Nov 27 2009
The politics of global warming
In Australia the Opposition party has just plunged itself into a huge split, with senior resignations against the Leader’s policy of backing an emissions trading scheme announced by the government. Some of the dissenters do not agree with the science on which global warming theory is based, others object to the extra costs, taxes and regulations in the government’s response to the issue.
It would be helpful if in the UK there was a proper enquiry into what has been happening to the evidence and its interpretation at East Anglia. Where public money is being spent on scientific research we need to be assured the standards and independence of the research are worthy of public support.
On the other side of the world the first day of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Conference is being turned over into a sherpa session for the Copenhagen summit seeking a world agreement on carbon reductions. It is likely to bring out the sharp divide between lower income countries wishing to grow faster, and higher income countries wishing to defend their livign standards. The one group will say they need to be able to grow their carbon outputs as their economies grow, just as the current advanced countries did in previous years. The advanced countries will say there are limits to how much they can cut their carbon outputs without damaging their competitiveness and their living standards. Western people like their cars and high speed trains, their central heating and air conditioning.
The USA and China have come up with their own compromise on these issues. The USA has offered 17% off its 2005 levels by 2020. Their recent recession and slower growth from here will help that, as would milder winters. China has proposed a bigger cut in the additional emissions its growth will generate, which will still mean China makes a very large overall increase in its output of carbon given the fast growth that most still forecast for its economy.
My view is straightforward. I think pursuing alternative energy sources to oil and gas makes sense in a world of limited fossil fuels. Increasing energy efficiency and reducing harmful emissions to the atmosphere and to the water systems is good as we prefer to live with clean air and pollution free rivers and lakes. A good test on whether a green proposal makes sense or not is to ask does it make the process cheaper or cleaner? Good green strategies save you money and make the world a better place.
The only effective carbon reduction strategy the UK has followed in the last twenty years was electricity privatisation. That led to an end to new coal power stations and their replacement by much more fuel efficient combined cycle gas power stations. I was pleased to be one of the main architects of that policy, as it cut prices as well as cutting carbon, and was designed to give customers and business a better deal. It is amusing to see Labour dining out on that policy, constantly reminding us we have hit our Kyoto targets without remembering the policy that enabled us to do so, which they opposed at the time.
70 Responses to “The politics of global warming”
John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
Quite right too. Irrespective of whether global warming is real or not using finite resources more sparingly while reducing pollution is absolutely the thing to be doing.
About time somone on the political front challenged the idea of Climate Change, the so called science behind it, what if anything causes it, and came up with some possible solutions (if any are needed) which do not involve just taxing everyone and everything.
Good on the Aussies, about time we had some REAL discussion here too, and put an end to the constant one sided BBC Mantra about global warming.
“My view is straightforward. I think pursuing alternative energy sources to oil and gas makes sense in a world of limited fossil fuels. Increasing energy efficiency and reducing harmful emissions to the atmosphere and to the water systems is good as we prefer to live with clean air and pollution free rivers and lakes.”
I agree, and believe that far to many have become sidetracked by a debate about the science, rather than the pressing need to clean up our act. Every time a member of the public insulates his home, or turns down his heating, a little less vital fossil fuel is used. A small saving to our balance of payments results, and a little more time to find an alternative is granted. In addition our air is a little less polluted.
“That led to an end to new coal power stations and their replacement by much more fuel efficient combined cycle gas power stations. I was pleased to be one of the main architects of that policy, as it cut prices as well as cutting carbon, and was designed to give customers and business a better deal.”
An excellent example of the kind of win win, that can result from innovating to reduce emissions etc. I recall, as you do, that Labour were against this at the time, and being in opposition is not a valid excuse when it comes to policies like this one.
Indeed Labour act for the most part like an opposition even when in power.
“Some of the dissenters do not agree with the science on which global warming theory is based, others object to the extra costs, taxes and regulations in the government’s response to the issue.”
Indeed many in this party, do not agree with the science. I am sceptical myself, but still favour a really big push to reduce CO2 because it will result in a more efficient use of finite resources and hopefully give us the time to install the alternatives that we will need to keep the lights burning. Improving efficiency is certainly a Conservative tradition. A good example of how we can all win, is right in front of you as we speak.
The computer was once a very large machine that used a massive amount of power and required a specially engineered micro-climate to function. Now we have computers many times more powerful in almost every home, and they consume a fraction of the energy, and are way faster as well.
As for the Science, I will say this again, I think an incoming Conservative Government, should require the RMCS, to look into the matter and produce an unbiased report within a single term in office. We really could do with such a report to reassure the sceptics, that we are open-minded at least. Even the most sceptical, can I hope see the very many common sense reasons for acting quickly, to reduce waste and pollution. As it currently stands we do not know with 100% certainty, what is driving climate change, but we should assume that humanity is at least partially to blame until proven otherwise, IMHO of course.
Eotvos Reply:
November 28th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
It would be a lot quicker and relevant if we had an (word left out) investigation into the (researchers ed) at the CRU who have been taking taxpayers money – $25M – and (producing questionable results -ed).
AGW is a complete myth. Mann , Gore , Jones , Trenbeth, Briffa (set out this theory which the blogger disagrees with -ed). Four of these individuals are the core of the UN IPCC and Gore was their frontman. This month on American TV Gore claimed that the temperature 2 kms below our feet was 2 – 3 million degrees – the surface of the sun is cooler than that. (Personal attacks on Gore and Obama left out-ed)
Nobody wants pollution but CO2 is not a pollutant. All life on Earth depends on it. It is also not able to absorb a lot of IR – this is what the quantum means in quantum mechanics. In fact it only absorbs at three frequencies in the IR band and at ambient temperatures in our atmosphere cannot interact with the 300 micron band – although that causes a vibrational transition in H2O, interestingly (0.4 – 4% of our atmosphere compared to 0.013% CO2).
The calculation produced by Svente Arrhenius in 1896, on the back of a fag packet, that the planet is 33C warmer than it should be is (wrong-ed). It does not take account of all heat transfer processes like conduction and convection. See Gerhard and Tscheuschner, contemporary mathematical physicists, (some straightforward calculus but mostly qualitative) – I’m sorry I can’t be bothered posting hyperlinks tonight.
‘YouTube’ has any number of videos debunking this nonsense.
Ross J Warren Reply:
November 29th, 2009 at 6:39 pm
“Nobody wants pollution but CO2 is not a pollutant.”
In fact not only is Co2 not a pollutant, it is vital gas that underpins our complex ecology. I understand this and personal I feel that the Americans may be just a tad responsible to the distortion. Methane is a more insidious danger and it appears from the Ice Core record that this gas has been high in other Climate change events.
