A Place to Stand

Last December I reported how Alan Thorpe boss of the National Environment Research Council had boasted in the Guardian of his desire to engage in a public debate on warming

'We need, very urgently, to discuss what to do now to mitigate the effects of climate change,' he said. 'Yet a handful of scientists, politicians and writers are still claiming humans are not responsible at all. We have got to kill off this notion so we can get on with the real work: protecting ourselves from future climate change. That is why I am challenging these deniers. I want them to outline their case so that it can be judged by scientists. That is something these people have been reluctant to do so far.'

NERC is a government funded alarmist body & Mr Thorpe is described as "Britain's leading climate scientist so they certainly should be willing to tell the taxpayers why they believe this. On reply to an email I spent asking how impartial they are & how many projects they had funded by sceptics I got

Most of NERC's funding, about £370 million a year, comes from the science budget, ie public funding. Just under £50 million comes from external sources, a breakdown of which is published in NERC facts (see our website)
We do not accept any funding which does not allow us to publish the outcomes. We take some commissions which require a delay in publication for commercial in confidence reasons.
Those who apply to us for research funding have their proposals submitted for peer review by external experts. Funding is allocated only to those applications with high quality ratings. There is no 'quota' system for research on one or the other side of an issue. The quality of proposals, assessed by independent review, is only criterion.

I am not convinced that our government are an entirely independent source on the warming controversy & more importantly the 2nd question is clearly not answered.

I happen to know that a very senior sceptic immediately offered to participate in this debate.

Since then Mr Thorpe has been silent. He seems to have made no attempt to defend this "urgent" gauntlet. willll be sending this to him [ a.j.thorpe@reading.ac.uk ] & should he wish to respond or otherwise participate in the urgent debate he has called for I will be happy to report it.

I did report this at the time but he declined to respond then. It would be unkind to suggest that he is frit because he knows that beyond his own bluster the warmers case cannot survive honest debate (as seen in New York recently) & it is conceivable that there may be some unknown reason for his reticence.