Mar 09 2007
The global warming “swindle”
It was good to see a group of scientists go over the top and ask some of the questions that should be asked about global warming theory in yesterday’s documentary. Things are not entirely as the “consensus” supposes. A recent news item has told us visits to Mars by space probes detect “global” warming there, but have not yet discovered the 4 x 4 s causing it, leading people to ask if the sun is currently hotting up affecting all of the solar system. We do need to know more about cloud formation, water vapour, sun flares and spots and volcanic activity to be sure what is causing the phase of warming that started in 1975 after 35 years of cooling.
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John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
But please can we be “greener and cleaner” for the right motives. The problem of water supply in south-east England is due to population growth not a drying climate. (We were being told global warming would be causing wetter winters and flooding by the government only a few years ago).
As for sea defences lets wait and see. The IPCC has drastically cut its forecast down to a mere 17″ over the next century and this will probably be lowered again.
And finally the “higher storm and tidal surges” show me the evidence? This is only conjecture.
Without the insanity and fear of global warming the world was doing quite nicely. Growth is becoming less dependent of energy. Cities and rivers are cleaner. Forests are regrowing. More and more people are escaping poverty. Even the polar bears are thriving.
The best thing the next Tory government can do for the environment is get the UK out of the CAP and CFP.
What about the Severn barrier then? Would Tory government build the Severn Barrier?
I think you’re understating the case. Lord Lawson has used the word “fraud” in connection with the Stern Report. In fact, it is perfectly plain from the evidence that if there is a human component to global warming, nobody has yet been able to measure it.
JR: “So let’s be greener and cleaner, but let’s stop pretending mankind is in control of the natural world,”
Thatcher (God bless her) was right on this issue as many such, lets use technology to solve polution problems. I remember the huge squabble over catalytic converters another groundless argument caused by the greenies.
For the benefit of mankind we actually ought to be colonizing space. It is highly dangerous to be so reliant on a single home planet.
You bet, the minute we (mankind, no hope the british government would have such vision) build a base on the Moon, the greenoids will be whinging about the ecological disaster of disturbing moon dust that ‘has layn untouched for 10 billion years”.
The argument ‘conserve more consume less’ runs at the heart of prudent, thrifty conservatism. The Global Warming,Carbon Footprint fundamentalists are merely the Greenham Common misfits of today’s society.
Spot on, Mr Redwood. While understanding your irritation with the Today programme, without that mention I would not have known about your blog!
Global warming is a reality, but the evidence that it is due to human activity, whilst intuitively plausible, is far from proven. It is established that the oceans, which cover approximately two thirds of the planet, form a major carbon dioxide sink. Warm water holds less carbon dioxide (and other gases) than cool water thus global warming will inevitably lead to a rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide, NOT the other way around. All of the scientific data from the past (eg ice core data) confirm that rises in carbon dioxide followed, did not precede, elevations in temperature. One expects journalists and (most) politicians to be ignorant of basic science (from their records) but it is a mystery why so many scientists seem to have forgotten basic physics. Cynics, of course, know that funding for science is not a level playing field and the big money is indeed all on the side of human causation for global warming.
Since the screening of the channel 4 documentary why has there been no wavering or questioning of any parties policies ? Meanwhile all of the media hype still crashes on.
The Channel 4 documentary tried very hard to tackle its subject from a number of different angles and gave the impression of being well put together with good evidence. I am surprised therefore
not to have seen it villified by the CO2 supporters but perhaps they are preparing their reply. One thing puzzled me however and that is this: If the evidence for CO2 as a cause of warming is so weak, why is it that America has not produced publicly the alternative scenarios? The President now stands behind the CO2 theory and if ever there was a country that does not want CO2 to be the cause I would suggest that country is the USA.
I would recomend all who are interested in this subject to look at “The Skeptical Environmentalist” by Bjorn Lomborg - he seems to have a strong view on most envoronmental statistics.
I was delighted to hear you outed as skeptic on Today today, but hope your leader is more charitable to dissent than I suspect.
The ‘Swindle’ may not be 100% factually correct but then nor is Al Gore’s film which I understand is to be distributed to every state school in the land. If the scientific method has any meaning should not both be shown and discussed in our schools?
