Susan, you will most probably not want to post this reply on your blog - not so much because it directly disagrees with the position you have been alligning yourself with, but because I think it's time to call a spade a spade.

Here goes. (And by the way, after I have finished I must hunt out your Cotswold book and savour it's delicious portrait of the sort of English countryside that you and I are so lucky to enjoy.)

Here goes.

Take one little house, any little house, in this country. Now imagine that little house is Planet Earth. The people living in that house have only that house - they cannot go beyond it, just as we cannot leave the Earth, and they cannot import things into it, just as we cannot import things to Planet Earth. They live in that house, eat in that house, wash in that house, sleep and do whatever they do in that house. They need heat in winter so they
burn what they can from inside the house and from the garden. All they eat comes from their garden. They catch rainwater for washing and flushing. They are self-sufficient, just as we on Earth are self-sufficient, must be self-sufficient. But can they go on like this forever? Their dirty water and their excreta all end up in their septic tank - that's fine for several years, but then they have to haul it all out. At first they slap it on ground against the furthest fence. They can't use it on the garden because it's noxious. They burn as much of their rubbish as they can, but there's a lot that won't burn, such as metals and glass, and there's a lot that it's rather unpleasant burning, like plastics, so a lot of their detritus gets stacked up against that furtherest fence beside the solids from the septic tank. Meanwhile the years are passing, the people in the house are growing old, growing up, multiplying, and soon they have overpopulation, four or five sleeping and living in every room and there's nowhere else to go, but still they keep reproducing without regulation, and still they keep eating of course, and still they keep excreting and adding to that pile at the bottom of the garden. But after only 80 or 90 years that pile of excretion is no longer confined along the back fence, it's now approaching the back door. Needless to say nothing much has been growing in the back garden for several decades. Food is scarce. Tensions run high. Fights break out. It is a MOST unpleasant place to be. At some point as a collective group they are going to have to take responsibility and admit their limited little world cannot sustain their constant reproduction, their consumption, and their excretion. They have poisoned their own environment and it is touch and go whether they can put the brakes on, institute radical changes, and get back to the halycon life they once had.

Our planet is exactly the same. It's just one big house in one big garden, and we human beings, the world over, are continuing to behave, en masse, like the inhabitants of the house above. Of course, the analogy of the little house is frightening but it is nowhere near as frightening as the global picture. The little house analogy doesn't take into account the gases and emissions we humans are pumping out along with our excreta. It doesn't take into account the gaseous and solid detritus that is banked up against Planet Earth's back fence by worldwide industries, whether small industries or massive.

You see?

It's really just common sense.

It's nothing to do with a need for a replacement for religion etc.

Travel the world, and you see the ever-continuing expansion and pollution happening everywhere at an alarming rate. All of Eastern Europe, all of China, all of the Far East, now wish to own the same washing machines as you and I, they're all watching satellite television and they see the luxurious consumer goods that most in the West now take as necessities, and they are demanding the same as a human right. In decades to come as Africa is rightfully helped out of poverty it too will desire the same life-style. The consumption and the excretion will escalate, and the population of the earth will escalate too.

It is a HORRENDOUS reality.

And the sad fact is that no government on the face of this earth is really willing to get tough about it . . . because they all know that the majority of the population are NOT people like you and I who wish to live simply and very reasonably, being creative and actually consuming very little, getting a lot of our pleasure, instead, from seeing the return of the swallows and so forth. Governments know that if they dare to talk about cutting back on people's consumption, for example everybody's "right" to pollute the air between the UK and the Caribbean for a week's holiday at least once a year, or everybody's "right" to drive however far they wish everyday across the UK in a gas-guzzling fume-emitting vehicle, they will have discontent on their hands and they will NOT win the next election.

One thing is sure, though. The time will come when things will get SO bad that massive measures will have to be enforced, just like in that little house above.

It's common sense. Fact. And we ALL have to stop burying our heads in the sand and admit it. Nothing can be done to stop what is going on in any major meaningful way until the inhabitants of the Earth admit that this house, this little ant-hill, is threatened.

