Saturday, October 31, 2009

Top Ten Tory bloggers in Denial over AGW

Sunder Katwala has taken a deep breath and dived like a mythical Danish hero into the depths of the tory blog to find out what they think about global heating. He has come up with the dismal news that the top 10 are all in denial over the effect of carbon dioxide on our atmosphere.

Let's look at their rascally links:

1. Iain Dale
2. Conservative Home
3. Dizzy Thinks
4. Daniel Hannan MEP
5. Tory Bear
6. Archbishop Cranmer
7. John Redwood MP
8. Douglas Carswell MP
9. Letters from a Tory
10. Burning our Money

This dismal shower will be in power come next June, barring acts of God (although "Lord" Heseltine of Quiff thinks the mountain is too steep to climb, and we are going to get a hung Parliament. Yes please).

What to do?

All I can suggest is that we copy the text below, store it on our desktops, and paste it into their comment slots at every opportunity.


To all the climate change deniers out there, you must understand that in the end, this is not an academic debate, because we and our children are part of the experiment. The consensus among scientists (yes, with a few exceptions, as is always the case in science) is that we should decarbonise our economy as a matter of urgency.

Let's take a bookie's eye view of the matter.

Say we decarbonise our economy, and it turns out (unlikely as that may be) that IPCC view is wrong? Well, we will have created hundreds of thousands of jobs in insulation and renewable energy manufacturing and taken thousands out of fuel poverty. Not bad, but that's not all. We will also have reduced the shock of Peak Oil and Peak Gas, and reduced the acidification of the oceans. And addressed our energy security problems. And increased prosperity in hot countries. Not bad, not bad at all.

Say on the other hand, we go the way of the denialists/skeptics, and it turns out, as per all reasonable expectations, that they are wrong? We will have problems with energy security, Peak Oil, Peak Gas, acidified oceans, acid rain, fuel poverty, unemployment, poverty, civil unrest and finally, massive, catastrophic climate disruption from droughts, floods, crop failures, disease, and war. With massive migration caused by environmental collapse. Not good.

Any sensible punters would put their money on decarbonising the global economy.

6 comments:

DocRichard said...

Yes, but he's not in the Top 10.

dizzy said...

Only problem with my inclusion on the list is that I've never once denied climate change or global warming.

dizzy said...

Thanks for suggesting I will be "in power" though. Tickled me greatly.

DocRichard said...

Dizzy, Dizzy, Dizzy
If this is the case, then I apologise 10 times over. It just shows not to take anything Labour blogs at face value.

Of course, you might accept climate chang/GW but deny that it was man-made, which is the popular position of the modern AGW denier. I was unable to check on this because there is no search box on your blog that I could see on my usual cursory skimming examination of the front page.

But assuming you accept AGW, do you also accept that preventing the worst effects of AGW means abandoning the free-market ideal and going for the more practical guided-market principle?

DocRichard said...

However, Sunder says Dizzy has expressed a neutral view on climate change, challenging the idea that the peer reviewed evidence favours the consensus view.

In your piece, you refer to one piece of data, a critique of dendrochronology, and use that one piece to offset the multiplicity of papers that are consistent with AGW. This is the norm with deniers, but it shows ignorance of the scientific method, which is about continual questioning of the orthodoxy. Deniers make much of the value scepticism, but that is implicit in all science. Nothing in science is ever proven, only not-yet-disproven, as you know from your reading of Popper.


In the end, this is not an academic debate, but a political debate about what to do, because we and our children are part of the experiment. The consensus among scientists (yes, with a few exceptions, as is always the case in science) is that we should decarbonise our economy as a matter of urgency.

Let's take a bookie's eye view of the matter.

Say we decarbonise our economy, and it turns out (unlikely as that may be) that IPCC view is wrong? Well, we will have created hundreds of thousands of jobs in insulation and renewable energy manufacturing and taken thousands out of fuel poverty. Not bad, but that's not all. We will also have reduced the shock of Peak Oil and Peak Gas, and reduced the acidification of the oceans. And addressed our energy security problems. And increased prosperity in hot countries. Not bad, not bad at all.

Say on the other hand, we go the way of the denialists/skeptics, and it turns out, as per all reasonable expectations, that they are wrong? We will have problems with energy security, Peak Oil, Peak Gas, acidified oceans, acid rain, fuel poverty, unemployment, poverty, civil unrest and finally, massive, catastrophic climate disruption from droughts, floods, crop failures, disease, and war. With massive migration caused by environmental collapse. Not good.

Any sensible punters would have to put their money on decarbonising the global economy.
.See the video here

DocRichard said...

And you certainly seem to have attracted the usual chorus of deniers on the comment slot...