Author Archives: Tim Lenton

There is a television series called Numbers, in which a mega-brained young professor of mathematics assists the FBI in solving crimes by using statistics, algorithms and formulae that predict what criminals are going to do.

Its appeal lies partly in the attractive characters, but also in the idea that life should be like that: there should a scientific answer to every problem. In real life, people with normal-sized brains use numbers differently – primarily to justify their own agendas.

For reasons that may not be unconnected with money, the road safety industry has over the last few years been anxious to attribute a very high percentage of accidents to excessive speed. Figures like 30% – sometimes even 50% – have been, and still are, bandied about, although the Government has admitted that speed is a contributory factor in only 6% of all accidents, and 13% of fatal ones.

Since these are government figures, we tend to distrust them, and the Government is not likely to be downplaying the role of speed, so maybe the true figure is even lower. Despite this, the drive towards lower speed limits continues, fuelled by the disproportionately loud voices of those who don’t like cars anyway and want you to walk, cycle or bus everywhere. A big advantage to driving is speed; so they naturally want to make driving slower.

Certain road safety groups also have an obsession with speed, and a more-than-willingness to be free with their use of figures. Brake, for instance, confuses driving speed with impact speed when it claims that a car travelling at 35mph is twice as likely to kill a child as one travelling at 30mph. The statistic actually refers to impact speed, which is quite different: a car travelling at 35mph is unlikely to hit anyone at 35mph unless the victim suddenly materialises in the road. There would be braking and an attempt to avoid collision. The impact speed is likely to be much lower.

It could be counter-argued that a driver travelling at 35mph would be that little bit more alert, and without aggressively policed speed limits (yes, I mean cameras, fines and points), he might not be looking at the speedometer instead of scanning the road and pavements ahead for possible hazards.

But no such arguments are admitted, and we have recently been told we live in the speed camera capital of Europe. The Department of Transport justifies itself by saying that its policies have cut deaths or serious injuries by 17,000 a year while making about £100 million in fines.

Why include serious injuries in these figures? Well, “serious” is pretty hard to define, and the actual figures for serious injuries depend on who has been collecting them. Also, it muddies the water, which can be useful.

The independent pressure group Transport Watch on the other hand blames speed cameras for increasing fatal accidents, to the tune of almost 10,000 deaths since their introduction in the 1990s. It argues: “Between 1980 and 1995 UK road deaths were falling 7.1% a year. But since speed cameras arrived, deaths have fallen just 2.8% annually.” The other thing that has fallen, of course, is police patrols. There are 4309 speed cameras in the UK, and just 1904 police traffic patrol cars.

Clearly at least some of these numbers contradict each other. The problem with numbers is that they deceive us into thinking they are magical: they can solve everything, or reveal everything. Arguments based on common sense take a back seat because the numbers are somehow mysteriously heavier: they carry more weight.

The real threat to road safety is not speed: it is bad driving. Police patrols are better able to deal with this – when they are there. But mostly they are not.

The average motorist does not drive recklessly, but nevertheless has his collar felt and is made to feel like a criminal. Meanwhile those who drive with their eyes glued to the speedometer survive, but are a much bigger risk to other road users. The very few dangerous speeders seem to carry on regardless.

And many drive dangerously slowly in the current climate, either through incompetence or fear, or not realising that road safety is improved by those who don’t dither when joining or leaving faster traffic; who don’t hold up queues of cars that clearly would like to progress a little more quickly; and who don’t move snail-like into the outside lane about three miles before they intend to turn right.

Yes, but what are the numbers? The fact is, they are just about anything you want them to be – as you can see by clicking here and here. Happy motoring.

Global temperatures have not increased in the last decade. But it takes more than that to stop the global warming bandwagon, which will probably keep on rolling until it hits a glacier somewhere in Kent.

The Prince of Wales is anxious that we should combat climate change before it’s too late. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan says climate change kills 300,000 people a year, and it’s time to stop polluting.

Why should we not believe them? They are distinguished people. The problem is that their expertise is in other areas. I don’t really blame them: they are surrounded by insistent and loud advisers – the sort of people who tell MPs what they can claim on expenses.

The count of 300,000 victims of climate change has all the hallmarks of a figure plucked out of the air. If by some fluke it is roughly true (how on earth would you find out?), it has probably always been true. Climate change does affect people, and the climate always changes: as Heinrich Heine might have said, c’est son metier.

If we can do something practical to alleviate the negative effects of climate change, then we should. But to think we can stop it happening is a delusion, and a very expensive one.

Incidentally, you can be fairly sure that anyone who describes carbon dioxide as pollution cannot be relied upon. Carbon dioxide is a naturally occurring gas vital to our survival. What could be described as pollution is soot, and a recent study has shown that soot could be responsible for 18% of global warming when it actually occurs. Until now this had been overlooked. I wonder what else has been overlooked.

