Cheers!
And shills for The Cause can see the wheels falling off the gravy train, attack ‘scepticism’ – yawn. The ultra-green Independent reports:
Owen Paterson has been accused of “incredible complacency” over climate change after new figures showed his department has slashed spending on helping Britain cope with global warming.
The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) will spend just £17.2m on domestic “climate change initiatives” this financial year, a 41 per cent decline on the previous 12 months, according to its response to a freedom of information request.
The figures will fuel fears that the Environment Secretary’s personal climate-change scepticism could be exposing the UK to a higher risk of flooding and other global warming consequences.
Bob Ward, policy director at the London School of Economics’ Grantham Research Institute, said: “These shocking figures should worry everyone in the UK. Defra is the lead government department for climate change adaptation and is primarily responsible for making the UK resilient to the impacts of global warming, such as increased flood risk,”
Maria Eagle, shadow Environment Secretary, said such a steep drop in domestic climate change initiatives “reveals an incredible level of complacency about the threat to the UK from climate change”.
She added: “This is further evidence that Owen Paterson’s unwillingness to accept the science on climate change is leading him to make the wrong choices on spending cuts within his department.” (source)
It’s still £17.2m too much, of course. And if that weren’t enough, the editorial weighs in, linking recent floods to climate change in highly emotional terms:
These are desperate times for parts of the South-west of England, where monsoon-like rains have left villages stranded by floodwater for the best part of a month. Nor has Somerset been the only part of the country to experience the full force of what to many seems an increasingly volatile and spiteful climate. After the largest tidal surge in 60 years hit the east coast last week, parts of East Anglia may have to be abandoned to the sea for good.
As the weather does its worst, David Cameron’s government – the same one that once boasted of its green credentials – seems bent on ignoring the implications of climate change. New figures show that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs under Owen Paterson will spend only £17m on “domestic climate change initiatives” this financial year, a fall of more than 40 per cent on the previous year. Spending on this vital issue will now account for only 0.7 per cent of total departmental spending. (source)
Either the opinion writers are incredibly stupid, or have incredibly short memories – it has to be one or the other. This nonsensical belief that extreme weather didn’t happen before 1980 is ludicrous. Even the IPCC refuses to link extreme weather to climate change, but that doesn’t stop the headbangers at the Independent.
But at least the UK is following Australia’s lead, and cutting pointless waste of taxpayer money on “climate” initiatives.
Australian Climate Madness 
“After the largest tidal surge in 60 years ”
Do they EVER listen to themselves.
YES.. we KNOW its a sixty to seventy year cycle.
that’s what we have been saying for a LONG time.
HadCrud and GISS would show this IF they hadn’t been so badly corrupted and mal-adjusted.
It makes one wonder what they might answer if someone pointed out that what they said means it was the same, or worse, at least 60 years ago. No doubt they’ll attempt to divert by pulling out the “extreme events are increasing” mantra.
The only thing extreme here is the shortness of their memories.
If there was a larger tidal surge 60 years ago, what caused that? Surely not CO2.
All the clowns who say it is a disaster to cut the spending, Do they really think that the money is keeping temperature down? If they do that means that we have invented weather control and all we have to do is spend more when it’s hot to bring it down a bit and less when it’s cold and that will let it go up a bit, this way we can control the temp of the planet, who knew? N
Didn’t see a real breakdown of that 17.2m – if we are subsidising less silly windmills all the better… but given the state of the country with so many floods, it would be good to see that money spend on managing and preserving this excess water….. so that when we have dry years we have something to fall back on.
Ahh but hang on…that’s too joined up for libdems….OK so back to occassional floods and occassional droughts because we are total effect of the weather – Ha!