Articles Tagged "Simon Heffer"

U.S. President Barack Obama: How have things come to this

As America approaches the third anniversary of Barack Obama’s historic election victory, the country is mired in economic gloom.

Expectations were absurdly high in the autumn of 2008, stoked up not least by the victor’s own campaign team. Yet Americans now seem bemused by how, exactly, it could all have gone so wrong.

In the run-up to his election victory, Mr Obama won praise for keeping quiet about the economy. It was the time of the collapse of investment bank Lehman Brothers, and the financial situation was shifting quickly: since it was hard for anyone to predict what would come next, silence seemed wise.

However, some suspected that this reticence betrayed something worse than caution: cluelessness.

At last people are telling David Cameron that his bunny-hugging has the potential to cause extreme economic and political damage.

Although I risk immediately being branded mentally defective for saying so, I am not convinced by the notion of man-made global warming. My lack of conviction, I would be the first to admit, is based on nothing resembling great scientific understanding: I have not so much as an O-level in physics or chemistry. All I do know is this: that the planet has heated up and cooled down at various points in its history without any help from factories, lorries or a beef-farming industry. Other planets have done, and continue to do, the same: I am still waiting for an answer to John Redwood's excellent point that the surface temperature of Mars has risen over the past few decades "and they are still looking for the 4x4s that did it". I therefore remain, in the phrase of Sir Antony Jay, the creator of Yes Minister, a firm thermosceptic.

Various other factors have contributed to an acceleration of my thermoscepticism. There was Lord Lawson's detailed and challenging riposte to the Stern report. There is Christopher Booker's superb recent book, The Real Global Warming Disaster, which I recommend that you all read. There is the hectoring tone of the BBC on the question, where any contributor to any programme who appears to be a thermo-denier is treated with incredulity and astonishment.

Hot weather has gone from being wonderful to being dangerous, writes Simon Heffer

Many of us will have spent the last few days of extreme heat wondering how we have lived this long. How was it that those of us who sweated through the roasting summer of 1976, the boiling July of 1990, or the hottest day ever in August 2003 are still here to tell the tale – since, in those days, there were not endless health and safety warnings? We are all being treated like children. A weatherman, instead of saying how wonderful it would be that it was sunny and hot, came on to warn us that "it won't suit everybody". Danger levels were constantly being raised by the Met Office.

And it's not just us. I was in Paris this week, where electronic signs on pavement billboards warn boulevardiers to smother themselves in sunblock and to ensure that their children wear hats. It can't be long before some interfering ninny goes on television to warn us to stay indoors until after sunset, or before the Prime Minister breaks into his busy day to remind us to carry bottles of water with us. I see a new quango – Ofphew – coming on, at huge public expense, to enforce coolness at all times. Ah, what it is to be grown-up.