Still the bandwagon rolls on, and last week’s elections saw many candidates flaunting their green credentials, little realising (until they got the results, perhaps) how many people they put off voting for them. Our local Green Party candidate attacked UKIP for having MPs who were climate sceptics (whatever that means), only to find that they had polled many more votes than he had.

So there is hope. Sadly the churches have been told they should “push the climate change agenda” as one of the top moral issues of the day, showing how comprehensively they have lost touch with their own heritage, theology, people in general and Jesus in particular.

But scientists of various persuasions and specialties are not all pushovers. At a recent gathering in Cambridge, David Henderson – a former Treasury official, professor of economics and critic of the Stern Report – issued a strong warning about the way the global warming bandwagon is powered.

“I have come to believe that the widespread trust in the IPCC is unwarranted,” he said, listing a number of criticisms about the IPCC’s handling of data and evidence – and alleging that those who managed the IPCC process had a “pre-commitment to the urgency of the climate issue” that prevented them from assessing objectively. His impressive criticisms of the process, and other comments, are available here.

Today’s received opinion on climate change is not well founded, he says, highlighting three characteristics of it: overstatement, overconfidence and the blind acceptance of a flawed advisory process.

UK Government departments and funded institutions working on climate change are, he says, almost entirely staffed by what might be termed “believers”. No surprise there. “I doubt whether among them there is even a handful of professional staff members who could be identified as even mild dissenters.”

He added that the IPCC was “neither objective nor authoritative”, and an alternative framework was needed – “less presumptive, more inclusive, more professionally watertight and more attuned to the huge uncertainties that remain”.

The huge uncertainties that remain don’t seem to worry global warming enthusiasts too much. A paper contributed to the journal Climatic Change says that such uncertainties – that is, the possibility that predictions are quite wrong – should not prevent governments from acting. It concludes that “if robust strategies are in place, minor inaccuracies in climate change modelling and predictions will be of little concern”.

In other words, the facts don’t matter. Well, unfortunately, that’s exactly what we thought.

Andrew Motion, who until last month was the UK Poet Laureate, has drawn attention to the poor knowledge in schools of the contents of the Bible. Judging by some of the bizarre answers given in quiz shows such as The Weakest Link, or even University Challenge, he is right to do so. And his observation might go some way to explaining why almost no-one nowadays knows what Christianity is, beyond a vague notion that it’s to do with people being good. (In case you were wondering, it’s to do with people being generally bad, admitting it and being forgiven.)

Mr Motion is concerned primarily that children are missing out on the historical and literary aspects of Christianity – the same Christianity that has been the motivation for countless works of visual, verbal and musical art over many centuries. It continues to motivate artists, of course, though not politicians so much.

Militant atheists may abhor any mention of faith in schools, but most of us would think that depriving pupils of knowledge and telling them what to think is not the optimum educational solution.

Such atheists seem to think that teaching Christianity is the same as evangelism. It is not, of course, and if the only way atheists think they can “protect” children from Christianity is by promoting ignorance, then they can have little confidence in the strength of their position.

It is surely significant that Muslim parents on the whole would rather their children attend an overtly Christian school than a secular one. I leave you to work out exactly what the significance is, and whether Christian parents would be equally happy to see their children attending Muslim schools.

Certainly there is concern among many Christians at the increasing influence of Muslims in our society – with the BBC installing a Muslim as head of religion, and the Koran, so I am told, being placed on a higher shelf than the Bible in courtrooms. The BBC is “known” for being happy to broadcast attacks on Christianity, but treading softly, softly around Muslims. But is that the issue here? It might be worth asking whether the new head of religion is good at his job, and whether he is the best candidate available.

As far as our secular society is concerned, one of the current battlegrounds is homosexuality. Christians hold different views on this, and some of those views are quite forceful. But should they be able to put these views in public debate? The Coroners and Justice Bill, which is presently in the House of Lords and has received heavy criticism there, seems to allow the interpretation that they can’t, which is a disturbingly anti-democratic stance, however the phraseology seeks to disguise it.

The often-shrouded point is that to oppose something, you don’t have to hate its proponents, or encouraging others to hate them. The thinking behind the Coroners and Justice Bill seems to be that in certain areas, everyone has to think and say the same thing. In what way is this different from Orwell’s vision of 1984?

Of course if you happen to be homosexual or gay, or both, then it would be nice if everyone was like you. (It would also signal the end of the human race, of course, but you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.)

Canterbury, which might be regarded as the “home” of English Christianity, was recently accused of not being gay enough. Apparently, there are no gay bars there. But why should there be? Are there any heterosexual-only bars? Any white-only bars? I should hope not. The point of equality and diversity is that we should be equal and diverse, not pushed into exclusive ghettos, or bars.