Ah, but pollution has nothing to do with GW, not has excess consumption of the world`s resources. I absolutely agree. Pollutin of the air makes people ill and kills them. Of COURSE people in the developing world want washing machine and televisions and a generally higher standard of living. Why wouldn't they want what we have ? That has nothing to do with whether it is right to want it - it may be wrong for us and for them, but you cannot say we can have all this stuff because we know how to use it properly and you don`t.
I have never for one moment suggested pollution is OK and nor does NL.What I am annoyed about is the assumption by so many that
1. Climate change is the same thing as Global Warming, It is not. CC has always gone on, since the Big Bang. Nothing to with us and we have no control over it.
2. GW was certainly happening to a small extent in the last quarter of the last century, SO FAR AS MEASUREMENTS CAN TELL - but it has stopped now and gone into reverse. It is nothing to do with what we have or have not done.
3. The hole in the ozone layer has actually sealed over again.
4. If GW starts up again it is not necessarily a bad thing.
5. People are titally muddled about what affects what and has to do with what and what they can do. So, in no particular order..
a. Plastic bags. Bad for the environment in any ways, especially re wildlife and the sea.
b. Unleaded petrol is unleaded because children`s brains were being poisoned.
c. Most major world weather catastophes have nothing to do with what we do or do not do - too many people think hurricanes have got more frequent and worse because of GW. It was expected that after Katrina, hurricances would become more and more deadly. In fact, there have been fewer. It`s the way the pendulum swings.
Tsunamis are because of earthquakes and earthquakes have to do with the way the earth is... we do not and cannot affect that.
d. Recycling has nothing to do with GW. We have no more landfill.
Running out of, using up, the finite resources of the earth has nothing to do with Global Warming whatsoever.
Although the green movement and the environmentalists bore the pants off me, in some respects they are right. But again, that is an entirely separate issue.
I hope I make myself clear !
And that`s it, you`re right. No more comments from either side.

Susan, you must allow me one further word. It's this. Pollution and Global Warming ARE related. DIRECTLY. You wonder how they can be? Well, it's not simple. It's complicated. Most science is. But to put it all in a nutshell: we need to think of our Earth as an organism, or an ecosystem. Everything within it influences everything else. The sea, the sky, the earth, we human beings and all other animals, and plant life, are all part of ONE beautiful piece of self-regulating life. We human beings have been stepping out of line though. The sea, the sky, the earth, other animals and plant life, are doing their best to cope with our excessiveness, but they cannot. And so our excessiveness is causing the kind of global warming that the Earth has never suffered from before - global warming caused by humankind's excessiveness and over-population. This is quite distinct from the global warming that has occurred at other times in the life of our planet.

We have to acknowledge this and take responsibility, not for ourselves, because pretty soon you and I will be dead and out of it, but for the sake of today's children and their children and their children. That's the motivation. Nothing religious, nothing "new age", & so forth.

Furthermore, the changes that must be made have to be massive and substantial. Many things, like sticking up wind-turbines and running round in beads and turning vegan, are like blowing in the wind.

Susan, maybe your comments in this post are aimed at me, I don't know, but I did leave a comment on your last post on this topic providing links to two very good website/blogs in this area, one run by the independent journal Nature, and the other by a group of climate scientists who are not "promoting" one side or the other, but who use their blog, among other things, to analyse the ways the media reports the scientific literature - which is often incorrect.

I have been a science editor for many years and I have no axe to grind, but I know there is much passion and heat in this area, at least some of the scepticism being tied in to US oil interests/politics. I am sure you can find other individual "climate sceptics" such as the professor you mention here (I could name you a few as well), but I am urging you also to look at the realclimate.org and nature reports climate change resources (both free) in order to get the full picture, rather than pulling out the views of a couple of individuals.

Best wishes
Maxine.

