalyptic visions are easy to sell, and many managing editors are left-wing; anti-industrial conclusions are popular.

A scientist has to publish papers in to receive future funding. If their papers are not accepted by a peer-reviewed journals then they will not receive funding. See a connection?

The situation then goes really political. Funding for climate study that does not assume man-made global warming is impossible to find. Everyone knows about global warming, and any paper that even mentions it, even if actually completely irrelevant, is more likely to be published. Any project that connects its subject to global warming is more likely to get funding. Therefore all over scientists are looking for connections to global warming. The human brain is a pattern-recognition device, and if you look for it you will find it.

Posted on 19 July 2009 21:51 by Richard

Anyone with an open mind should look at
http://climatedebatedaily.com/

Posted on 19 July 2009 22:01 by Tony Fortnam

The more the science behind the climate change religion is looked at the moor questions there are.

I don't believe a word of it and if petrol wasn't a quid a litre I would leave the car running on the drive just to annoy the evangelists

Posted on 19 July 2009 22:07 by D. Nier

Ian Plimmers book is so far only available in hardback at £25. That should ensure as few as possible people ever read it. Where are the paperback houses in the UK? Hiding behind their profits for publishing lies for the last ten years. "Inconvenient Truth" anyone? Michael Moores drivel?

So where is there a paperback publisher to put out Plimmers book at a price that makes it a WH Smiths Best Seller shelf space?

Wake up! Environmental concern, yes, Recycling, yes, Global Warming - lies!

Posted on 19 July 2009 22:22 by AndrewSouthLondon

Man made global warming is the biggest scam ever perpetrated on a gullible public.

Want to know how it started/ Read all about Canadian socialist/UN apparatchik Maurice Strong.

Evidence for it? There is none. Facts show declining temps over last 10 years. Coinciding with declining sun activity.

The North pole? Ice is at is normal level of melt, nothing unusual. CURRENTS can affect ice melt not just world temps. Ice is growing at the South Pole.

Scientists are prostituting themselves and there is nothing like a consensus.
A lead IPCC scientist says there is so much of a natural variability in weather it makes it difficult to come to a scientifically valid conclusion that global warming is man made --- "It well may be, but we're not scientifically there yet."

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/17/ipcc-lead-author-on-global-warming-conclusions-were-not-scientifically-there-yet/#more-9404

Posted on 19 July 2009 22:55 by TrevorsDen

In the beginning, Douglas, it was called AGW=Anthropogenic Global Warming, which meant, simply Man-Made Global Warming. The theory is that combustion of hydrocarbon fuels, as in power stations, coal, oil, gas, result in the production of CO2.Then someone noticed that CO2 was associated with global warming, and there you have it, CO2 is the cause.
What was not noticed was the fact that for thousands of years, this planet of ours had been experiencing temperature fluctuations, none of which can have been caused by the production of CO2, since we have only been around for such a short period of time.
And then it was noticed that indeed CO2 fluctuations occurred, but after the global warming.
CO2 rise followed temperature rise, not the other way.
And then it was noticed that sunspot variations coincided with global temperature variations.
At this moment in time there are no sunspots.
However the AGW argument took the world of your colleagues by storm, and they accepted the CO2 argument at face value, thus Carbon Trading.
Notice that smarter AGW-ists have taken note of the change in scientific emphasis, and, increasingly, the "A" is being dispensed with, so that now any form of global warming is taken to be man-made.
But it isn't.
CO2 controls are not necessary, in fact the classical way engineers measured the efficiency of combustion was by measuring the CO2 produced, the higher the CO2 (about 14% being the theoretical maximum) the more efficient the combustion, therefore less fuel was burnt.
Burning less fuel is is good, high CO2 is bad. The two are incompatible.
However it is very important for everyone on the planet, because of population growth. Right now we are increasing at a rate of one new small town per day. That is about 50,000 tiny naked people, all righteously demanding to be fed and kept warm and dry etc. Day after day after day. Raw materials of every kind, cannot be replenished, once gone, that is it. No fuel, no aluminium, no copper, no diamonds, you name it.
So we have to conserve that which we have, for our grandchildren.
And we have to maximise our use of what we have access to now, to try and ensure that our children have at least a chance.
So you, as a politician, face two problems, the first not to waste what we have on the false altar of AGM-ism and the second, how to arrange things so that our children and grandchildren at least have a sporting chance.

