Science and Technology CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by Ralph Morris (CLC008)

I will start by questioning the implication in the URL entitled “Climate: Public understanding and policy implications”. Reading that piece I am steered towards the perception that government policies have been informed by the opinions of all scientists world-wide and that these opinions are based on evidence.

As I write this paper I am listening to BBC News reporting that scientists are predicting a 200 year Ice Age as a result of (human activity induced) climate change. About a decade ago, the same news programmes were reporting that scientists were predicting the end to snow in winter in the UK as a result ……!

Recently the revered, but frequently inaccurate, David Attenborough was promulgating all sorts of doom—and quoting false figures, for which he had to apologise.

I read reports which both prove and refute Climate Change, both groups written with scant regard to the truth. And the truth is, I don’t know what the truth is! I do know that some of the “facts” are so obviously the product of a fertile imagination that everything else is open to question.

Common sense tells me that the Earth is constantly cycling between warm periods and cold periods, without any help from humankind. It is currently going through another of its cycles, this time assisted by human intervention. Whether the annual impact of humankind’s intervention equates to just a single volcanic eruption is open to question.

To conclude that the human impact is sufficiently serious to merit the hysteria which pervades the corridors of power requires a major effort to ignore what facts there are. The only conclusion which I can reach is that Climate Change is being used as yet another pawn in the power game: and to hell with the population of the UK!

If, for one fantasy moment, I accept the postulate that human intervention is significantly influencing the climate, the UKs contribution is minimal when compared with that of the US or China. Whichever way I view it, I cannot see any rational argument for most of the “low carbon” policies which are being preached by the High Priests of this new UK religion. However, it still makes good sense to reduce our dependence on fossil fuel sources, if only on the basis that a dwindling resource is best reserved for uses where there is no alternative.

Those who claim that what are commonly known as “renewables” will replace fossil fuels are “pissing in the wind”

… which is a particularly apposite epithet, given that so much of the this new Koran or Bible is devoted to wind energy.

Everybody knows that wind power is unreliable and must be backed up by an alternative power source.

Everybody knows that if this alternative source is nuclear, it will produce a stable supply at a relatively fixed level for decades. Turning it off to allow wind power to operate merely adds to costs. Either way, wind power subsidies are producing zero benefit to UK Ltd. There is sufficient anecdotal evidence to suggest that corruption is also playing its part in political circles—unless somebody can tell me how else Energy Department (DECC) ministers (and/or ex-ministers) acting as consultants to the “renewables” companies can be construed.

Of course, nuclear engineering companies are now demanding large subsidies to build in the UK. Of course they are! They have seen the offer of subsidies to wind power companies and can see no reason why they should not be offered the same terms. Better terms perhaps, since they will be providing a reliable source of power.

Conclusions

I have to reach the conclusion that the decision-makers are being led by the nose down a series of hugely expensive cul-de-sacs by a group of self-serving pundits, many of whom are enjoying “consultant” status to the “renewable” companies.

This leads me to the inevitable conclusion that a lot of politicians are essentially uninformed, incompetent and wholly untrustworthy and that the whole climate change thing is a scam.

Which does not mean that climate change is not happening—only that it is being used by the unscrupulous to offer “Snake Oil” cures.

April 2013