The link between the Martian climate and the Earths has been shown to be very loose, our orbits are elliptical, this means that at some points in time the Earth and Mars are closer to the sun and at others they are further away. Interestingly our elliptical orbit is not the same as that of Mars, as such simple observations that both climates are becoming increasingly hot can not simply be brought down to Carbon, there are other factors at work.
Simply put any climate scientist who says that they understand the climate in its entirety is either lying or misguided. The climate is immensely complex, but none the less it is easily to demonstrate that if one increases the carbon in the atmosphere (and other greenhouse gasses) then that atmosphere gets hotter. This is basic chemistry not complex climate science. It is relatively easy to see through ice boring, weather records etc that we have undergone a huge number of excessively hot winters and summers in the last 20 years.
Also climate change looks like it will result in warmer wetter winters (hence the flooding) and hotter drier summers (drought) so your simple assessment that agriculture will benefit is simply misguided and many indigenous plants will not be able to tolerate such new extremes.
Some comments on a few added so far:
John Redwood’s supposed benefits of “global” warming are interestingly local to the UK - will the rest of the world, particularly the developing countries, not be affected by increasing temperatures? Maybe not much of an issue so long as the SE of the UK doesn’t have to endure a hosepipe ban…
The Ch4 swindle
I agree entirely with Shaun (March 12 at 11.10) - “Since the screening of the channel 4 documentary why has there been no wavering or questioning of any parties policies?”. It’s as if the Channel 4 documentary never happened. Similarly, it is strange that America, having wavered for so long, is now behind the CO2 theory. You do have to wonder if there is some sort of conspiracy going on!
On a more positive note, there seem to be a lot of people who do not subscibe to the carbon emissions theory but my concern is that we are not being heard. The politicians have another agenda and will not be stopped, come what may. What can we do about this?
Many thanks for taking a rational line on this issue.
When I watched Al Gore’s film, I thought something wasn’t quite right about his graph illustrating the changes in global temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentration with time. Now I know from the Swindle documentary what it was. Rises in CO2 concentration follow and do not precede rises in global temperature. This one simple fact, to my mind, should lead sensible people to conclude that man made CO2 is most unlikely to be responsible for recent or future global warming.
It’s a shame that, from his recent suggestions to tax “frequent” flyers, David Cameron doesn’t appear to be amongst the sensible, but perhaps you can have a quiet word with him. When you do, you may care to remind him that most frequent flyers don’t do it for fun. We do it for sound business reasons and would not take kindly to a Conservative manifesto that, for no good reason, proposes measures that would push our costs up relative to those of our overseas competitors.
Dear Mr. Redwood,
It was only yesterday that I came across an article in the latest copy of CIWEM’s “Water & Environment Magazine” about the motivation of climate change sceptics. The article “Mad, Bad or Greedy?” was written by the Guardian’s Environmental Correspondent and climate change believer Paul Brown who, I suppose, makes a good living from the doom and gloom stories he publishes in this pseudo-scientific trade-rag for hobby environmentalists. It was along the same lines that you hear all too often: The non-believers in climate change are paid by the oil giants, the robust science behind climate modelling, blah, blah, blah… of course, without any scientific evidence for the “facts” presented.
Here are my comments on climate change:
Since earths existence, the climate has changed. A wonderful perspective on this has been written up in the Gaia Hypothesis by James Lovelock and I have no doubt that the development of man is contributing to this natural phenomenon - every complex system interacts with its environment.
I don’t want to go too deep into the science of climate change. Although I studied Environmental Engineering I am not qualified enough to comment on the system complexity of climate change and its contributing factors.
Many non-qualified “preachers” of climate change are not so shy to share their belief systems with others and, I suppose,that everyone is entitled to his/her opinon.
We are getting to the point now: This is about politics where everyone is entitled to speak out and form a majority. At the moment, by majority perception, there is a phenomenon of man-made climate change. Where does this perception come from though? Here is my explanation:
People must fear. During the cold war we feared the Warshaw Pact states and after the iron curtain came down there was nothing to fear about. Because of our need to fear, the environmentalist camp had the right agenda at hand: “We are all going to die from climate change and, ironically, it is again the human enemy who is creating it”.