Posted on 19 July 2009 23:18 by Peter Melia

Sustainability is the key whatever you chose to believe of global warming/climate change etc. In many ways it detracts from the sustainability discussion because of the complexity of weather systems and the inherent uncertainty. It is possible to hide behind this argument which may be correct by the way. Sustainability is a more compelling argument for changing the way we live.

Posted on 20 July 2009 08:07 by skingers

Good to hear you querying this Douglas.

I don't claim to have any understanding of the science. I do know that the earth's climate goes too and fro -- that in Charles II reign the Thames regularly froze.

But I can recognise a band-wagon when I see one. I can recognise intimidation of opposition when I see it ("Climate change denier! Lynch him!" etc). I can see all the usual suspects for left-wing causes lined up to exploit all the rest of us.

Risky to disagree, establishment firmly in favour, costs all us money, excuse for more power for them and less liberty for us...

Not very likely to be true. Just too convenient for words.

Posted on 20 July 2009 09:26 by Roger Pearse

Speak of the devil, my copy of Heaven and Earth arrived in the mail today. I shall have to pull up an armchair and get stuck in.

Posted on 20 July 2009 10:05 by boy on a bike

Open-minded?

Come now, man, you're a right wing Tory. Your whole post oozes that you'll come back, say you've read the book, and call the scientific consensus bullies, intimidators and also add in that it'll whack the poor. And hey, wasn't Thatcherism all about living for now and sod it if the world's 10 degrees hotter in a century's time when us here are all dead.

You can be read like, well, a book.

Posted on 20 July 2009 11:17 by Parasite

Sue Doughty,

Piers Corbyn, along with being an excellent MP, his brother is a weather scientist type person, and has excellent inside knowledge of the climate change people. I'm not a socialist by any stretch of the imagination but I have read all of Tony Benn's diaries because I like the bloke. One of the entries that sticks out is this from 2002:

"Piers Corbyn, Jeremy's brother, who is a weather expert, told me he is sceptical about global warming, and promised to send me his analysis. I was told to be wary of environmentalists because they're the ones pushing nuclear power, which I thought was interesting."

Kind Regards

Posted on 20 July 2009 12:23 by Stephen Palfreyman

Nigel lawsons book is also a good read on the matter, 'An Appeal to Reason'.

Posted on 20 July 2009 13:20 by Thomas Byrne

" I still can't quite believe that virtually the entire political establishment and (state-funded) scientific community have got it quite so wrong" DC - beleive it. I've a PhD in physics - lots of computational/modelling work over the years. Looking into what has gone on here, the claims are simply not credible. In fact, in many ways they fail to qualify as science.

Put yourself in the position of a Russian during the days of Lysenkoism. Could all of these government experts have been wrong ?

Posted on 20 July 2009 15:04 by A.T.

Has my previous comment been censored ?

Posted on 20 July 2009 15:11 by Freddy

It's like a free pass to raise more tax money as far as govts are concerned. That's why they have no wish to question it.

Anything that gets people paying more money without complaint is a major winner for companies and govts alike.

It's only the ordinary people that lose...

Posted on 20 July 2009 17:14 by Elliot Kane

Many governments are investing in many more Nuclear power stations (UK, for example) - just one example of where the venerable nitwit uses a simple lie to bolster his peculiar logic.

As far as I can see, the big corporate Energy players win whatever happens, climate change or no climate change.

Posted on 21 July 2009 10:36 by Joseph

Please view my Website titled: Global Warming: Man or Myth - The Science of Climate Change at: http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/global_warming/index.html

I have tried to describe the latest climate change research in a relatively easy-to-read format. Humans are causing the warming - the evidence is quite robust.

Posted on 31 July 2009 02:34 by Scott A. Mandia

Make A Comment