Monday, 17 February 2014

The floods in Great Britain are not caused by climate change - official

For a sixth week storms continue to batter Great Britain. It is a lie that the floods have anything to do with climate change. My friend Tom Cain put it beautifully on Facebook (I quote with his permission).

In case you believe the lie that the floods - whose immediate cause is wet weather brought on by a shift in the jet stream - have anything to do with climate change, listen to Professor Mat Collins. He's the Associate Professor in Climate Systems at the University of Exeter, and co-ordinating lead author to the International Panel on Climate Change 5th Assessment Report, Chapter 12: “Long-term Climate Change: Projections, Commitments and Irreversibility.” Collins said at the weekend: "There is no evidence that global warming can cause the jet stream to get stuck in the way it has this winter. If this is due to climate change, it is outside our knowledge." 
Just guessing, but my suspicion is that having devoted his entire career to the study and modelling of climate change, Collins (a) knows more about it than David Cameron, Ed Miliband, et al and (b) would be only too happy to ascribe the deluge to climate change if there were any scientific justification for doing so. But there isn't. So he doesn't.

The ideology of climate change (it is an ideology because it is no longer susceptible to scientific disproof) reminds me of Whittaker Chambers's explanation of Communism as
'in fact, man's second oldest faith. Its promise was whispered in the first days of the Creation under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: 'Ye shall be as gods.' It is the great alternative faith of mankind. Like all great faiths, its force derives from a simple vision. Other ages have had great visions. They have always been different versions of the same vision: the vision of God and man's relationship to God. The Communists vision is the vision of Man without God. It is the vision of man's mind displacing God as the creative intelligence of the world." 
If the weather is awful this does not mean the climate is changing but if the climate is changing - and Bucharest's taxi drivers seem unanimous that it is this, and if human activity has some part in the process, this  does not mean human activity is of crucial importance or that we can prevent warming. We are clearly living in the end of an Ice Age. This was clear to me, who hates physics, as soon as climate change was first bruited abroad. 

 I should be a guru or at least a famous writer.

12 comments:

  1. Anonymous17 February 2014 at 15:53

    Im a strong non believer in climate change caused by humans and their pollution. Climate has always changed, actually in the past those changes were more dramatically and rapidly done.

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    1. Political Refugee from the Global Village17 February 2014 at 18:32

      Pollution has a role but I think there are clear reasons why people get frightened and they are psychological and political/philosophical, not objective. It is the hubristic idea that man is in charge of the universe.

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    2. Anonymous18 February 2014 at 14:42

      pollution affects us and part of our chain food. maybe it speed up things down hill but they were rolling anyhow. 12 000 years ago Europe was in ice age and no industry brought back the green fields than, but a normal evolution which repeats its self on the planet. As for humans, yes, as they think there is a God which listens to their specific prayers, it seems legit to think that we have such a significant impact here. because ego and self centrism.

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  2. Anonymous18 February 2014 at 09:40

    God is in charge of the Universe, but man has free will and what we do to the Earth has consequences. The climate has always changed. It is skewed thinking to allow climate change to be a left-right debate

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  3. Anonymous18 February 2014 at 09:42

    the 'essential question' is not really the "CO2 emissions" by man. It is the Climate Sensitivity to said trace gas IN TOTAL (most Atmo CO2 doesn't come from burning of fossil fuels - check the facts). Again, why has atmo temp NOT increased for 16-17 years, when total CO2 in the atmosphere has increased? The much vaunted Climate Muddles cannot explain this, and did not predict it. And, again, over geologic time, increases in atmo CO2 level always LAGGED temperature rises, it did not LEAD such rise. Therefore, in the past, CO2 concentration increases could not have 'caused' increasing temp over geologic time. Which, if you are a True Climate Alarmist is a tad tricky...

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  4. Anonymous18 February 2014 at 14:57

    So to extend the parallel, the followers of current belief both that (a) climate is actually warming and (b) the most significant driver is human industry is akin to the believers in the man-without-God view. Good one! And not a chain of logic I would have ever arrived at all on my own... Dan Teodor

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  5. Anonymous18 February 2014 at 15:02

    It hasn't always been called 'communism'. 'Communism' is only its latest incarnation.

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  6. Martin18 February 2014 at 20:27

    You might like this, Paul: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/10625663/Flooding-Somerset-Levels-disaster-is-being-driven-by-EU-policy.html

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    1. Political Refugee from the Global Village19 February 2014 at 14:18

      Thank you. Very interesting. I have come to think joining the EU was a tragic mistake for England.

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  7. Ronnie Smith20 February 2014 at 19:24

    I thought you were a famous writer. The floods in England are caused by too much rain. Nothing at all to do with the weather, the climate or anything else of that nature. It's simply too wet. Furthermore, I have absolutely no doubt that the EU is ultimately responsible for this and the sooner England leaves the EU, the sooner the rain will stop and everything will get back to normal. Climate change indeed, it's the bloody French.

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    1. Political Refugee from the Global Village21 February 2014 at 14:46

      http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100260343/the-floods-weret-anyones-fault-for-heavens-sake/

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    2. Political Refugee from the Global Village21 February 2014 at 14:47

      See the link Martin Robb provided above: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/10625663/Flooding-Somerset-Levels-disaster-is-being-driven-by-EU-policy.html

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