Instead of logical thinking, there seem to be huge irrational leaps going on. The fact that it is wrong to express hatred of homosexuals does not mean that it is essential to promote homosexuality. I don’t hate crocodiles or hamsters, but that doesn’t mean I have to promote them. I may feel that the level of crocodile and hamster activity in the world is about right.

But whatever stance Christians take on controversial issues, Christianity has something special to offer, which is forgiveness, love and acceptance – even to those we find completely wrong-headed. No, I don’t mean homosexuals; I mean absolutely anyone we disagree with. So I was delighted to read the restrained response of the Rev Sally Theakston, a team rector in Norfolk, when British National Party representatives attended one of her churches and then launched an attack on the worship there and on the Church in general.

She did not use the opportunity to attack BNP policies or advise people not to vote for them, however much she may have been tempted to do so. Instead, she said: “I am sorry that members of the BNP do not find worship at St Faith’s helpful for their discipleship.”

Way to go, Sally!

A head teacher makes all the difference to a school. So much so that if you are checking a school out to see if it is up to your child’s exacting standards, you will do well to ask the head if he or she is thinking of moving on. Once a head goes, the school mysteriously changes. It could leap over a cliff, or it could suddenly come alive with the sound of learning.

The best heads are not those who adhere desperately to local or central government criteria in a bid to totter up the league tables. The best heads have minds of their own and are willing to circumvent all the newt-like centralised stipulations to make sure their children get the best teaching and the best environment to work in. They are inspired, and inspiring.

So why are the best heads paradoxically desperate to retire? Because of the rubbish heaped on them by whichever “education education education” government happens to be in power. All the form-filling, the budget-bending, the health-and-safety nitpicking, the equality and diversity demands, the constant government “initiatives” and above all, the social work. Bit of a clue when the education department of a county council suddenly becomes children’s services.

Anyone with any intelligence just wants to put the whole lot in a bin bag and throw it at the nearest politician. Or ignore it, of course. But it does wear you down – which is why, as I said, so many great heads are keen to retire. And why, incidentally, so many deputies who would make great heads take a look at what is lumped on their own head’s heaving desk and decide that discretion is the better part of valour, so “thanks, but no thanks”.

How has this ludicrous situation come about? Primarily a lack of trust for those with expertise. As in so many areas where the Government feels it has to intrude, we end up with people with no special knowledge at all telling the experts what to do. It is as if a journalist were to draw up a plan for building a nuclear reactor and then insist that his plan was followed by the engineers. Result: nothing, or extremely dangerous fallout. Just what has happened in schools across the country.

But Britons in positions of authority love telling the masses what to do. No-one follows those ridiculous European directives more closely than us. Where the French would laugh and the Italians would pass by on the other side, we slavishly try to follow it all to the letter.

Perhaps that is why the Government is so enthusiastic about measures to combat climate change. It is not that there is any way of affecting climate change (this planet is bigger than all of us); it is just a glorious opportunity to put into operation all kinds of directives, warnings, demands and taxes – and best of all, to tell people how to live their lives.

So the United Kingdom becomes the only country in the world to set legally binding carbon budgets, in a meaningless bid to slash carbon emissions by a third within 11 years.

Environmental expert Bjorn Lomberg, of Copenhagen University, described this as “pure wishful thinking”, adding: “No country in the world has ever managed to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by a third in just 11 years.”

But it will be worth it, won’t it? Well, you tell me. Government advisors say it will cost each household £600 a year, and apparently the effect will be to reduce world temperatures by one-three thousandths of a degree by the end of the century. And that’s if carbon dioxide really causes warming, which is by no means certain.

The other problem in schools, apart from the tendency of great head teachers to retire, is the perceived failure of those who are not academically able. There is no real reason why academic expertise should be more highly prized than the ability to, say, build a house. But for some reason our entire schools system has been based on exactly that strange misjudgement.

In a bid to change this, it became fashionable in some areas to concentrate all efforts on the less academically able, to bring them up to speed on paperwork. But that didn’t work either. What happened was that those who were good at arithmetic, writing and reading were deprived of showing their true potential, and those who had no talent for paperwork made little progress either – and through league tables and assessment tests they were deprived of demonstrating what they really were good at. Everyone was a loser.

The same is true for people who are good at driving. They find that all the measures taken by those in authority are aimed at someone else: namely those who are not very good at driving but good at something else – it doesn’t matter what. A transport expert once told me he had never travelled with a highways engineer who was a good driver, so perhaps they’re aimed at highways engineers. On the other hand, maybe he was unlucky.

