Have I seen The New Jerusalem?

[Richard Barrett]

By the way can anyone come up with the name of one credible scientist (...) who says that climate change "probably isn't a problem"? )

Well?

According to Mr P, it's "a view many scientists share". One single name would be a start.

[ahinton]

Well?

According to Mr P, it's "a view many scientists share". One single name would be a start.

It would indeed - so perhaps something might be read into the fact that not one has yet been put forward (or am I just being naïve?)...

[Thropplenoggin]

Well?

According to Mr P, it's "a view many scientists share". One single name would be a start.

Does ol' moss face, David Bellamy, count? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/t...ut-of-BBC.html

[teamsaint]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_the_mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming

[amateur51]

Well?

According to Mr P, it's "a view many scientists share". One single name would be a start.

I am confident that at this very moment Mr Pee is searching through his carrier bag marked Handy Facts for the appropriate newspaper cutting

[Richard Tarleton]

Does ol' moss face, David Bellamy, count? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/t...ut-of-BBC.html

Sadly no. He's also become an enthusiastic supporter of and mouthpiece for foxhunting, which whatever else it may be (embedded in the fabric of our rural society etc.) is also ecological illiteracy (I can explain but here is not the place). Up till the early 1980s he could be taken seriously, but went completely off the rails.

[Mr Pee]

I am confident that at this very moment Mr Pee is searching through his carrier bag marked Handy Facts for the appropriate newspaper cutting

I refer me learned friend to teamsaint's post above.

[Richard Barrett]

Thank you teamsaint. (Should have checked that myself!) So, under "Scientists arguing that global warming will have few negative consequences" there are three names. Not very many, it has to be said, compared with the 620 authors of the 2007 IPCC report, and the many hundreds of others who peer-reviewed that document.

Of these three, Patrick Michaels has apparently "published little if anything of distinction in the professional literature, being noted rather for his shrill op-ed pieces and indiscriminate denunciations of virtually every finding of mainstream climate science", according to John Hodren, the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the USA. Moreover, Michaels' projects have been funded by fossil fuel companies and in 2006 he was given $100 000 by a Colorado energy company. All of that sort of tends to rule him out as impartial, I would say.

The other two, Sherwood Idso and Craig Idso, are father and son respectively. Craig Idso apparently receives $11 600 a month from the Heartland Institute, a rightwing thinktank described by the New York Times as "the primary American organization pushing climate change skepticism."

So that leaves papa Sherwood as the only scientist who argues that "global warming will have few negative consequences" and hasn't taken the shilling of the energy industry and its cheerleaders. (Or at least I can't find any evidence that he has.) I supposed that ansers my question, since I asked for a single name.

[Mr Pee]

Thank you teamsaint. (Should have checked that myself!) So, under "Scientists arguing that global warming will have few negative consequences" there are three names. Not very many, it has to be said, compared with the 620 authors of the 2007 IPCC report, and the many hundreds of others who peer-reviewed that document.

Of these three, Patrick Michaels has apparently "published little if anything of distinction in the professional literature, being noted rather for his shrill op-ed pieces and indiscriminate denunciations of virtually every finding of mainstream climate science", according to John Hodren, the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the USA. Moreover, Michaels' projects have been funded by fossil fuel companies and in 2006 he was given $100 000 by a Colorado energy company. All of that sort of tends to rule him out as impartial, I would say.

The other two, Sherwood Idso and Craig Idso, are father and son respectively. Craig Idso apparently receives $11 600 a month from the Heartland Institute, a rightwing thinktank described by the New York Times as "the primary American organization pushing climate change skepticism."

So that leaves papa Sherwood as the only scientist who argues that "global warming will have few negative consequences" and hasn't taken the shilling of the energy industry and its cheerleaders. (Or at least I can't find any evidence that he has.) I supposed that ansers my question, since I asked for a single name.

Few deny that global warming- if it is occuring at all- will have negative consequences for some. There's no news in that. There are a lot more scientists in that list, and I dare say many others who aren't- who disagree about the very nature of the debate- i.e. the causes of any such warming and the accuracy of the predictions thereof.

Do you want to debunk all of those as well?

[ahinton]

Few deny that global warming- if it is occuring at all- will have negative consequences for some. There's no news in that. There are a lot more scientists in that list, and I dare say many others who aren't- who disagree about the very nature of the debate- i.e. the causes of any such warming and the accuracy of the predictions thereof.

Do you want to debunk all of those as well?

You're missing the point here. The very fact that you write "if it is occurring at all" seems to prove that. The expression "global warming" is unfortunate, since what's under discussion is "climate change", which is a larger and more widespread issue than upward changes in temperature alone (grave as they and their consequences are and are likely to become). You are at least right to draw attention to debate over the causes, but any such serious debate must recognise that hand in hand with naturally occurring changes over which humanity has little if any possibility of control go others over which it can exert some control by changing and/or ceasing certain activities that exacerbate the problem. Richard Barrett wrote some time ago, however, that time is not on the side of anyone to sit and do nothing while the precise (if there can even be precise and unfluctuating) details of how natural climate change and that caused by human activity are worked out and accepted by the majority; there are things that can be done immediately, some of which will have advantageous effects on environmental air pollution irrespective of the extent of their impact on climate change as a whole, so Richard is right to point out that sitting and doing nothing ought not to be seen by any of us as a realistic option.

[Richard Barrett]

Few deny that global warming- if it is occuring at all- will have negative consequences for some. There's no news in that.

Let me remind you of the particular point in the discussion, concerning the climate change "policy" of UKIP.

Julien Sorel: You could vote for a party that says of climate change "our conclusion is that there probably isn't a problem..."
Yourself: Which is a view many scientists share these days.

As we can see, in fact it is by no means a view "many scientists share", which one might think has implications for whether UKIP's position on climate change has any credibility.

There are more scientists who disagree as to the causes or projections for climate change, but there's no justification for governments or for that matter individuals to sit around doing nothing while their disagreements over detail continue.

[Nick Armstrong]

James Delingpole is of course the UKIP 'spokesman' on the climate issue

e.g. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/ja...n-two-decades/

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100197832/now-even-pravda-admits-the-global-warming-jig-is-up/

http://jamesdelingpole.com/

I hadn't heard of this organisation before:

http://www.thegwpf.org/who-we-are/

[vinteuil]

James Delingpole is of course the UKIP 'spokesman' on the climate issue

... I so admire our Calibran's restraint in not adding any adjective what-so-ever before, ahem, "James Delingpole"...

[Nick Armstrong]

... I so admire our Calibran's restraint in not adding any adjective what-so-ever before, ahem, "James Delingpole"...

I could of course have pointed out that he is an Oxford chap and hence of course deeply reliable... and - what was it? - ah yes, always relevant.

[MrGongGong]

I hadn't heard of this organisation before:

http://www.scarysquirrel.org/tufty/tuftyclub/