I read the Telegraph article.

Vanessa Regrave was in bang-on shrill haridan form:

Our planet is dying!!!!

Does she still have a Chechen terrorist in the basement of her large London home.

Ms Redgrave is priceless, like a slightly cracked Ming vase.

I think the Greenies hope of saving the planet just died:

China is going to accelerate its coal fired power generation in a huge way

This is as clear a statement of 'Fuck You Kyoto' as there could be. Wait for George Moonbat to deliver a frothing at the mouth condemnation in tomorrow's Guardian!

Really what is the point of the Green crowd so earnestly trying to persuade us to destroy our standard of living in order to 'save the planet' when a country with over 20 times the UK's population is going into coal fired overdrive? They're all in cloud cuckoo land.

We must learn to deal with a warmer planet because ther's no way to stop it without civilisation grinding to a halt.

Thanks for the fascinating article.

"We must learn to deal with a warmer planet because ther's no way to stop it without civilisation grinding to a halt."

Absolutely.

But the catastrophe mongers are hugely exagerating the threat of warming.

"We must learn to deal with a warmer planet because ther's no way to stop it without civilisation grinding to a halt."

Patrick there is no real proof that the planet is getting warmer, and extreme doubt that anything but natural forces are at work as the climate is not static.

It will probably be impossible (or at least with existing technology) to stop the climate changing, create the climate we want, or even affect anything but the margins

steves,

Exactly. The Green cry "We are killing our planet!" is probably nothing other than rampant anthropocentrism.

I was an astrophysicist and there are many more things which control climate than George Monbiot's philosophy allows.

The Greenies are just part of a general left-wing howl that everything which is bad, or perceived to be bad, is quite obviously the fault of Western Capitalism. Stands to reason don't it. You can't make money without fucking something over can you?

Jacob, Steves,

You're both slightly preaching to the converted - I'm no 'catastrophe monger'.

I do think, however, that there's a difference between being sceptical about the fact of a changing climate and being sceptical about how profound the impact of that change might be. For what it's worth, my guess is that mankind has maybe caused a very slight warming but that that in no way explains every hurricane or mild winter. etc. Natural effects from volcanic CO2, solar flares, etc dwarf anything humans get up to. I'm all for mild winters and firmly in the 'Yeah - but so what' camp.

No doubt someone will find a way to blame the ice age on ChimpyMcHitlerBushiburton.

I think the climate has been getting measurably warmer in some places over the past few decades, but beyond that I don't think it is possible to make big extrapolations. That said, I totally endorse the Bjorn Lomborg view that even if global warming is real, the financial cost of trying to halt it would be better deployed in ensuring decent sanitation and clean drinking water in the Third World, for example. To which I would add: seriously trying to eliminate TB and malaria, two massive killers, and spending on flood defenses, encouraging reforestation of parts of the world, etc. Now that might even do some measurable good.

Global warming (or more accurately the greenhouse theory) may or may not be happening - frankly it's irrelevant, as the soundest reason for reducing our reliance on oil (rather than coal, which we don't have much of now in the UK anyway) is that the less we need the stuff, the less the more unstable and fascist regimes who produce it will need to concern us. (US and Canada excluded of course - at least until Hilary gets in).

OK, it's a simplified notion but it's a start, and doesn't have that strange knack of coinciding with some old fashioned collectivist goals as so many trendy green theories seem to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wth_p4p0rfY

Oh, and also, http://www.mineyourownbusiness.org/

The Chinese are going into- actually back to- coal fired stations because the projected costs of LNG would have seriously compromised their balance of trade.
Of the 18 or so projected LNG projects, about 10 are on hold (I work in the industry) while they look at modern fluidized bed coal plants. The Chinese are confidant they can keep pollution way down, and these plants will supply clean power to replace rural areas' dependency on wood and kerosene (parafin) burning, so its probable that the world will come out cleaner overall. I'm supposed to be going out there in a couple of weeks to sort out some problems with our LNG plant at Fujian, which should be fun.

Let's all buy some coal mining shares then!

I'm dubious of the role of CO2 in global warming. Mars is losing it's icecaps, but seems unlikely our CO2 emissions have strayed that far.

Leftists have hijacked concern for the environment we live in just like they have hijacked and corrupted so many other issues.

But we are effecting our environment. The standard knee-jerk leftist response is "It's western technology causing it!" The standard rightist anti environment response is "There's nothing happening. And besides, there's nothing we can do. Party on."

