C
Captain Compassion
Guest
Lord Lawson claims climate change hysteria heralds a 'new age of
unreason'
By Christopher Booker
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 06/04/2008Page 1 of 2
One of the striking features of how concern over global warming has
risen to the top of our political agenda is the extraordinary
unanimity with which it has been taken up by our political
establishment.
Lord Lawson: the science is far from settled or understood
Not only have our main political parties unquestioningly accepted the
more extreme claims of the threat posed by global warming, as
exemplified by the Treasury's Stern Review or Al Gore's alarmist film.
Our politicians have similarly endorsed without a murmur all the steps
now being taken to avert this predicted catastrophe - which, if
carried through, can only mean a dramatic transformation in our way of
life.
Only one senior political figure in Britain has dared stand apart from
this stifling orthodoxy: Nigel Lawson, now Lord Lawson of Blaby, who
as Margaret Thatcher's Chancellor presided over the renaissance of our
economy in the 1980s.
In 2005 Lord Lawson played an influential part in shaping a report on
The Economics of Climate Change by the Lords economic affairs
committee. It stood out as a measured but often critical appraisal
both of the science behind orthodox global warming theory and of the
political response to it.
In 2006, in a lecture to the Centre for Policy Studies, Lord Lawson
gave a more personal view of one of the overriding political issues of
our time, which he has now expanded into a book, An Appeal To Reason:
A Cool Look At Global Warming. His timing is impeccable. On one hand,
we are just starting to appreciate the colossal cost of the measures
being taken to meet the European Union's target of a 60 per cent cut
in our CO2 emissions in the next four decades, ranging from plans to
spend hundreds of billions of pounds on wind turbines to the EU's
emissions trading scheme, already costing us billions through our
electricity bills.
On the other hand, global temperatures, after flattening out, have in
recent months shown a sharp fall, wholly unpredicted by those computer
models on which the proponents of warming orthodoxy rely. This raises
rather large question marks over whether the theory has actually got
it right.
When I met Lord Lawson at the House of Lords, I hadn't seen him since
his famously drastic slimming regime, some years back, left him
looking rather gaunt. I was relieved to see him now, at the age of 76,
looking remarkably well-preserved as he continues to divide his active
life between the House of Lords, two company chairmanships and his
home in south-western France.
How did he come to develop such an informed interest in this subject?
"When, in 2005, I was invited to serve on the Lords committee," he
explains, "I felt there was no issue more appropriate for us to look
at than the economic implications of global warming, because they are
so enormous, and so few people seemed to be doing it."
What was most striking about that Lords inquiry was the range of
expert witnesses it called. These naturally included leading
supporters of the official orthodoxy, such as Sir John Houghton,
chairman of the working group of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC), which since 1988 has been the central player in
alerting the world to the supposed dangers of global warming.
Snow falling on a beach in Greece appears to give the lie to the
apocalyptic predictions of Al Gore and others says Lord Lawson
But also invited to testify were some eminent dissenters, such as the
US climatologist Professor Richard Lindzen and Paul Reiter, the
world's leading expert on tropical diseases, both outspoken critics of
the much-vaunted "scientific consensus" on global warming.
"Considering the differing views our committee started with," says
Lord Lawson, "it was quite an achievement that we ended up unanimously
agreed on what was in many ways a fairly critical report. But the key
was that we based our findings on examining the evidence" - and this
remains a marked feature of his book.
"Undoubtedly," he says, "the closing years of the 20th century saw a
modest warming in global temperatures. But the orthodox explanation
for this has a problem. While atmospheric CO2 continues to rise,
temperatures have not in the past decade followed suit.
"They try to explain this," he adds mischievously, "by saying that
global warming will resume in 2009 or thereabouts. Maybe it will: we
shall see."
Some of the committee's most trenchant criticism, echoed by Lord
Lawson today, was reserved for the way the IPCC "has mutated in the
minds of those who head it into something more like a politically
correct alarmist pressure group".
"Nevertheless," he says, "we have to accept that the IPCC is far and
away the most influential player on this issue. What I therefore try
to do in my book is to accept the general case it has made, but to
look very carefully at how it is made and its implications."
One useful thing Lord Lawson does is to examine what the IPCC is
actually saying in the small print of its latest report, as compared
with the wilder exaggerations favoured by the Stern Review and Al
Gore. "If you look at the IPCC's detailed predictions, on such issues
as food and water shortages, sea-level rise and health, they paint
nothing like the catastrophe we are made familiar with by the media. A
maximum sea-level rise of 23in over 100 years hardly compares with the
20ft predicted by Mr Gore's film.
"Indeed, from the IPCC's predictions," he says, "we can calculate that
the upshot of this great disaster facing the world might be that our
great-grandchildren, instead of being slightly more than 4.8 times as
well off as we are, would be only 4.7 times as well off."
One huge gap in the IPCC's thinking, Lord Lawson suggests, is that "it
fails almost completely to take account of the capacity of human
beings to adapt to changing temperatures - as we can see from
comparing Finland with Singapore, two of the world's most successful
economies. In the first, people manage to live happily with an average
annual temperature of 5C; in the second, they can cope with an average
of 27C."