So those who enjoy driving and who do not cause accidents find that everything is against them – most obviously road humps and speed cameras. Exceeding the speed limit is such a tiny cause of road accidents that a visiting Martian might think that we had lost our minds. There are undoubtedly bad drivers who exceed a safe speed for the conditions: most of them are inexperienced or habitual law-breakers.

These problems could be tackled by better driving instruction and more police patrols. But no, we have speed limits set lower and lower, so that even the good drivers become bad drivers, losing concentration and constantly taking their eyes off the road to check the speedometer. With cameras deliberately set to catch offenders rather than improve safety, the bad drivers go on being bad, and the good ones get fined for driving at a perfectly safe speed.

Job done. We have the statistics to prove it. Of course we have. We always do.

The UK car industry is in trouble. According to the BBC, the number of new cars produced in the country fell by a record 59% in February this year, “as the motor industry continues to suffer from weak demand”.

Why anyone should be surprised at this is beyond me. The Government, encouraged by environmentalists, has gone out of its way in recent years to make motoring more and more unpleasant, and more and more expensive. Levying higher tax (and sometimes higher parking fees) on cars that do not meet certain pointless emission requirements has made those cars unsaleable. Drivers are forced to stick with what they’ve got, where in more enlightened times they would be looking for a new model.

But it is not just cash. What used to be called the pleasures of motoring have been reduced constantly by spurious road safety measures. In an attempt to curb those very few drivers who habitually drive too fast, highway authorities have resorted to the clumsiest of measures – road humps and speed cameras – frustrating and often fining untold thousands of good drivers while failing to do much about the really dangerous ones.

The latest bright idea from the Government – reducing all rural single carriageway speed limits to 50mph and enforcing them with average speed cameras – is another step along this foolish path. One hopes it may prove a step too far, and that public consultation will overturn it. But sadly the Government is dominated by environmentalists and others who believe that driving is anti-social at any speed. In 1995 the Friends of the Earth said “speed limits should be made very low and rigidly enforced to take all the glamour out of motoring”, and this miserable view seems to have prevailed.

What is repeatedly overlooked is that good driving is a skill, and that if you don’t enjoy it, you’re probably not doing it very well. To discouragement enjoyment of driving by sticking people in painfully slow queues is to produce a generation of drivers who have little idea what they’re doing – a fact that becomes painfully clear in an emergency.

The Sunday Times pointed out: “The principle of proportionality is increasingly going out of the window. The majority of people…are being asked to constrain their behaviour because of a tiny minority of wrongdoers and careless people. Universal punishment is a lazy, bad solution.”

The same paper points out that if you can cut accidents by reducing speed limits to 50mph, then presumably you can reduce them further by reducing all limits to 30mph, then 20mph… I suggest a man with a red flag may be the answer. Or maybe other factors are important?

Meanwhile the Government would like to introduce road pricing and fixed penalties for a range of driving offences, as well as unelected quangos to decide on transport policy. Oh, and of course that 20mph limit is already with us – in the residential streets of many towns and cities. On some streets it’s needed; on others it isn’t.

If drivers were taught to drive properly, the only speed limits necessary should be advisory ones. As it is, a mass raising of speed limits by 10mph in rural areas would see a vast improvement in the quality of driving.

I was glad to see that in one area – parking – the misguided efforts of environmentalists to make life difficult for motorists have been seen for the nonsense that they are. Essex County Council has decided to provide more parking on new developments. Earlier Government “attempts to reduce car ownership by limiting the amount of off-street parking spaces provided within residential developments” have resulted unsurprisingly in a mess of cars parked on unsuitable streets, with what are euphemistically termed safety issues as a consequence.

Hats off to Essex. But what was that about “Government attempts to reduce car ownership”? Couldn’t have anything to do with the UK car industry being in trouble, could it?

It’s hard to know who you can trust when it comes to transport. This week a Norfolk over-60 wrote to his local paper to complain that he had got rid of his car on the basis that he could use a free bus pass for all journeys, but the Government was now planning to reduce the times when he could do so. Perhaps the Government would like to buy him a new car and give the industry a bit of a boost.

*Could it be worse? Click here.

Don’t worry: Richard Dawkins probably doesn’t exist. I myself have never seen him in the flesh, and nor has anyone I know.

There is by all accounts a figure who claims to be Richard Dawkins, and who goes about proclaiming himself to be infallible, but there is no proof of his identity other than a few documents of doubtful authenticity.

Some people claim to have heard his voice, but it is likely that they have heard some other voice, or indeed a voice entirely within their own heads.

Books exist that some claim were written or directly inspired by him, but on investigation these are found to contain fanciful ideas about areas totally beyond anyone’s experience, such as the events of pre-historic times. It is likely that science will in due course discredit these ideas.

