Environmentalism & Freedom

Often, environmentalist's sense of triumph belies their actual intellectual reach. George Monbiot calls himself the winner of a debate with director of the Institute of Ideas, Claire Fox, Last week, on an internet radio channel called The Fifth Column, I debated...

The delusions of the climate technocrats

<em>Published on Spiked-Online at http://www.spiked-online.com/site/article/11888/</em> It was the latest in a long series of last chances to save the planet. Like a convention of superheroes, 14,500 politicians, civil servants, journalists and campaigners...

Climate Technocrats at Durban

I have a story up on Spiked today... It was the latest in a long series of last chances to save the planet. Like a convention of superheroes, 14,500 politicians, civil servants, journalists and campaigners from development and environmental NGOs descended on Durban,...

The Art of the Possible… And the Impossible

I'm so bored... BORED... of climate change. Environmentalism is such a boring, boring, boring thing. It's mundane. It's banal. It obsesses about the minutiae of biological functioning only to the extent that it wants to limit the possibilities of human life, rather...

The Polar Bear Affair. Part 1001.

The BBC's Frozen Planet is continuing to fuel controversy. First, as discussed previously on this blog, the BBC's decision to sell the seventh episode of the series -- David Attenborough's personal view of climate change and the crysophere -- as an option led to...

Thoughts on Climategate r1

I thought it might be worthwhile posting this presentation I gave in Edinburgh in Spring last year, following the first Climategate. It seems to me that the same is true of Climategate 2 as was true of the first: if there had been a more transparent debate,...

Against Evidence-Based Policy-Making

I have a post at the Independent on the Battle of Ideas blog about the problems with 'evidence-based policy-making'. The big lie about evidence-based policy-making is that it’s based on evidence. Evidence no more produces and speaks for itself than cars decide their...

Climategate II – Derailing the Re-Railing

So... Part two of the Climategate series is out. Popcorn is flowing. It's too early to say anything that isn't already being said about what the new emails revealed. But, as per usual, what's being said about what the emails do or don't reveal is interesting. Leo...

Not the BEST way to debate climate

<em>Published on Spiked-Online at http://www.spiked-online.com/site/article/11597/</em> In late 2009, not long before the Copenhagen climate-change conference, thousands of private emails by climate researchers based at the University of East Anglia’s...

When the BEST Ain't Good Enough, Make Stuff Up

This story was intended for Spiked-Online, who may be publishing it at some point, but I wanted to get it out a bit sooner. A new scientific study of the Earth's temperature record aimed to rescue climate science's reputation from the aftermath of the 'Climategate'...