Is Skeptical Science wilfully dishonest or just plain stupid?

28 February, 2014 by

sks_Consensus_Gap

Dishonest or stupid?

It has to be one or the other [or maybe both – my bet is on both – Ed]. Because no matter how many times the 97% figure is shown to be misleading, they keep on plugging away with it, witness the latest example, with the accompanying graphic on the right:

The epidemic of climate science false balance in the media

False balance in media reporting on climate change is a big problem for one overarching reason: there is a huge gap between the 97 percent expert consensus on human-caused global warming, and the public perception that scientists are evenly divided on the subject.

This can undoubtedly be traced in large part to the media giving disproportionate coverage to the opposing fringe climate contrarian views. Research has shown that people who are unaware of the expert consensus are less likely to accept the science and less likely to support taking action to address the problem, so media false balance can be linked directly to our inability to solve the climate problem. (source)

What this translates to is frustration that the media (for once) isn’t being taken in by Un-Sk Ps-Sc‘s statistical gymnastics.

Un-Sk Ps-Sc have refined this kind of nonsense into an art form, in order to maintain their dogmatic narrative in the face of any contrary evidence. For example, many writers on climate from both sides of the debate have acknowledged that there has been some kind of levelling off of temperature in the last decade or so, or a pause, but not Un-Sk Ps-Sc, oh no. Using classic misdirection, Un-Sk Ps-Sc forgets about surface temperatures, on which it previously obsessed, and shifted focus onto the mysterious ‘missing heat’ in the oceans, claiming that warming continues as rapidly as before. See here for more on that.

Likewise with the nonsensical 97% consensus figure, which, each time it is used, subtracts yet another chunk of what little credibility Un-Sk Ps-Sc may have once had [not a lot – Ed]. Notice that “agree on global warming” is vague enough to allow a huge swathe of opinion to be included, therefore supposedly supporting this ludicrous percentage. But maintaining this fictional number is essential to the autocrats at Un-Sk Ps-Sc, because it can then be used to bully media organisations into giving even less time to any contrary arguments than they do already, i.e. to silence critics.

It is likely that a similar percentage of sceptics ‘agree on global warming’ to the extent that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, humans have added CO2 to the atmosphere and that the additional CO2 will have caused some warming of the planet. But if the question were more honestly framed, for example, what percentage of climate scientists ‘agree on global warming’ AND consider that the effects on the climate are likely to be catastrophic AND consider mitigation to be the only option, and I suggest the figure would be considerably lower.

The ‘false balance’ that Un-Sk Ps-Sc harps on about isn’t about whether climate change is happening or whether humans are in part to blame, but more about the magnitude of the problem and how we should respond.

But that doesn’t make for anywhere near as nice a graphic, does it?

They can’t back away from it now, of course, given that there’s a Guardian column, written by Un-Sk Ps-Sc’s Nuccitelli, with 97% in the freaking title…

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With:

ACM’s sharp words for Lord Deben: sling your hook, mate

27 February, 2014 by

Isn't this the most punchable face you've ever seen?

Isn’t this the most punchable face you’ve ever seen?

Lord Deben, formerly John (Selwyn) Gummer, is a climate change evangelist who happens to be chairman of a company (which he formed) to advise other corporates on ‘environmental responsibility’.

But he’s also the chairman of the UK’s Climate Change Committee. So on the one hand he’s driving government policy towards tougher environmental and sustainability requirements, whilst on the other providing advice, at huge cost no doubt, to companies on how to manage those additional requirements. Anyone not able to spot the conflict of interest there?

He also likes spending other people’s money – like when he claimed £36,000 (AU$67,000) on MPs expenses for gardening at his house. Nice work if you can get it, right?

Anyway, along with all the other climate zealots, Gummer likes to lecture others on the folly of their ways, and disparage those who disagree with him – even elected Prime Ministers of other countries – as reported in the FT’s article ‘Lord Deben’s sharp words for Australia’s approach to climate change’:

Lord Deben said he had discussed climate change at length with Mr Abbott before last year’s Australian election, “and I got five different views during that period of time”.