Those who find themselves worried by observations attributed to Richard Dawkins should consider putting an advertisement on the side of a bus, as this will undoubtedly make them feel much better.

I love my planet. Given the choice of which planet to be born on, this is almost certainly the one I’d have chosen. Mercury is too hot and Jupiter is, well, too gassy. Saturn runs rings around you, and Venus and Mars are close, but not close enough. Further out in the Solar System, it’s probably too cold even for the Green Party.

Having been allocated this planet, I am happy to do the best I can for it. This does not include turning all my electricity off for an hour because the World Wildlife Fund tells me to. Why not? Partly because it’s a complete waste of time – why not spend an hour picking up litter? – and partly because the WWF is a wrong-headed institution misusing its money and its membership for a political agenda which has little to do with wildlife.

One of the things I like about this planet is that wildlife survives. It will survive however the climate changes. Which particular animals and plants prosper will depend on which turns the climate takes, but wildlife will not vanish. It is, actually, amazing. I think we should interfere with it as little as possible.

The WWF’s stance on climate, however, is part of a worrying trend. In fact it has gone so far that it has ceased to be a trend and become something of an epidemic. A correspondent who has given over 40 years of service to environmental and conservationist causes wrote recently that in the past a balance was always struck between different interests. He adds: “However there was always potential for distortion, via the power of conservation organisations with large memberships. If they had wanted an activity stopped, their members could have been recruited to apply sufficient pressure to influence political decisions.

“While this never happened during my tenure, it would appear that these tactics have now been adopted.”

He was writing specifically about the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, and their “breathtaking cynicism” over wind farms – urging the Government to build them everywhere except on RSPB reserves. But his remarks apply equally well to bodies like the World Wildlife Fund. And remarks by politicians like Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, reveal this for what is when he says it has become “socially unacceptable” to oppose wind farms. The idea that it is socially wrong to hold certain views on the environment smacks of a totalitarian outlook on life which certain organisations and people are enthusiastically fostering and which, if unopposed, will ultimately destroy our freedoms.

Certain charities are making climate change a big part of their agenda. Christian Aid, which laudably fights poverty and oppression, muddies the waters by trying to persuade its supporters to sign a pledge to reduce their carbon footprints. Tearfund, which also tackles poverty and injustice, urges us to take up a carbon fast. Friends of the Earth has abandoned all balance and majors on climate change scaremongering. Yes, we can withdraw our support from these charities, but we can’t avoid their influence on our lives. And of course they foster the kind of hatred that is seen in radical protest.

None of these organisations is scientific. They are at root political. They have taken a view on climate, under the influence of the kind of people whose talk outweighs both their experience and their qualifications – not to mention their judgement. And of course they get all the publicity, because that’s what they’re good at. We are more in danger of drowning in a sea of global warming guilt publicity than from any rise in sea levels.

But despite all that, and almost completely unreported, there is what has been described as an “explosion” of sceptical scientific voices. Over 700 scientists from all over the world are now signed up to the US Senate Minority Report of Dissenting Scientists (nearly 60 in the last three months), and in case you think this is not many, the number of scientists who authored the media-hyped 2007 Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change Summary for Policymakers was 52.

“I do not find the supposed scientific consensus among my colleagues,” said noted Earth Scientist Javier Cuadros last month.

“Unfortunately climate science has become political science,” said award-winning Princeton University physicist Dr Robert H Austin. “It is tragic that some perhaps well-meaning but politically motivated scientists who should know better have whipped up a global frenzy about a phenomenon which is statistically questionable at best.”

Meanwhile peer-reviewed studies are making it past the barrier set up by global warming enthusiasts. Dr Anastasis Tsonis in a recent article found that “the Earth is undergoing natural climate shift”. Dr George T Wolff, a top atmospheric scientist, says: “There is no observational evidence that the addition of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have caused any temperature perturbation in the atmosphere.” And chemist Dr Mark L Campbell writes: “The sky is not burning, and to claim that it is amounts to journalistic malpractice. The press only promotes the global warming alarmists and ignores or minimises those of us who are sceptical.”

At the very least, there is a serious possibility that human-generated carbon emissions do not cause global warming. The implications of that are staggering for many and should be investigated thoroughly. But the publicists, the marketing men, the politicians, the media and the activists have plumped for the scare story, created a high-speed, armour-plated bandwagon, and everyone is jumping on board, simply to avoid getting mown down. Is it too late for them to get off? They seem to think so.

Editorial staff at my local newspaper, the Norwich-based Eastern Daily Press, are facing the loss of over 50* jobs. This will hit hard at a human level, with redundant journalists and ancillary staff losing their livelihood at a time when their skills will not be in huge demand elsewhere. Of course it is the jobs that are redundant, not the people, but such rationalising is not of much practical help, though it may patch up failing self-esteem.