The US cattle trade being a very large contributor to the increase in this gas in the atmosphere. My concern is that we raise the temperature to far at the seabed, resulting in a very large release of further Methane liberated from the Hydrate reserve, a considerable amount of which exists. Of course if we could find a way to remove the Methane hydrate we could burn it. Methane is in fact an excellent fuel which when properly burnt becomes many times less damaging than if released directly. We should of course be looking at ways to trap and burn Methane
Ross J Warren Reply:
November 29th, 2009 at 6:51 pm
“this is what the quantum means in quantum mechanics.”
Quantum in its most basic terms is the packets of energy that are produced by atomic structures. A quanta being the smallest step change or packet that can be produced. Quantum mechanics is essentially logical, but can and does become less reliable when attempting to understand large amounts of gas, we may be better served by chaos theory when trying to pin down such massive effects. In other words Quantum can be appealed to but justify the maths.
I still don’t believe in this “Man Made Climate Change” rubbish. There’s too much bad science, and too many very vocal people with axes to grind.
If the (UK) politicians in power spent as much time understanding and resolving the economic issues of the day rather then posturing about “carbon” issues, the country would be a better place. Obviously I’m assuming that if they spend the time saved to aquire a proper understanding (rather than a prejudiced social meddlers perspective) they would come up with a proper solution….
Efficiency in power generation is the ideal, and the move away from coal was, at the time, the most suitable solution. By definition, increased efficiency means that you require less fuel for the same output, which also reduces pollution (and “carbon emissions”, for those who care). Longer term, the emphasis should be moved from gas turbine generators on to nuclear, if only because we are buying so much gas from abroad. There should also be a place for (UK mined) coal-based electricity generation too, assuming the acid rain and particulate polution issues can be resolved.
I do not find your last paragraph convincing. Why burn gas in power stations at approx 35% efficiency (when grid losses are included), when using gas for home central heating gives an efficiency of over 90%?
I suppose if there is a huge amount of gas available it really doesn’t matter, but it seems a wasteful use of it.
Reply: Combined cycle gas stations are c.55% efficient compared to say 38% for coal stations. Obviously direct burn can be more efficient than burning a secodnary fuel – that is up to each consumer.
S Matthews Reply:
November 27th, 2009 at 9:50 am
You should compare like with like. The very latest coal fired power stations can achieve 50%+ efficiency. However in all cases there is a big loss of efficiency in transmission, gas or coal. My point still stands, why burn such a useful substance in a power station when it is more efficiently burned elsewhere? Only if there is so much of it that it doesn’t really matter.
Mark Reply:
November 27th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
A little information on coal station efficiency and CO2 emission is here:
http://www.worldcoal.org/coal-the-environment/coal-use-the-environment/improving-efficiencies/
Efficiency can be further increased using CHP.
The realities of UK energy in the 1980s was that the miners were defeated on the back of a massive increase in oil burn at power stations, meanwhile a surplus of gas production was building up that provided the fuel for the dash to gas in power generation. Gas producers were also concerned to mitigate the extreme seasonality of domestic gas demand (about five times higher in winter than summer). As late as the mid 1990s, the UK government did not see value in permitting additional Norwegian gas to use the Frigg line to the UK (this was limited by treaty to certain by then largely depleted fields only), which resulted in the Norwegians building additional pipeline capacity to the Continent instead.
However, we now find ourselves with rapidly increasing reliance on imported natural gas since our own North Sea production is falling sharply. While supplies down dedicated pipelines from the Norwegians can be regarded as secure, we are increasingly dependent on LNG imports and continuity of supply into the European gas grid from Russia. Unlike oil, there are few sources of LNG. Gas reserves are much more highly concentrated that oil reserves, and mostly located in a few potential or actual problem countries. Reliance on gas may leave us more vulnerable than under the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s. Policy that was appropriate in 1984 is no longer appropriate today.
The UK sits atop several hundred years’ supply of coal at the consumption rates and market prices that prevailed in the 1970s. It will soon become our only real potential source of reliable (not just when the wind blows) and secure energy – at least until fusion becomes commercial. It’s time the politicians recognised that.
Now, if you really want to be pragmatic, look at the dramatic changes in China’s energy consumption and sourcing, and the likely future consequences of those trends. They have moved from being a small net exporter of oil to importing over 5m b/d in around a decade. By 2020, it is anticipated they will consume more oil than the USA at 20m b/d – equivalent to around 25% of global production currently. This illustrates why it is so much more important to influence what happens in China than to flagellate ourselves – and also why security of supply may become a rather more important issue in the future. I know for a fact that the Chinese have been worrying and planning about how to secure energy supplies from elsewhere in the world since well before they became a net energy importer while the West was dreaming of “new paradigms” of permanently low oil prices. The Chinese ogle Siberian and Caspian oil & gas, and are prepared to finance pipelines to secure it and thus deny it to anyone else, even when they provide a less economic export route. They happily deal with difficult African regimes to secure resources, and so on. Of course, the Chinese aren’t the only ones with a fast growing energy hungry economy – just perhaps the best prepared.
Maybe politicians and Whitehall mandarins and Washington and Brussels bureaucrats are aware of the realities of future global competition, and have decided to invent an abstract bogeyman in the form of AGW to shield us from them for now. However, the policies they espouse might be better directed if they actually considered the realities rather than this false god that we are all supposed to bow down before.
DennisA Reply:
December 2nd, 2009 at 12:03 am
Excellent factual analysis
You say “…. we need to be assured the standards….” when surely you should be saying that we need to be informed.
The last few days have bought into question the probity of the findings surrounding this “science” and the last thing we need is to be reassured.
Demolish this “science” and the rest of your case fails, except the opinion that we might do well to diversify our energy use from fossil fuels to other types of energy.
The free market and its promise of huge rewards will ensure an orderly diversification if appropriate but constant government meddling and our so called “energy policies” will simply leave us with the confused muddle we now have.
What on earth do you find so objectionable about the free market when discussing future energy requirments that you would subjugate it to incompetent ministerial dictat?
Reply: I think you must have been reading a different piece from mine. My piece is based on market commonsense.
“Increasing energy efficiency and reducing harmful emissions to the atmosphere and to the water systems is good as we prefer to live with clean air and pollution free rivers and lakes.”
Unfortunately ‘we’ are in the descendancy and ‘they’ – who don’t much care whether a fish is flapping around in agony on a plate when they eat it with chopsticks – are in the ascendancy.
‘They’ don’t give much of a monkey’s about the environment.
I don’t know why – if planting trees is such a good way of offsetting carbon – we don’t just plant millions of trees regardless of carbon emissions. Do it pre-emptively … then we could end up in carbon credit and able to use as much energy as we like !
