'Trougher' Yeo recants on global warming

So even Tim "Trougher" Yeo admits he was wrong about climate change. (Well done young Matthew Holehouse for screwing this admission out of him.)

Here's what he said in 2009:

"The dying gasps of the deniers will be put to bed. In five years time, no one will argue about a man-made contribution to climate change.”
And here, less than five years on, is what he is saying now:

“Although I think the evidence that the climate is changing is now overwhelming, the causes are not absolutely clear. There could be natural causes, natural phases that are taking place.”

We're going to see a lot of this in the coming weeks and months: "the even though I've been proved completely wrong, I was right all along really" non-apologetic retraction from all those former full-time climate alarmists – eg the Met Office; Oxford's Professor Myles Allen; even certain of my Telegraph blogging colleagues – who are now trying to escape from the collapsing edifice of the great AGW scam while trying to salvage as much professional dignity as they can muster.

Notice that weasel phrase "I think the evidence that the climate is changing is now overwhelming…" It's the sort of technique you might learn in an advanced NLP class as a way of pulling wool over the eyes of the unwary. What the phrase implies is that there has been a long-running debate as to whether "climate is changing", that Yeo has always been on the right side of it and that now he has been vindicated. Truly this a slimy trick worthy of the man they sometimes call "Trougher" and sometimes "Ebola". As we all know here, there has never been a debate about whether the "climate is changing". Not even Mr Thick the Thickest person on the planet; not even Mr Fossil Fuel, the most lavishly Big-Oil-funded denialist denialista; not a single person anywhere on earth ever in our lifetime has ever suggested that climate doesn't change. Indeed, that has been the whole point that those of us on the right (ie my) side of the argument have been making all along. Climate change is a normal, natural and perpetual process which occurs, and has always occurred, with sublime indifference to man's puny input.

Still, it's good to see Yeo taking at least the first tentative step on the path to redemption. Admitting you were totally wrong about something, that you've been made to look an utterly despicable, greedy fool, that even the Conservatives in your constituency hate you, that no one trusts you as far as they can spit, that you've done immeasurable damage to your country's landscape and economy with the abysmally counterproductive environmental policies you not only helped promote but from which you may have benefited financially: these are things no man would ever wish to admit to himself.

But it's OK Tim. I can help. In the last two years, for example, you have earned getting on for £250,000 on top of your MP's salary, from your various green interests. Imagine how much happier you'd be in your skin if you could divest yourself of that money which you have now realised is tainted money. Imagine if you'd been given a blood diamond by Charles Taylor; imagine if you'd produced a DVD called "Now Then, Now Then: the Very Best of Jimmy Savile": you couldn't, in all conscience, keep the profits from that, could you?

Well, Trougher, me old mucker, I'm afraid the same rules apply with your green business interests. Here's the thing: that industry you've profited from simply WOULD NOT EXIST had it not been for that toxic combination of junk science and hysterical fearmongering to which you have made such a vocal contribution.

I know quarter of a million quid is small beer next to the profits being raked in by your mates in the renewables industry. But for some people out there it would make a real difference, especially the victims of the wind industry which the Committee for Climate Change (Prop: Tim Yeo) has done so much to encourage.

£50 buys someone a decent night's sleep in a B & B away from the insomnia-inducing low frequency noise of a wind farm

£500 buys a sporting rifle which – not that I'm recommending such illegal behaviour, heaven forfend! – might be used to blast away at the nacelle of the nearest wind turbine

£30,000 pays for a QC to represent a local community at the wind farm planning appeal to which, of course, by rights they should never have had to be subjected. After all, it's not as though the planning committee of their district council didn't already turn down this application to plonk an industrial turbine in the middle of their cherished beauty spot on two occasions, once by 11 to 1 and second time by 11 to 0. But hey, that's the situation we've got at the moment with Dave's Greenest Government Ever: still committed to building more of the turbines which no one save scrounging landowners and principle-free renewable energy companies actually wants….

£50,000 pays for the subsequent judicial review.

£250,000 buys a bespoke resignation speech, written by top author James Delingpole, for when you finally realise that being a decent Tory MP doesn't fit comfortably within your skillset and that there are careers more closely aligned to your moral outlook. I'm thinking, maybe rare-earth mineral mining in China. Growth industry. Really green!

Heh that's brilliant, apart from the bit about delingpole.. /cringe

Ed Davey attacks papers who report 'destructive' climate sceptics

Newspapers are wrong to give a “platform” for campaigners and groups that question whether climate change is caused by human activity, Ed Davey, the energy secretary, has said.