There is still some hope, with prominent local personalities asked to step in and plead with management, a Downing Street petition started and a Facebook group also called into being. The call is to maintain quality journalism at a local level, and the fear is that a reduction in staff numbers will result in loss of quality.

This is a real danger. Managing director Stephan Phillips says he is keen to promote quality journalism and to give editors freedom, and I am sure he is sincere in that. Whether he will be able to deliver it with a much reduced staff remains to be seen. Many experienced journalists doubt it. *In response to public comments, the number of jobs threatened has now been reduced to 34.

The National Union of Journalists’ representative on the paper stresses the importance of “well researched newspapers put together by professionally trained journalists”, and as a previous editorial training manager and former chief sub-editor on the EDP, I would want to echo that. But the circulation of the paper has been falling steadily, and I can’t help wondering whether part of the reason for that is, first, a reluctance in recent years to carry out that research quite so rigorously and, second, a willingness to echo all too easily the establishment view on critical issues.

Because the EDP still has excellent journalists, it does many things very well. By most standards it is a first-class newspaper. But in the area of policy making it has failed to provide a forum for fair discussion on such things as climate change and road safety. At a time when it is impossible to find a political party that will voice doubts on the official lines, the press – and particularly the local press – should be a sounding board, and the EDP has not fulfilled that role. In fact it has sided with people who want to squash discussion. This is frustrating for readers, and readers can stand only so much frustration.

It is by no means alone in this attitude. I single it out purely because it is my local paper, and I know quite a lot about it. I have friends working there, and I would rather no-one lost their job. But I do think a bit more cut and thrust, lateral thinking, maverick outspokenness and rigorous research is more likely to get and retain a committed readership than a bland, lifestyle-centred approach.

Naturally I hold these views only because I have an antisocial, unthinking and unethical attitude to life in general. Or so some would have you believe. A Guardian writer on the environment equates people sceptical about the causes of climate change with Holocaust deniers. A new film designed to attack sceptics is called Age of Stupid. Is this reasoned argument? It is not. Does it raise suspicions that the global warmers’ arguments are not watertight? Yes it does. Yet the media is awash with uncriticised scaremongering from an assortment of scientists, economists, politicians and a Prince of the Realm. Not to mention the so-called environment correspondents who do little more than regurgitate green propaganda.

Over the past few years, we are told, emission of carbon dioxide has risen hugely. Melting of ice has increased enormously. So why has global temperature not risen at all for nigh on a decade, and why have Britain, Canada and many other parts of the world just experienced the coldest winter for many years? Why cannot we see any sign at all of sea levels rising and Norfolk sinking into the sea?

Today scientists yet again call on us to “act now or face climate catastrophe” (the Daily Telegraph’s words). And again politicians, surrounded by on-message advisers, will not question it for a moment. Television will proclaim it; teachers will teach it. But the fact is that if things are as bad as these scientists claim, no action will have any effect, and the only thing worth doing is planning for redistribution of populations.

Some say that even if predictions are wrong, it is worth taking precautions. But what if, as some scientists claim, the world is cooling? Then any precautions aimed at mitigating warming will leave us in a worse state when we experience cold. After all, as transport authorities this winter would have told you, if you expect milder winters, you don’t stockpile salt to grit roads. If you don’t heat houses effectively, old people die.

More and more, climate change takes on the look, not of science, but of a rather unpleasant fundamentalist religion. The Scientific Alliance suggests that “it seems more than coincidental that the rise of environmentalism has been at a time when there has been a big drop in religious adherence”, and if you want to read a well-argued analysis of that view, click on Newsletters here.

Perhaps we all need something to feel guilty about. Christianity, of course, is about forgiveness, but that’s never been popular with judgmental people like us. Guilt is the new black.

When 1984 came around we breathed a sigh of relief. George Orwell could certainly write, but as a prophet he didn’t stack up. The real 1984 was nothing like his vision of it. We were still free, and we had minds of our own.

Now, a quarter of a century later, it seems we may have relaxed too soon. Of course we haven’t reached Orwell’s 84, but we’re on the way there. In the end, it may turn out that he just got the numbers wrong.

Bit of over-reaction, surely? Well, maybe. But I find myself becoming increasingly uncomfortable at the sort of country I’m living in. Big Brother may still be a shadow, but the shadow seems to be solidifying in a disturbing way.

Free speech has always been a bedrock of our society in Britain, but the right to say what we think is being eroded. Even freedom of thought seems sometimes to be under attack.

As a practising Christian (I haven’t quite got the hang of it yet), I can’t help noticing that certain elements of society are becoming more aggressive towards Christianity. Any positive expression of faith is greeted in the media by outbursts from atheists, just as any scepticism about the causes of climate change is immediately greeted by abuse from activists.

