CLEAN GEORGE

Post lifted from Tim Blair

Guardian environment correspondent David Adam reveals some shocking environmental news ... in his third paragraph:

The UK risks losing its international authority on climate change because of its failure to cut greenhouse gas pollution, according to a leading scientist.

Bob May, president of the Royal Society, said new figures showing that UK emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases which contribute to global warming have risen for the last two years, made it difficult for British politicians to be taken seriously on the issue.

He said: "It is very difficult to criticise other countries such as the United States if we are unable to meet our commitments. Indeed, emissions by the United States have actually declined over the last two years ..."

Excuse me? The US has actually become cleaner under the rule of enviro-hater Bush? You'd think -- although May also notes that US pollutant outputs are "still some 20% above 1990 levels" -- that this might rate more highly as a news story. Then again, Bush apparently reduced industrial pollution by 11% during his governership of Texas, and nobody cared for that news, either ...






SOME GOOD EXCERPTS FROM THURSDAY'S CLIMATE CHANGE DEBATE IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS

Full transcript here

It seems likely that there will be disagreements in Montreal over whether new targets for reducing emissions should be set beyond the first period of the Kyoto Protocol .... Of course, it is difficult to take costly action today on behalf of a seemingly distant future. The Prime Minister said, "the blunt truth about the politics of climate change is that no country will want to sacrifice its economy in order to meet this challenge". The blunter truth about the politics of climate change is that countries are not doing enough to sever the link between economic growth and increasing emissions of greenhouse gases. --Lord May of Oxford

The noble Lord, Lord May, speaks with great passion and, indeed, with great charm-it is a potent combination. However, it has to be said in the kindest possible way that he is a serial alarmist. When some 30-odd years ago the Club of Rome produced its report on the limits to growth-many of your Lordships will recall it-which stated that there would be such a shortage of resources that growth would more or less grind to a halt within a reasonably short space of time, this fallacious forecast, which received a great deal of media attention at the time, was warmly endorsed by the noble Lord, Lord May, as he now is. He said that he thought growth would come to an end even sooner as a result of the second law of thermodynamics. Now he is sending out a new alarm which is the exact opposite; that is, he refers to the alleged rise in carbon dioxide emissions, and therefore global warming, as a result of very rapid continuing growth for a long time to come. So he has backed both horses in the race. --Lord Lawson of Blaby

I hope that the new British government initiative under Sir Nick Stern will be done with the intellectual vigour which I associated with the Treasury when I was a Minister there some 20 years ago. Whether it is done in the Treasury or the Cabinet Office does not matter too much. I also hope that the Government will use their influence, and specifically the work that is being done by the Stern review, to press strongly for improvements in how the IPCC works. There are two other options recently suggested by Professor Henderson which should be considered in this context, particularly if it proves difficult to reach agreement on change. The first is that the economics of climate change should be reviewed regularly by the OECD. It is perfectly proper for the OECD to look at the economics of global warming. Its endorsement of the economics would greatly enhance the forecasts that are made. Secondly, Professor Henderson recommends that an independent audit of the IPCC process should be possible. The fact is that not enough detailed information is released on the publication of some of its data to permit replication by others. --Lord Wakeham

These days we are all liberal politicians and we much prefer persuasion to dictation. But, faced with the crisis that we have heard outlined so far, we have to ask whether persuasion will be enough. --Baroness Scott of Needham Market

So what do we need to do to get action on climate change? I thought Sir Crispin Tickell did rather well when he said that we need three things: leadership from above, pressure from below and catastrophe.--Lord Haskel

One of my final jobs as a Minister was to go to the United States to try to persuade people to be more constructive about the Gleneagles agreement. I failed lamentably in that regard. ... Given the default of the American leadership, much of the international leadership has fallen to our own Prime Minister, both in the EU and internationally.... That is why it is doubly unfortunate that some recent figures on carbon burn in the UK have gone the wrong way. It is also unfortunate, but wrong, that that has been accompanied by rumours that the leadership of the Government is no longer committed either to the 20 per cent target or to an effective post-Kyoto agreement. --Lord Whitty

The effects and consequences of climate change are all too evident to me. Our summers are becoming drier, although I have to say that it has not seemed like that living in the north-east of England this year. --The Lord Bishop of Newcastle

Implementation by government needs a policy, a sort of philosophy. If you will excuse the parallel, when I used to read a lot about politics as a Labour activist, I was always impressed by Lenin's strange policy of power to the Soviets, plus electrification. The parallel for new Labour was power to the markets, plus targets. If one takes away targets, one is left with a hole. We need to hang on to targets, which have been very effective, whether social, economic or scientific. Any wobbling on that makes the whole structure worrying. --Lord Hunt of Chesterton

I am one of those who, like my noble friend Lord Lawson, reacts adversely to scare stories, and also, to some extent, to an overwhelming consensus of all sensible people. I am therefore doubly suspicious of an overwhelming consensus trying to scare me.... So I start from a point of view that when a dissident voice comes along and sticks pins in the consensus, I am predisposed to favour the dissident; in this case, that global warming is all the fault of the Americans, or more particularly George W Bush. I therefore start with the view that Mr Matt Ridley and Mr Bjorn Lomberg sound like the scientists for me; and that the more they are berated by the powers that be, the more I remember how the dissidents on BSE and AIDS were berated by the powers that be. If you doubt that they are berated, go on to the Internet, or read Andrew Simms in the Guardian; the language is not that of science but of the commination service from the Book of Common Prayer. --Lord Waldegrave of North Hill

At Kyoto, the British Government agreed to reduce UK carbon dioxide emissions by 12.5 per cent by 2012. Since 1997, UK emissions have risen by 5.5 per cent, and that increase steepened by 1.5 per cent in the last six months of 2004 and by 2.5 per cent in the first half of this year.--Baroness Byford




COMMON SENSE PREVAILS: BRITAIN'S NEW CLIMATE POLICY SHIFTS FOCUS TO ADAPTATION

The government is beginning a 12 week period of consultations with industry and some public sector institutions to find out exactly what is being done to prepare the UK for the effects of climate change.

In a press notice issued today, the Department for Food, the Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra) argues that the UK must adapt because some impact from climate change is inevitable "regardless of current and future action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions".

Environment Minister Elliot Morley commented: "Climate change is happening and it will impact on all organisations across the country. The government is aiming to put together an adaptation strategy to assist in this planning. But first we need to know what is already in hand."

Defra suggests preparation for the impact of climate change could include things like relocating businesses, redesigning buildings, and forming partnerships with other similar organisations to help spread the costs.*

The findings will be used to inform the development of an adaptation policy framework. This framework will be designed to establish local and national objectives and measures of progress, provide a structure for adaptation activities and provide long term guidance on climate change policy.

* We are preparing for the impact of climate change here at El Reg by commissioning the construction of a large floating craft upon which animals could go, two by two.

Source

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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