Some things are beyond controling and this is one of them – by dint of nature and by dint of human nature. All I want my politicians to do is deal with the things they CAN control. I’m suspicious that they don’t – and I’m suspicious that they latch on to such an amorphous subject as climate change. Is it a way of procuring power and importance over the masses ? Fighting a continual and elusive enemy ? A battle which requires legions of underlings and highly paid and powerful execs (politicians) ?
I want my streets cleaned. I want criminals imprisoned, I don’t want my taxes given to wasterels, I don’t want my taxes stolen by cheating MPs, I want my borders properly controlled, I want children educated and not indoctrinate … I could go on and on …
But here we have it. Socialism by the back door. Curtailment of consumerism by limiting the size of wheelie bins.
Thanks John,
It is good to see rational contributions on this subject. The reasons for reducing emissions to improve the quality of air, thus improving the quality of life is spot on. We need to stop using climate change as a stick to beat the “unbelievers” and start making sound economic decisions that actually achieve something.
This debate brings about to much posturing and government intervention while the real work on improving lives is being done quietly, in incremental steps around the world.
A real debate on man made global warming is essential. The science is a long way from being cast iron, but I do not believe we will have that debate until organisations like the University of East Angela come clean on issues such as temperature change over the last 10 years. We must have proper scrutiny of the climate models and proper debate!
John,
I am pleased that you are addressing the issue, I am disappointed that you seem to be ignoring an important factor. The climate is changing. It has always changed, and will always change. The important question is how much of the change is down to humanity. The appearance is that the science undertaken by the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University is tainted. It has apparently been peer reviewed, but who by? Not in terms of qualification, but commitment to the AGW scenario. The “Climategate” emails illustrate practices that appear to be anti science. This must call the research in to question. It is imperative that an independent inquiry is conducted by a panel that includes so called skeptics. Failure to do so not only causes questions to continue as to the validity of the science, but taints science as a whole. I have to say, as a final comment, that I am surprised that the BBC also appears to be ignoring this aspect, and appears more interested in denigrating the “deniers” (what an insulting term).
If we accept that that climate change is caused by human activity then it seems to me that a least a part of what should be addressed in seeking a solution is the size of the world population. If it grows as predicted then the climate change remedy will have to try to hit a target moving ever further away.
And another disadvantage of human population growth is that it leaves progressively less room for everything else we rather like to have living about us.
DennisA Reply:
December 2nd, 2009 at 12:05 am
But we don’t accept that climate change is caused by humans, except at regional level by land use changes.
“It would be helpful if in the UK there was a proper enquiry into what has been happening to the evidence and its interpretation at East Anglia.”
Helpful is not the word I would use – it is ESSENTIAL. The evidence that has been found in the leaked emails and programmer’s comments in the code (software) that was ‘released’ indicate serious failling in both the peer review process and the quality control of the work by the Climate Research Unit (CRU). This is not some quirky spat between warmists and the deniers, but goes to the very heart of scientific discipline.
In a world where policy is increasingly being shaped by “scientific models” it it critical that such modelling is subject to proper scrutiny, review and audit. The University of East Anglia has been in receipt of large sums of taxpayers’ funds to support the work of the CRU. The evidence from the leaked material is of unprofessional behaviour, subversion of the peer-review process (to suppress dissenting scientific voices), and shoddy programming/data management practices.
The Public Accounts Committee ought to ask the NAO to commence an urgent review of the work of the CRU to establish whether public funds have been effectively and efficiently spent and to determine the level of confidence that Parliament and the UK Government could place in the models and reports by the CRU, on which so much of the UK’s climate change legislation and policy is now based.
The Australian Opposition has seen the light, it is time for the Conservatives to do the same. Recent polls should that the public is pretty sceptical about man-made global warming – it it time your party showed some responsibility and leadership in this matter and followed the Australian’s lead.
To be even discussing climate change is a waste of time, the climate has always been changing and always will irrespective of us. As has now been shown the climate change lobby is a farce and a con. As you rightly point out what we should be worrying about is limited resources and also the very strong possibility of conflict and upheaval because of lack of fossil based energy.
I don’t know whether climate change is occurring or if so whether it is anthropogenic – it is surely a debate for the scientific community who unfortunately appears to be making a pig’s ear of it. Lay members of the public are being ill-served by the self-interested and political overtones forming a large component of the discussion – as indeed so evident in my home country of Oz.
One factor which always seems to be overlooked is that if the world contained fewer people, we would have less-pressing or no need to address the climate change issue. Environmental impact is a result of the combination of population, affluence (consumption) and technology – the “PAT” equation. So far governments and others have concentrated on the “A” factor with efforts to ration and tax us into their idea of responsibility. Possibly more effective, and with other benefits also, would be a long-term realistic population policy in UK and world-wide.
When is someone in the Conservative party going to acknowledge the CRU email/code scandal? When are you going to stand up for truth and honesty? When, apart from Nigel Lawson, are you going to say that there is a case to answer here – because so far there has been a lot of silence, broken only by very ill timed ‘green’ speeches by the likes of Messers Osbourne, Shapps and Mitchell.
The Australian’s are challenging MMGW, the US politicians are challenging it, the ‘MMGW scientists are on the ropes’, and what do we get in Britain? I’ve got to the stage now I’m getting my news from blogs and overseas news reporting. That we have sunk so low in Britain that this affair is not being reported in the media’, no questions are being asked in Parliament, and that it is British scientists who have been key in perpetrating this scam, is shaming.
Can the Tories, at least, stand up with the public voice for those of us that still value our British inheritance for truth, honesty, freedom, real science, and the vigerous defence of democracy.
Man in the Street Reply:
November 27th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
“Can the Tories, at least, stand up with the public voice for those of us that still value our British inheritance for truth, honesty, freedom, real science, and the vigerous defence of democracy.”
One would really hope so – particularly as they are currently the Opposition party. Unfortunately the silence is deafening. The obscence way that Parliament voted through the Climate Change legislation with hardly a murmur of dissent suggests that far too many MPs are focussed on the Westminster bubble rather than the real world.
What the last decade has shown us is that politicians are far too uncritical of models, they took on face value the FMD model in 2001 which led to mass slaughter of farm animals – it was just a model developed by a group of academics in London, but cost us £million+++. We have had two scares now about flu pandemics (avian and swine) predicting massive death rates, etc – again these are simply models.
Unformtunately the average citizen does not understand that in many cases computer modelling is simply guesswork. A mathmatical model is proposed for a specific scenario and a series of projections run. The model is inevitably based on assumptions made by the modeller – which IMO are rarely subject to proper scrutiny.
