Something happend during yesterday's events in the European Parliament that I thought you might want to see.
During the debate on climate change in developing countries, both the BNP and UKIP denied that climate change was man-made, and argued against any action to mitigate its effects on the developing world.
I unpicked their argument, and demanded further action by the EU to tackle climate change and deliver for the developing world. I reminded those present that 81% of the British public believe that climate change is a 'very serious' or 'fairly serious' issue, and told of its effect on life in Kenya.
BNP Leader Nick Griffin MEP said to the European Parliament that:
"Man‑made global warming is an unproven theory based on manipulative statistics."
He also attacked climate change as an 'elite scam' and an excuse to 'impose internationalist dogma and global government'.
His arguuments were backed up by UKIP MEP Godfrey Bloom, who claimed that:
"We are all talking here about something which is not happening. The whole thing is a sham - this bogus hypothesis, this ridiculous nonsense that man-made CO2 is causing global warming."
It came as no surprise for us to see UKIP and the BNP teaming up, but we hope you can pass this message on to show the true face of these two ultra right wing parties. Watch the speeches of Nick Griffin MEP and Godfrey Bloom MEP, as well as my own response below:
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I'm giggling as I type this but that, Sam Franscisco, would make it a Death Star.
Sorry ... I'll get my coat ...
for me, it also fits nicely with the intriguing and compelling idea of 'watermelon' politics: green on the outside and red on the inside. (something that Devil's Kitchen for example - in between the outstanding and often hilarious misanthropy - has fleshed out in well-researched, articulate and convincing detail). after all, where did a broad swathe of the international red movement go after the wall came down? it appeared to go green in order to conduct the statist Old War in a different uniform and with different tools. conspiracy theory? no. empirical observation on the coincidental rise of the greens in the 90s? most definitely.
does that imply that the green movement is a fifth column? no, of course not: many of its supporters are motivated by more visceral concerns and i see nothing wrong in wanting to live in a world where environment, flora and fauna are respected and protected insofar as that is possible. in fact i applaud it because it is instinctively moral.
but i'll nail my colours to the mast - under my own name and in the spirit of unencumbered debate please note vicky - and suggest that if one were to wipe the greasepaint off the more voluble of its fanatics, one would find red under ones fingernails. and a fading tattoo of lenin ...
Please do me a very special favour. Cut and paste this link into your browser.
http://video.google.com/videosearch?client=safari&rls=en&q=george+carlin+saving+the+planet&oe=UTF-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=1HbgSqb5J8yz4QaRk4kb&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CBcQqwQwAA#
I find the neatly lined link of holocaust denial and questioning climate change repugnant, but then if you actually rate Linda's debating skills, it would also explain why you would describe perfectly reasonable questioning of Linda's article as discourteous and dismissive. She didn't unpick Griffin's argument, she didn't even try to. All she did was announce a survey without stating the source and talk about a situation in Kenya which has much more to do with cultural practise than the changing climate.
I'll associate myself publically with anything I say here on the LL, more than happy to debate people face to face, but this isn't about debate is it? The issue of climate change being man made has already been made and reinforced by the political establishment, anyone who disagrees is automatically a conspiracy theorist, a denier and now it would seem that those who disagree are to be linked with holocaust denial and racism.
Clever all this politics stuff isn't it?
"You know the 'hockey stick' - the original evidential lynchpin of global warming as favoured by the IPCC and al gore. The one that has been roundly, solidly and universally discredited by peer-scientific review since 2003 for a litany of data handling, compilation, methodology and analysis errors?"
That has nothing to do with Griffen and everything to do with actually researching the subject fully and not simply believing the emotive tosh coming out of politicians who can hardly debate with themselves let alone undertake a reasoned scientific debate.
CO2 as 'the' agent of climate change is now a political theory, not a scientific theory, against which the current peer review of overall multi-discipline scientific evidence disagrees and is only supported and promoted by political vested interests.
It is actually Linda that is weird... jumping on the wrong band wagon to attack the BNP.
To use Jules' language, you, Madame, are a Climate change fanatic.
And yes, this is my real name.
Seems very odd that Griffin wants to ally himself to all those weird ideas, in the face of so much scientific evidence.
Also weird that so many Labour list readers also share those strange ideas. And are prepared to post such discourteous and dismissive comments. Interesting that many of them hide behind pseudonyms. I wonder why don't they want to be associated more publically with those ideas?
And should Labour List accept such anonymised comments?
ms mcavan, your 'post and run' silence here speaks volumes. so i assume, like the monbiots of this world, that you still cling to the discredited and fraudulent hockey stick with messianic fervour?
how would you and your fundamentalist ilk prefer to be labelled by those who you denigrate and demonise out-of-hand? 'climate change zealot'? 'climate change fanatic'? you know, as in religious zealot. and terrorist fanatic.
not funny is it? so why do you do it?
The Planet is not in danger (except from wayward asteroids and the death of our nearest star).
CO2 is made from stuff that supports Life (carbon + oxygen) which is emitted by the oceans in far greater amounts than 'Man' could possibly generate.
Climate Change. It's what God does.