Five? Really?

He said he had a similar conversation with Mr Abbott’s mentor, former Australian prime minister John Howard, whom he said was also “absolutely unscientific about it”, and appeared to have read only one book on the subject, by the former UK chancellor Lord Lawson, who says there is great uncertainty about the potential risk of climate change.

Gummer and his ilk are the only ones being unscientific.

“I have high hopes that people in Australia will recognise that the rest of the world is going in the opposite direction,” said Lord Deben, adding that not every Abbott government minister shared Mr Abbott’s views.

More lies – the world is rapidly retreating from action on climate change (much to Gummer’s disappointment, no doubt). What planet is he on?

“It’s a joy to go and listen to some others, like [communications minister] Malcolm Turnbull who clearly seems to take a more sensible view,” he said. (source)

I just sprayed coffee all over my keyboard – thanks for that.

Well I have a few sharp words for you, pal: mind your own damn business.

The FT has more here.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With:

‘Flat Earthers’? I rather think not…

25 February, 2014 by

No sceptic would be a member…

Flat Earth Society: No sceptic would be a member…

One of the favourite ad hominem terms employed by climate headbangers is “Flat Earther” – someone stuck in the ignorance of the past, tied up in a belief system that has long since been abandoned.

But for climate zealots like Cook ‘n’ Lew, it’s far easier to portray their critics as uneducated rednecks with psychological issues (with a bit of name-calling thrown in) than to engage with their arguments and respond to them.

The reality, as usual, is very different, as the Scottish Climate and Energy Forum discovered (h/t Bishop Hill):

A sceptical consensus: the science is right but catastrophic global warming is not going to happen

A recent survey of those participating in on-line forums showed that most of the 5,000 respondents were experienced engineers, scientists and IT professionals most degree qualified and around a third with post graduate qualifications. The survey, carried out by the Scottish Climate and Energy Forum, asked respondents for their views on CO2 and the effect it might have on global temperatures. The results were surprising. 96% of respondents said that atmospheric CO2 levels are increasing with 79% attributing the increase to man-made sources. 81% agreed that global temperatures had increased over the 20th century and 81% also agreed that CO2 is a warming gas. But only 2% believed that increases in CO2 would cause catastrophic global warming.

So what’s going on?

Above all, these highly qualified people – experts in their own spheres – look at the published data and trust their own analysis, so their views match the available data. They agree that the climate warmed over the 20th century (this has been measured), that CO2 levels are increasing (this too has been measured) and that CO2 is a warming gas (it helps trap heat in the atmosphere and the effects can be measured). Beyond this, the survey found that 98% of respondents believe that the climate varies naturally and that increasing CO2 levels won’t cause catastrophic warming.

So not only are sceptics a scientifically literate, highly educated and very well informed bunch (far more so than the majority of arts-degree journalists, politicians and inner-city green activists), but also nearly four-fifths of respondents would pass the standard test for “belief” in anthropogenic global warming (myself included, by the way). It’s the ‘C’ that prefaces the ‘AGW’ that sceptics take issue with – the magnitude of the warming and whether it’s a problem, whether there is any point in trying to mitigate, or whether we just do what all of life has done for that past three billion years, and adapt.

Yes, a very small minority of sceptics do not believe that man has caused at least some warming through the burning of fossil fuels. One could possibly argue that this very small minority should perhaps be less offended by the term ‘denier’ than the rest of us. But to label the entire sceptic community as ignorant deniers is 100% wrong – on both counts. But don’t expect the headbangers to take any notice…

We could do a little survey here as well – put your area of expertise and qualifications in the comments – no names required. Let’s see what we come up with.

Jo Nova has more here.