If we are to avoid wasting large amount of taxpayer money in future we need to have all models (on which Government policy and legislation is based or developed) to be available for public scrutiny – including the raw data, the mathematical model, the software used to develop the projections, the documentation for the software and all the assumptions used in the development of the model/software. It is in the public interest that this exposure occurrs so that models are properly scrutinised and validated – not hidden behind FOI exemptions and obfuscation.
One problem I have with the proponents of global warming is how much we are being asked to take on trust, on the assumption that the climate modellers know what they are doing and don’t make mistakes.
Having looked at some of the code contained in the CRU leak, I am now extremely skeptical of their claims. The researchers there seem to have generated an initial set of programs for data analysis, and then simply layered more and more programming cruft onto this initial suite to try to extend it, without ever actually reviewing what everything was doing.
It doesn’t help that all the people involved only seem to know Fortran and don’t seem to know very much platform-specific detail, either; the HARRY_READ_ME.txt file is littered with blithe asides on the lines of “assume that this is down to system architecture” and so on. A lot of the work being done isn’t actually climate modelling, but shuffling data in big text files to get it into some sort of order and some uniform format.
Over the last few years the Great Standards War for data has raged, and out of it has come the XML standard which if applied in this case would have given the researchers the standardised data format that they were looking for, had they only known about it. Similarly languages like Perl and Python were designed especially as “programming glue”, for mundane but necessary tasks such as hacking a mess of data into some uniform shape. Both these languages have numerous plug-in modules, and could be made to take in all manner of data and output it as XML.
This wasn’t done. What did happen is the researcher in question spent literally months cobbling data into some vaguely coherent whole, and then spent months again on a bug-hunt in the existing Fortran modelling software; in some cases the existing code was so poor that it wouldn’t even compile on the Sun kit they were using.
To summarise, this outfit give an extremely strong impression of being (of questionable reliability-ed) of climate modellers, and I for one wouldn’t trust a thing they said without an independent review of their software and methods. Given that our Government seems intent on manipulating the lives of millions, and trillions of pounds based on this research, I’d at least like to see some checking done on it.
What incompetence! Reply:
November 27th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
Having also looked at the HARRY_READ_ME.txt the level of incompetence in the CRU is simply staggering. For a flagship research establishment to be developing and running what at best are poorly documented models, and at worst undocumented models, appears unprofessional. But to then use the resulting data to publish a stream of academic reports and input to the IPCC reports is nothing less than (misleading-ed).
That sad part of all of this is that vast amounts of public money have been wasted on a team whose work is now (being questioned-ed). The BBC and Westminster may choose to ignore it by the Australians and Americans won’t. It just a shame that a British academic institution is at the heart of this (word left out).
David Price Reply:
November 27th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
To be fair when the programmer (?) started the exercise XML wasn’t generally available (I think the first spec was after 1995). That said, given the team believed the world’s life depended on it I find it incredible they haven’t managed the data at all properly with documentation, version control, clear naming schemes and any attempt to consolidate onto a common format at an early stage. Given the importance of this stuff you simply must have audit trails to prove where data came from, when and that it was processed correctly. Surely you’d at least apply the same techniques as for financial data.
The CRU people do seem to have poisoned the well and unless new data and analyses can be rigorously prove the case in a clearly auditable way, It looks like the AGW proponents have a very high hill to climb if they are to convince many people now of their position.
Regardless of that though JR identifies the key issue. We need to reduce our dependence on dwindling energy resources such as gas and oil and for both economic and security of supply reasons.
I feel this should be approached at national and individual levels. Nuclear is an obvious national strategic approach which together with other large scale solutions must be addressed. But at the same time the individual or community can look at reducing their energy requirements and perhaps introduce microgeneration to address a subset of their needs. The feed-in tariffs and other measures in the Conservative “decentralised energy” policy paper is a good start.
Thank you for setting out your views, as there seems to have been an almost complete silence on the subject of the leaked e-mails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia by politicians and some of the media – particularly the BBC. Thank goodness there are politicians in Australia and the USA who are prepared to speak and act against the prevailing political dogma. How marvellous it must have seemed to politicians to find a scare so all encompassing that they could use it to do whatever they like and what a great money making racket. Is anybody going to independently investigate the contents of those e-mails from the UEA which appeared to show manipulation and suppression of data because they weren’t consistent with the theory? The scientific method is to postulate a theory and then test it by measurement and experiment. When the measurements don’t confirm the theory, it is the theory which should be changed not the measurements. With so much money in play, perhaps it isn’t surprising that such disciplines are cast aside. However, we expect our so-called political representatives to find out how our money has been spent instead of thinking how much more of it they can take from us based on the work of places like the Climate Research Unit at the UEA.
You say that “It would be helpful if in the UK there was a proper enquiry into what has been happening to the evidence and its interpretation at East Anglia.”. I would go much further than that and say that there should be a police investigation, not only into the hacking, but also into other possible (wrongdoing-ed)
As has been mentioned elsewhere, at least two (possible-ed)offences (should be examined -ed):
1. Misappropriation of public funds – It is alleged that they falsified data and that this falsified data was subsequently used as a basis to obtain further funding.
2. Failure to disclose information under the FOI – it is alleged that there was a deliberate attempt to prevent disclosure of information by urging various people to destroy the data rather than release it as requested.
Surely both of these issues are matters for the police, not some cosy internal enquiry.
Worth remembering that Kyoto was more about carbon production than carbon consumption; so you win if you are an importer of the stuff rather than the producer. Along with the increased thermal efficiency of NG fired CCGT plant, natural gas has a lot more hydrogen in it than coal and consequently a lot less carbon. The global carbon problem is a global coal problem basically. Old power engineers were never comfortable with burning a nice clean fuel like natural gas to make electricity. The future for them was nukes supplying electricity and, eventually, desalination and hydrogen, for when we ran out of water and natural gas. Still what goes around comes around.
Just think where we would be now if we still had those electric block storage heaters in the house rather than a NG fired condensing boiler. You only get the latter because there is only a trace of Sulphur in the fuel, hence you can run such boilers with wet exhausts without any condensed acid rotting it away. A problem for older big coal and heavy oil plant. (Sulphur = acid rain = EU Large Combustion Plant Directive = shut down 2015)
The future looks expensive, plus tax. Subsidy for Offshore wind is about to get two ROCs per MWh in the next Renewable Order; nice little earner at £100 – 120 MWh, when the wind blows that is. But, don’t expect to see that itemised on your electric bill.
Test question. What is the installed capacity of all the stand-by generators in commercial and industrial premises in the UK? In a time of crisis, how many could start up and synchronise to a live grid?