Mr Davey attacked “destructive and loudly clamouring scepticism” about climate change, and criticised parts of the media for the way they report that scepticism.

The minister’s comments come as MPs prepare to vote on a new legal target to cut carbon emissions from Britain’s power plants.

An amendment to the Energy Bill would commit the UK to have a “near carbon-free power sector” by 2030.

Backers of the amendment say that cutting carbon emissions is needed to check changes in global weather conditions.

Many scientists believe that human activity that releases carbon into the atmosphere contributes to climate change.

One recent survey of 12,000 academic papers on climate change found 97 per cent agree human activities are causing the planet to warm.
Some scientists and politicians question that consensus.

Last week, Tim Yeo, the chairman of the Commons Energy and Climate Change committee, said it was possible that “natural phases” in the climate may explain warming, and not human activity.

Lord Lawson of Blaby, a former Chancellor, has also questioned the consensus on climate change.

In his speech, Mr Davey attacked newspapers who give what he says is undue space to reporting those who are sceptical about the climate consensus.

"Of course there will always be uncertainties within climate science and the need for research to continue.

"But some sections of the press are giving an uncritical campaigning platform to individuals and lobby groups,” the minister will say.
"This is not the serious science of challenging, checking and probing.

"This is destructive and loudly clamouring scepticism born of vested interest, nimbyism, publicity seeking contraversialism or sheer blinkered, dogmatic, political bloody-mindedness.

"This tendency will seize upon the normal expression of scientific uncertainty and portray it as proof that all climate change policy is hopelessly misguided.

He added: "By selectively misreading the evidence, they seek to suggest that climate change has stopped so we can all relax and burn all the dirty fuel we want without a care.

"Those who argue against all the actions we are taking to reduce emissions, without any serious and viable alternative, are asking us to take a massive gamble with the planet our children will inherit, in the face of all the evidence, against overwhelming odds."

Spain braces for 'coldest summer in 200 years'

French weather channel Meteo has forecast that this summer will be the worst on record in Western Europe since 1816 – known by meteorological experts as “the year without summer”.

If you've been looking forward to spending your Spanish summer sunning yourself by the pool, don’t pack away your winter clothes just yet.

France’s main weather channel has announced that there is a 70 percent chance of this summer being cold and wet across Spain, France, Portugal, Germany and Austria.

Cold maritime fronts and weak solar activity during the winter months have not only given us a chillier Spanish spring than normal, they’re also going to make the summer months unusually dreary and rainy.

According to Meteo, June and July are only likely to have short periods of summer heat which will in turn bring heavy storms in August.

September and October are likely to register higher average temperatures and less rain, the French weather agency announced on Monday.

The year without summer, 1816, is not an old wives’ tale.

Overcast skies and cold temperatures across the northern hemisphere led to severe crop failures and food shortages in France, England, Ireland and the US during the summer months of that year.

We have seen similar patterns before – in the 1950s and the 1880s – and we have hints that we are coming towards the end of this current cycle.

However, it might continue for the next five to 10 years.

There is a higher probability of wet summers continuing.

But it's very early days in trying to understand why this is happening.

The scientists also debated how melting sea ice should be better incorporated into climate models...

...as well as how observational data – for example, deep-ocean temperatures – could be improved

...to help their understanding of the potential relationship between climate change and the recent run of inclement weather and record-breaking extremes.

World's top climate scientists confess: Global warming is just QUARTER what we thought - and computers got the effects of greenhouse gases wrong

A leaked copy of the world’s most authoritative climate study reveals scientific forecasts of imminent doom were drastically wrong.

The Mail on Sunday has obtained the final draft of a report to be published later this month by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the ultimate watchdog whose massive, six-yearly ‘assessments’ are accepted by environmentalists, politicians and experts as the gospel of climate science.

They are cited worldwide to justify swingeing fossil fuel taxes and subsidies for ‘renewable’ energy.

Yet the leaked report makes the extraordinary concession that over the past 15 years, recorded world temperatures have increased at only a quarter of the rate of IPCC claimed when it published its last assessment in 2007.

Back then, it said observed warming over the 15 years from 1990-2005 had taken place at a rate of 0.2C per decade, and it predicted this would continue for the following 20 years, on the basis of forecasts made by computer climate models.

But the new report says the observed warming over the more recent 15 years to 2012 was just 0.05C per decade - below almost all computer predictions.