Note: By the way, I have a Masters Degree in Engineering from the University of Cambridge (1990), and am admitted as a solicitor of the Supreme Court of England and Wales. So there.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

Climate policies invariably totalitarian

24 February, 2014 by

It's for your own good

It’s for your own good

This truth is revealed in an excellent and very entertaining article at American Thinker, in which author Daren Jonescu asks why there isn’t a single climate policy advanced by the headbangers that does not require despotic, undemocratic and tyrannical impositions on the lives of the population.

It’s all about climate change being too big a problem for democracy to handle (where have we heard that before? Clive Hamilton), so they demand the right to do whatever they like:

Global warming “admitters” — to distinguish you from those of us you call “deniers” — I have a question for you: Do any of you have an answer to the cataclysm your settled science has proven beyond any possible doubt is coming which does not require totalitarian measures?

Let me rephrase that, in case the connotations of the phrase “totalitarian measures” have not yet passed peer review, in which case their meaning may not be able to reach minds occupying the rarefied atmosphere of pure science. My question, then, is: Do you, or any of your gods of peer review, propose solutions to anthropogenic global climate change which do not involve the violation of property rights, the restraint of individual liberty regarding matters of self-preservation (i.e., jobs and wealth-creation), the weakening of every nation’s sovereignty in favor of increased “global governance,” and the expanded empowerment of thousands of bureaucrats, think-tankers, and advisors accountable to no one?

I ask this only because it has become apparent that you admitters, who are undoubtedly on the right side of history — at least compared with the anti-science Neanderthals over on this side of the fence — are absolutely at wit’s end (or even a little beyond that) in seeking to understand how anyone could possibly continue in ignorance, when both Leonardo DiCaprio and Scarlett Johansson are on the side of Truth. Concerned about your shattered (but scientifically settled!) nerves, I propose to help you out with a little inside baseball concerning the intellectual (yeah, I know, silly word choice) reticence of the unbelievers to join in your celebration of the revealed religion.

Read it all.

(h/t Junk Science)

Filed Under: Climate

Adaptation is the only response to climate change

23 February, 2014 by

Mitigation…

Mitigation…

It has been said many times on this blog, whether or not climate change is a problem, there is only one response: adaptation.

Climate change mitigation action, such as carbon taxes, emissions trading schemes etc, have done nothing whatsoever to alter the climate, but have cost the global economy billions, and probably trillions, of dollars – dollars which could have been spent far more wisely.

It is scandalous that so much hard-won cash has been squandered on pointless environmental gestures, when millions are dying from lack of clean water or cheap electricity. As the author of the following article points out, these decisions are not ones that should be made by scientists:

It is interesting to enquire initially just whose job is it to tell us how to respond if we believe climate change is happening and materially human-induced. When various clever non-scientists raise concerns about climate change models they are waved away by specialists in the area, told that these are proper scientific questions for proper scientists. Yet all too often scientists fail to apply the same rules to themselves. The issue over whether there is global warming and what the human contribution to it might be is – at least to a material extent – a scientific question. But whether we should do anything about it and, if so, which of the available technical options is best to adopt, is emphatically not a question for scientists. Instead, it is a question for economists, which then puts you very much in my world. (source)

And for those morons who continue to label anyone who questions the climate dogma ‘deniers’, the thing we should be denying is any more of the money you want to flush down the pan on mitigation…

There’s plenty more – read it all.

Filed Under: Climate

Highlights of the week

22 February, 2014 by

Krauthammer

Krauthammer

A few articles caught my eye this week, all of which are worth a read.

Charles Krauthammer at Investors.com:

I repeat: I’m not a global warming believer. I’m not a global warming denier.

I’ve long believed that it cannot be good for humanity to be spewing tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. I also believe that those scientists who pretend to know exactly what this will cause in 20, 30 or 50 years are white-coated propagandists.

“The debate is settled,” asserted propagandist-in-chief Barack Obama in his latest State of the Union address. “Climate change is a fact.”

Really? There is nothing more anti-scientific than the very idea that science is settled, static, impervious to challenge.