I think a public enquiry is a very good idea John. So long as the sceptical case is actually allowed to be aired I have little doubt of the outcome. Even if chaired by one of the usual suspects such people tend to middling honest when in public view. I pains me to say it about scientists & what purports to be science but much of it should be taken under oath.
One of the great things about such enquiries is that it allows politicians to dismount from untenable positions with some dignity. While Mr Cameron has nailed his flag to the catastrophic warming mast he could not be faulted for supporting an enquiry & in due course could not be faulted for accepting the results.
Such an enquiry, if it was the first of its kind in the English speaking world might even regain most of the credibility British science has lost worldwide by this fraud.
A simpler & quicker variant would be for a broadcaster to allow a traditional formal, 3 or more speaker, debate over a couple of hours. I have no doubt it would achieve a big audience & such a style of debate has a long history precisely because it works. This may be why the BBC has repeatedly refused to even consider thje idea.
More to their taste is the warming question on Question Time last night where Melanie Philips made the case accurately but was hampered by it being 3 1/2 (4 1/2 if including Dimbleby) to 1 & her being given first position. This prevented any rebuttal of the BBC’s comedian guest’s assertion that he had performed scientific experiments in Greenland & seen that the place was melting – clearly untrue assertions. Nonetheless we saw significant movement from David Davis who, while accepting warming, expressed doubts it was catastrophic.
AndrewSouthLondon Reply:
November 27th, 2009 at 9:15 pm
If the Public Enquiry recruited merely the bought-and-paid-for IPCC – Vichy scientists – the ilk of Brown’s henchman the (unflattering word left out -ed) Stern, what on earth is the point? These climate (absolutists-ed) have infiltrated and neutralized all opposition.
Find me an academic prepared to go to the stake “denying” global warming?
Who is going to tell Obama he is an ass – to his face?
No guts from Conservatives. No stomach for the truth. Just pretend there is nothing to see while the world is handed over to communist global government – the Waterlmelons win.
Where were you, Daddy when the eco-(extremsists-ed) took over. ?
Have you tried to buy a light bulb recently? Get used to it.
Alan Johnson (and so by extension the government) have shown that they will not tolerate scientists becoming involved in political matters by using the ultimate measure – dismissal.
Anyone who has read the released emails cannot doubt that the scientists at the CRU have biased their results due to political considerations. Will be interesting (or not) to see if Labour take such a principled stand in this matter.
Just as the Stone Age did not come to an end due to the finite number of stones in the world, the petro-chemical age will not come to an end by the world running out of oil. It will end when better, realistic and economicaly sound technologies become available.
As to the AGW stuff, setting aside the e-mail controversy, I suspect that a great many politicians know or suspect it to be a nonsense, but they are scared of potential media vilification if the put their heads above the parapet. In Europe so far, the only three remotely mainstream figures I know of, to have seriously challenged the orthodoxy are Lord Lawson (Bravo sir), a gentlemen from the DUP and an East European party somewhere.
Add to that, it’s just too convenient. Want to impose another unpopular tax or restrict freedom? Just sigh and say “Ah, we’ve no choice, we have to save the world” And debate is shut down.
Then there’s the “socialism by the back door” approach many of the left seem to be taking, and finally, how can any major politico stand up and say “Whoops, I’ve been talking total nonsense for the last decade or more, sorry about that”
For example, I do not see Mr Albert Gore saying “Where do I return the Oscar and the Nobel prize?”
But, I am hoping that the Australians are the first cracks in the damn of orthodoxy, which will lead to a flood. Can we now realise the Emperor was naked all along? Can we cast AGW into history’s dustbin along with other pseudo-religous scares such as the one brought to you by Matthew Hopkins the old witch-finder general?
My fingers are firmly crossed.
Neil Craig Reply:
November 28th, 2009 at 11:43 am
Vaclav Klaus is probably the east European you mean though the Poles are of a similar opinion. Klaus has said pretty much the same as you about politicians knowing perfectly well that it is a lie but being afraid to speak out. I suspect one of the effects of this is that they may be equally scared to be seen supporting what is obviously not just error but deliberate & massive fraud.
Russians generally do not believe this & the Russian Academy of Sciences has played an honourable role in refuting this. An example of our media censorship is that Andrey Illarionov, a free market advisor of Putin whose statements on Putin, when he resigned, were massively trumpeted by our media has also said ““Ideology on which the Kyoto Protocol is based, is a new form of totalitarian ideology, along with Marxism, Communism and socialism.” wghich, with the honesty, integrity & impariality which our media so enthusiastically display, was massively, indeed entirely, censored by them
Good points – whether we are causing climate change or not is irrelevant, the key issues as you say are conservation and best use of our resources and environment. The world’s population is too big now to sustain the aspirations of third world peoples to reach western standards of living. If the same hysteria was placed where it should be on reducing population it would be justified. At a guess 80% in the world are in serious poverty, not UK poverty.
Socialism is of course rearing its ugly head with a vengeance and only sees higher tax and measures that damage economies.
Indeed.
Very sensible comments, JR. I wonder how Mr. Milliband’s windmill obsession would shape up against your criteria? A big fail, I would expect.
As for “Their recent recession and slower growth from here will help that, as would milder winters” – well yes it would, but unfortunately for the supporters of this farrago of nonsense, the world is cooling at present, so they are not going to get milder winters.
“The only effective carbon reduction strategy the UK has followed in the last twenty years was electricity privatisation.”
A bit of a whopper that one, surely?
There was a “dash to gas” for turbine power borne out of then cheap North Sea gas and the availability of European supply through the interconnector.
This existed for a couple of years when it was realised the short-terrm pursuit of profit had left the country strategically compromised.
North Sea gas running out. Russkies using gas a political weapon. UK is up a creek without a paddle.
Arguably, electricity privatisation showed banksters how to gull a dumb state. Bonuses anyone.
Man in a Shed Reply:
November 27th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
But he’s right. The only major CO2 reductions made by the UK are due to the higher efficiency of Gas Turbine powered power stations.
There is a possible strategic argument about power supply, which has been ducked as much by government and ofgem as by power companies.
This is why we have the pathetic example of Labour trying to claim they have kicked of the building of a new round of nuclear power stations, which have a very low realistic chance of being ready to keep the lights on. The alternative will be running the old nuclear stations way beyond their design dates, with the associate risks that will entail.
This is very much the failure of government, and for the last 12 years that has been Labour.
John – you view looks sensible enough to me.
The underlying problem with AGW (apart from the fact its very much in question of course) is that its really a trojan horse for developing world government and inevitably socialism.