In recent weeks

• a Christian nurse was suspended because she offered to pray for a patient;
• a school receptionist whose five-year-old daughter was told off for talking about Jesus (whatever next?) faced the sack for seeking support from her church;
• a foster mother who had looked after more than 80 children was struck off the register because a Muslim girl in her care became a Christian (even though the girl was 16 and had become a Christian without any encouragement from her foster mother);
• a Christian care home on the south coast had thousands of pounds worth of funding withdrawn by its local council because it wouldn’t wouldn’t ask its elderly residents about their sexual orientation every three months;
• and a Christian encyclopedia has been pulped for being “too Christian” in what the editor-in-chief describes as “probably the first instance of mass book-burning in the 21st century”.

When some of these incidents have received the fresh air of publicity, decisions have been changed. But there is an undercurrent of hostility that is hard to explain, and that breaks through at the slightest provocation.

One atheist wrote to his local paper about the Christian nurse, alleging that a “blind” experiment had proved that prayer was ineffective and in some cases counter-productive. He failed to explain how prayer could be counter-productive if it was ineffective and the people involved did not know they were being prayed for.

Many people will testify that prayer is effective, but that’s not the issue. Prayer has a positive effect on thousands, probably millions, of people. Eliminating it from public and private life can only be destructive.

Of course not all atheists are fanatics. Matthew Parris wrote a surprising and moving article in The Times at the end of last year about the positive effect Christianity has in Africa, largely through the introduction of a positive mindset and by challenging fatalism.

But there are a disturbing number of people who feel they have to “report” anyone who gives any sign of not bowing down to the gods of equality and diversity, as imagined by the sort of liberal mentality which used to tell us that Stalin was a good guy really.

These same people will complain about the use of certain forbidden words, like “golliwog”. Because they are hostile and contemptuous people they cannot grasp that not everyone is like that, and to most people a golliwog is a soft toy without any negative associations. But it is the sneaks themselves who are really contemptible, in trying to stir up hatred where none exists.

As a country we seem to encourage this attitude, and Big Brother thrives on it. The judgmental attitude that is so common in society is quite inimical to true Christianity, whose distinguishing marks are love and forgiveness. Love and forgiveness do not go down well in a society that wants to tell you what to say and what to think.

But the religion of Britain is less and less Christianity and more and more global warming. It is extraordinary that at a time when the global climate has been cooling for at least six years, huge publicity is received for an alarmist who says that carbon dioxide emissions have been increasing even more than had been predicted. No-one seems to ask why, if emissions are increasing hugely and the temperature is falling, it should still be believed that increased CO2 causes warming. It seems to prove that it doesn’t.

But when the country is full of companies that are trying to demonstrate how tiny a carbon footprint they have, it is very difficult to accept that carbon footprints really don’t matter. It seems to be a moral and ethical essential to believe that we are destroying the planet. But what if we’re not? Does the truth matter at all?

A gentleman who modestly calls himself Ethical Man is calling for support through the social networking site Facebook. What he says there typifies the muddled thinking of these 21st century crusaders. He wants to “save the world from climate change”. Doesn’t he know that the climate has always changed and always will? The world does not need to be saved from it. It is an integral part of how the world works. Nor does he seem to realise that carbon dioxide is not a “pollutant”: it is vital to our survival and has a key role in how the world works. Never mind, he’s Ethical Man, and that’s all that really matters. Everyone who does not share his opinions, of course, is Unethical. So they should not be allowed to say anything.

Yes, Big Brother is here, and his colour is sometimes green. He doesn’t like religions that encourage freedom of thought, love and forgiveness. Guilt is his thing, and condemnation. I wonder what George would think about it all.

Those who value freedom enter 2009 with some trepidation. The over-regulation of society shows no sign of abating; the lack of trust in professionals and the proliferation of bureaucratic targets continues to harm both those who are targeted and those they try – against the odds – to care for; the unthinking acceptance of unproved theories and refusal to listen to alternatives frustrates individuals and puts a spanner in the economy; simplistic materialism takes the spirit out of the people.

The continued wackiness of the health and safety industry is a gift to many comedians, but the absurdity of demanding that milk chocolate should bear a label warning that it contains milk is simply a symptom of a deeper rottenness in the state, typified by the blame culture and the rush to litigation. In America we are told that a man trapped in a lift for 40 hours found his life irreversibly altered not by the trauma of the experience, but by his decision to sue the company afterwards.

In Florida thousands of people are apparently being healed in a Christian revival that has spread in some measure to this country; our main contribution is advertisements on buses suggesting that God “probably” doesn’t exist.