Climate change brings people together; we have all these nice climate change meeting around the world, people get together and have something common to talk about (let’s talk about the wheather, Lads!). The first time, the world is united and stands firm against evil. The New World Order has manifested itself in the form of a brotherhood of man standing against the peril of its own demise. And when everything is just so beautiful and the world is united at its height of international solidarity in fear for its survival, the heretics come and spoil the show with a bit of scientific doubt. The most shocking is the hostility these critics and climate change sceptics have to face. There is no tolerance if one is to ask for scientific hypothesis testing of all these climate change models. The dictatorship of majority opinion does not allow for doubt. Even if climate change is a political issue based on majority belief systems, what happened to the principles of John Stuart Mills and the protection of individual rights? Are we facing an era of eco-faschism?
So how do our political systems benefit from all this? Well, it brings stability and control because of the fear factor. There is also a more subtle argument behind targetting CO2 as a policy. We, the industrial nations, currently maintain a heavy dependency of oil producing countries. Targeting CO2 means reducing our exposure to oil and gas producing countries and we are replicating the fuel efficiency drive we experienced during the oil crisis in the 1970s. It also helps to reduce relative demand and therefore helps to slow down price inflation for oil and gas. there are many other factors, of course; E.g. giving giving Mr. Stern and Mr. P. Brown a job to continue writing reports and articles)
One a more funny side: Why are we so obsessed with CO2 if water vapour is a much bigger contributor to climate change? Should we not prohibit people from boiling the kettle twice (to ensure the water actually boiled) before making a cup of tea? Or, perhaps we should prevent people from having hot showers as well?
I hope there is an era of eco-enlightenment arising where arguments are based on reason rather than dogma.
Yours sincerely!
I’m personally undecided about the the current question on global warming, i.e. “Are we responsible for a higher rise than we would expect to be occuring naturally?” but if it turns out that the rise in temperature is mostly natural, I’d hate for people to restart treating the planet like a throw-away commodity after taking some personal responsibility towards it.
@apl (March 9th 2007 @ 6.22pm) Are you serious?! Do you really think we should be looking at colonising space as a solution?! If we ever do colonise space, you can guarantee that it will be only the richest who can afford to do it. For the forseeable future, we have one planet and that’s it.
Liam,
that’s a good question. My feeling is that, yes, almost certainly mankind has increased the global temperature by some amount, simply because he has been busily emitting C02.
But we should keep it in perspective. Recently I saw some figures on mankind’s emissions and the total amounts of CO2 that nature is constantly cycling through the atmosphere. Believe me, the human contribution is a drop in the ocean, almost literally. Remember also that CO2 constitutes a very small fraction of one percent of the atmosphere, and that of the several greenhouse gases in the atmosphere CO2 is the weakest (water vapour is the strongest, I believe).
It is completely bizarre that CO2 is portrayed as some kind of pollutant. In fact it is the life blood of the global eco-system. The food production capacity of the world is at least 30 percent higher due to the extra CO2 (some food crops are up to 70 percent more productive). Huge areas (e.g. Siberia) may well become available for food production in a warmer climate. And, of course, far more people are killed by cold weather than by hot weather. I don’t like the cold. I don’t like heat waves, either, but I regard the milder winters that we enjoy as a huge benefit (though I do miss the snow!)
A few decades ago those same climate scientists were warning us of an impending ice age. I think global warming is far preferable!
Chris
[...] The Conservatives‘ record in office wasn’t probably that much better- at least one of their MP’s, John “Vulcan” Redwood, tells it like it is! [...]
John,
Excellent blog! Keep up the good work.
John Redwood’s supposed benefits of “global” warming are interestingly local to the UK - will the rest of the world, particularly the developing countries, not be affected by increasing temperatures? Maybe not much of an issue so long as the SE of the UK doesn’t have to endure a hosepipe ban…
The Ch4 swindle
Liam P: “Are you serious?! Do you really think we should be looking at colonising space as a solution?!
Yep. not as a solution to Global warming, but as an insurance policy to natural disasters. There is evidence in the earths crust of volcanic erruptions that impacted entire continents. Yellowstone park in North America is on top of a massive volcanic caldera. The Deccan traps are such in India. Resilience in population can only be obtained if humans are not exclusively reliant on the Earth.
