Shocking scenes earlier this week from Wennington, where suburban houses went up in flames after wildfires spread across tinder dry fields, and firemen struggled to contain the blaze in record temperatures of 40 degrees. Meanwhile, fires have ranged across France, Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece. Italy has declared a state of emergency because of the worst drought in 70 years.
But the good news is that we need not be alarmed. The climate hoaxers are at it again. Fake news, fake data, fake science, and fake reporting. Even the weather stations that record the temperatures are fake. The mainstream media is whipping up hysteria, fanning the flames, you might say, merely to further its liberal agenda. Let’s just get out and enjoy the sunshine.
The spoiler scientists of the British Antarctic Survey claim that they have incontrovertible proof of anthropogenic (man-made) global warming, the result of many years of conducting research and analysing data from the polar regions. Likewise, NASA, who have unique access to satellite data relating to sea-levels, ice coverage, and the chemical composition of the atmosphere. Likewise, the Met Office, whose meteorological observations from ground and air-based instruments, and research aircraft, inform their climate models. Likewise the Royal Society, who in 2018, together with 21 other national academies and societies of science representing the consensus views of tens of thousands of scientists launched a Consensus Statement on Climate Change. Indeed, all the world’s leading scientific organisations support the consensus that global warming is man-made.
We need not be alarmed. Again, it is all fake data, fake modelling, fake analysis. The world scientific community is involved in a worldwide plot engineered by the global liberal elite to further their nefarious agenda. Individual scientists may not even be conscious what is going on, for they have been bewitched by ‘groupthink’. Although normally impeccably rational and cool-headed in their pursuit of the truth, they have in this case been indoctrinated, brainwashed, succumbed to mass hallucination, in accepting a paradigm – anthropogenic global warming – that is obviously bogus.
How do we know? The global elite, who have masterminded the conspiracy (possibly with extra-terrestrial assistance), have masterfully covered their tracks for they are devious beyond belief. It is the same global liberal elite that denied Donald Trump his landslide election victory (every electoral official in the country was in on it) and foisted killer vaccines on the world under the pretext of a manufactured pandemic. It is the same NASA that faked the Moon landings on a stage set at a USAF base and, at least according to Flat Earthers, doctored satellite images of the Earth to make it look spherical.
We know because a minority of brave scientists have dissented. These modern-day Galileos have spurned the orthodoxy, turned their back on official sources of funding, risking their academic careers in the process, and with generous financial help from the fossil fuels industry and organisations funded by it, published compelling research that reveals climate change to be a hoax.
Naturally, these heretics are ridiculed by the establishment. Their papers are pilloried when they are peer-reviewed and declared fraudulent. The climate change hoaxers do what they can to confuse the issue by making their arguments as complex as possible, by appealing to sophisticated models with hundreds of variables, to complex chemical and physical processes, and by utilising needlessly technical terms – all spurious – solely intended to bamboozle us.
luckily, we amateurs are able miraculously to see through the mass of data – the same data that climate scientists have devoted their professional lives to making sense of. No need to study meteorology, biochemistry, thermodynamics, atmospheric physics or chemistry, solar physics, geophysics, oceanography, glaciology, paleoclimatology, applied mathematics, or computer modelling. No need for a laborious process of peer-review, which in any case merely serves the interest of the elite. By cobbling together a few items of cherry-picked data, a few choice variables, and some causal linkages, we can prove (1) that there is no global warming, and (2) that even if there were, humanity has nothing to do with it.
Luckily, there are innumerable websites to assist us in this. No need for studying the relevant science or sophisticated computer modelling when 5 minutes ‘research’ on the net will furnish the evidence needed to confirm our beliefs. Aliens living on the far side of the Moon? Flat Earth? Men from Venus? It’s all there.
Just a few minutes ‘research’ and you too can go online to disprove the man-made climate change thesis, the consensus of tens of thousands of climate scientists, with a Mickey Mouse model. Try it!