I have indeed looked at all those. I know that what I would call our side of the picture has been suppressed. I am not getting at you. I don`t know you ! That isn`t why I am putting this all up. I am so tired of 1. the suppression of the sceptical arguments and of people being conned. Have YOU read Lawson, come to that ? If you are a science editor you should.
But as he says, it would none of it matter one jot if it were not actually doing real damage now to the third world.
I also do wonder what exactly people think the disadvantages of GW - if it resumes - might be. We are very adaptable. Warm climates are better for human health and longevity than cold ones. We would adapt our food crops, as now. As for the climate, it is, as you know, always changing and always has changed and that has nothing to do with us. We are incredibly arrogant to assume that we have both caused the putative problem and that we can solve it, by a few people getting on bicycles.
Oh, and I don`t think Nigel L is in the pocket of the oil or any other industry. I know I`m not

Susan

Did you see the Newsnight report a week or so ago? One of their science journalists were looking to see if Global Warming was a myth, it was quite a balanced report looking at how the scientists are basing climate change predictions on computer models that are still evolving and don't yet involve every single factor that could be involved and until they can model literally everything we won't know. One of the guys they interviewed made a good point at the end, if we wait until we know for certain whether global warming is real or not and then place controlling measures, by then it will be too late.

I am getting increasingly open minded about whether global warming is real or not, however I still applaud efforts to reduce carbon consumption, even if global warming isn't real, we are still running out of the stuff (with it's resulting global political implications) and the remaining fossil fuels we are using cause pollution.

Dear Susan

I have only just caught up on your blog this week and have been prompted to post a comment ...

First of all, I would like to applaud you for posting your views on this topic openly, even though I am sure you were aware that you would invite comment from the fanatics of this new and dangerous religion.

I don't usually post here, but read your blog regularly and this topic is one that has got me very angry for the two main reasons you have given above:

1. The suppression of sceptical arguments. Something that I love about living in the UK is that we are allowed to question and disagree with 'established' thought. The fact that, what I consider to be, the more scientific and reasoned argument against antropgenic Global Warming is being repressed is something to be seriously worried about.

2. The damage to the third world. To deny the third world countries the right to use their own resources such as oil and coal to give their citizens a better way of life is, in my opinion, criminal. The fact that use of those resources could help to save the lives of millions of people in those countries, is simply murderous.

I am not a scientist, but like you am an ordinary thinking person concerned about human welfare. I am not a journalist either so am not able to present the scientific argument myself - I leave that to the likes of Nigel Lawson and Christopher Monkton, who have the facts and figures to support their arguments.

Julie

P.S. Have you noticed that the rhetoric has changed from 'Global Warming' to 'Climate Change' now? I wonder why? Probably in the light of the fact that there has been no recorded increase in temperature since 1998, and in fact several countries have recently witnessed their coldest Winters in decades!

Might I recommend a look at the Stern review? "Sir Nicholas Stern, Head of the Government Economic Service and Adviser to the Government on the economics of climate change and development, is delighted to present his report to the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the Economics of Climate Change" (report available at link).
There is also a recent book by David King, who has just retired as scientific advisor to the government and whose area of research is climate change, together with Gabrielle Walker, a scientific editor and author.

I do not think it is a question of suppressing anyone's views, but a matter of looking at the evidence.

Spencer doesn't say that man-made global warming is not happening, only that "some [of our recent warming] might be natural." Well we all know that anyway, through sunspot activity among other factors.

I think if we apply Occam's Razor, and consider the possibilities of, on the one hand

1. that US oil interests have been in the vanguard of denying climate change for their own very good but selfish economic reasons, and that now the evidence is overwhelming (90-95% certain, says the latest IPCC report), they are in the happy position of being able to cry suppression and appeal for sympathy as the underdog

or on the other hand that

2. people who are convinced by the evidence that man-made global warming is happening are simply looking for a new religion now that they don't believe in God or aren't Marxists anymore (!)

then I think one stands out as self-evidently true.

The bottom line is that if you reject the IPCC's explanation for global warming, you should ask yourself the following questions:

1. Does the atmosphere contain carbon dioxide?

2. Does atmospheric carbon dioxide raise the average global temperature?

3. Will this influence be enhanced by the addition of more carbon dioxide?

4. Have human activities led to a net emission of carbon dioxide?

If you are able to answer ‘no’ to any of them, you should put yourself forward for a Nobel prize. You will have turned science on its head.