wait there's more

Sir David King condemns green scaremongering; Herod condemns child abuse; Osama Bin Laden condemns Islamist terrorism; etc

By James Delingpole Politics Last updated: October 31st, 2009

Professor Sir David King – Tony Blair’s former chief scientific advisor and foot-and-mouth massacre guru – has spoken out against climate change alarmism. He has told the Times:

“When people overstate happenings that aren’t necessarily climate change-related, or set up as almost certainties things that are difficult to establish scientifically, it distracts from the science we do understand. The danger is they can be accused of scaremongering. Also, we can all become described as kind of left-wing greens.”

Presumably he is no relation of the Sir David King who claimed in January 2004 in Science magazine that climate change is “the most severe problem we are facing today” and “a far greater threat to the world than international terrorism.” (Hat tip: Benny Peiser)

Nor of the Sir David King who was reported thus in May 2004:

"Antarctica is likely to be the world’s only habitable continent by the end of this century if global warming remains unchecked, the government’s chief scientist, Professor Sir David King said last week. He said the Earth was entering the ‘first hot period’ for 60 million years when there was no ice on the plane and “the rest of the globe could not sustain human life”.

Nor of the Sir David King who made the following claim as recently as June 2008:

"If all the ice on Greenland were to melt, sea level would rise by seven metres. Is that likely to happen? Well I was saying six years ago unlikely [but] I’m afraid that that’s having to be revised… 80 percent of our human population lives within less than a one metre rise of sea level so imagine the destabilisation of our geopolitical system with a sea level rise of the order of one or two metres. And that is on the cards I’m afraid."

Nor, one hopes, is he any relation of the Sir David King who led the British delegation to a science conference in Moscow in 2004, whose performance prompted the following disgusted after-action report by the conference chairman Alexander Illarionov:

“In our opinion the reputation of British science, the reputation of the British government and the reputation of the title “Sir” has sustained heavy damage.”

If I were sensible, moderate Professor Sir David King I would have stern words with this soundalike character: otherwise some people might be in danger of mistaking him for an hysterical fool.

THE nation's peak science agency has tried to gag the publication of a paper by one of its senior environmental economists attacking the Rudd government's climate change policies.

The paper, by the CSIRO's Clive Spash, argues the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme is an ineffective way to cut emissions, and instead direct legislation or a tax on carbon is needed.

The paper was accepted for publication by the journal New Political Economy after being internationally peer-reviewed.

But Dr Spash told the Australia New Zealand Society for Ecological Economics conference that the CSIRO had since June tried to block its publication.

In the paper, Dr Spash argues the economic theory underpinning emissions trading schemes is "far removed" from the reality of permit markets. "While carbon trading and offset schemes seem set to spread, they so far appear ineffective in terms of actually reducing GHGs (greenhouse gases)," he says. "Despite this apparent failure, ETS remain politically popular amongst the industrialised polluters.

"The public appearance is that action is being undertaken. The reality is that GHGs are increasing and society is avoiding the need for substantive proposals to address the problem of behavioural and structural change."

Dr Spash said trading schemes did not efficiently allocate emission cuts because their design was manipulated by vested interests. For example, in Australia, large polluters would be compensated with free permits while smaller, more competitive firms would have to buy theirs at auction. The schemes were also flawed because: global warming was caused by gases other than carbon; emissions were difficult to measure; carbon offsets bought from other countries were of dubious value; and the schemes "crowded out" voluntary action by individuals. He concludes that more direct measures, such as a carbon tax, regulations or new infrastructure would be simpler, more effective and less open to manipulation.

Dr Spash could not be contacted by The Australian.

However, his presentation to the ANZSEE conference in Darwin last Wednesday stated: "The CSIRO is currently maintaining they have the right to ban the written version of this paper from publication by myself as a representative of the organisation and by myself as a private citizen."

Dr Spash said CSIRO managers had written to the journal's editor demanding the paper not be published.

CSIRO spokesman Huw Morgan said the publication of Dr Spash's paper was an internal matter and was being reviewed by the chief executive's office.