The questions I should like to see answered by those who dismiss the anthropogenic climate change theory are these:
1. Do you agree that it is not possible to change even one thing in the world without changing at least one other thing?
2. Do you agree in cause and effect?
3. Do you agree that the annual consumption of oil is about 35 billion barrels?
4. Do you agree that the annual consumption of coal is about 8 billon tons?
5. Do you agree that the annual consumption of natural gas is about 4 trillion cubic metres?
6. Do you agree that the combustion products of the above are exhausted to the atmosphere?
7. Bearing in mind your answer to 1 and 2, do you think it possible that burning all these billions of barrels of oil, billions of tons of coal, and trillions of cubic metres of gas, and discharging the combustion products to the atmosphere results in no changes other than the fact of those discharges?
8. If you agree that such discharges must create effects beyond the mere fact of the discharges themselves, on what basis do you exclude climatic effects?
9. If you agree that such discharges may have climatic effects, on what basis do you dismiss warming effects from among those effects?
1 and 2. These are philosophical questions to which different philosophers offer different answers. Neither is an axiom.
3, 4 and 5. Yes, and we need alternatives to resources that will run out. Luckily, nuclear power exists, and is safe and clean as long as corners aren’t cut.
6, 7, 8 and 9. The theory is logical, despite my doubts about axioms 1 and 2, but I don’t believe it’s supported by evidence in the real world. Clive James’s satirical vision of deep-fried polar bears floating over a submerged London is no more likely to happen now that it was fifteen years ago when he devised it.
But even if it’s all true, nuclear power provides a complete solution to the problem, so why aren’t the Green Party and Extinction Rebellion campaigning for it, instead of protesting against it? Is it perhaps because they’re very, very stupid? Or very, very Marxist? Or, as seems very plausible to me, both?
It is hard to take seriously, as environmentalist saviors, the rich celebrities who use private jets to fly to Davos to listen to a disturbed teenager. It’s not what scientists say that is the issue, it is the obvious religious fervor of “repent for the end of days is upon us” flavor of the whole movement that is turning people off.
Only scientists can judge theories about quantum mechanics, because we can’t build particle accelerators in our back gardens, but anybody old enough can work out whether it’s hotter nowadays than it used to be.
The climate change hypothesis suffers from the problem that anybody old enough can tell that it isn’t hotter nowadays than it used to be.
Any real scientist would abandon a hypothesis when its predictions proved to be false, but the pseudo-scientists of climate change are too poorly educated in the principles of scientific method to change their minds, so they tell lies instead.
“It’s a bit warmer than it was on an arbitrary date 250 years ago, so let’s panic!”
Alternatively, let’s enjoy the current spell of warm weather, because real scientists, like everybody else, know it won’t last as long as we’d like.
I’m old enough, and I can promise you it certainly is hotter than it used to be. However, the people who have been recording temperatures properly, using proper scientific instruments and controlled conditions, tell us that it’s hotter than it used to be.
This kind of denial of reality is definitely a symptom of a mental illness. Get help “PJR”. You can take Blaiklock with you.
I can remember when it was said, when the temperatures reached the 70s (Fahrenheit) that it was going to be a nice warm summers day. You could play outside all day without having to worry about 2nd degree burns or sunstroke. 75F is around 24°C. Now, we regularly have temperatures of 35+°C, and even now 40°C, and we are told to use “common sense” and not go out in it. Think of that. It is now too hot in England to safely stay outside all day. Not hotter? Pfffft. Sometimes I wonder whether you’re aware you’re actually pissing yourself and not spilling the Chablis down your legs.
There are at least four rational grounds for doubting the current climate panic:
1. Temperatures are now being measured in more places than in the past, including new places that were perhaps always hotter.
2. Buildings reflect heat, so places that are more built-up than they used to be are hotter.
3. In all scientific measurements, there’s a tendency to drift. Even the sacred constants of physics seem to change.
4. Human beings being what we are, it’s likely that some of the measurements are fraudulent.
I regard the climate panic the same way I regard the COVID panic and the Putin panic: I assume that I’m being lied to now because I know I’ve been lied to in the past. But feel free to be gullible, Andrew.