He goes on to contrast some of the crazier predictions on such matters
as the melting of polar ice or the shifting of the Gulf Stream with
the much less alarmist views of genuine experts in these fields -
showing how the "threat from which the planet must be saved" has been
almost laughably exaggerated.
So what then should we do about it? Lord Lawson discusses the familiar
implausibility of reaching any worldwide agreement on massive cuts in
CO2, when developing countries such as China and India cannot see why
they should be denied the hope of emulating the living standards of
the West.
He similarly dismisses the futility of most of the techniques being
proposed to "mitigate" those emissions, from "cap-and-trade" schemes
to reliance on biofuels, which "even the most zealous
environmentalists now realise do far more environmental damage than
anything they might seek to cure".
As for "such feelgood measures as driving a hybrid car or not leaving
our television sets on standby, in this context they are trivial to
the point of irrelevance".
"Our politicians," he says, "need to be honest with the people. If
they believe that we need to cut back drastically on carbon dioxide
emissions today, at considerable cost and disruption to our way of
life, because there is a remote risk of major disaster some time in
the distant future, they should make the case explicitly in those
terms.
"The fact is," he concludes, "that the science of what determines the
earth's temperature is far from settled or understood - and
fortunately opinion surveys suggest that the majority of people, even
in the UK where politicians of all parties sing from the same
politically correct hymn sheet, instinctively sense that this is so."
Lord Lawson closes on a note that others of us have struck in trying
to puzzle out the deeper reasons for this great climate panic. He
recognises that in many ways the global warming ideology has filled
the vacuum left by the collapse of Marxism: "Green is the new red."
He sees parallels with the apocalyptic visions held out by certain
religious movements in the past. He is alarmed by the fanatical
intolerance shown by many believers in global warming to any heretic
who dares question their certainties.
He ends by describing "the new religion of global warming" as "the Da
Vinci Code of environmentalism. It is a great story and a best-seller.
It contains a grain of truth and a mountain of nonsense.
"We have entered," he says, "a new age of unreason, which threatens to
be as economically harmful as it is disquieting. It is from this,
above all, that we really do need to save the planet."
--
If you disagree with the theories and dogmas of Marxism or Scientific Socialism
then you are a tool of Capitalist interests. If you disagree with the theories
or dogmas of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming then you are a tool of
Capitalistic interests. Notice a pattern here? -- Captain Compassion
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority but to
escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane. -- Marcus Aurelius
"...the whole world, including the United States, including all that
we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark
Age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights
of perverted science." -- Sir Winston Churchill
Joseph R. Darancette
daranc@NOSPAMcharter.net
unreason'
By Christopher Booker
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 06/04/2008Page 1 of 2
One of the striking features of how concern over global warming has
risen to the top of our political agenda is the extraordinary
unanimity with which it has been taken up by our political
establishment.
Lord Lawson: the science is far from settled or understood
Not only have our main political parties unquestioningly accepted the
more extreme claims of the threat posed by global warming, as
exemplified by the Treasury's Stern Review or Al Gore's alarmist film.
Our politicians have similarly endorsed without a murmur all the steps
now being taken to avert this predicted catastrophe - which, if
carried through, can only mean a dramatic transformation in our way of
life.
Only one senior political figure in Britain has dared stand apart from
this stifling orthodoxy: Nigel Lawson, now Lord Lawson of Blaby, who
as Margaret Thatcher's Chancellor presided over the renaissance of our
economy in the 1980s.
In 2005 Lord Lawson played an influential part in shaping a report on
The Economics of Climate Change by the Lords economic affairs
committee. It stood out as a measured but often critical appraisal
both of the science behind orthodox global warming theory and of the
political response to it.
In 2006, in a lecture to the Centre for Policy Studies, Lord Lawson
gave a more personal view of one of the overriding political issues of
our time, which he has now expanded into a book, An Appeal To Reason:
A Cool Look At Global Warming. His timing is impeccable. On one hand,
we are just starting to appreciate the colossal cost of the measures
being taken to meet the European Union's target of a 60 per cent cut
in our CO2 emissions in the next four decades, ranging from plans to
spend hundreds of billions of pounds on wind turbines to the EU's
emissions trading scheme, already costing us billions through our
electricity bills.
On the other hand, global temperatures, after flattening out, have in
recent months shown a sharp fall, wholly unpredicted by those computer
models on which the proponents of warming orthodoxy rely. This raises
rather large question marks over whether the theory has actually got
it right.
When I met Lord Lawson at the House of Lords, I hadn't seen him since
his famously drastic slimming regime, some years back, left him
looking rather gaunt. I was relieved to see him now, at the age of 76,
looking remarkably well-preserved as he continues to divide his active
life between the House of Lords, two company chairmanships and his
home in south-western France.
How did he come to develop such an informed interest in this subject?
"When, in 2005, I was invited to serve on the Lords committee," he
explains, "I felt there was no issue more appropriate for us to look
at than the economic implications of global warming, because they are
so enormous, and so few people seemed to be doing it."
