Articles Tagged "Philip Stott"

The basic truth about Durban, the latest and 17th Feydeau farce passing as serious UN climate talks, is simple: the BASIC countries - Brazil, South Africa, India, and China - played a blinder.

They outwitted comprehensively the ever-zealous, naive, and hypocritical EU to ensure that they achieved their fundamental goals, which were to delay any agreement on a replacement for the failing Kyoto Protocol until at least 2015, and any actual action to cut emissions until at least 2020. And, of course, by then, the plate tectonics of world politics may have altered even more radically, so that further delays will be eminently possible, or the global warming narrative - we can only hope - will have withered away permanently into perennial greenhouse history.

Clever Tactics

I watched their basic tactics with growing admiration. First it would be China, then India, to raise objections, while South Africa, the host nation, often seemed to lack “urgency” or “ambition”, as certain commentators bemusedly observed.

Meanwhile, the US simply tagged along, playing the game to adapt the BASIC strategy to their own advantage. In the end, the BASIC countries got precisely what they wanted, and, in doing so, saved us all from the immediate imposition of billions of dollars of further debt. We owe them a lot.

THE CLIMATE CHANGE ACT RECONSIDERED - PART 1 of 2



A public meeting Held in the UK House of Commons on the 30th of November 2011

See below for Part 2 and also link for Cartoons by Josh from the same meeting

When it comes to UN climate conferences, I am constantly flabbergasted by the breathless naivety and forced optimism of certain politicians and environmental reporters, not to mention of green activists. It is as if Voltaire's very own Dr. Pangloss had set sail to Cancún with Candide. Despite having become a syphilitic beggar, Dr. Pangloss remains firm in his belief that "all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds", explaining that syphilis "… was a thing unavoidable, a necessary ingredient in the best of worlds; for if Columbus had not caught in an island in America this disease, which contaminates the source of generation, and frequently impedes propagation itself, and is evidently opposed to the great end of nature, we should have had neither chocolate nor cochineal."

'Global warming' was likewise reduced to a clapped-out beggar last year in frozen Copenhagen. Yet, in the best of all possible worlds, this Danish debacle is now seen as a good thing, because it brought a sense of reality to the delegates in Cancún, who still, of course, neatly proceeded to avoid any legally-binding commitments on emissions, and on pretty well anything else for that matter, putting off the whole charade until next December in sunny Durban, South Africa. My, how this ship of fools traverses the globe - Candide and Gulliver have nothing on them! And, it is worth remembering that Cancún was the 16th Conference of the Parties no less.

Click source to read FULL report from Philip Stott

For over a month now, since the farcical conclusion of the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, I have been silent, partly through family commitments abroad in the USA, but also because, in this noisy world, in ‘The Clamour Of The Times’, it is on occasion better to be quiet and contemplative, to observe rather than to comment. And, as an independent academic, it has been fascinating to witness the classical collapse of a Grand Narrative, in which social and philosophical theories are being played out before our gaze. It is like watching the Berlin Wall [pictured] being torn down, concrete slab by concrete slab, brick by brick, with cracks appearing and widening daily on every face - political, economic, and scientific. Likewise, the bloggers have been swift to cover the crumbling edifice with colourful graffiti, sometimes bitter, at others caustic and witty.

The Sun isn’t playing ball with the ‘global warmers’. Indeed, I expect one of our more rabid Labour ministers to come out any day now fatuously accusing the fading star of ‘global warming’ denial on a par with denying the effects of smoking or the link between HIV and AIDS.

Yesterday, a mere 35,000 protesters [by contrast, between 60,000 and 80,000 folk participated in the Peterloo protests of August 16, 1819] took to the streets of London to shout about - er, well - everything, from evil bankers to ‘global warming’ and the urgent need to support motor-car manufacturing. To say that the protest was both inchoate and incoherent would be to understate its naivety. Moreover, it took no fewer than 150 separate organisations, from trade unions to charities, to muster the 35,000 souls. Meanwhile, some 70,000 diehards trekked to Wembley to watch a fairly boring friendly match between England and Slovakia (at least England won 4-0).

By contrast, in 2002, the Countryside Alliance persuaded over 400,000 people to march in defence of hunting the fox and country living, a figure confirmed by the Metropolitan Police; and just think of those 1819 Peterloo statistics when adjusted for relative population size. Moreover, the ‘global warming’ contingent yesterday was, as usual, a small, if rather noisy, runt. As ever, it was a case of empty vessels making the most sound.

We have had several people contact us concerning our expression "Climate Cognitive Dissonance", this has been used recently with the following CO2Sceptics article Climate change could be even worse than feared - yes, it's true!.

UK Professor Emeritus of Biogeography, Philip Stott of the University of London highlighted this psychological condition in two of his articles, Cognitive Dissonance and More On Cognitive Dissonance and we simply added the "Climate" part as it seemed the appropriate thing to do, as far as some of the media are concerned.

We could have also mentioned the phrase "Man Made Climate Cognitive Dissonance" or "Man Made Global Warming Cognitive Dissonance", but we thought it was best to keep it headed as short as it could be, and who knows at a later time when this rather silly situation has come to a head with "Global Cooling" some brainy psychologist may even use the same term, lets all hope a lesson can be learnt from this event and it will be over soon.

At this moment in time regretfully, the media are still very keen to report that world temperatures are becoming warmer when in fact they are becoming cooler, and it's little wonder when you read these articles by Philip Stott, that it fits the psychological condition described.

From Emeritus Professor Philip Stott

Dangerous Economics

We hear a great deal about ‘dangerous climate change’ from the likes of Al Gore and Nicholas Stern. By contrast, I wish to speak about dangerous ‘Green’ economics....

From Economist.Com

Cooling the planet
Philip Stott, Emeritus professor of biogeography, University of London

SIR – Your assertion that “global warming is happening faster than expected” exhibits a disturbing degree of cognitive dissonance (“Adapt or die”, September 13th). Since 1998 the world’s average surface temperature has exhibited no warming, according to all the main temperature records. The trend has been a combination of flatlining and cooling, with a marked plunge over the past year; many countries, including Australia, Canada, China and the United States, experienced severe winters.