Its time the Conservative party started to think about how to extradite itself from the AGW camp, whilst keeping the emphasis as you rightly put it on new technology and improving efficiency.
Man-made global warming is a con allowing governments to high-jack tax increases. The spotlight should be turned on the East Anglian fiddlers as it is being done by a Senate Enquiry in the States.
Quite recently some 60 German scientists petitioned Angela Merkel over the falsehoods being perpetrated by the scare-mongers and were joined, shortly afterwards by 200 more but why do many leading papers and Aunty Beeb say nothing about it? It also makes the Nobel Committee look awful dolts over their Al Gore fiasco. He should be made to give it all back.
The science of climate change/global warming is of prime importance. There are suggestions that results have been massaged, scientific papers have been kept from publication in Scientific Journals, Conferences have excluded scientists who do not follow the consensus. Assertions have been made time and time again that the science is settled. Reporting, both in the press and radio and television, has only followed the consensus line and yet it is probable that the science is wrong. How science is reported now needs re-evaluation and should bear in mind that science is never settled.
Politicians have gleefully accepted the proffered opinions of the AGW supporting climate scientists. Indeed, they appear not to be aware that other explanations for Climate Change exist. Consequently they have voted in favour of spending vast amounts of money, our money, in an attempt to solve a problem which may well not exist or is of a natural nature. Climate has always changed. Policies resulting from the former threats of Climate change must be rethought and made relevant.
As present science provides the building blocks for future science we are now in a quandry. Scientific research based upon dodgy or corrupt prior data has no legitimacy and must be discaded. There is now a massive task to be undertaken to validate what has gone before and discard what cannot be validated.
Oh dear, how sad to read a respected senior MP and his followers who dont follow science. The discussion should be about how to reduce the most emissions, not if there is some conspiracy!
We should for example insulate all houses to a high standard, it will be cheaper to heat, waste less, and provide green jobs. So a win win situation.
Changing to Gas reduced emissions, but its still a fossil fuel. Renewables are the answer, but they need investment. We have a great resource here, a very windy country. But we are one of the worst for wind turbines in Europe.
S Matthews Reply:
November 27th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
Renewables can only provide a small component of our requirement, and only then at great cost.
I suggest you look at the science, not to mention investigating the CRU fiasco.
Adrian Windisch Reply:
November 27th, 2009 at 9:25 pm
Some regions have over 24% electricity just from wind.
Wind power available in the atmosphere is much greater than current world energy consumption!
Together with solar/wave etc we don’t need nuclear or fossil fuel. Was that too scientific for you S Matthews?
Acorn Reply:
November 28th, 2009 at 10:16 am
Adrian. Have a look at the following, “24% electricity from wind”, is the quote you give to the advertising department to use; the reality is a lot different, even in Germany with its 20 GW of wind turbines. If you ever get the chance, talk to some German power engineers and get them to tell you the story; “the day the wind didn’t blow all over Germany”.
BTW. Thanks to the CEGB building the 400kV supergrid, the lights remain on in the south of England, where there is a lack of generation capability.
The system end to end looses about 7% not masses as stated elsewhere. The gas network looses a bit more, powering compressors to push it around the pipes, and storing gas in the pipes and the few storage volumes we have.
The electricity grid and the gas grid are now interconnected; because of the large amount of gas fired CCGT electric on the system.
After round 3 offshore licensing, there could be up to 39 GW of windmills around our coasts, eventually. Peak demand will be around 60 – 65 GW. So apart from paying through the nose for these turbines how much will the guys providing the back-up want paying for when the wind don’t blow? Fortunately the lads at NG are on the case.
There is a big future in HVDC connectors to the continent. Our UK electric suppliers won’t talk about those much; inter-connectors mean foreign competition!!!
http://www.nationalgrid.com/uk/sys_09/default.asp?action=mnch10_13.htm&Node=SYS&Snode=10_13&E=Y
Adrian Windisch Reply:
November 30th, 2009 at 10:01 am
The 24% is a well known statistic, look it up. Its not something I invented to be used by advertisers!
You speak of increasing wind power generation eventually, I want it to be as soon as possible, why wait?
You talk about the wind not blowing as this was a new. As I stated already, you cant rely on more than around 30% power from wind, but as the UK is nearer 2% we are nowhere close to this.
Mark Reply:
November 27th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
I would like a clear statement as to whether houses should be built on the assumption of cold winters, or hot summers. The building standards look very different, as do the power requirements.
Adrian Windisch Reply:
November 28th, 2009 at 11:06 am
People say global warming, as the average temperature will increase. But there will be more chaos, unseasonal weather, heavy rain in the summer etc. So not easy to predict.
A well insulated house needs little heating in cold conditions, its also good at keeping the heat out.
Emil Reply:
November 27th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
Where’s the win-win when the inevitable result of politician’s posturing is loss of freedom and a huge increase in personal taxation? But wait, Brown just pledged £800 million more debt for our country to be diverted, in the name of “dangerous climate change” to more third world dictators.
Mark Reply:
November 28th, 2009 at 9:53 am
…after just £1m to help with the floods in Cumbria. Maybe they’d have done better if they were in a Labour marginal.
Amanda Reply:
November 27th, 2009 at 9:52 pm
I don’t think you ‘follow science’ either, I certainly don’t and I know more about it than you:-
1. Ventilation is more important to health and comfort in a house than insulation. In eco-housing it is crucial. You don’t mention it.
2. Sometimes the wind blows, sometimes it does not, and even when it does wind turbines produce ‘diddly squat’ by way of energy. Also, the production of the concrete used to build them produces a great deal of carbon – not very C02 efficient – if you care about such things. In addition it destroys natural C02 absorbing vegetation.
3. Why do we need to insulate houses, if the world is going to heat up? The BBC ‘Gardeners World’ keeps telling us to plant cactus in our gardens, because it’s going to be so hot !!
And now for the economics.
1. Once all the houses are insulated what happens to all the jobs? Not a very sustainable form of employment !
2. In normal circumstances less energy needed in a house would be cheaper, except that in this case the energy from the ‘diddly squat’ wind turbines is very expensive due to the subsidies paid out to farmers and the businesses that run them. And when you take into consideration all the extra tax that has to be paid, I think most people will be worse off.
3. Perhaps as a great follower of ‘climate change’, you could tell me something that makes no sense to me. Why do we need to give all this money to the third world to help them live a ‘western lifestyle’, when so many MMGW advocates think we, in the West, should all go back to a simpler ‘medieval lifestyle’. It seems to me the third world are already where they should be !!
