A Place to Stand

The Guardian has a reply to the Global Warming Swindle film last night, from their "environmental correspondent". Conveniently he says he didn't actually see it before explaining what was wrong with it. Apparently it "fails to stand up to the mildest scrutiny" but how & in what way he doesn't say. Then that the idea of any sort of media conspiracy is silly because the Guardian would be very happy to publish a front page headline debunking global warming if it was possible. No really.

The remarkable thing is how overwhelmingly sceptical almost all comments in the Guardian, the lions den of political correctness & warming enthusiasm, were.

David replied to critics twice

"I don't think anyone claims to have all the answers. Most climate scientists I speak to acknowledge that many factors play a role in global warming, but that carbon dioxide is now by far the most dominant."

to which I replied

Certainly saying you have not seen the programme you are reviewing makes it easier not to discuss the argument.

So yes David, as the Guardian's "environment correspondent" I think you can be held reponsible for what you have & more importantly haven't reported. You certainly haven't disputed the Guardian's general Luddite line (pro-warming. pro-Y2K, pro-peak oil on 1970/80/90/2000/2005, anti-nuclear, pro the lie that Chernobyl killed 500,000, pro-saying the Netherlands will be flooded out by 2007, pro-saying that pollution will bring life expectancy down to 40 by 2000, pro-the no safe limit to radiation damage, pro-Club of Rome, pro-global cooling back when that was fashionable, pro-millions of species facing extinction etc etc).

Presumably saying that any of these were a hoax would also have got you the Guardian's "front page" too. With such a guaranteed front page one can only admire the restraint with which you & every other Guardian journalist has abjured such publicity by not mentioning that they all provably are hoaxes.

Presumably also your dudgeon at the suggestion that you could possibly be biased because you are making a good living out of writing up the warming scare means you are equally on record as having publicly attacked all those in the Guardian & elsewhere who have claimed, without evidence, that every sceptic is being paid by industry. Perhaps you would care to give links to the numerous times you have expressed similar dudgeon on behalf of those who endorse scepticism - which is after all the proper scientific attitude to all theories.

& later he said

Here are the arguments made in the film against man-made global warming.
(I paraphrase, but they can be found on the program's website)

There was a cool period around the 1940s
Carbon emisisons have lagged behind temperature rises
The troposphere is not warming as expected
Carbon dioxide is produced from natural sources
Carbon dioxide is only a small part of the greenhouse effect
The sun has got stronger
Fewer cosmic rays are arriving, which form clouds and shade the earth

These are not new arguments. They have been rehearsed many times and debunked many times.

Apologies for not taking each in turn, but it really is better done by climate experts. Anyone who wants to, can easily find discussions of them at www.realclimate.org

Which I & some others thought

David that is a ridiculous post.
None of these have been debunked because all of them are factually correct.

There WAS a cooling period between 1940 & 1975 & everything there is correct too.

&

David Adams has replied here "I don't think anyone claims to have all the answers. Most climate scientists I speak to acknowledge that many factors play a role in global warming, but that carbon dioxide is now by far the most dominant."

Which brings up 2 points.

Firstly this means that he is opposing the "the scientific debate is over" tendency which has been loudly supported by such as the BBC, the Guardian, David Miliband & all & sundry, even a former Moderator of the Church of Scotland. It appears that, despite not having seen it he has enjoyed a conversion comparable to that of St Paul.

Secondly he displays a basic ignorance in that CO2 is NOT the most important warming gas, water vapour is followed by methane. Moreover the human component of CO2 is only 3%. CO" itelf being 3 hundred parts per million of the atmosphere. Surely if he, or anybody else, feels able to criticise the critics, without seeing what they said, he should at least do so knowing the basic facts.

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It really is quite disgraceful that in a supposedly serious newspaper they employ a specifically "environmental" correspondent who is unable to articulate the scientific arguments for the case he is supporting & shows such basic ignorance of what is the major greenhouse gas.

I also put in a reference to Alan Thorpe who in December, promised to publicly & online debate with sceptics & has since been invisible.