:BangHead:
It was also plain stupid and self-destructive - as most comments here prove.
Mr Griffen is entitled to have his view ( not that i agree with him ) , however there is some evedence that climate change is normal and is part of the planets cylce , I agree with reducing emissions but to say the debate is closed is wrong .
Ps I know my views will not be popular
ricki
And did you not have room for the 'unpicking his argument' bit on the video? You could have left out that weird wibbling bit about cows.
The reasons for reducing exhaust emissions from cars has to do with their impact on human health in the mainly urban life style we now live (carbon monoxide poisoning is the main agent now that lead has been removed as a fuel additive though the increased fitting of catalytic converters in petrol cars has also reduced the impact of this and the small amount of sulphides). New diesel engines are similarly highly efficient in fuel burn with low particulates.
The reason for fitting scrubbers to coal / oil fired power stations is also well established, scientifically, for the reduction of acid rain produced by carbonic acid and sulphuric compounds in an untreated plume. The most recent scrubber design proposed for the coal powered power station in Kent has been proven to be 99% effective when trialled at Longannet in Fife. Again improved and more efficient fuel oil burners such as condenser boilers have reduced the output of 'acid rain' producing end products to they point they are less than 1% of exhaust fumes(before any further treatment of the plume).
Modern coal air flow burners and oil condenser burners are also highly efficient, burning 99% of coal and oil fed into them. The same flow technology is used in the 'Eco friendly', wood burning, carbon neutral power stations which also have to have scrubbers fitted to take out the heavy sulphur tar oils which are a bye product of burning wood (even at 1200 Centigrade).
As for methane on ocean floors the biggest physical agent in keeping methane there is the extremely high pressure of water on top of the ocean bed (have a look at partial pressures of gases to understand why) and a two degree change of surface water has no effect in the deeps as the methane is all below the inversion layer. The evidence for this is that there has been no increase in methane content detected even around the hot water plumes in the likes of the Marianas Trench or along the Atlantic Ridge.
So your rather emotive 'power station smoke / car exhaust' comment is pretty irrelevant to the UK discussion. The growing evidence is that CO2 involvement in climate change is spurious at best.
Whatever the case taxing energy use has to be better than taxing income, although the trading scheme doesn't at the moment generate any replacement income for the state. Pumping power station smoke and car exhausts into the atmosphere must damage it even if it has no effect on the climate.
Talking about methane, one fear is that a lot of methane is stored under the oceans which will be realeased if the temperature goes up by 2 degrees. I wouldn't have a problem with reducing methane producing animals to breeding levels, though I might need to learn how to eat vegetarian.
So what is your point Henry? Are you insinuating that what has been written should be read as fact, even though Linda has failed to reveal her sources for the 81% who think climate change is serious?
Or perhaps because she is a Labour MEP we shouldn't question a word she says. I mean after all, what has she got to gain from trying to hoodwink the electorate into a myth about the climate that will earn the British government (Labour or Conservative) and the EU rather a lot of money?
Incidently there is also a join up page for the Flat Earth Society here if you're really interested in it, you might be able to learn when to make a valid point with your replies or become a Flat Earther even!
Last time I looked a majority of UK voters appeared in favour of the death penalty.
So are you suggesting a return to hanging? Of course not.
Silly facile argument. Linda deserves all the comments she is receiving.
Ain't science grand?
Edit: Well done Linda on a world first. You've got people on a Left Wing web site agreeing with Nick Griffin. Does that tell you anything?
"Sir Michael raised serious concerns about the claim that CO2 emissions had fallen by 12.8 per cent compared with 1990 levels.
Nearly a third of that fall is made up of carbon credits purchased by polluters in an EU trading scheme and do not represent actual cuts in UK emissions. Without the credits, the fall is a much more modest 8.5 per cent."
Just who is telling porkies about climate change: Linda?
There is a lot of scientific evidence that shows global warming is a cyclical phenomenon. Ice cores from the Arctic demonstrate that in 1400 it would have been possible to circumnavigate Greenland and traverse the fabled North West Passage as the Chinese claim to have done. The earth being an imperfect sphere wobbles about its axis in an asynchronous orbit around the sun. In the 1700's the northern hemisphere suffered from a 'mini ice age' yet in Roman times the SE of England was several degrees warmer than it is currently. In the 1500's seal levels in the Solway Firth were 4 metres higher than today and the reason London is heading under the waves is not due to rising sea levels but the effect of Scotland still rising after the last Ice Age and tilting the SE of England downwards into the channel.
The problem for the CO2 climate change theory people is that CO2 is not the biggest or most significant greenhouse gas, methane is and to reduce methane levels to make a real difference you would need to wipe out over a third of the world's herbivores - can't see the WWF signing up to that, or dairy and beef farmers......
The problem is Griffin is nearer to telling the truth than all the clown governments who signed up to Kyoto. The world is getting warmer because it is and has done so, regularly, over the whole period of its existence in a few hundred years it will get colder again, maybe so cold that we have another ice age that politicians in the future can blame on the lack of CO2 in the atmosphere.