In an atmosphere where it is hard to distinguish reality from myth, we are prey to those with agendas based sometimes on lying, sometimes on cherry-picking the facts. When Al Gore was interviewed by Richard Madeley, the interviewer found him to be ghastly, boorish and wrong-headed: “He would brook no discussion about climate change and kept on saying, ‘The debate is over.'” Yet the Church Commissioners have just decided to invest £150 million in Mr Gore’s “environmentally minded investment firm”. It is not so much Mr Gore’s viewpoint that is objectionable: it is his refusal to even consider that he may be wrong. Perhaps the Church Commissioners identify with that.

The Scientific Alliance suggests that this is the crunch year for environmental policies, adding: “The climate change lobby desperately needs 2009 to break records for high average temperatures and extreme weather. Summer ice melt in the Arctic in 2008 was hyped, but the winter growth seems to be more rapid than usual. The year as a whole gave miserable summer weather to many, and there has been no upward trend of temperatures since the highs of 1998, despite steadily rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.” I feel torn: I like warm weather, but I would also like the cool breeze of reality to make itself felt.

So far, business as usual: green activists just ignore what is happening in the real world, and the fact that a Green Party councillor was given prime letters spot in my local newspaper, the Eastern Daily Press, to promote his fantasy low carbon solution to the economic crisis suggests that the media are also on another planet. His outburst prompted someone with rather more expertise to comment: “I suggest an urgent programme of building proper power stations instead of ‘white elephants surrounded by dead birds and bats’ known as wind farms … and use more of the £50 billion raised from motorists each year in order to construct more motorways / roads in order to bring the UK’s inadequate road network up to EU standards.”

My twopennyworth would be to urge parties who profess an interest in green issues to do something about our current environment and employ people to rid the country of unsightly litter. Living in a rubbish tip hardly promotes a healthy view of life.

At the end of this month a workshop is being held for Norfolk councillors before the launch of the county’s new Climate Change Strategy. It would be nice to think that they might get an evenhanded briefing on the views of different scientists, but this hardly seems likely. There will be discussion on how local councils are going to meet targets for reducing carbon dioxide, but none, apparently, on whether this is necessary, or would have any effect. Councillors, of course, have no special expertise. They rely on what people tell them, and who yells loudest. Depressing.

Private transport is another area where reality and fantasy mingle, often with a helpful stir from climate activists. When I suggested on this site that the number of accidents caused by speeding was much less than government figures suggested, I was taken to task by road safety expert Keith Peat, who maintains that no accidents at all are caused by speeding. Could this be true?

“No accident can be caused simply by exceeding a number on a pole,” he says. “It is against the laws of physics.”

True enough, I hear you whisper amid the howls of outrage. But surely driving too fast is dangerous? The operative word, of course is “too”. Fast is fine; too fast is, well, too fast and therefore dangerous. How do we work out what is too fast?

Hey, let’s not bother. Let’s impose irrationally low limits and use cameras to penalise people who exceed them. Better still, let’s use the latest technology to introduce speed adaptors in cars. Makes sense, doesn’t it?

No, of course it doesn’t. People will simply assume that they can drive as fast as the adaptor will let them, regardless of the road conditions. And when a brief burst of acceleration would avoid danger, they won’t be able to do it. Yet again, those who exercise a skill are being targeted by those with no skill at all. And those with no expertise are not above giving a deliberately false picture to back up their feeble case.

They claim that injury accidents could be reduced by 29% by fitting cars with the adaptors. But this is a figure spun from two entirely different “contributory factors” for fatal accidents derived from what is already subjective police “box ticking”: 12% for “exceeding the speed limit”, and 17% for “excessive speed for the conditions, under the posted limit”. As the much-maligned Association of British Drivers points out: “Clearly ISA (intelligent speed adaptation) cannot control inappropriate speed under the posted limit, and the 29% claim is therefore demonstrably bogus.”

But does it matter, if it slows people down? It depends on what kind of country you want to live in, whether the truth really matters and whether slow = good. There is no reason it should, after all. Mr Peat asks: “What do we know of the economic casualties caused by curtailing, slowing, hampering and limiting a major part of our infrastructure? The road safety industry has every reason to ignore this matter, but the question must be, have we already gone too far? Should we be looking at raising limits? Thousands of prosecutions tend to prove that the limits are too low, do they not? Certainly before limiters are even considered we should  ensure that the limits are economical and appropriate.”

He points out: “There is no instrument that better than the human brain at assessing every aspect in a constantly changing scenario, and this is not confined to assessing speed limits only.”

But apparently the human brain can no longer be trusted. Thinking is frowned upon, if it does not confirm received wisdom – wisdom that coincidentally allows certain people to make a great deal of money, and others to ensure that they climb the political ladder, with expenses to match.