Cllr Derek Tipp, a Conservative councillor on New Forest District Council, says Town Halls should not present contentious claims on global warming as if they were facts.
As a district councillor I am continually bombarded with what I call propaganda on the subject of global warming, or as it is now referred to, “climate change”. Much of this emanates from government, but it also comes from the LGA and sundry other so-called NGO’s.
I regularly receive invitations to attend conferences or seminars, be trained to speak on the need for “urgent action” etc. From my experience it appears that council officers on the whole are fully on board with the government. I have yet to meet an openly sceptic council officer, though I would expect there are a few closet sceptics, not daring to come out for fear of damaging their careers.
Members are perhaps a little braver, in my experience, as they are a little freer to speak their mind, not having a career in local government, unless they are trying to become a cabinet member. Global warming is one of those issues which for most members is not a front line issue. In other words they are prepared to accept the prevailing orthodoxy, rather than make a stand against it.
Put together, all the foregoing to me amounts to propaganda. Against this background a minority of councillors like me, with sceptic views, have to try and make ourselves heard.
We are all being urged to do our bit to fight global warming by recycling more and putting less water in our kettles etc. I have no objection to these suggestions per se but what I do object to is having to accept that they will have the slightest effect on our climate. If they were put forward as desirable to conserve resources and to save money, then fine; but to save the planet – do me a favour!
A constantly used phrase is “the debate is over”, but when did it take place. Did I miss it? No, of course not; we have never had one, and with the climate alarmists so monopolising local and national government we are not likely to get one either. Remember only five MP’s voted against the Climate Change Bill with its aim to cut our CO2 emissions by 80% by 2050, even though they had no idea what the true costs or benefits of it were.
The situation in government both local and national in the UK seems to contrast completely with the public at large where I find sceptics are if anything in the majority. Opinion polls seem to agree with that, in spite of the unremitting propaganda coming from most of the media and, of course government.
There is much stiffer opposition in both the USA and Australia, where it looks quite possible that their climate change legislation could be defeated. In contrast to our feeble opposition, they are really looking at the cost of the measures to citizens as well as to the economy and to industry and jobs. Sceptics are being taken seriously with real debates taking place. Japan is also reluctant to act in a way which damages its national interest. China, India, and Brazil are determined not to halt the growth of their economies.
Yet here in the UK and in the EU we seem united in going it alone, if necessary; showing the world that we are prepared to make the big sacrifice to save the planet with hardly any discussion on the matter. It is not as if we have the most trustworthy politicians in the world, as has been only too evident of late and it is only a few years since we went to war on the strength of a “dodgy dossier.
To me it is quite extraordinary that so many politicians could be determined to take such costly action on the basis of such flimsy evidence without any idea of the full costs or benefits, and that local councillors are prepared to back them without any proper debate. Ignorance of the science is perhaps understandable though I would have thought that this ought to mean looking more closely at both sides of the argument rather than accepting the word of the UN committee (IPCC) as being final.
It is not as if the evidence was overwhelming that CO2 is causing dangerous global warming. In fact there has been no warming since 1998 and since 2001 we have had slight cooling, which was not predicted by the proponents of the theory. In addition new accurate measuring devices have shown that the oceans have been cooling since 2004 and Arctic ice is now returning to its long term average.
These facts are seldom published in the mainstream. Instead every quirk of the weather is blamed on global warming. Is sea level rising? Well, actually no more than usual, but alarmists with their computer models project that it will increase in 50 or 100 years time, but their projections are based on increasing temperatures due to increased CO2 levels. Thereby a circular argument leads to a self-fulfilling prophesy.