Liam P: “If we ever do colonise space, you can guarantee that it will be only the richest who can afford to do it.”
Well, that was how air travel started out, the prevelidge of the few. Now you can travel across the European continent for less that
Sir,
I am pleased that someone appears to be taking a more balanced view, though disapointed that I only found out about it due to an almost throw-away reference to your blog site on the Today programme. I am tired of reminding people that 200 years ago the Thames froze over with such regularity every winter that fairs were held on it, but 2,000 years ago the Romans grew grapes as far north as Yorkshire and 20,000 years ago the North Yorks Moors were covered with 40 feet of ice. I suspect that there were few people around then warning primitive man to eat his mammoth cold because all those fires were likely to make the ice sheet melt. Partly, I hope, because there was someone reminding them that only 2 million years before that East Anglia was a semi-tropical swamp.
On the question of tackling cheap flights by making them more expensive I would be more convinced if there were a realistic alternative. It may not have occurred to your illustrious leader that we live on an island with a pretty miserable weather pattern. I admit that the reason for both the weather and our island status may be due to non-man-made global warming, but if he can explain to me how I can get me, the wife, three kids and auntie Doris away to a couple of weeks in the sun in an equally cost-effective and timely manner by alternative means I would be pleased to hear it. Similarly, it may seem madness to take a flight to London from the North East of England when it is only 250 miles away and overland, but so long as I can get there and back quicker and for a third of the price I will take the cheap flight option. The solution is not to make the flight more expensive. That would be just as idiotic as making the flight slower. The answer is, surely, to make the alternative of real travel easier, cheaper and quicker - the carrot rather than the stick, because the stick beats the people who can least afford to be hit.
I am in favour of a cleaner and better country, but one with lower not higher taxes where people have the incentive to work and the capacity to enjoy its rewards. No matter what the politician says, “green” taxes on flights will not be used to support green issues - I have no doubt that the initial reason for road tax was roads but it is used neither for that nor for funding any decent alternative means of transport, so far as I can tell.
Yours faithfully,
Gerry Stapleton
“we do need to know more about cloud formation, water vapour, sun flares and spots and volcanic activity to be sure what is causing the phase of warming that started in 1975 after 35 years of cooling.”
that’s a good idea. why don’t we set up a big, international panel of scientists to assess all the evidence and report back to you and all of the other politicians in the world. oh wait, they already did. http://www.ipcc.ch
Sheesh, and I always thought you were one of the brighter MPs
John refers to the earth warming up and the disputed cause of that (whether man made or not) but he doesn’t seem to grasp the concept that the earth warming by even a few degrees a century will present us with great social and physical challenges irrespective of the cause. What is undeniable is that the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere does increase the temperature of the planet and that controlling the amount of CO2 released is our most effective way to influence the temperature.
I wonder whether John faced with an asteroid with potential to hit the planet would put his hands up and say “It wasn’t caused by us” and take no action.
There is a scientific debate concerning the causes of global warming but this is no excuse for inaction on how to limit the effect!
As to the nationalistic part of the argument that warming benefits us: Who believes that rapid climate change will improve the prospects of the poorest (or any) nations on this earth. Well us being nationalists we don’t really care; but consider the immigration possibilities, the water wars in the equatorial nations, even the lack of snow in the alps (skiing anyone?). Does anyone believe we are truly an economic island (John Donne saw the writing on the wall a long time ago)
I certainly believe in the questioning of scientific theories (falsification) but I must say following this article I would seriously consider whether voting for John Redwood is a good idea (saying that, I believe David Cameron is proposing a lot of good things so one must consider the balance…)
Hugh
I’m quite surprised by how willing many of you seem be to believe what you see on television! I don’t mean to be rude, but how many of you are actually *qualified* to critically asses the claims made on that program?
Just to respond one point raised by Derek Wight and Tim above: Derek asserts
“it is a mystery why so many scientists seem to have forgotten basic physics.”
They haven’t.
Tim says
“This one simple fact, to my mind, should lead sensible people to conclude that man made CO2 is most unlikely to be responsible for recent or future global warming.”