What a beautiful article! Alistair, you have elevated the glorious art of irony to a level we have never seen before. I can only hope it’s not lost in this place*, where for example, Catherine Blaiklock has stated in a previous article that the current levels of CO₂ in the atmosphere to be “dangerously low”. She claims, in order to justify this extraordinary assertion, to have studied climatology at Oxford, but even if you think a single module in a geography degree qualifies, it is hard to believe that this is something that would have been taught by that institution.
*Although having now read the other comments below I realise that, depressingly but predictably enough, that it apparently is.
In what way is Catherine Blaiklock’s Oxford science degree inferior to any other trained scientist’s degree, Andrew?
Do you perhaps (like Odious Attenborough and Thick Thunberg) approve of scientists only when their conclusions support your prejudices?
I don’t have any prejudices about scientific research, so that’s a meaningless question. If the science demonstrates a clear result, disagreeing with it because you don’t like it—such as the fossil fuel industry is known to have done—is irrelevant.
And really? “Odious Attenborough”? What a vile little man you are. Where’s your research-based insight into it all? Pathetic.
“Odious” and “thick” are the kind of adjectives you’d use yourself for people you disagreed with, though “vile” and “little” are the ones you happened to choose today.
You didn’t answer either of my questions. My answer to your question is implicit in my comment to which you replied. I think any neutral observer would consider me to be the winner of our little debate so far.
@ PJR
Poor old Weirdna – the word “vile” is used more than once from his limited stock of insults that he mistakes for argument. However, I think the evidence for climate change is pretty substantial, the role of British carbon emissions negligible, and that technology is part of the answer to these problems.
Well pjr, there is absolutely nothing wrong with a Geography degree from Oxford university. It’s very prestigious. However, she has apparently rejected whatever she was taught in order to make such an absurd statement about the current level of CO₂, because I think it’s safe to say that Oxford University wouldn’t be teaching such ignorant, unscientific bullshit. Not even in 1985. You cannot claim authority on a subject because you went to Oxford, and then make it up on the hoof.
Do you seriously think that one should never disagree with what one was taught by one’s tutors? If you don’t think it, why did you say it?
The average daily temperatures from June 1st to July 21 in Central England was 23.9 C in 1976 and 21.6C this year. How is this Climate Change?
And the temperature in my bath decreased from 31.5 C to 30.7 C. How can this be Climate Change?
https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/50-years-of-failed-doomsday-eco-pocalyptic-predictions-the-so-called-experts-are-0-50/
The logic is against man made climate change. Since 1967 scientists have made 41 predictions of world annihilation due to human activity [See article above]. None have come true. This is just another prediction; its motivation can only be understood in a political context.
‘sophisticated computer modelling’
Just look how well sophisticated computer modelling did with COVID.
But warming is man-made. That is a fact. The highest temperatures were recorded at Heathrow and RAF Coningsby. You can’t get more man-made than the busiest airport in Britain and an RAF airfield.
RAF Coningsby has more than four operational Typhoons able to contribute to the British Global warming disaster? I’m amazed.
There have been two hot days in July.
The rest of the month is cold. People are wearing coats or jumpers
Re the (first) “moon landing”, was it possible for the technology of the day to have achieved what was claimed? Having passed through the dangerous Van Allen radiation belts with the barest minimum of protection, and having reached moon orbit, they then detached the lunar lander which made a controlled soft landing on its feet, two of them exited the capsule and walked around in searing sun heat with air-con packs on their backs, took off again and made a perfect connection to the moon-orbiting module which was in exactly the right place, then fired more rockets to send it accurately back to earth, through the Van Allen belts again, all as a first-time unrehearsed programme to fantastic accuracy. And the astronauts all lived happily ever after, no radiation effects. It all raises an awful lot of questions, and did. And if you want to see how such an event could be faked, the film Capricorn One will show you. For the arguments and rebuttals about the Apollo programme, see “Moon landing conspiracy theories” on Wikipedia. Take your pick!
