Lord Rees – Delingpole World

Breaking news from the splendid Bishop Hill. It seems the AGW establishment has launched an urgent damage limitation exercise in order to whitewash the Climategate scandal in time for Copenhagen.

Here’s the (so far unconfirmed) story:

1) Lord Rees (Royal Society) to be asked by UEA to investigate CRU leak.

2) Foreign Office and government leaning heavily on UEA to keep a lid on everything lest it destabilises Copenhagen.

3) CRU asked to prepare data for a pre-emptive release in past couple of days but trouble reconciling issues between data bases has stopped this.

The appointment of Lord Rees, if confirmed, is especially worrying. It’s the rough equivalent of appointing King Herod’s grand vizier to investigate a mysterious outbreak of mass baby killing in Judaea.

First, Lord Rees – formerly Sir Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal – is very much of the catastrophist mindset which helped launch the whole AGW scare in the first place. Five years ago, he declared:

“I think the odds are no better than 50/50 that our present civilisation will survive to the end of the present century.”

Second, he has previously suggested that there might be certain areas where frank and open scientific enquiry is not a good idea.

“He asks whether scientists should withhold findings which could potentially be used for destructive purposes, or if there should be a moratorium, voluntary or otherwise, on certain types of scientific research, most notably genetics and biotechnology.”

Third, he is president of an institution – The Royal Society – which has persistently used its distinguished name (founded 1660); and supposed unimpeachable scientific authority to push AGW theory.
Here is the Royal Society’s most recent statement on the subject, brought out in the aftermath of the Climategate scandal.

The UK is at the forefront of tackling dangerous climate change, underpinned by world class scientific expertise and advice. Crucial decisions will be taken soon in Copenhagen about limiting and reducing the impacts of climate change now and in the future. Climate scientists from the UK and across the world are in overwhelming agreement about the evidence of climate change, driven by the human input of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

As three of the UK’s leading scientific organisations involving most of the UK scientists working on climate change, we cannot emphasise enough the body of scientific evidence that underpins the call for action now, and we reinforce our commitment to ensuring that world leaders continue to have access to the best possible science. We believe this will be essential to inform sound decision-making on policies to mitigate and adapt to climate change up to Copenhagen and beyond.

I’m sure that Lord Rees will strive to be as scrupulously unbiased as he is possibly capable. But with a history like this behind him, I can’t say I am terribly reassured.

UPDATE: More on Lord Rees’s resolutely neutral position on AGW – as posted on the Bishop Hill blog.

Interview with Lord Rees:

“What one single thing convinces you most that climate change is taking place?

The main reason for concern is that the carbon dioxide level is rising by 0.5 per cent a year and is now at a level that it has not been at for the last half a million years. I think if we knew nothing else than that, there would still be great reason for concern.

What is the most important thing you are personally doing on climate change?

I am becoming more and more conscious of the need to avoid waste. I use a small economical car, for instance.

If you were the Prime Minister, what one thing would you do about climate change?

I think Tony Blair has already played an important role leading the G8 nations on the climate change issue. I think he was right to do this and the issue is now high on the international agenda. The recently published Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change will have an impact internationally as well as help the G8 nations move further on this subject.

Do you agree with the Bishop of London that “making selfish choices such as flying on holiday or buying a large car are a symptom of sin”?

Bishops are experts in defining sins and I am not, but one change that may happen and I hope will happen over the next few years is that it will become socially unacceptable to be conspicuously wasteful.

There’s so much noise about climate change, are people in danger of becoming complacent?

It’s a difficult issue for the public because the downside is very long-term and is international, unlike pollution for instance, which people are concerned about because it affects their localities. The effects of carbon dioxide emissions are worldwide rather than local and the most severe effects will be far in the future. “

Yep. He’s going to come down hard on those CRU scientists all right. Just the man for the job!

Less than half the British population still believes in Anthropogenic Global Warming, says a new survey commissioned by The Times.