However, he said that under the agency's charter scientists were forbidden from commenting on matters of government or opposition policy.

The CSIRO charter, introduced last year, was trumpeted by Science Minister Kim Carr as a way to guarantee freedom of expression for scientists.

Senator Carr said he was seeking a briefing from the CSIRO.

Opposition science spokesman Eric Abetz accused the government of empty spin.

Julian Cribb, adjunct professor of science communication at the University of Technology, Sydney, said gagging scientists deprived the public of scientific knowledge they had funded.

ANZSEE president Wendy Proctor said if Dr Spash's research questioned current orthodoxy, it should be made public to inform debate.

Many of us who were involved in the early days of environmentalism, because of the disgusting and dangerous state of our post-war air and rivers, and had good reason to be satisfied with the progress that had been made, became distressed when the movement was suddenly hijacked by a new force. It seemed to be motivated by a hatred of industry and economic progress. Instead of relying on actual measurements of pollution, it began to extrapolate by means of theories and models. It developed the threat of the New Ice Age. Industrial pollution would block out the sun and plunge the world into an appalling frozen future. In Britain it was irrelevantly defeated by the searing summer of 1976, an isolate statistic that could have no bearing on climate and, though it caused ridicule, was nevertheless a portent of things to come. We innocently assumed that they would withdraw, but they simply did an about turn. Almost without pausing for breath, they converted the threat of an ice age to one of catastrophic global warming. Digging up old papers by the likes of Arrhenius and Callendar, and without a trace of embarrassment, they switched from accusing industry from freezing us to death to claiming that it would roast us. At the time most of us in science treated it all as a joke that no one could possibly take seriously. How wrong we were! We simply could not see that profound changes were taking place in society, that even science and its methods would come under a devastating threat.

If there is one area in which your reviewer takes a view that is divergent from that of these authors, it is in the role that Britain played in the Mother of all Scares. Sir Crispin Tickell and Margaret Thatcher just get a passing mention. Tickell, a history graduate and diplomat, closely involved with the European Commission and later permanent representative to the United Nations, author of Climatic Change and World Affairs, 1977, was a close advisor to Thatcher, who, with the unique authority of being a political leader and a science graduate, under the influence of Tickell launched Global Warming into the world political domain. If there is a “Typhoid Mary” that spread the contagion of global warming around the world it can only be Tickell; he was closely involved with the very international institutions that promoted it. Thatcher was at war with the Miners’ union and the oil sheiks and was determined to press the case for nuclear power. As so often happened, her tactical manoeuvres defeated her strategic aims. She fostered the creation of a movement that opposed everything she stood for. Revisionists deny that she was all that enthusiastic in the promotion of global warming. Take it from one who sat it the front row at a major speech she made, this is not so; or, failing that, take it from her then loyal lieutenant, Nigel Lawson. She established the Hadley Centre, designed to manufacture evidence for global warming, at the expense of funds diverted with great damage from real science, and subverted the Royal Society by putting money on the table for the same purpose. The Hadley Centre became a main engine for the UN IPCC, which imposed the global warming religion on the world.

Global warming is the scare that is the climax  of this book. It is both unique and typical. It is unique in that economic failure is not just a by-product of the scare, it is the whole raison d’être. It is promoted by interests who oppose everything that would enhance the economic well-being of mankind (for example, realistic sources of energy as opposed to those that are intermittent, impracticable and only sustainable by grotesque levels of subsidy). It is typical in employing all the manoeuvres that have sustained the previous, less durable scares; i.e. selecting favourable data while ignoring more credible adverse data, practising overt and covert censorship, mounting ad hominem attacks on opponents, recruiting “scientists” to serve its purposes with public funds, while without evidence gratuitously accusing critics of receiving handouts from hated industrial sources, putting the frighteners on ill-informed ordinary people and so on. Scientifically this scare is dead in the water, even the measurement evidence of any warming occurring at all fades away on examination, but the weaker their case becomes the more fervently the faithful cling to their belief and the more bitter the bile they direct at infidels.