Arnold Ahlert on Progressive Insanity and the Global Warming Cult:

Progressives will do virtually anything to advance their agenda. In the arena of global warming, they have resorted to hysteria and angry denunciation of those who dare to question their infallible “wisdom.” And as it is with every aspect of their agenda, such wisdom must be imposed at the expense of liberty.

Leading the charge is Secretary of State John Kerry, who epitomized the above approach in a speech to Indonesian students, civic leaders and government officials in Jakarta, Indonesia. First he laced into one the left’s favorite punching bags, namely the coal and oil industries he accused of “hijacking” the conversation. ”We should not allow a tiny minority of shoddy scientists and science and extreme ideologues to compete with scientific facts,” he declared. ”Nor should we allow any room for those who think that the costs associated with doing the right thing outweigh the benefits. The science is unequivocal, and those who refuse to believe it are simply burying their heads in the sand. We don’t have time for a meeting anywhere of the Flat Earth Society.”

Possibly suspecting that his presentation might be insufficient to galvanize the unwashed masses, Kerry added a dash of fear to the mix. ”This city, this country, this region, is really on the front lines of climate change,” Kerry warned. “It’s not an exaggeration to say that your entire way of life here is at risk. In a sense, climate change can now be considered the world’s largest weapon of mass destruction, perhaps even, the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction,” he added.

Ben Pile eviscerates our least favourite psychologist in Lewandowsky nails his faeces to the door:

Lewandowsky does not ‘examine why individuals choose to reject well-established scientific findings’. Few that Lewandowsky has claimed ‘reject’ the claim that ‘the Earth is warming due to greenhouse gas emissions’ in fact reject the claim at all. Lewandowsky’s research invariably depends on the idea that any criticism of any aspect of climate change, from science, through to policy, is a rejection of the claim. But his is misleading. Moreover, and has been observed here many times, the claims that ‘the Earth is warming due to greenhouse gas emissions’, is not a scientific claim — it lacks any precision. It can mean anything from an inconsequential amount of warming, through to changes that will bring about the end of civilisation. Lewandowsky’s propagandising has to omit any sense of proportion, because admitting that climate change is not just a matter of degree, but matters of degree on matters of degree precludes the possibility of making polarising statements and moralistic claims, as is his intention.

Any my personal choice for article of the week, Dr Roy Spencer loses his rag:

Yeah, somebody pushed my button.

When politicians and scientists started calling people like me “deniers”, they crossed the line. They are still doing it.

They indirectly equate (1) the skeptics’ view that global warming is not necessarily all manmade nor a serious problem, with (2) the denial that the Nazi’s extermination of millions of Jews ever happened.

Too many of us for too long have ignored the repulsive, extremist nature of the comparison. It’s time to push back.

I’m now going to start calling these people “global warming Nazis”.

The pseudo-scientific ramblings by their leaders have falsely warned of mass starvation, ecological collapse, agricultural collapse, overpopulation…all so that the masses would support their radical policies. Policies that would not voluntarily be supported by a majority of freedom-loving people.

They are just as guilty as the person who cries “fire!” in a crowded theater when no fire exists. Except they threaten the lives of millions of people in the process.

Good for you!

Filed Under: Climate

Yet another excuse for The Pause

10 February, 2014 by

Age-old excuses

Age-old excuses

UPDATE: One of the other ABC reports (and there are plenty) leaves no room for any doubt:

Stronger than normal trade winds in the central Pacific are the main cause of a 13-year halt in global surface temperatures increases, an Australian study reveals.

Note: “are” the main cause. Not might be, or perhaps, but “are.” And if that weren’t enough, we have a D-word alert:

The authors reject the study gives impetus to climate change deniers and instead suggest that when the winds ease, global warming will accelerate rapidly.

The ABC really is a piece of shite.

The ABC breathlessly reports that a well-known warmist has worked out yet another reason for The Pause, and another factor that the climate models apparently didn’t know about.