What was most striking about that Lords inquiry was the range of
expert witnesses it called. These naturally included leading
supporters of the official orthodoxy, such as Sir John Houghton,
chairman of the working group of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC), which since 1988 has been the central player in
alerting the world to the supposed dangers of global warming.
Snow falling on a beach in Greece appears to give the lie to the
apocalyptic predictions of Al Gore and others says Lord Lawson
But also invited to testify were some eminent dissenters, such as the
US climatologist Professor Richard Lindzen and Paul Reiter, the
world's leading expert on tropical diseases, both outspoken critics of
the much-vaunted "scientific consensus" on global warming.
"Considering the differing views our committee started with," says
Lord Lawson, "it was quite an achievement that we ended up unanimously
agreed on what was in many ways a fairly critical report. But the key
was that we based our findings on examining the evidence" - and this
remains a marked feature of his book.
"Undoubtedly," he says, "the closing years of the 20th century saw a
modest warming in global temperatures. But the orthodox explanation
for this has a problem. While atmospheric CO2 continues to rise,
temperatures have not in the past decade followed suit.
"They try to explain this," he adds mischievously, "by saying that
global warming will resume in 2009 or thereabouts. Maybe it will: we
shall see."
Some of the committee's most trenchant criticism, echoed by Lord
Lawson today, was reserved for the way the IPCC "has mutated in the
minds of those who head it into something more like a politically
correct alarmist pressure group".
"Nevertheless," he says, "we have to accept that the IPCC is far and
away the most influential player on this issue. What I therefore try
to do in my book is to accept the general case it has made, but to
look very carefully at how it is made and its implications."
One useful thing Lord Lawson does is to examine what the IPCC is
actually saying in the small print of its latest report, as compared
with the wilder exaggerations favoured by the Stern Review and Al
Gore. "If you look at the IPCC's detailed predictions, on such issues
as food and water shortages, sea-level rise and health, they paint
nothing like the catastrophe we are made familiar with by the media. A
maximum sea-level rise of 23in over 100 years hardly compares with the
20ft predicted by Mr Gore's film.
"Indeed, from the IPCC's predictions," he says, "we can calculate that
the upshot of this great disaster facing the world might be that our
great-grandchildren, instead of being slightly more than 4.8 times as
well off as we are, would be only 4.7 times as well off."
One huge gap in the IPCC's thinking, Lord Lawson suggests, is that "it
fails almost completely to take account of the capacity of human
beings to adapt to changing temperatures - as we can see from
comparing Finland with Singapore, two of the world's most successful
economies. In the first, people manage to live happily with an average
annual temperature of 5C; in the second, they can cope with an average
of 27C."
He goes on to contrast some of the crazier predictions on such matters
as the melting of polar ice or the shifting of the Gulf Stream with
the much less alarmist views of genuine experts in these fields -
showing how the "threat from which the planet must be saved" has been
almost laughably exaggerated.
So what then should we do about it? Lord Lawson discusses the familiar
implausibility of reaching any worldwide agreement on massive cuts in
CO2, when developing countries such as China and India cannot see why
they should be denied the hope of emulating the living standards of
the West.
He similarly dismisses the futility of most of the techniques being
proposed to "mitigate" those emissions, from "cap-and-trade" schemes
to reliance on biofuels, which "even the most zealous
environmentalists now realise do far more environmental damage than
anything they might seek to cure".
As for "such feelgood measures as driving a hybrid car or not leaving
our television sets on standby, in this context they are trivial to
the point of irrelevance".
"Our politicians," he says, "need to be honest with the people. If
they believe that we need to cut back drastically on carbon dioxide
emissions today, at considerable cost and disruption to our way of
life, because there is a remote risk of major disaster some time in
the distant future, they should make the case explicitly in those
terms.
"The fact is," he concludes, "that the science of what determines the
earth's temperature is far from settled or understood - and
fortunately opinion surveys suggest that the majority of people, even
in the UK where politicians of all parties sing from the same
politically correct hymn sheet, instinctively sense that this is so."
Lord Lawson closes on a note that others of us have struck in trying
to puzzle out the deeper reasons for this great climate panic. He
recognises that in many ways the global warming ideology has filled
the vacuum left by the collapse of Marxism: "Green is the new red."
He sees parallels with the apocalyptic visions held out by certain
religious movements in the past. He is alarmed by the fanatical
intolerance shown by many believers in global warming to any heretic
who dares question their certainties.
He ends by describing "the new religion of global warming" as "the Da
Vinci Code of environmentalism. It is a great story and a best-seller.
It contains a grain of truth and a mountain of nonsense.
"We have entered," he says, "a new age of unreason, which threatens to
be as economically harmful as it is disquieting. It is from this,
above all, that we really do need to save the planet."
--
If you disagree with the theories and dogmas of Marxism or Scientific Socialism
then you are a tool of Capitalist interests. If you disagree with the theories
or dogmas of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming then you are a tool of
Capitalistic interests. Notice a pattern here? -- Captain Compassion
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority but to
escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane. -- Marcus Aurelius
"...the whole world, including the United States, including all that
we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark
Age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights
of perverted science." -- Sir Winston Churchill
Joseph R. Darancette
daranc@NOSPAMcharter.net