“We are planting enough trees to counteract the additional carbon emissions generated by our campaign” 

“(Kyoto II would) raise energy prices to astronomical levels for consumers, cripple industry, increase joblessness and poverty, and ultimately threaten a breakdown of the social order” 

    The watchword for David Cameron’s campaign for the leadership of the Conservative Party is turning out to be waffle.

    Ask him a serious question about a tough problem and you will get plenty of warm words. Words that show he’s a really, really nice man who cares lots for humanity.

    But Cameron is more like a Liberal Democrat. Lots of talk, but no action.

    David Davis unveils a shrewd, exciting policy to cut taxes. Can’t do that, say the Cameroons, it’s divisive and a hostage to fortune. Reintroduce 20 grammar schools to the country’s deprived inner cities? Can’t do that. Cameron would rather build on the new Labour education policy which, even though it has trashed education for those who can’t afford to go private, he doesn’t want to oppose for opposing’s sake. Old Etonian Cameron’s pampered public school buddy George Osborne doesn’t want to commit to this either, even though both of them benefited from a top class education which used to be available to the rest of us when we had grammar schools and the eleven-plus examination. Repatriate powers from Brussels? That might jeopardise some cosy sinecures for our chums. Can’t do that.

    The BBC Question Time debate on November 3 made this distinction clear. Davis was clear and tough with a plan of action for change. Cameron waffled and appeared to have no strong underlying philosophy.

    In an earlier column on Cameron, I’d compared him with Tony Blair and Bill Clinton as more of a style over substance media front man, than a conviction politician like David Davies. I was wrong. That was too generous. Cameron reminds me more of Prince Charles, who in his “we-are-all-guilty” mode, constantly bores on about the environment and how if we don’t stop the climate changing, it will destroy us. Cameron’s recent speech on climate change could have been delivered by Chuck Wales himself. It took on board half baked theories, embraced a right-on cause that would please the Notting Hill crowd but would in fact impoverish the rest of us, and ended up suggesting a government committee could solve the “problem”.

    MORONIC
    The idea that we can change the climate is moronic. There is no evidence that human activity is changing the climate.

    “There is at present no solid evidence for a significant human influence on global climate - none whatsoever,” says Professor Fred Singer of the Science & Environmental Policy Project, in Arlington, Virginia.

    “According to greenhouse theory and climate models, there should have been a sizeable warming of the atmosphere by now, due to the anthropogenic increase in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases; but it seems to be too small even to be detectable. At least, that's the conclusion of the best global data we have - from weather satellites and, quite independently, from instruments on weather balloons as well,” Singer said.

    Professor Singer occasionally appears on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme, when the editors are feeling guilty about pushing the idea a bit too far that humans are damaging the climate.

    JUNK SCIENCE
    There are plenty of axe-grinders, usually socialists or their apologists, quoting junk science and attempting to prove that human induced global warming is happening. Politicians on the make jump on this bandwagon in the name of saving us all. Cameron has joined them.

    But top scientists who are untainted by politics (see WintonsWorld’s link to Global Warming) don’t buy that. Most sensible people would agree that energy is a crucial policy area for government and that scarce resources like oil and gas must be used economically and responsibly. President Bush said the Kyoto treaty would enfeeble the U.S. and not have any impact on climate. The U.S. Senate agrees and voted 95-0 in 1997 to veto the Kyoto treaty which sought to cut CO2 emissions but excluded big energy users like China, India and Brazil.

    Bush believes that the best course of action is to harness technology to use scarce resources more efficiently, and eventually find renewable replacements. Pro-Kyoto politicians are quite prepared to cut CO2 emissions, even though it would cripple the U.S. economy which would then do the same to Europe and the rest of the world, while having no perceptible impact on the climate.

    KYOTO MANICACS
    There are a number of inconvenient facts which Kyoto maniacs try to avoid. How come for 30 years, between 1945 and 1975, when CO2 emissions were accelerating, the world’s temperature actually declined? Scientists at the time were getting their knickers in a twist saying we were all going to die because of global cooling.  How come in Roman Britain, the climate was warm enough to allow a flourishing red wine industry? How come Greenland was colonised and agriculture flourished there a couple of thousand years ago? Could this perhaps been down to the fact that climate moves in cycles, and it is dictated by the sun, which by all accounts is a pretty powerful source of energy.

    LOVES QUANGOS
    But Cameron joined the corrupt politicians seeking to curb CO2 with a speech on October 31 at the Eden Project in Cornwall. The speech showed Cameron in all his vacuous awfulness. He called for “action”, which turns out to be classic New Labour quangoitis in disguise.

    Cameron wants to set up a Carbon Audit Office to monitor emissions, and quotes from the fatuous speech of government science advisor Professor David King who said last year that global warming was more of a threat to mankind than terrorism. Cameron falls for the junk science line of attack, saying, without bothering to back it up with evidence that “the rate of (climate) change has accelerated dramatically over the last hundred years.”

    This is simply not true.

    He quotes selectively dodgy data to back up his “case” – “the 1990s were the warmest decade in the last 1,000 years”. But go back 2,000 years and that isn’t the case. He grabs the horey old chestnut that extreme weather like floods, droughts and storms are increasing. Not true. People are building houses on flood plains, and areas that have traditionally been ravaged by hurricanes. That’s true.

    Then he goes for the Full Monty.

    CONSENSUS IS UNSCIENTIFIC
    “There is a clear scientific consensus that man-made greenhouse gases have accelerated what was a wholly natural process of global warming.”

    Forgetting the fact the science doesn’t believe in consensus, but in hard, cool facts to prove its theories, there is no such consensus. Many scientists allied to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change agree with this, but they are often tainted by their involvement which brings them nice salaries and travelling expenses as the circus travels around the world spreading its gospel. But many serious scientists in Europe and the U.S. don’t buy this theory.   

    Many experts believe that Kyoto-like action will be counterproductive.

    DEVASTATE BRITAIN’S ECONOMY
    “The real danger is that the science advice given to the government will cause serious economic damage to Britain. It is utterly irresponsible to recommend a climate policy that calls for reducing fossil-fuel use by 60 percent (with respect to 1990) by 2050. It amounts to a system of fuel rationing that would raise energy prices to astronomical levels for consumers, cripple industry, increase joblessness and poverty, and ultimately threaten a breakdown of the social order,” according to Professor Singer. 

    And guess what Cameron wants to do about all this. Cameron, who would lead a great British political party wants – 

·      A new international accord (he doesn’t say what kind)
·      Intelligent, consistent and long term MEASURES (my italics), but doesn’t say what measures, only that we have to “grasp the nettle”
·      A cross-party commission to create a long-term policy framework for energy and the environment

       And if that isn’t vacuous enough for you, here’s the clincher.
    “I am starting with a carbon-neutral campaign for the leadership. With the help of the Carbon-Neutral Company, we are planting enough trees to counteract the additional carbon emissions generated by our campaign.”

    You couldn’t make it up.

 Neil Winton – November 4, 2005