Were all the Apollo missions faked, or just the 11th?
Except the Russians never exposed it as a fraud, because they, like many other countries, had tracked the mission by radio all the way to the Moon and back. The particular motion would have been impossible to fake for everybody’s viewpoint.
The Russians would have loved to prove it fake.
All of your points are trivial and have all been debunked. People survived nuclear bombings and Chernobyl, never mind a few minutes in the van Allen belts.
And yes, the technology was capable of it. We’ve had rockets for thousands of years and airtight vessels—submarines—for I think hundreds. And the mathematics and theory of gravity for hundreds too.
Thousands of years of rockets! Hundreds of years of submarines! Andrew evidently has all the necessary qualifications to be a leading climate-change pseudo-scientist!
I am so glad this putrid bully pulpit of a magazine is going down the financial tubes.
What makes you think that ? Sorry to disappoint you we are solvent in exceptionally difficult trading conditions, more than be said for the Guardian which can only survive on income from the stock market ! Also like all left organisations, no reader comment pages. I am sure Andy approves
How about cut out all the racist stuff? This is an absolute cesspit of vileness, apart from the ignorant ravings under this beautiful piece of writing.
An “absolute cesspit” of “racist stuff”? What, SR?!
Are all human populations identical? Are some peoples better adapted to some environments than others? Are those who recognise genetic, racial and national differences, and their cultural effects, “complete morons”?
I do take the points made , but it seems to me that the Climate is always changing. The issue is what we do, and why…
I do not advocate brazen pollution or the destruction of the environment. Nevertheless I have not seen any accounts of climate change from normal cycles, the variations in the Earth’s axis etc.
The present Hysteria is motivated by someone’s interest… surely?! There is a world wide advertising campaign about it. And the alternative ‘renewables’ require resources, heat and pollution to make ..
If the problem is Human activity then surely the answer is depopulation ?? And we can start at home with a stop on all further immigration, and especially from cultures obsessed by massive breeding…
It would have been useful if the article had included a few direct links from the last two paragraphs.
So, Professor Richard Lindzen, Professor William Happer, Professor Ian Plimer, Dr Willie Soon, Professor Judith Curry, Dr Patrick Moore and very many other real scientists are all wrong? It’s politics-based pseudo-science, not science, which has become a religion, a cult.
Got it in one! Apart from Patrick Moore, do any of the above not receive funding from, or have financial interests in, the fossil fuels industry?
Patrick Moore, famously not a scientist. Equally famously, deceased.
I noted that whenever there is cold weather, they claim “weather isn’t climate!” but whenever there is hot weather, the weather suddenly *is* climate again.
Group think. People believe it because people believe because people believe it.
Well-written article brilliantly ridiculing climate change deniers.
That’s all very well but every disaster the Left has raved about – the new ice age, acid rain, bird flu, mad cow disease, AIDS, covid etc has fizzled out. The Left has cried wolf so many times it has grown hoarse.
That’s why the latest terror has to be nebulous: easy to frighten people with and – given that there is nothing as mutable as the weather – very difficult to disprove. For the Marxists and their fellow travellers, what’s not to like?
Whatever the reason for famine in Africa and Asia now and in future, their peoples will try to come to Britain. Worldwide climate change and pollution are now blamed on the Industrial Revolution itself, i.e. whitey!!! It would be offensive to say “They breed ’em, and we feed ’em,” so I’ll just write it.
The BBC is the UK’s greatest public exponent of climate change.
The BBC is renowned for its honesty and integrity.
Which of these statements is true?
What’s your source for the first statement? I think it’s accepted pretty much universally now by anybody who isn’t a complete moron.
Fair enough.
But UK CO2 emissions are not the problem. Chinese and Indian emissions are.
Meanwhile, why not extract oil from our coal as the South Africans did – the technology has been known for 100 years?
Climate change isn’t about climate change. Have you noticed that whatever the problem is, the answer is always the same? The answer is always more taxes, more government employees and more regulations and more controls.
Solving the problem would be a disaster to those who claim to care about the problem.