Green campaigners and climate scientists are losing the public debate over global warming, one of the movement's leading proponents has admitted. Dr James Hansen, director of the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who first made warnings about climate change in the 1980s, said that public scepticism about the threat of man-made climate change has increased despite the growing scientific consensus. Speaking ahead of a public lecture in Edinburgh this week, he admitted that without public support it will be impossible to make the changes he and his colleagues believe need to occur to protect future generations from the effects of climate change. His comments come as recent surveys have revealed that public support for tackling climate change has declined dramatically in recent years. --Richard Gray, The Daily Telegraph, 9 April 2012
Dr Benny Peiser, director of sceptical think tank The Global Warming Policy Foundation, said governments and the public had "more urgent problems to deal with" than tackling climate change. He said: "People have become bored by some of the rhetoric from the green movement as they have other things to worry about. In reality the backlash against climate change has very little to do with the sceptics. We will take credit for instilling some debate but it is mainly an economic issue. Climate change is not seen as being urgent any more. James Hensen has been making predictions about climate change since the 1980s. When people are comparing what is happening now to those predictions, they can see they fail to match up." --Richard Gray, The Daily Telegraph, 9 April 2012
For people who want more action on global warming, an inconvenient truth has arisen over the last decade: Annual average temperatures stayed relatively flat globally -- and dropped in the United States and Oregon -- despite mankind's growing release of greenhouse gases. The hiatus in temperature increases may be contributing to higher public skepticism about warming, particularly in the United States. But it hasn't changed most climate researchers' opinions of likely substantial human-caused warming this century from releases of carbon dioxide and other gases. --Scott Learn, The Oregonian, 9 April 2012
A time-honored strategy of cataclysmic discourse, whether performed by preachers or by propagandists, is the retroactive correction. This technique consists of accumulating a staggering amount of horrifying news and then—at the end—tempering it with a slim ray of hope. First you break down all resistance; then you offer an escape route to your stunned audience. --Pascal Bruckner, The Wall Street Journal, 10 April 2012
Millions of householders who want to build a conservatory, replace a broken boiler or install new windows will be forced to spend hundreds of pounds more on ‘green’ projects. They will not be permitted to carry out the home improvement or repair unless they agree to fork out for measures such as loft or wall insulation. The work is expected to add ten per cent to the cost of any building project in the home. --James Slack and Tamara Cohen,Daily Mail, 9 April 2012
Christopher Booker's article in the Mail is extraordinary. The idea that we are intending to add massively to the cost of making home improvements by forcing people to complete a variety of other works at the same time is quite mindblowing. I find the idea that it will be forbidden to replace a broken down boiler without spending thousands more quite immoral. Are people supposed to sit in the cold if they can't afford it? This is going to make ordinary people very, very angry. --Andrew Montford, Bishop Hill, 10 April 2012
It’s like one of those tortuous twists from Borgen, the television political drama from Denmark, that confront the fictional prime minister Birgitte Nyborg. The Danish energy company behind the world’s largest wind farm in the Thames estuary has been hit by a pay scandal that could dash its plans in Britain. Last week Anders Eldrup, chief executive of Dong Energy, was forced to resign after it emerged that he had given unauthorised pay packages worth millions to a group of top executives — including the head of its lucrative British wind energy arm. --Bojan Pancevski, The Sunday Times, 8 April 2012[Registration required]