Adrian Windisch Reply:
November 28th, 2009 at 11:34 am
Amanda,
You think ventilation is more important that insulation? Open a window if its stuffy. But you will spend thousands heating your home in cold winters if the insulation is poor. Energy going straight out the window. Clever use of heat exchangers can capture the hear from expelled air and warm incoming.
There are many factors to making an eco house, this is not the place for a list of them. It would include water saving, energy saving, using low energy construction etc.
If wind turbines provide so little energy, why do some countries get 10 to 20% of their power from them? ‘Diddly squat’ indeed.
You may wish to keep developing countries in poverty, others think everyone in the world should have a more fair share of resources.
After insulating homes, green jobs could be found by getting solar hot water on every roof. There are many millions of homes, some in very poor condition.
Amanda Reply:
November 29th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
I know ventilation is just as important as insulation for health !! And I also know it is more than a question of opening windows, do you?
“you will spend thousands heating your home in cold winters ” – exactly COLD WINTERS.
Great term ‘diddly squat’ – so which developed contries produce 10-20% of their power then from this source?
“You may wish to keep developing countries in poverty” – insulting statement from someone who has no idea of the work I do or my views, does this reflect the quality of your logic and arguement?? However, I will tell you this, poverty in some countires is not the fault of people in others, and more than the poverty in some houses is the fault of others.
“Fair share of resources” is a emotive Marxist term. Countries have different resources and then we trade, that is what the economic theories of trade are all about, and which bring advantage to everyone – provided they do not saddle themselves with dictators and socialist governments. And if you are worried about the fair share of resources in your terms, then I would worry more about what the Chinese are doing in Africa if I were you.
Some of us already have solar panels, and when the sun shines it HELPS heat water, however in the UK this is unlikely to be the way we heat all water in the near future. Maybe in the more distant future new technologies may emerge. Green industries may indeed produce more jobs, but if we householders are all so poor through taxes that we cannot keep up to and improve our houses, then those jobs will not materialise.
Adrian Windisch Reply:
November 30th, 2009 at 10:21 am
Amanda, you said ‘It seems to me the third world are already where they should be !!’ so how are you insulted by what I said?
Denmark gets 24% of its electricity from wind power, Spain 11%. It isnt that difficult to find such information, or information on ecohouses, yet sadly you dont seem to have haven’t looked it up.
Please check your facts before making assertions, so you can then give a link to demonstrate what you mean. Such as ‘I know ventilation is just as important as insulation for health !!’ How do you know this? And I didn’t say that insulation was important for health, its important for reducing waste!
What incompetence! Reply:
November 27th, 2009 at 11:41 pm
“Oh dear, how sad to read a respected senior MP and his followers who dont follow science.”
Well that’s where your wrong – as a computer literate professional engineer with many years experience of working with IT systems I regard the CRU’s behaviour as (questionable-ed). For so called scientists to behave in the way they have done and prevent reasonable debate about the data, and modelling they are using to produce their reports is an absolute disgrace. Science is about challenge and proof – a good scientist will be prepared to expose their work to competing ideas and philosophies – the open testing and challenging of ideas is how scientific progress is made! Instead a small cabal of “scientists” has apparently hijacked the debate and mislead both the media and policy makers.
The CRU/University of East Anglia have done a great disservice to British science and they have apparently wasted a considerable amount of public funds in what appears to be an idealogical pursuit of AGW.
Adrian Windisch Reply:
November 28th, 2009 at 11:03 am
If you follow science you will know global warming is real and coming, a few emails from years ago make no difference.
Anyone whose emails were hacked into would have some embarrassment revealed to the world. We say things to friends that are not meant for the public.
What about some real competition between banks Reply:
November 29th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
You might say embarrassing things using a personal email account when communicating with friends, but these are publicly funded academics using their institutions email services to discuss work for the IPCC, etc. The tone of a number of the quoted emails is unprofessional and brings their own institutions into disrepute.
If this were to go to court the authors of the emails would look both unprofessional and incompetent – particularly where senior individuals are condoning/encouraging (such-ed) acts such as the deletion of material to prevent it being release of material via FOI requests.
If these leaked emails had been from director/senior managers of major financial institutions would you be happy continuing to invest with them? I certainly would not and the market would probably take a similar view!
Stuart Fairney Reply:
November 28th, 2009 at 9:37 am
Sir, two points if I may. First, I do not “follow” Mr Redwood, I merely read the blog for first rate analysis (especially of financial matters) in today’s politics as well as the eclectic subsequent commentary. I presume to speak for many of the commentariart in this.
Second, as I understand it, there has been no ’science’ to follow from (some global warming exponents -ed) for many years. I would define science as empirical observation from which conclusions can be drawn. To decide what the answers are ahead of time and then bending the data accordingly is not science as it is now recognised.
Interestingly however, you will recall just such a cart-before-the-horse approach was taken by supposed scientists in the old soviet union who were supposed to prove the superioirity os their system through soviet biology etc. That of course was from a regime which could brook no dissent because the fundamentals were nonsense. Do today’s AGW alarmists welcome open debate or engage in ad hominem stuff calling opponents deniers?
Wait a minute, I see a pattern forming
cut’n'paste from CH, which applies equally to this post.
—–
What annoys me about some climate change sceptics, however, is that they are unwilling to consider measures that are advanced by politicians that would cut emissions but are also entirely justifiable on other grounds”
Tim, the problem with this is when it is used to sweep a critical examination of catastrophic AGW under the carpet. It is essential that CAGW and the other arguments are decoupled.
If CAGW is wrong, then we are going to incur massive costs, loose security of energy supply (in the absence of nuclear build), and also loose another bit of sovereignty to the tranzies – binding future governments and all that.
This smacks of political slipperyness – the world cools for a few years, so global warming becomes climate change. The case for human driven climate change goes flakey ? It doesn’t matter because we’re doing the right thing anyway. Well, no you’re not. Remove particulates, desulphurise, you’ll still pay your carbon tax. Insulate houses – the savings will be nothing compared to the cost of windmill generation.
Carbon cap and trade is a ridiculous way to tackle these other issues.
Love the website! Much better – clean and nice, but just as much fun.
Second, I appreciate that a Politician (our host) can handle the science of climate change without emotion and with efficiency. Wasn’t it Mrs Thatcher’s government which raised the topic in the first place and then successfully introduced the very anti-Leftie nuclear programme?
Adrian:
In the eighteenth century, they tried to drain the Fens where I live by windmills. They very soon found out that the wind blows when it wants to. In the Fens we had to wait for steam power.
Until we find a decent system of storing electricity, wind farms are not going to do the job either.
Adrian Windisch Reply:
November 27th, 2009 at 9:35 pm
Mike, no one would suggest 100% wind power, but over 20% is easy, currently we are around 2% so lots of room to expand. Spain has over 10%, Denmark 24%.