Simple? You seem to have missed the obvious possibility that increased CO2 in the atmosphere causes warming , *and* that warming causes increases in CO2 in the atmosphere!
ljw
Dear Mr Redwood
I am grateful to Radio 4 for introducing me to your blog. I am so pleased to find a politician who questions the reasons for global warming in the face of such a strong but misguided argument pushing manmade CO2 emmissions as the cause. We all want to live in a greener environment but want to do it for the right reasons not the wrong ones. What can we do to make our voices heard ????
Best Regards
Suzanne Foster
Suzanne F says:
“I am so pleased to find a politician who questions the reasons for global warming in the face of such a strong but misguided argument pushing manmade CO2 emmissions as the cause”
I’d like to understand the evidence for it being a “strong but misguided argument”?
Gerry S says:
“I am tired of reminding people that 200 years ago the Thames froze over with such regularity every winter that fairs were held on it, but 2,000 years ago the Romans grew grapes as far north as Yorkshire and 20,000 years ago the North Yorks Moors were covered with 40 feet of ice.”
Yes, we all know that the earth has undergone climate change in the past but I’m not sure what the relevance is to this arguement. If it can be proven that I did not commit crime A, does it also follow that I did not commit crime B? (not my analolgy but I like it!)
The undisputed fact, even by staunch sceptics I believe, is that atmosperic CO2 is increasing due to human activity. This has been measured unlike some of the long past indicators of climate change you mention that are inferred by proxy measurements of ice cores, tree rings etc plus less scientific ones such as the proliferation of vineyards (BTW, the Domesday book has about 40 or so vineyards listed across Southern England - today there are estimated to be about 400…)
The undisputed fact is that increasing CO2 will lead to increased global temperatures.
By how much will temperature increase? Now that is the question.
Several contributors have said that it is undisputed that CO2 warms the climate.
It is also undisputed that higher in the atmosphere it cools it. Convection as well as radiative transfer also takes place. Because of its latent heat water plays the major role. It is also undisputed that a small change in clouds is more significant than a major change in CO2. It is also undisputed that low level cloud has declined as temperatures have increased. No practising scientist claims we know all the answers (at least when they publish their work). There is no evidence, as opposed to hypothesis that CO2 is significant in the climate. Models incidentally are just expensively programmed hypotheses
The fact is that those convinced that CO2 is the culprit want to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. Solar variation is claimed to be too small both now and in the Milankovitch cycle yet is assumed to be enough to end an ice age. The ice cores show an 800-year lag between temperature and CO2 as we change from glacial to interglacial, yet they now claim the same feedback process can cause a similar change in less than 100 years. The climate is a chaotic coupled system and everything we have seen in the last 40 years could be (not is) entirely natural.
Forget the science. Evidence of past thriving settlements high on Dartmoor and in Orkneys as well as Greenland leave no room to doubt that it has been warmer with less CO2. Never mind grapes in England they were abundant in Scandinavia!
If we are to base our judgements on science let it be open where anyone can see all the data and all the computer code and none of it is concealed as was the case for the now discredited ‘hockey stick’ or the still secret and unaudited CRU surface temperature record or the many highly tuned climate models for which we the taxpayers pick up the bills but has no access.
I am willing to be proved wrong by the data but not by what well paid zealots say the data say. Show us the data and the computer programmes and let’s see if it adds up! Don’t say it is all published, because it is not.
Andy: “The undisputed fact is that increasing CO2 will lead to increased global temperatures.”
Well, it is clearly not ‘undisputed’ any longer, and we are not even sure it is a ‘fact’. On top of which, you may have cause and effect reversed. It is more likely that the water cycle is the primary driver of climate on the planet, how often do you see falling C02 in either its liquid or solid form? And there is not a single ocean of liquid CO2 anywhere on the planet.
Even the devious greenies realise it might be too difficult to persuade folk to ban water. H2O in its gaseous form is several times more plentiful than C02, yet you choose the least common of the two compounds to hang your theory on.
Furthermore, CO2 is not a polutant. It is the oxidised form of Carbon, (C) which is the building block of 99.8% of life on the planet.