Matthew England of the University of New South Wales (see here and here, for example of his impartiality on the matter) proposes a variation on the ‘Dog Ate my Warming’ excuse, accepted uncritically as usual by the ABC:

Scientists have come up with an explanation for the pause in global warming, which has long been a point of contention raised by climate change sceptics.

Over the past 15 years the rate of global warming has slowed – and more recently almost stalled.

Sceptics say the slowdown suggests warming is not as bad as first thought, while most climate scientists say it is just a natural climate variability.

Now an Australian-led team of researchers has found strong winds in the Pacific Ocean are most likely to be behind the hiatus.

The University of New South Wales (UNSW) researcher Matthew England said oceans were much more dominant in terms of their heat uptake.

“Obviously we have implications of that such as sea level rise,” Professor England said.

Professor England led a team of researchers from around the world that has come up with an explanation for why the oceans soak up the heat.

Their research, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, has found the answer lies in stronger than usual trade winds whipping across the Pacific Ocean.

It was found the winds were churning the Pacific like a washing machine, bringing the deeper colder water to the surface and pushing the warmer water below.

“The phase we’re in of accelerated trade winds particularly lasts a couple of decades,” Professor England said.

“We’re about 12 to 13 years in to the most accelerated part of the wind field.

“It’s important to point out there’s a cycle we expect to reverse and when they do reverse back to their normal levels we’d expect global warming to kick in and start to rise.” (source)

Note how the day of reckoning, when warming is set to resume, has been pushed out to some unspecified point in the future. Personally, I think it’s the Flying Spaghetti Monster that’s tinkering with the climate, reaching out with his noodly appendage to fool the warmists… no more ridiculous than the above, I would say.

Add it to the list.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,

Cook ‘n’ Lew’s propaganda war

9 February, 2014 by

Propaganda war

Propaganda war

John Cook and Stephan Lewandowsky, the Laurel and Hardy of pop climate psychology, are back with more self-serving consensus nonsense in The Conversation.

The question posed by the first article, “The truth is out there – so how do you debunk a myth?” seems to be answered by the response “replace it with a different myth”:

First and foremost, you need to emphasise the key facts you wish to communicate rather than the myth. Otherwise, you risk making people more familiar with the myth than with the correct facts.

That doesn’t mean avoid mentioning the myth altogether. You have to activate it in people’s minds before they can label it as wrong.

Secondly, you need to replace the myth with an alternate narrative. This is usually an explanation of why the myth is wrong or how it came about. Essentially, debunking is creating a gap in people’s minds (removing the myth) then filling that gap (with the correct explanation).

If you had to boil down all the psychological research into six words then it can be summed up as follows:

fight sticky ideas with stickier ideas.

Myths are persistent, stubborn and memorable. To dislodge a myth, you need to counter it with an even more compelling, memorable fact.

But Cook’s first ‘memorable fact’ is itself another myth. The 97% consensus figure is as meaningless as any other factoid. Nothing in that figure conveys the subtlety of the arguments in play – it’s a typical black/white result chosen to mislead. Putting aside all the statistical sleight of hand (which others have dealt with), even if we accept the conclusion, what does it tell us? That almost all papers conclude that the climate is changing and humans have an influence? Count me in.

What it doesn’t show is the range of views within that group – from those like me, who acknowledge the effect on climate but question its magnitude and the proposed response, to those like Cook ‘n’ Lew, who think there is no natural component to the recent warming, it’s all man-made, and we should wreck the global economy in a pointless gesture that won’t change a thing.

The second ‘memorable fact’ is simply misleading and emotive: the Hiroshima bombs analogy.

Global warming is a build up in heat. Greenhouse gases are trapping heat which is building up in our oceans, warming the land and air and melting ice. When scientists add up all the energy accumulating in our climate system, they find the heat build-up hasn’t slowed since 1998.

The greenhouse effect continues to blaze away. It turns out the laws of physics didn’t go on hiatus 16 years ago.