The 31-page ‘summary for policymakers’ is based on a more technical 2,000-page analysis which will be issued at the same time. It also surprisingly reveals: IPCC scientists accept their forecast computers may have exaggerated the effect of increased carbon emissions on world temperatures – and not taken enough notice of natural variability.

They recognise the global warming ‘pause’ first reported by The Mail on Sunday last year is real – and concede that their computer models did not predict it. But they cannot explain why world average temperatures have not shown any statistically significant increase since 1997.

lThey admit large parts of the world were as warm as they are now for decades at a time between 950 and 1250 AD – centuries before the Industrial Revolution, and when the population and CO2 levels were both much lower.

lThe IPCC admits that while computer models forecast a decline in Antarctic sea ice, it has actually grown to a new record high. Again, the IPCC cannot say why.

New report counters climate change scare

Halloween comes a month early this year, with the Sept. 27 release of the next big United Nations climate change report. Innocuously entitled Working Group I: The Physical Science Basis, the fifth assessment report of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) doesn’t sound scary. But it is certain to provide endless fodder for doomsday coverage by media the world over.

That is its purpose, of course: to convince the press to frighten the public so that they pressure governments into multibillion-dollar climate change plans. The science is settled, the IPCC and climate activists will tell us. It is past time for action.

The IPCC could not conclude anything else. UN climate change activities must adhere to the doctrine laid down in 1992 by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC). At that year’s Rio summit, virtually all national leaders endorsed the FCCC’s proclamation that humanity must work to accomplish “stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.”

That 21 years ago, and even today, no one knows what, if any, greenhouse gas level would cause climate problems is immaterial. The climate change express left the station long ago.

So, in the two decades since Rio, the UN has done what you would expect a well-funded, unelected bureaucracy to do when put in charge of solving a problem. They convened huge international conferences in exotic locations to orchestrate climate treaties. They created global warming and alternative energy “road maps” for the world to follow. They designed strategies to monitor and enforce countries’ compliances with treaty obligations. And, of course, the UN will run the developing nations $100-billion Green Fund.

No matter what science and observational evidence actually tell us, it is not realistic to expect one part of the UN, here the IPCC, to conclude that the problem other parts of the organization has been pushing the world to solve may not actually exist.

What has clearly been needed for a very long time is an anti-IPCC, a formal group of equally qualified but independent experts who do not support the hypothesis that our greenhouse gas emissions, carbon dioxide in particular, are causing climate problems. Then media could report the arguments for and against the man-made global warming hypothesis and let the public and their elected officials decide who is most credible and what, if any, actions should be taken.

While there have been open letters and petitions signed by leading experts asserting that the IPCC is wrong, the skeptics side has never had anything like the weighty tomes issued every five or six years by the IPCC. So, most reporters cited IPCC proclamations as if there were no equally credible alternative.

All that is about to change.

Today, the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), a panel of leading scientists and scholars from across the globe, will issue a report entitled Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science. Strategically timed to precede the release of the IPCC document by 10 days, the NIPCC report will reveal a scientific community deeply uncertain about the reliability of the computer models used by the IPCC to predict climate problems. Climate Change Reconsidered II will also demonstrate that many of the world’s leading climate experts now question, or entirely refute, the IPCC’s basic postulates and its interpretations of the observational evidence.

The NIPCC criticism doesn’t come from a “fringe” group of scientists: it is repeated in thousands of articles in the peer-reviewed literature, many of which are listed and interpreted by the scientist authors of the NIPCC report. Unlike the IPCC, the NIPCC is not sponsored by the UN or member governments, and so is not politically motivated to come to any pre-ordained conclusion.

It is co-authored and co-edited by Craig Idso, chairman of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change; Professor Robert Carter, former head of the School of Earth Sciences, James Cook University, Australia; and S. Fred Singer, PhD, president of the Science and Environmental Policy Project and professor emeritus of environmental science at the University of Virginia. Forty-six other climate experts from 14 countries acted as authors and reviewers.

Climate Change Reconsidered II focuses especially on research papers that were either overlooked by the IPCC or that contain data, discussion or implications arguing against the dangerous global warming hypothesis. The report concludes that the IPCC has exaggerated the amount of warming likely to occur due to rising CO2 concentrations and that whatever warming may occur will be harmless.

Among the other conclusions of the NIPCC report:

* There has been no global warming for the past 16 years, even though CO2 levels have risen eight per cent. Climate models clearly do not work.

* We may soon experience global cooling due to changes in the brightness of the sun.

* The global area of sea ice today is close to that first measured by satellites in 1979.

