I very much like David Aaronovitch, especially since he became an opinion writer for The Times. I don’t always agree with him, but David is unquestionably his own man, and he can turn a devastating phrase, as is brilliantly exemplified today [‘Eventually, we will all hate Obama too’, The Times, July 22; paper version, p. 22]:

“George W. Bush, of course, represents a particular kind of offence to European sensibilities. He blew out Kyoto, instead of pretending to care about it and then not implementing it, which is what our hypocrisies require.”

Absolutely. This is something I have been noting, if less pithily and less succinctly, for over ten years. What really got up European snobberies was not the fact that the Bush administration wasn’t doing anything about ‘global warming’ (actually, the US has often done far more practically-speaking than Europe), but a deep irritation that the Toxic Texan resolutely refused to play the European hypocritical game of hand-wringing and talking-the-talk, while doing pretty well zilch of note. Indeed, I have often suggested in public that, politically-speaking, Bush should perhaps have simply played ‘the game’, and then not implemented anything, just like the majority of the countries which did ratify. It is well to recall that the word, ‘hypocrisy’, derives from the Greek, ὑπόκρισις (hypokrisis), which means ‘play-acting’, ‘acting out’, or ‘feigning/dissembling’.

Just let me remind you of some salutary statistics. Between 1997 and 2004, carbon dioxide emissions rose as follows:

Emissions worldwide increased 18.0%;

Emissions from countries that ratified the protocol increased 21.1%;

Emissions from non-ratifiers of the protocol increased 10.0%;

Emissions from the US (a non-ratifier) increased 6.6%;

Emissions from the US increased less than 75% of ratifying countries.

With respect to the last point, the following are the percentage rises in emissions for a list of selected countries which have ratified the protocol (or which were exempted from targets): Maldives, 252%; China, 55%; Luxembourg, 43%; Iran, 39%; Norway, 24%; Russia, 16%; Italy, 16%; Finland, 15%; Mexico, 11%; Japan, 11%; Canada, 8.8%.

Here is unequivocal factual evidence in support of David’s scathing observation. ‘Global warming’ has become the ultimate faith without works. All that matters is the public confession of sin and belief, which must now also include, again as David points out in his article, the vilification of the US.

An Inconvenient Truth

And, talking of hypocrisies, I have been much enjoying the bizarre media spinning with respect to OFCOM’s recent ruling on Channel 4’s screening of The Great Global Warming Swindle - everybody can be a winner, it seems.

Yet, the only part of the ruling that really matters is the inconvenient truth that the 15-month inquiry by OFCOM found that this lively Channel 4 documentary claiming ‘global warming’ to be the ‘biggest scam of modern times’ did not significantly mislead viewers.

Just so. Well done, Channel 4.

Moreover, I especially enjoyed watching Newsnight yesterday evening, on which the UK government’s former Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir David King, became increasingly miffed as Hamish Mykura, the excellent Head of Documentaries at Channel 4, continued, calmly and politely, to argue for freedom of speech and for the importance of not closing down debate on so important an issue. Great stuff. As Newsnight suddenly cut to a new, breaking story of much greater significance [the capture of the Bosnian Serb war crimes suspect, Radovan Karadzic], I thought King writhed more and more like Snape in Harry Potter.

My congratulations then to Channel 4 for holding its nerve. It was absolutely vital that The Great Global Warming Swindle was shown [you may buy the final version of the DVD of The Great Global Warming Swindle here].

Perhaps, I should also propose, Dear Reader, that there is a mass write-in to OFCOM with complaints about Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, if and when this is shown (for balance!) on Channel 4. As one perceptive watcher’s ‘Comment’ to Newsnight (July 21) states:

“OFCOM have got it wrong again... Balance is an ‘overall’ concept rather than having to be balanced within each programme - and as the overwhelming propaganda is on the side of the Climate Change lobby it is hardly damaging to point out the other side of the story. I don’t remember OFCOM complaining about An Inconvenient Truth equally riddled with bias and bad science...”

Sauce for the goose, and all that. Hypocrisies all round, say I.

And, for further reading, I should like to recommend Mary Dejevsky’s brave comment in The Independent (July 22), ‘Don’t silence those who challenge consensus’:

“The embrace of consensus has a particularly malign influence in science, where dissenters from a whole collection of current orthodoxies find themselves frozen out of the research funds and publications necessary to pursuing their career.”

A most thoughtful piece. Coffee in the garden - one of the few warm days so far this cool summer.