Only 41 per cent accept as an established scientific fact that global warming is taking place and is largely man-made. Almost a third (32 per cent) believe that the link is not yet proved; 8 per cent say that it is environmentalist propaganda to blame man and 15 per cent say that the world is not warming.

Even more interesting than the result, though, is the Thunderer’s appalled reaction. In a leader that might have been easily have been written by the Great Moonbat himself, the Times quite simply refuses to accept that the growing band of sceptics may have a point. Instead, it accuses these ‘deniers’ of being idiots:

It is possible that the collective expertise of brilliant scientists could be wrong. The best minds in the world once held a geocentric theory of the solar system. Before the discovery of sub-atomic particles they believed that everything was made of earth, air, fire and water. Right up to the 19th century, serious scientists wrote recipe books for making animals. But no previous process of scientific trial, error and progress has ever overturned such a well-attested thesis. Lord Rees has reminded us that we now live in a global village and it is, he pointed out, probably inevitable that there will be some global village idiots.

The Times’s approach is not unlike that of a Marxist theorist berating the bourgeoisie for their “false consciousness”; or indeed, a Eurocrat deciding that when sovereign nations keep voting “No” in Euro referendums it doesn’t mean that the EU is an oppressive and unpopular construct but that the voters need working on a bit harder so that they come to the correct “Yes” conclusion next time. It is, in fact, another perfect case of what Jonah Goldberg calls Liberal Fascism.

It is also an example of just how increasingly out-of-touch the MSM is with the views of the wider reading world. Recently, the Times launched a poster campaign boasting that it offered more extensive eco coverage than any other newspaper. Some of the claims made on these posters – such as the one about the North East passage being used as a commercial shipping route for the first time (when actually it has been used since 1934) – have been shot down by the excellent Andrew Orlowski on The Register.

But even if these claims were true, are wall-to-wall horror stories about impending man-made eco-doom really what readers of the quality newspapers want to read these days? My suspicion is not. I’m presuming that the audience which reads and comments on blogs isn’t totally different from the one that reads newspapers in print form. And if that’s the case, then the MSM’s obsession with AGW is looking increasingly out of date.

If you don’t believe me, check out the comments below one of George Monbiot’s columns, or indeed, either of the two Times articles listed above. Commenters who take the Al-Gore-approved line are vastly outnumbered by commenters who believe the whole AGW thing is a load of crock.

And it will take a bit more than bullying accusations that they’re “idiots”, I suspect, to swing them round.

2 Responses to “59 per cent of UK population are ‘village idiots’ thunders The Times”

Lauren says:November 17, 2009 at 2:46 amHey James,Loved your newest post about the whole Global Warming issue there in the UK.I found your site, because I clicked on one of your articles about Obama and the whole Nobel Peace prize issue, and I was like “this is so awesome”. It had humor in it, but it was the truth, too, and I instantly became a fan.I’ll definitely be subscribing.
I’ll be checking out your books as well. Hopefully I can eventually purchase them online if they’re not in a book store here.

Please keep on writing.

I’ll keep reading.

All the best,

Lauren
Sebaneau says:February 5, 2010 at 2:50 amAnd four days later, the Climategate files were released on the Internet…

Lauren says:November 17, 2009 at 2:46 amHey James,Loved your newest post about the whole Global Warming issue there in the UK.I found your site, because I clicked on one of your articles about Obama and the whole Nobel Peace prize issue, and I was like “this is so awesome”. It had humor in it, but it was the truth, too, and I instantly became a fan.I’ll definitely be subscribing.

I’ll be checking out your books as well. Hopefully I can eventually purchase them online if they’re not in a book store here.

Please keep on writing.

I’ll keep reading.

All the best,

Lauren

Sebaneau says:February 5, 2010 at 2:50 amAnd four days later, the Climategate files were released on the Internet…

Tag: Lord Rees

Climategate: The Whitewash Begins

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59 per cent of UK population Are ‘Village Idiots’ Thunders The Times

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2 Responses to “59 per cent of UK population are ‘village idiots’ thunders The Times”