Guardian columnist Henry Porter has written a very funny column in which he takes a bash at global warming sceptics:
Hearing Lord Lawson argue with the impeccably reasonable climate scientist Sir Brian Hoskins on the BBC Today programme last week, I finally boiled over. It is surely now time for the deniers to make their case and hold an international conference, where they set out their scientific stall, which, while stating that the climate is fundamentally chaotic, provides positive, underlying evidence that man's activity has had no impact on sea and atmosphere temperatures, diminishing icecaps and glaciers, rising sea levels and so on.
Until such a conference is held and people such as Lawson, Lord Monckton, Christopher Booker, Samuel Brittan and Viscount Ridley – names that begin to give you some idea of the demographic – are required to provide the proof of their case, rather than feeding off that of their opponents, they should be treated with mild disdain.
This is rather hilarious. I don't think Brittan takes a view on the science, but I've definitely heard all of the other named sceptics say quite clearly that they think that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and/or that mankind can affect the climate. It looks as though poor old Henry Porter is struggling to even determine what the sceptic case is. Comment is free, but research is optional, at the Guardian at least.
Perhaps I can be of assistance. I think I'm right in saying that those named would all argue that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and that it could be expected to have a small warming effect on the planet. Temperatures have gone up, indeed, but we cannot detect any statistically significant changes in the surface temperatures, which were rising long before mankind's carbon dioxide emissions became large enough to have a plausible effect. The case is that warming is likely to be small and largely benign and that the costs of mad mitigations schemes are going to vastly exceed any reliable estimates of cost.
Really, you would think after all this time that a senior columnist at the Guardian would at least be able to criticise people for the things they say rather than having a go at the rumours of what they believe, as put round at metropolitan dinner parties.