The problem for politicians if they accept that there is no one to 'blame' or tax excessively or make them look good like the nonsense of 'carbon credits' (the CO2 variant of sub prime mortgages) then they are left just looking a bit daft.
Have you even read the comments on this thread?
Do you care - probably not, I am sure that you are sitting in Brussels thinking that your keen political and analytical mind, gave them deniers a damn good verbal pasting hey?
What ho!
Load shotgun.
Stick out foot.
Place business end on foot.
Close eyes.
Pull trigger.
I hope this is not your usual level of debate, you had trouble stringing one word together. No arguments were "unpicked".
Griffin 1 - McAvan 0
btw I still cannot leave a comment on this site using Firefox. I reported this a few weeks back. I have to fire up IE to leave my comments. Poor show.
No, Linda, you did no such thing. You opened with a shrill ad hominem attack on the UKIP MEP which was entirely uncalled for.
You then went on to quote a survey with no source. The survey question, you tell us, and we'll have to take your word for it, was "is climate change serious ?". This is not the same question as whether people believe that climate change is man made, it is therefore entirely irrelevant to your point.
You continued with a personal anecdote, which has no scientific basis, and is also not related to the anthropogenic-ness or otherwise of climate change.
So you see, you didn't actually engage with their argument at all.
Notably, without seeing the surveys in question, including the questions and methodologies, how are we to determine that yours is any more accurate than Griffin's ?
Are we simply supposed to take your word for it ?
"BNP Leader Nick Griffin MEP said to the European Parliament that:"Man‑made global warming is an unproven theory based on manipulative statistics.""
Which it is. Please see the rest of the comments relating to Mann et al and the spurious hockey stick warming graph.
Plot the data from any other twelve trees in that data-set and the hockey-stick looks more like a snooker cue.
you know the 'hockey stick' - the original evidential lynchpin of global warming as favoured by the IPCC and al gore. the one that has been roundly, solidly and universally discredited by peer-scientific review since 2003 for a litany of data handling, compilation, methodology and analysis errors?
it would be instructive to hear where you stand on this ...
I think it should be a matter of scientific debate, not political debate by the arrogant, deluded and pretentious.
You reference polls that indicate the British public's belief in Climate Change, so I thought you might be interested in the following article on the Guardian website.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jun/22/climatechange.carbonemissions
The opening line of that article.... "The majority of the British public is still not convinced that climate change is caused by humans" Care to comment?
When governments continually introduce ever more "green" taxes, people's suspicions are raised as to the real agenda. So if you want the general public's support on this issue, you might want to consider the carrot rather than the stick. If it really is about the environment, this shouldn't be a problem. If as many suspect, it really is about increasing revenue, the please carry on.
Whilst you're at it, could you please let me know what surveys you are quoting where 81% of people in Britain think that climate change is a serious issue? What were the questions? How many people were asked? What are the backgrounds of the people asked?
I can do a survey right now in my local village and ask how many people think the village is noiser than it was ten years ago. I've loaded the question in my favour to prove that the village is noisy, but have I really proved that? A lot of houses have been built meaning more traffic, both vehicles and foot traffic. New restaurants have opened, so the village is now bustling with activity of an evening and naturally is noiser. See what I'm getting at? You can load your questions, ask a sample of people from a certain background and manipulate the result.
To be honest, and I hate saying this, but Nick Griffin argued his case and whether he is right or wrong, he did it with ease. You appeared to struggle and struggle rather badly to get a point across that frankly wasn't worth making. I'm concerned about other countries, but not to the point where I believe I have the right to interfer with their cultural practises. And using climate change as some sort of lever to say that world poverty will end if we tackle it with the current methods suggested is pathetic. You've not challenged what Nick Griffin said, you didn't debate, you just pulled some statistics out of the bag without quoting the source, nattered on about a cultural practise and said you had the solutions to end world poverty by tackling climate change. Thats it? Thats all you have?
Sorry to say this but if that is the quality of debate we can expect from Labour MEPs then you're failing the British public and you're actually doing more damage than good. If we must go along with the EU, fine, you haven't given us all the option on whether we should or shouldn't, but you're supposed to be fighting our corner. You're supposed to be representing the British people and from what I've seen in your YouTube video you're not doing that. You're following an agenda set by a group of politicians and that is not representing the British people's views.
And you wonder why some would support the BNP based on your performance in that debate? It beggars belief that you you are there to represent the British people, but its far worse than that, they pick you to debate with the BNP? To use a parlance of our times - Epic fail!
I'm sorry but unless I missed something I didn't see any unpicking of arguments there. You quoted a couple of surveys which can always be manipulated, and they're especially easy when you have the likes of the UN and Al Gore lying or omitting facts from their reports and presentations.
"Man‑made global warming is an unproven theory based on manipulative statistics." Spot on.
"He also attacked climate change as an 'elite scam' and an excuse to 'impose internationalist dogma and global government'" Also spot on, just as the government is using the war on terror to restrict our civil liberties, the global warming is being used to extract money.
If Labour were bothered there is a 101 things that could be done that don't involve extracting more money from us, starting with the 3rd runway.
I doubt that the Conservatives will by any different to be honest.