* Sea-level rise is not accelerating.

* There have been no significant changes in the magnitude or intensity of extreme weather events in the modern record.

The key question to be answered in the climate change debate is not whether climate change is real, or whether human activities have some impact. Both are obviously true. The real question is whether reputable science indicates that it is worth spending hundreds of billions of dollars to restructure our energy infrastructure to avoid a man-made climate catastrophe.

Activists cite the reports of the IPCC to support an affirmative answer to this question. The new report of the NIPCC suggests the exact opposite is true.

Government, industry, education and media leaders must insist on an immediate cessation of expenditures on climate change pending a complete re-examination of the file. No matter who’s right, the stakes are too high to do anything else.

Tom Harris is executive director of the Ottawa-based International Climate Science Coalition. climatescienceinternational.org

EU policy on climate change is right even if science was wrong, says commissioner

Regardless of whether or not scientists are wrong on global warming, the European Union is pursuing the correct energy policies even if they lead to higher prices, Europe’s climate commissioner has said

Connie Hedegaard's comments come as the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is expected to admit that previous scientific predictions for global warming and the effects of carbon emissions have been proved to be inaccurate.

In an interview with the Telegraph, Europe's most senior climate change official argued that the current policies are the correct ones because a growing world population will put pressure on energy supplies regardless of the rate of global warming.

"I personally have a very pragmatic view.

"Say that 30 years from now, science came back and said When it inevitably turns out 30 years from now that the predictions are completely wrong, and we forced to concede, 'wow, we were mistaken then now we have some new information so we think it is something else'. In a world with nine billion people, even 10 billion at the middle of this century, where literally billions of global citizens will still have to get out of poverty and enter the consuming middle classes, don't you think that anyway it makes a lot of sense to get more energy and resource efficient," she said.

"Let's say that science, some decades from now, said 'we were wrong, it was not about climate', would it not in any case have been good to do many of things you have to do in order to combat climate change?."

If they were serious about any of this, wouldn't they just abandon oil+fractional reserve banking, move to geothermal power .....

andyh wrote:
I first heard of Geothermal getting on for 20 years ago. I was living in Penwith at the time and heard about a small housing development that had it built in. It blew me away, so simple, so effective. The oft quoted issue with it is that it's very 'costly' to do on established housing and single dwellings etc...It is however really rather cheap to install on more sizable new build developments. So you would indeed logically think that a society that was serious about the AGW monster would have pressed it into action on every new housing development. In those 20 years we have witnessed many many thousands of new estates going up...We have not however witnessed geothermal being utilized at all...

A similar area is that of tidal power. Ok, tiz 'costly' at first but the tides are in perpetual motion. The energy that could be tapped is phenomenal, totally clean and essentially free once the infrastructure is in place. It is also relatively efficient. The TV programme Tomorrow's World presented the idea back in the 70's...As yet no serious investment has been made.

When you look at it, it does rather seem that all this AGW stuff isn't about clean ands renewable energy at all. Tiz all about maximizing corporate and State profit. Correct me if I'm wrong mr Gore.

When you look at it, it does rather seem that all this AGW stuff isn't about clean ands renewable energy at all. Tiz all about maximizing corporate and State profit. Correct me if I'm wrong mr Gore.

World's top climate scientists told to 'cover up' the fact that the Earth's temperature hasn't risen for the last 15 years

Scientists working on the most authoritative study on climate change were urged to cover up the fact that the world’s temperature hasn’t risen for the last 15 years, it is claimed.

A leaked copy of a United Nations report, compiled by hundreds of scientists, shows politicians in Belgium, Germany, Hungary and the United States raised concerns about the final draft.

Published next week, it is expected to address the fact that 1998 was the hottest year on record and world temperatures have not yet exceeded it, which scientists have so far struggled to explain.

The report is the result of six years’ work by UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is seen as the world authority on the extent of climate change and what is causing it – on which governments including Britain’s base their green policies.

But leaked documents seen by the Associated Press, yesterday revealed deep concerns among politicians about a lack of global warming over the past few years.

Germany called for the references to the slowdown in warming to be deleted, saying looking at a time span of just 10 or 15 years was ‘misleading’ and they should focus on decades or centuries.

The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has changed its tune after issuing stern warnings about climate change for years
Hungary worried the report would provide ammunition for deniers of man-made climate change.

Belgium objected to using 1998 as a starting year for statistics, as it was exceptionally warm and makes the graph look flat - and suggested using 1999 or 2000 instead to give a more upward-pointing curve.

