Shropshire Star: Claims on climate an excuse for tax rises

May 31, 2008 wonkotsane Climate Change, Letters, Propaganda No comments

! This post hasn't been updated in over a year. A lot can change in a year including my opinion and the amount of naughty words I use. There's a good chance that there's something in what's written below that someone will find objectionable. That's fine, if I tried to please everybody all of the time then I'd be a Lib Dem (remember them?) and I'm certainly not one of those. The point is, I'm not the kind of person to try and alter history in case I said something in the past that someone can use against me in the future but just remember that the person I was then isn't the person I am now nor the person I'll be in a year's time.

Looks like the green lobby haven’t managed to bully the Shropshire Star into closing down the climate change debate yet …

Every week there seems to be another report by a scientist of some description which is proclaimed as “further evidence” of climate change.

There is no doubt that climate change is happening, it’s been happening for millions of years and will continue to happen long after the human race has bombed itself to extinction.

In March Dr David Vaughan, the lead author of the IPPC report on climate change, told the worlds media that the Wilkins Ice Shelf “hangs by a thread” and was about to collapse. The Wilkins Ice Shelf had, in fact, already collapsed 10 years ago.

This is used as “evidence” that human activity is causing climate change and calling for increased taxation. [1]

In April scientists from Lancaster University claimed that there is no link between solar activity and climate change. The BBC described this as “further compelling evidence” despite there being an abundance of data showing a clear link between the two.

Lancaster University used 20 years worth of data to “prove” that there is no link between solar activity and climate change events that take place over millions of years. [2]

In May, German scientists announced that we wouldn’t see any global warming for the next decade. In fact, they have concluded that we will see global colling followed by a period of warming caused by what they called “natural climate cycles”. [3]

I am old enough to remember the doom-laden prophecies of an impending ice age right up until about 15 years ago. Now the same data has apparently convinced todays scientists that the opposite is going to happen.

Climate change is nothing more to the British government than an excuse to increase taxes. If it was anything but an excuse to put up taxes then it would be DEFRA commissioning reports and forming climate policy, not the Treasury!

It’s time to apply some common sense to the climate change debate (not that much debate is allowed any more) before the economy is fatally damaged on a false premise.

Stuart Parr

[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7313264.stm (Antarctic shelf ‘hangs by a thread’)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/24/ice_shelf_collapse/ (Global warming cleared on ice shelf collapse rap)

[2] http://media.kusi.clickability.com/images/gwimage3.jpg
http://www.realclimate.org/images/SW2006b.jpg
http://www.unc.edu/~sstaff/images/craytemp.jpg
http://www.news2wkrn.com/jeff/Droughtlook-dr2-FMA-06.GIF

[3] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7376301.stm (Next decade ‘may see no warming’)

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