Creating a metaphor

To communicate this, we used a metaphor. We toyed with many metaphor ideas but found none able to conceptualise the heat build-up in a stickier manner more than this:

Since 1998, our planet has been building up heat at a rate of 4 Hiroshima A-bombs per second.

We released a website with an animated ticker widget to show how much heat our planet is building up each second. The widget, which can be freely embeded on other websites, also includes a number of other metrics such as the amount of energy in hurricane Sandy, an earthquake and a million lightning bolts.

This is intentionally and cynically misleading, since it plays on the ignorance of the general public as to the amounts of energy flowing into and out of the atmosphere. As pointed out in this post, 4 Hiroshima bombs per second is very small compared to the 1000 launched at us by the Sun every second. But your average man in the street wouldn’t know that. They would look at the destruction of Hiroshima and link that with the ‘destruction’ wrought upon the atmosphere.

Cook is then joined by Lew for another defence of the fake Consensus, this time against an attack from their own side. Mike Hulme argues that simply quoting figures (like the 97% fake consensus) has little influence on the political actions that are needed (or not) to deal with the problem (or lack of a problem). Cook and Lew disagree, naturally, since the fake Consensus is their baby:

The data we have just reviewed show otherwise: there is strong evidence that the public’s perception of an overwhelming scientific consensus is key to stimulating the constructive policy debate we should be having.

All of this is wrapped up in cliched comparisons with the tobacco lobby (whereas many do and will continue to die from lung cancer as a result of smoking, the planet is refusing to warm as expected despite increasing CO2 emissions; whereas stopping smoking will reduce your chance of dying from lung cancer, taxing CO2 will make no difference to climate change; etc etc) and the citing of fake data about the funding poured into the denial machine.

In case you haven’t noticed, this is all propaganda. It is about creating a consensus where none exists, in order to fool the public.

But, guys, it ISN’T WORKING. Despite all your desperate attempts to manufacture agreement, the Australian public (and around the world) are even more sceptical of the exaggerated and alarmist claims of extremist environmental groups, Western governments, the UN and the IPCC. The more you try, the worse it gets.

In other words, keep it up!

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , , ,

Aussies not fooled by relentless alarmism

7 February, 2014 by

Why mention Melbourne's temperatures??

Why mention Melbourne’s temperatures??

The Aussies can, thankfully, see straight through environmental scares.

They’ve heard all the doom and gloom before, they’ve seen all the hysteria, the wailing and gnashing of teeth from those suckling at the government’s teat. Then, if that weren’t enough, they look at the fudging of data, the enviro-activists posing as impartial scientists, the cover-ups, the abuse hurled at critics, the politically-motivated massaging of the message, and realise that the pronouncements of these troughers aren’t worth jack shit.

Australians rank climate change well down on their list of concerns, even though most believe temperatures where they live will rise, according to an annual survey of attitudes by the CSIRO.

On a list of 16 issues ranging from health and cost of living to terrorism and drug problems, climate change came in at just 14th.

Even among environmental issues, the climate ranked only seventh out of eight concerns, behind household waste and above only salinity.

Zoe Leviston, a social psychologist at CSIRO and lead author of the survey, said the ranking was “surprisingly low”, not least because more than 70 per cent of respondents also judged climate change to be either somewhat, very or extremely important. (source)

“Surprising” because, living in a bubble, like most CSIRO scientists do, Ms Leviston has no idea that the rest of the population have more pressing things to worry about, like paying bills, keeping their jobs – you know, trivial stuff… And get this:

Another finding from the CSIRO survey is that people tended to underestimate how widely accepted climate change is in the community. “Climate change denial, or contrarism, or whatever you want to call it, is overrated,” Dr Leviston said.

Yep, the Aussies don’t buy the 97% bullshit either. Onya! And note that anyone challenging the hysteria is either a ‘denier’ or a ‘contrarian’. Who’da thunk it?

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

UK sanity: Govt slashes climate budget by 41%

29 January, 2014 by

Cheers!

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.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With:
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