“The warmers are getting more and more like those traditional predictors of the end of the world who, when the event fails to happen on the due date, announce an error in their calculations and a new date.” [Dr. John Brignell, Emeritus Engineering Professor at the University of Southampton, on Number Watch (May 1)]

Oh dear! The inevitable is happening. The ‘global warming’ trope is unravelling on a daily basis - scientifically, economically, and politically. The wheels are coming off the hysterical bandwagon, and it is not going to be a salutary sight watching the politicians and the media junkies jumping cart and trying to throw mud in everyone’s eyes.

Pathetic Sophistry

First, climate - as long predicted here - just won’t play ball. We now know that there has been no ‘global warming’ since 1998, a fact unpredicted by the models and despite an above-average rise in ‘greenhouse’ gas emissions. Moreover, new computer models show that the Earth’s temperature may stay roughly the same for at least a further decade through the workings of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) [for example, among many reports: ‘Next decade “may see no warming”’, BBC Online Science/Nature News, May 1]. And, even the Solar Cycle 24 sunspots are refusing to flare up [see: ‘Keeping You Up-To-Date’, April 24].

It is pathetic sophistry to claim, as some are wont, that ‘natural forces’ are having the temerity to “suppress” ‘global warming’. The fundamental point has ever been this: climate change is governed by hundreds of factors. The very idea that we can manage climate change predictably by understanding and manipulating at the margins just one politically-selected factor is about as bonkers as it gets. How on Earth have folk been conned into believing such hubris? It is so like The Prophecies by Nostradamus [above] - the vagueness and lack of dating make it easy to quote ‘evidence’ selectively after every major dramatic event, and retrospectively claim them as a ‘hit’!

Hyperbole, Not Cool Facts

Secondly, Nigel Lawson’s mitigated Humeian critique of ‘global warming’ is convincing folk left, right, and centre [eat your heart out, Robin McKie - see: ‘Wrong, Wrong, Wrong, and.....!’, April 27], witness this exemplary comment from the novelist, Susan Hill, on her excellent blog [‘An Appeal to Reason’, May 2]:

“Nigel Lawson’s finely argued book of that name is sub-titled ‘A Cool Look At Global Warming’. Regular readers of this blog will know how suspicious, not to say cynical I am about the emotive rubbish spouted on the subject of GW, the unscientific waffle, the leaps to change things, often for the worse, based on hyperbole not on cool facts, the panic-mongering based on what we think we know as against what we actually do, and on what is happening as against what we guess (I use the word advisedly) may happen in 100 or 1,000 years time.

I cannot do much more than press Nigel Lawson’s temperate book upon you and quote from it every day for a while. I am so convinced of its importance as a check and balance to all the received-opinion and muddle-headedness that I have bought 20 copies and am happy to post one to anyone who is ready to read some facts and common sense.”

Brava! Susan is rightly scathing about ‘green evangelism’:

“And in case you wonder why I am so keen to have everyone read this book, it is not only because I hate what Jay calls ‘green evangelism’ but more importantly, because I care about the Third World and its poverty. As I am sure do you. We owe it to them to get our facts straight.

These ships usually have a very wide turning circle, but fortunately, we are witnessing one bitter consequence of our lemming-like panic into producing alternatives to fossil fuels right now. If you give over to the production of biofuels land which has always been used for the production of food crops, you find that people who were previously well-fed start to starve and the already-starving increase in number and get hungrier. Very quickly. That is happening now, it is not merely an academic argument about what may or may not happen to the world inherited by our great-grandchildren and beyond.”

Voters and Sun Readers Are Not Fooled

Finally, of course, the public is sensibly not being fooled by all the hot air and rhetoric, despite those lurid front pages in The Independent - today you can feel The Indie’s lachrymae rerum [‘Green tax revolt: Britons “will not foot bill to save planet”’, The Independent, May 2]:

“More than seven in 10 voters insist that they would not be willing to pay higher taxes in order to fund projects to combat climate change, according to a new poll.

The survey also reveals that most Britons believe ‘green’ taxes on 4x4s, plastic bags and other consumer goods have been imposed to raise cash rather than change our behaviour, while two-thirds of Britons think the entire green agenda has been hijacked as a ploy to increase taxes.

The findings make depressing reading for green campaigners, who have spent recent months urging the Government to take far more radical action to reduce Britain’s carbon footprint.”

Thank goodness they haven’t taken more action.

‘Global warming’! I believe it is, at last, unravelling, folks. As a Sun reader penned on May 1: “‘Global warming may “stop”, scientists predict.’ Now if that’s true, how can we tax it?”

Time to await those seminal Sun headlines:

“It’s The Sun Wot’s Done It!”

“Will The Last Person Who Believes In ‘Global Warming’ Please Switch Off The Low-Energy Light Bulb!”

In the meantime, a nice glass of lightly-chilled sauvignon blanc should do the trick ..... “Cheers!”