The United States delegation even weighed in, urging the authors of the report to explain away the lack of warming using the ‘leading hypothesis’ among scientists that the lower warming is down to more heat being absorbed by the ocean – which has got hotter.

The last IPCC ‘assessment report’ was published in 2007 and has been the subject of huge controversy after it had to correct the embarrassing claim that the Himalayas would melt by 2035.

It was then engulfed in the ‘Climategate’ scandal surrounding leaked emails allegedly showing scientists involved in it trying to manipulate their data to make it look more convincing – although several inquiries found no wrongdoing.

The latest report, which runs to 2,000 pages, will be shown to representatives from all 195 governments next week at a meeting in Stockholm, who can discuss alterations they want to make.

But since it was issued to governments in June, they have raised hundreds of objections about the 20-page summary for policymakers, which sums up the findings of the scientists.

What it says will inform renewable energy policies and how much consumers and businesses will pay for them.

The report is expected to say the rate of warming between 1998 and 2012 was about half of the average rate since 1951 – and put this down to natural variations such as the El Nino and La Nina ocean cycles and the cooling effects of volcanoes.

No 'serious person' should doubt man behind climate change, says Tony Blair

No serious-minded person could possibly doubt that climate change is manmade, Tony Blair has claimed, as several influential figures move to head off fresh doubts about the integrity of the science behind global warming

The former British prime minister made his remarks at a major climate industry conference in New York on Monday, just days before the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) delivers its fifth report into global warming in Stockholm on Friday.

The IPCC report is attracting huge scrutiny after it emerged that there has been no significant increase in global average surface temperature for the past 15-plus years – contrary to earlier IPCC predictions and climate change models.

Leaked drafts of the report have suggested that the IPCC is preparing to explain the discrepancy as a “pause” caused by cyclical fluctuations in sea temperatures, dust from volcanic eruptions or the downward phase in the solar cycle.

The failure of the planet to warm as predicted is seen by climate change sceptics as proof that the IPCC models are fundamentally flawed, and that politics – not hard science – has driven too much of the process in the four earlier IPCC reports that began in 1990.

However Mr Blair, opening the New York Climate Change week, said the report would show it was “ninety-five per cent” certain that global warming was man-made, and that the time for debate was now over.

“After this panel assessment this week, there will no longer be any serious doubt in the minds of serious people that this is a serious problem," he said, "The question is can we find the means of galvanising the [political] leaderships to act in the way they should?”

“Ninety-five per cent certain, is a pretty large degree of certainty – I recall that the number of people who think Elvis is still alive is round about five per cent,” he added, to laughter.

Since leaving office Mr Blair has supported The Climate Group, a non-profit foundation that teams up with big business to tackle climate change issues.

Among the corporate sponsors of the event were the Weather Channel, the insurance major Swiss Re, the LED lighting specialists Phillips, the furniture maker IKEA and the computer giant Hewlett-Packard.

Mr Blair was followed to the lectern by Todd Stern, the US special envoy on climate change and Jim Yong Kim, the World Bank president who was even more vocal in rubbishing climate change sceptics than Mr Blair.

“We have to stop with these silly arguments and move forward on thinking about what we are going to do,” Mr Kim said, citing World Bank studies that mapped out the possible consequences of global warming.

“Among the predictions is that by 2030 it’s quite possible that Bangkok could be under water,” he said, “Now these other explanation, and the people who doubt the existence of man-made climate change, I would simply say, the doubters don’t have a problem with climate change, they have a problem with science.”

However there are several senior climatologists who have questioned the IPCC explanations for “the pause” in the rise in global surface temperatures, and argued that the kind of ‘certainty’ spoken by the climate change industry is unhelpful and could damage the credibility of the IPCC report.

The IPCC’s credibility is still recovering from the so-called ‘Climategate’ affair of 2009 in which leaked emails from the University of East Anglia showed how scientists who were more sceptical about man-made climate-change had been deliberately shut out of the peer-review process and denied data.

Prof Judith Curry, a leading climate scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the US , is among the scientists who supported the consensus of the findings fourth IPCC report in 2007, but now says scientists need to admit uncertainty on the issue.

The drive to reach consensus had led to “oversimplifying the problem and its solution and hyper-politicising both, introducing biases into the science and related decision-making processes,” she wrote in a recent article for The Australian newspaper.

"Let's abandon the scientific consensus-seeking approach in favour of open debate and discussion of a broad range of policy options that stimulate local and regional solutions to the multifaceted and interrelated issues surrounding climate change."