Reliable Daily Telegraph?
September 15th, 2007 | This post was written by Benet NorthcoteThe Daily Telegraph site is carrying a very misleading article on the global warming debate. It pains me to highlight it, as I hate to provide more publicity, but it needs a rebuttal.
The problem is not that they report this study (although what these people are saying is nothing new). It is that they don’t provide ANY balance to the story. They don’t say that the Avery and Singer are in a tiny minority of the scientific community and they don’t offer any other scientist the chance to rebut their theory. That is not good reporting in my view.
For those who want a proper analysis of this, you can do worse that visit www.realclimate.org and read this Q&A.
The Daily Telegraph is a fine paper, and a very entertaining read; I am just disappointed at this particular story.
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Tags: Commentators, Green
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September 16th, 2007 at 9:01 am
This is all part of the Telegraph’s agenda of undermining Dave. The Daily Mirror gives us better coverage! Telegraph’s a lost cause until Heffer is sacked I am afraid.
September 16th, 2007 at 10:08 pm
From the Spectator’s Coffeehousee blog:
“Whenever there is a genuine combination of carrots and sticks proposed there is popular support for the ideas. So, 80 percent of people favour raising taxes on gas guzzling cars while reducing those on low emission vehicles. Equally, 83 percent support lowering stamp duty on energy efficient homes. By contrast, 70 percent oppose charging people to park in supermarket car parks and 54 percent disagree with the idea of putting VAT on short haul flights. A green agenda that worked on encouraging good behaviour as much as punishing bad would be both good for the planet and a vote winner.”
This is what most of the proposals in the Gummer-Goldsmith report aim to do – reward environmentally good behaviour, and disincentivise behaviour which is environmentally bad.
Allowing local authorities to require supermarkets to charge for parking could (depending on how it is carried out) encourage people to make fewer trips to the supermarket and/or encourage people to use their local shops more.
Personally I think I’d go further than just adding VAT onto short-haul domestic flights with a realistic train alternative… I would argue that VAT and fuel duty ought to be paid on aviation fuel as well as petrol/diesel etc. Airlines surely don’t need subsidising any more. Enough of us make the choice to fly. Obviously this is not just a matter for the UK, but I think it’s something we should be arguing for.
September 18th, 2007 at 10:45 am
It sounds perfectly feasible to me that climate change is a natural phenomena. Why are you so against debate within this matter? Afraid the truth will come out and show that the whole global warming debate has stalled as forecasts of doom and gloom have passed with no effect? Tories in the past were very much people who thought for themselves. The green bandwagon is being lead by socialists who are in effect turning the Blue into Red – Dave is a fool!
September 18th, 2007 at 7:07 pm
Anon: look at the answer to the first question in the Q&A Benet linked to. It says, “the warming in the last few decades cannot be explained without the impact of human-released greenhouse gases. Avery was very careful to crop his temperature plots at 1985, rather than show the data to 2005.”