British PM Gordon Brown attacks “anti-science, flat-earth climate sceptics” while UK Conservatives reaffirm climate science and need for “desperately urgent” Copenhagen deal
"British PM Gordon Brown attacks “anti-science, flat-earth climate sceptics” while UK Conservatives reaffirm climate science and need for “desperately urgent” Copenhagen deal"
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Miliband: “The approach of the climate saboteurs is to misuse data and mislead people.”
So the British PM joins the leaders of Australia and this country in condemning the anti-science disinformers (see Obama takes on the anti-scientific delayers, while Australia’s Rudd slams the “deniers” and the “gaggle” of “conspiracy theorists” opposing climate action). The above cartoon appeared in the UK’s Guardian with the headline “Brown attacks ‘flat-earth’ climate change sceptics.”
And yes, I’m glad Brown picked up the phrase “anti-science” — it’s better and clearer than “denier” [see “Diagnosing a victim of anti-science syndrome (ASS)“]. Who knows, maybe he reads Climate Progress!
Ed Miliband, Brown’s Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change — a position Brown created (and if climate change doesn’t need an SOS, what does?) — joined in the condemnation:
Ed Miliband gave his most damning assessment of the sceptics yet, describing them as “dangerous and deceitful”.
He said: “The approach of the climate saboteurs is to misuse data and mislead people. The sceptics are playing politics with science in a dangerous and deceitful manner. There is no easy way out of tackling climate change despite what they would have us believe. The evidence is clear and the time we have to act is short. To abandon this process now would lead to misery and catastrophe for millions.”
Hear! Hear!
Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) was on hand to lend support:
Markey warned against allowing America’s political agenda to be hijacked by the email affair. “We can no longer allow our climate and energy policy to be hijacked by the government of Saudi Arabia, ExxonMobil, and the defenders of the fossil fuel status quo,” he said.
And the Guardian itself introduced some sanity:
Even if an investigation into the university emails were to show evidence of wrongdoing, scientists and politicians say there is an overwhelming body of evidence that humans are causing climate change.
The piece end with a truly amazing quote I will be using many times in the coming weeks and months to show just how much U.S. “conservative” leaders have been captured by narrow political interests:
A number of prominent Conservatives, including former chancellor Lord Lawson and former Cameron frontbencher David Davis, have pounced on the email furore. But tonight the shadow climate change secretary, Greg Clark, made clear the party line remains that climate change is a serious man-made threat. “Research into climate change has involved thousands of different scientists, pursuing many separate lines of independent inquiry over many years. The case for a global deal is still strong and in many aspects, such as the daily destruction of the Earth’s rainforests, desperately urgent,” he said.
Yes, there is nothing genuinely “conservative” about refusing to conserve a livable climate.
Related Posts:
- Washington Post mocks Inhofe as “the last flat-earther”
- Sen. Inhofe explains he’s going to Copenhagen so that when Sen. Kerry says “Yes. We’re going to pass a global warming bill” then “I will be able to stand up and say, ‘No, it’s over. Get a life. You lost. I won!’ “
- Joe Klein on the GOP: “How can you sustain a democracy if one of the two major political parties has been overrun by nihilists? “¦ How can you maintain the illusion of journalistic impartiality when one of the political parties has jumped the shark?”
- Honey, I shrunk the GOP, Part 1: Conservatives vow to purge all members who support clean energy or science-based policy
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Our Conservative Canadian Enviroment Minister Prentice also made a (relatively) positive statement – “The science overall is relatively clear on all of this and as a conservationist and as a responsible environmental steward Canada wants to see carbon emissions reduced,”
He also dismissed the CRU Hack; “It does not change the position of Canada”.
The Canadian goverment isn’t exactly charging to the forefront on the issue, but they’re at least making good noises, and don’t look like they’ll be blocking progress.
Well said, Mr Brown. Thank you.
Joe, an excellent analysis of ‘SwiftHack’, perhaps worth a post: http://www.greenparty.ca/blogs/7/2009-12-03/and-now-discuss-those-hacked-emails
What a breath of fresh air! Particularly after just ingesting Clark Hoyt’s pile of manure this morning.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/opinion/06pubed.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
The only good thing I can say about Hoyt’s treatment is that it unintentionally allows Andy Revkin to hang himself. Revkin is quoted at the end saying “Our coverage, looked at in toto, has never bought the catastrophe conclusion and always aimed to examine the potential for both overstatement and understatement,”
EARTH TO REVKIN: THE IPCC IS THE MIDDLE GROUND AND ITS MIDDLE GROUND IS CATASTROPHE.
That Revkin betrays his inclination for the horserace over “truth” is just another nail in the coffin for his pathetic coverage. Too bad Hoyt has gotten used in the process.
[JR: I’ll do a post on this shortly.]
Great cartoon, thanks, and I like Levenson’s comment, too.
We seem to be having a language problem. Recently the deniers announced that they wanted to be called “skeptics”, which was a clever move on their part. Every scientist is of course a skeptic, so they wanted to rebrand themselves. Much of the media caved in, and also decided to allow deniers to continue to describe serious scientists such as Gavin Schmidt as “alarmists”.
These people have a long history of using language to manipulate opinion, due to their association with very sophisticated PR firms that also dream up things like “sound science” (describing Singer and Michaels) versus “junk science” (anyone who actually understands and publishes on climate change). They also managed to change newspaper descriptions from “global warming” to “climate change”, which, as one of them pointed out, is like driving from New York to Virginia. Their use of language derives from focus group road testing. The deniers have enforced their will on the media mostly through noise and intimidation.
Why let them dictate the words even we are going to use? Are we supposed to stop calling them “deniers” because the association with Holocaust deniers hurts their feelings? And we should sit quietly while they call us “alarmists” and perpetrators of “junk science”?
We should call them deniers for a lot of reasons. This word existed before the Holocaust. And it’s a matter of opinion whether Holocaust deniers- mostly harmless nutcases who probably don’t even believe what they’re saying- are any worse than the calculated and quite dangerous PR techniques of those who oppose action on solving global warming.
It’s going to get a little rough. Time to take a stand and call them out for what they are.
I like anti-science or A-S.
[JR: Yes, anti-science syndrome — I added a link to my original post on that.]
Re Canada’s PM Harper making nice at COP-15, don’t be misled by this carbon bully, he’s just playing possum-politics. Look beyond his words at his government’s latest deed — cutting off all funding to a religious group that dared visit and criticize Harper’s cash cow — Alberta’s climate-destroying tarsands development.
And what are we to make of this “Doomsday” comment of one of his MPs in response to a “What-if-climate-scientists-are-right” question? — “If Doomsday kicks in, then it kicks in.” This is the voice of a party that dares plays dice with the the future of the planet.
DavidCOG, thanks for the link to that interesting analysis of the CRU hacked emails by Elizabeth May. She is the first person I have seen who has read all 3,000 of the emails that have been released so far. This allows her to put them in context and conclude:
“The enormous volume of emails give a picture of thoroughly decent scientists increasingly finding themselves in a nightmare.”
She quotes an email from Gavin Schmidt at NASA (and RealClimate) on 2 December 2008 about what that “nightmare” is:
“The contrarians have found that there is actually no limit to what you can ask people for (raw data, intermediate steps, additional calculations, sensitivity calculations, all the code, a workable version of the code on any platform, etc) and like Somali pirates they have found that once someone has paid up, they can always shake them down again.”
I was looking for a way to get an extra “S” on the “Anti-science.” Good call ! A-SS
“Anti-Science Syndrome” (ASS) is cool. What about “Anti-Science Sink Hole” (ASS Hole).