Combined with other renewable sources we dont need fossil fuels.
Mark Reply:
November 28th, 2009 at 9:57 am
Denmark has the luxury of being able to import 83% of its requirements when the wind doesn’t blow from Germany, Norway or Sweden. Yet they consume 7 times as much coal energy as the wind energy they produce.
Data can be manipulated to read whatever people want it to read as. It’s most likely that crafty politicians have been watching, for some years, for the opportunity to use climatic conditions as a tool for raising taxes…..all they needed was a few nice pictures of polar bears swimming between ice-bergs, along with emotive photographs of people being rescued from tsunamis and tropical hurricanes…..matched up with sensational headlines conveniently provided by the BBC…..and there we have it; mankind is responsible for these dreadful scenes and we must all be horse-whipped and shamed into paying more tax.
Climate changes happen over very long time-cycles. No human can live long enough to witness a complete cycle. At present the Sun (the real one, not the newspaper) continues to show low-grade sunspot activity. Last winter was one of the coldest that I can remember for some years.
But the plan, it seems, is to gather scientific evidence and if it doesnt fit the political requirements, then it must be reshaped. I would like to know what government is going to do to fix the dreadful state of climate change on Jupiter, also Mars, whose polar caps have been visibly wilting in recent times.
The perceived “problem” with Britain’s properties is that many of them are old. They do not take kindly to being forcibly fitted with unsympathetic upvc windows, stuffed with loft insulation or having their walls dry lined or cavities filled. English Heritage has already made considerable effort to give people help with their old homes, in terms of how best to improve their insulation and retain warmth, without hacking out their prized period features….though sadly much of this has been ignored by millions of homeowners who have fallen for the DG predators’ sales patter. Labour Government would no doubt like to bulldoze everything older than forty years and start with a clean sheet.
What is perhaps more important is the generation of power in the first place. If there’s no oil, gas or electricity coming in, then all the DG and fancy combi- boilers in the world won’t help you. Solar heating panels, Photo-voltaics and the like may sound twee to some people but if in operation en-masse in many homes then they would have an effect. I’m not clever enough to get into the understanding of the large-scale requirements; but at the domestic level there has to be more potential for generating one’s own power, even it doesnt completely fulfill the home’s needs.
About time we had a rational debate.
Publish the raw field data.
Stop brain washing our kids.
Stop being so dependent in cheap oil.
Don’t rely on back biting, bitchy academics.
Get a sense of reality in this debate.
I worked in the optical fibre production business for a while, its an interesting business, quite hard stuff to make but especially hard to make the highest quality stuff
It was dominated by production in countries which had “mastered” the techniques, and the companies corning etc that figured it out
World production when I was involved was mainly in USA, UK, Australia, China with China lagging behind the quality the others could produce and so not able to charge as much on average
India started making it
And the UK and USA governments started ramping up the rules and regulations regarding the plant chimneys, what was allowed to be pumped into the air, how the air and wind was monitored and so on, this is all fairly recent in the last 15 years or so
To cut a long story short the UK ramped up the quality of the air coming out of the chimneys greatly, not small increments, but large changes requiring massive investments in newer and ever newer leading edge technology in the chimneys
Guess what, I think I’m right in saying that there is no optical fibre production in the UK anymore, apart from the general problems imposed in the UK which has caused all manufacturing to disappear, its just not economic to build or run a plant here with the mega expensive chimneys needed
Optical fibre is now largely and ever more made in China and India, and the chimneys in the plants producing it produce more pollution than our plants were 20 odd years ago
So the impact of optical fibre production on world pollution has not gone down, it’s just shifted to India and China
And consequently an industry where we really were world leaders has gone from these shores
And we have not figured out as a nation how to compete with other nations which are prepared to cut corners with our idealistic view of climate change agenda
I am here talking about producing the individual strands of fibre optic, and not the larger cables which are just bunches of these put together into an outer skin
Conservative views on how we will keep our people working when facing this challenge in this and other industries is welcome!
Now we have no production and no problem with the air from those chimneys, but we also have no jobs and no wealth creation
Recently it was predicted that the UK population would increase by 10 million in the next couple of decades. How will we cut CO2 if there are 10 million extra mouths to feed, clothe, heat and transport? Never mind the fact China increases its output per year more than our total output! We could stop all CO2 in the UK tomorrow and China will fill the gap in 12 months!
i would add that the large multi nationals allowed the IPR which the USA and UK largely created, in figuring out how to make the best quality optical fibre, to be given away to India and China
India and China are much more ruthless with us
My view is the USA and UK should have protected the IP involved in making optical fibre, we should not just have given it away to countries prepared to compete in unfair ways with us
If China and India want to play by their rules fine, but we should play our own hand much more carefully, and that for me means if we lead in something like optical fibre we should not just hand over all the hard won secrets
But again how does this scan with the “free market” ideals of the Conservatives
Sorry if I’m boring you here
I have just read Cameron’s latest on The Blue Blog. Totally sold on man-made climate change, no mention of the CRU at the University of East Anglia. TAXPAYERS’ MONEY used to (produce-ed) results to match a theory but Cameron and your party say NOTHING. This is a scandal. Is it embarrassment or something more sinister that prevents the Conservative party from performing its duty?
“It would be helpful if in the UK there was a proper enquiry into what has been happening to the evidence and its interpretation at East Anglia. Where public money is being spent on scientific research we need to be assured the standards and independence of the research are worthy of public support”
John, this is absolutely the case. Acceptance of AGW is about to change our society. So this is potentially the most important paragraph that you have ever written in your political life. In agreement with others who have posted, you should add transparency to this. [ There is no excuse for the material not being public domain, and this would have flagged up the problems much earlier ]
I referred this subject to Alan Duncan (my MP) at the House of Commons a few days ago – reponse NIL. I referred this to the PM’s office ditto – response NIL.
There is massive questioning of the UEA/CRU leak, let alone the
thunderous noise on Google (worldwide and in the UK) and on other sites regarding the lack of involvement by the BBC and the print media – with the main exception of the Spectator and the Mail. Hopefully Brooker will have something to say tomorrow in the Sunday Telegraph.
Even Monbiot has called for Jones to be sacked and the data re-analysed.
Just what is ongoing here-other than sealed lips and prayers for a positive Copenhagen?
PS – you mention standards. Congratulations – I think you are the first politician to do so.
This is as big an issue as the alleged (misleading of the puboic -ed). Potentially bigger. The case for (substantial misleading-ed) is convincing, but still unproven. The standards issue is systemic and easily proven. ( I’ve posted more on this on CH. )