And both camps show a strong tendency to degenerate into echo chambers telling each other how right they are.

The claim that there is nothing we can do sounds strange coming from this group that as a general rule believes the application of human ingenuity can solve almost any problem.

Two points that I think are unassailable. First, we certainly are effecting out environment. Second, we have almost no idea how. It is so complicated an effect that we don't, and may never understand it.

For example, for years the Green wisdom has believed that jet travel is contributing to global warming. Well, it turns out that the opposite is true. Had the Greens managed to get all jet travel grounded, things would have gotten rapidly worse, not better.

We don't even know, but we may actually be slowing solar caused global warming with our actions.

The biggest obstacles to deliberately manipulating our environment are not the capability to do it. It's the wisdom to know what to do.

I can imagine the political battles to be waged over how actions and their consequences effect different areas and interest groups.

If you want to oppose deliberately altering the weather because it's politically not possible, or because it's too complicated to do safely, or any other of many legitimate reasons, that's fine. Just don't keep up this fatalistic bleating of helplessness and denial. You don't tolerate others claiming they are victims of fate or nature. It sounds strange hearing the words from your mouths.

"the financial cost of trying to halt it [global warming] would be better deployed ..."

By leaving the money with the parties that earned it.

If the people who own the resources wish to use them to supply clean water in developing countries, or fight malaria, AIDS or TB - so be it.

Of course, "the financial cost of trying to halt it [global warming] " would halt no global warming, they would just be thrown down the drain.

If the people who own the resources wish to use them to supply clean water in developing countries, or fight malaria, AIDS or TB - so be it.

Jacob, indeed. Let's be clear, I am against state-directed spending in any area, period. But in general, if one is going to argue over pros and cons of spending on X or Y, it seems to me highly persuasive that we get more return in terms of bettering life by spending on things like clean water than trying to change the weather.

I am sure I don't have to prove my free market credentials here every time I wrote a comment. I take it people know me well enough by now!

Nuremberg style trials for global warming skeptics? That what one eco-fascist is calling for:

Grist Magazine’s staff writer David Roberts called for the Nuremberg-style trials for the “bastards” who were members of what he termed the global warming “denial industry.”

Roberts wrote in the online publication on September 19, 2006, "When we've finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we're in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bastards -- some sort of climate Nuremberg.” (http://gristmill.grist.org/print/2006/9/19/11408/1106?show_comments=no )

Gore and Moyers have not yet commented on Grist's advocacy of prosecuting skeptics of global warming with a Nuremberg-style war crimes trial. Gore has used the phrase "global warming deniers" to describe scientists and others who don't share his view of the Earth's climate. It remains to be seen what Gore and Moyers will have to say about proposals to make skepticism a crime comparable to Holocaust atrocities.

Johnathan,

My remark was not intended as a rebuke or reprimand to you, it was just a remark. If it was offensive I apologise.

Here is another:
"we get more return in terms of bettering life by spending on things like clean water..."

We get more return in terms of bettering life by letting free markets bring economic progress. Clean water follows.

What irks me is that people, like Lomborg, find it necessary to justify their recommendations in terms of "it's for the poor, it's for Africa, it's for the children.... " etc. What irks me is that some people seem to think that adopting the leftie's terminology and manner of speaking will gain them popularity, or they adopt it anyway, just out of carelessness or indifference.

Witness Lomborg himself - despite his rooting for "clean water for the poor" he didn't get much love from the left.

End of rant. Don't take it personally.

Mars losing its polar ice caps? Egads...we don't have global warming...we have GALACTIC warming!

Not sure about the galactic, kl, but it certainly appears to be solar system wide.

While there is no doubt that global temperatures are trending upwards rather dramatically, there is plenty of room for doubt as to whether our actions are making things worse, or slowing down a even greater externally driven warming trend. Certainly the case of the missing contrails proved the latter to be possible.

Like Will Rogers said (approximately) "It's not what we don't know that's the hurts us. It's what we know, that really ain't so."

We could benefit from a few less answers, and a few more questions.

It is clear that the establishment environmentalists do not give a toss about the poor (for all their words), but they do not give a toss about the environment either - otherwise they would support nuclear power (which they oppose with all their might).

They are like "Zac" Goldsmith of the British "Conservative" party. Rich kids (often very rich kids), who pretend to care about "globel warming" and the rest of it, but in reality do not care.