In the midst of the public meltdown of the theory of anthropogenic climate change, a particularly insightful analysis of the theory’s fortunes has been published by The Washington Times. The author of “Global warmists abandon fact for fancy” is Roger Helmer, member of the European Union Parliament for the East Midlands in England. In Helmer’s own words, he “was first elected in 1999 and re-elected in 2004 as the local MEP for Derbyshire, Lincolnshire, Leicestershire & Rutland, Nottinghamshire and Northamptonshire. I stood on a Conservative platform to defend the national sovereignty of the UK and work for an EU of nation states, as opposed to the federal model that New Labour is pursuing.” Part of that task, it would seem, is defending his homeland from the scientific and economic nonsense associated with the extremes of environmental politics.
Writing for The Washington Times, Helmer observes that even if the theory were true, the economic self-immolation of the West could do little to stop it:
Given that China is building a new coal-fired power station every week, with India not far behind, it’s a fair bet that CO2 emissions will increase for decades regardless of what we in the West do. If the United Kingdom, for example, were to turn off its economy totally and not burn so much as a candle, China would make up our emissions savings in about 12 months.
But Helmer is far from counseling despair in the face of pollution from the developing world. In point of fact, he maintains that for all the clamor about “scientific consensus”regarding global warming, the truth is far different.
We are told that the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) represents a consensus of 2,500 experts in the field. Yet when we look at the details, we find that the IPCC process, and especially the Summary for Policymakers, is in the hands of a small group, no more than two or three dozen.
The practically incestuous links among these scientists were revealed in a 2006 report by a team led by George Mason University statistics professor Edward Wegman at the request of Congress following a report by the National Research Council. These people work together, publish papers together and peer-review each others’ work. And we now know from the "Climate" leaks that they also cobbled together unrelated data sets, sought to "hide the decline," to eliminate the Medieval Warm Period from the record, to prevent publication of alternative views and to bring about the dismissal of editors who took a more open-minded approach.
Science is supposed to follow the facts and seek the truth. These guys started with a conviction about climate change and sought to make the data fit the preconception.
What does Helmer believe could motivate such a manipulation of the data? One of the most powerful of motivations; in his words: “Follow the money.” But what Helmer appears to find most disheartening is the “propaganda”to which the public in general, and school children in particular, are subjected. And in many cases, Helmer maintains, scientific modeling has been allowed to ‘trump’ observation:
In each of these cases, the alarmists put the projections of virtual-reality computer models ahead of real-world observation. Yet these models are programmed with a wide range of estimates and assumptions — including the assumption that CO2 is a major cause of warming. Little surprise, then, that they predict that outcome.
Helmer has demonstrated a virtue which is becoming increasingly rare among the political class in the West: saying what he actually believes. No doubt his views on the environment will continue to draw the ire of the extremists, and those who would accommodate their agendas, but Helmer has provided a valuable public service.