The atmosphere is made up of; Carbon Dioxide 0.038%, Water vapour 1% - 4%, Free Oxygen 20.9%, Nitrogen most of the rest.
DavidH says:
“Forget the science. Evidence of past thriving settlements high on Dartmoor and in Orkneys as well as Greenland leave no room to doubt that it has been warmer with less CO2. Never mind grapes in England they were abundant in Scandinavia!”
No room for doubt? None at all. Then, enlighten us, just how warm was it? Forgetting the science of course. Use only a bunch of old stones, some anecdotal reports of vinyards and your in depth knowledge of how people hundred of years ago used temperature to decide where to live.
Suzanne asks in despair “What can we do to make our voices heard?” She is very much not alone. There is an incredible depth of frustration at the way that zealots are forcing their opinions on ‘ordinary folk’ not just on the issue of global warming but on so many other issues - health and safety, taxation, social welfare, crime and punishment to mention just a few. Suzanne is right; although we hear complaints time and time again about the way the world is being run those complaints remain isolated - there is no one place where people can group together to give their combined views the substance that they deserve. There are forums and blogs that pick up an issue for a while but nowhere where informed serious debate can examine issues in depth and measure the strength of opinion on those issues. So concerned have I been about this that I have set up a web site (ConsideredOpinion.co.uk) to meet just that need. Suzanne - and others - let’s hear from you.
Richard Gregg, when you say
“There is an incredible depth of frustration at the way that zealots are forcing their opinions on
replying to ljw
On the contrary my concern over the hysteria about man made global warming is based on the scientific evidence and not a politically motivated knee-jerk reaction. There is ample scientific evidence of changes in global temperature, both warming and cooling, in the past but there is little real evidence of man made emmissions making any significant contribution. The sad thing is that we are only hearing one side of the argument! It is actually action on man-made global warming that appears to be entirely politically motivated. Those concerned about a cleaner environment seem to have hi-jacked this argument to more forcefully make their point. There are many people, myself included, who are concerned about a cleaner environment but I do not believe that the cause will be helped by using spurious “facts” that will be discredited by any sober analyis of the evidence. It sounds as if LJW is the “fundamental christian”, not me.
Suzanne,
Sorry - I didn’t mean to sound so rude in the previous post; I’ll try to respond more carefully this time!
Let me start by saying I’m not a raging lefty environmentalist. I really just see this as a scientific issue. You say “there is little real evidence of man made emmissions making any significant contribution”, but this view is in contradiction to most published peer-reviewed research.
Let me assume for a moment (and do correct if I’m wrong) that you are not a research scientist actively investigating world climate, then I have to ask, from where do you derive your opinion on climate change, and how do you assess the reliability of that source? (I am not asking rhetorically - I really would like to know!)
For your information, I’ll answer my own question: I am a research scientist, although in an area totally unrelated to climate science. My opinion is based on IPCC reports - i.e. the mainstream view among climate scientists.
ljw
apl: Furthermore, CO2 is not a polutant. It is the oxidised form of Carbon, (C) which is the building block of 99.8% of life on the planet.
This 0.2% of life on the planet which is not carbon-based would probably disagree with you!
Why is the scientific community silent about the middle ages warm period which was warmer than today and why are volcanic emmissions ignored as a contributing factor. Changing undersea activity in the ‘ring of fire’ is more likely the cause of global warming and cooling.
“In control” is not the right expression if you try to be accurate. It is an exaggeration deliberately used to disaccredit a position.
The right term would be “affect”. Of course, if you use it, your phrase is quite useless. Because I suppose you are not saying that the human being does not affect the natural world, are you?
Just the same, I am sure there are little scientists claiming they understand “everything” about anything. So claiming they do is, again, a rethoric trick. Not very scientific, in my opinion.
Global warming / cooling or climate change is no more than a scare tactic to swindle us all out of so called green tax. The poorest will be hit hardest which is the worst part about it.
Now that the solar activity of 2005 and 2006 has ended its cycle we are back to normal, mostly cool, wet and windy in the UK, Summer included.
Clean air is a good thing to encourage but with no cap on population in the debate and none of these so called green taxes being used towards solar energy and public transport etc, the logical conclusion is that scare taxes are being used to swindle all of us into paying ever more tax, period.