“Facts” on climate change.

The Australian today publishes a rather odd piece on the latest paper on climate change from Britain’s science academy, the Royal Society, claiming it as an acknowledgement of the limits of the science. Funny, but I thought they were using a new expression to describe global warming now, but it is a bit difficult to keep up with the terms used.

The ragged intersection between science and politics is the point at which much of the climate debate has been derailed. Politics demands certainty to make a convincing case for co-ordinate action. Science, on the other hand, is driven by scepticism. Each hypothesis formulated from empirical evidence needs to be challenged and tested to within an inch of its life before its veracity can be assumed. The 43 society members now believe the societies previous position was too strident and implied a greater degree of certainty than was justified.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's reports should have been seen for what they were, political documents. They were designed, quite reasonably, as a basis on which to build a political solution.

It has to be questioned as to why designing scientific reports in order to form a basis for political action is in the view of the author, “quite reasonable.” Designing reports in such a way is nothing short of fraud and deserves to be denounced as such.

The report is in fact an effort to reconcile the fact that some of the bodies involved have been caught out tampering with the evidence and in fact have been prepared to accept anecdotal evidence, such as “the glaciers will disappear,” over the facts that it was a widely exaggerated claim. While insisting that much of the science is settled it merely pays lip service to the chances that some areas are open to debate, and there are matters where simply enough is not known in order to reach conclusions.

It still advocates going ahead and committing economic suicide with GW action.

The Australian has given itself a shameless political plug with, ”The Royal Society sets out a strong case for pursuing the cautionary, responsible approach long advocated by The Weekend Australian”

This is of course not the responsible course of holding off action until a consensus is reached, in fact they still want to implement ration and tax or a carbon tax. The Weekend Australian has tended to advocate the Vogon position of, “Resistance is futile,” for some time, and this is what is recommended in the report.

The only difference is that they now want us to forget some of the more hysterical positions that they have been caught out on.