Author Archives: Tim Lenton

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• a Christian care home on the south coast had thousands of pounds worth of funding withdrawn by its local council because it wouldn’t wouldn’t ask its elderly residents about their sexual orientation every three months;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.

According to last weekend’s papers, this is the coldest start to a UK winter for more than 30 years. Of course this is no indication that the global warming crew are in any way mistaken. If, on the other hand, it were the mildest start to a winter for 30 years, it would be clear evidence that warming is continuing apace, and probably getting worse.

So what hope of getting the climate change facts coolly examined in an independent sort of way? Not much, in this country. The Government surrounds itself with advisers who are all of the same persuasion, whether they have any actual expertise or not. So, sadly, do the other political parties; so you can’t vote against global warming. Political strategies are so strongly linked to it that they would be difficult to unravel. The media, with a few honourable exceptions, don’t question it. Any number of businesses have reduced carbon footprint as part of their mission statement, and they are doing very well, thank you.

The whole policy approach to transport, a major issue in the UK, is bound up with the assumption that carbon dioxide causes global warming and threatens our very existence. (It handily disregards the fact that even if that were true, taking every car in Britain off the road would make no difference.) The influential magazine Local Transport Today is extremely revealing of this head-in-the-sand attitude. Recent headlines have included ‘Use motor taxes to subsidise public transport and cut CO2’; Speed limits and smarter choices – the route to lower CO2 emissions?; A dislike of cars motivates some people’s climate campaigning; Lighter, less powerful cars could be key to a low carbon transport system; and, critically, CO2 reductions must be core to all transport packages, says DfT.

So people who should be working out the best way to organise transport in the UK are spending all their time worrying about something that may not be true and, if it were, should be disregarded because we can have no effect on it – certainly as far as transport is concerned. It hardly fills you with respect for the Government – a commodity that is in short supply in these credit crunch days.

This misconceived obsession with carbon dioxide can affect the whole area of road safety. Environmentalists have recently tried too insist on legislation to introduce tyres that reduce noise and CO2 emissions – although they would also reduce safety. And I am informed by an influential motoring journalist that unofficial police figures indicate that over 70% of serious injury and fatal accidents involve tyre failures in one way or another.

The same people who would like us to use such tyres are often behind the spread of road humps and speed cameras. In the last ten years traffic police in England and Wales have fallen by 1500, largely because of an increased reliance on speed cameras – despite the fact that exceeding the speed limit is responsible for only a very small percentage of road accidents. AA experts recently said the trend of replacing police by cameras should be reversed “to make our roads safer” – and occasionally a council will work up the courage to think for itself and take a wider, more balanced view. Swindon Borough Council is the most recent to take such a step by quitting the local camera partnership because “it skews road safety too heavily towards tackling speeding”. Walsall is also reviewing its speed cameras with a view to removing “unnecessary” ones.

In Manchester the electorate saw through a Government plan to introduce road charging for reasons linked to climate change and roundly rejected it. Nevertheless, the Government is pressing ahead with technology trials for national road pricing – a cynical move which brought a breath of fresh air from the Tory side. Transport spokesman Theresa Villiers said: “It’s crazy for Labour to be spending millions of taxpayers’ money on trial for local road pricing schemes. They should scrap the trials now.” In Birmingham the number of people entering the city centre by car in the morning peak has fallen by 32% since 1995, so why should road charges be necessary?

Meanwhile a Norwich Green Party councillor advised us to vote for his party because “it’s the one party that takes sustainable transport policy seriously…the party that cares about the Earth and our place on it”. Such self-righteous arrogance, apparently, is what makes the world go round nowadays.

One journalist who can be relied upon not to follow the party line on climate change is Christopher Booker. He points out that the organisation run by Dr James Hansen, Al Gore’s chief scientific ally, recently announced that October 2008 was one of the hottest on record. This absurd finding was eventually found to be caused by the fact that certain temperature records allocated to October were in fact for September. A spokesman for the organisation explained that it “did not have the resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with”. Like Booker, I find this an astonishing admission. The implications – and more surprising facts – can be found by clicking here.

Some people, of course, accuse Booker of “bias” and “logical fallacies”. If you are not sure, try the Scientific Alliance for a measured view of the climate change debate. It warns of the danger of eco-fundamentalism and acknowledges the difficulty of moving from an entrenched position. It also warns that “if, as is very likely, the hell and damnation messages of climate change – the ‘slow cooking’ of the Earth, the swamping of Pacific island states by rapidly rising sea level, the ‘runaway’ and ‘irreversible’ warming as tipping points are passed – are found to be gross and irresponsible exaggeration, then public opinion will rapidly turn against the messengers”.

Father Christmas fears

While on the subject of absurdity, I see that certain teachers are refusing to tell pupils about Father Christmas because of “fears that they could offend people from other faiths”. Other faiths? Is Father Christmas a faith now? Or do they think Father Christmas was born in a manger and greeted by shepherds, only to be crucified and rise again on the third day?

In the circumstances, not telling pupils about him may be a good idea. Why not give them a practical task, like trying to find Christmas stamps with a religious theme? After failing elsewhere, I tried the main post office in Norwich a few days ago, only to be told that they had run out – although lots of people had been asking for them. Next step, I guess, is for the Post Office to issue statistics that far more people used pantomime stamps than religious ones. And so the secularisation of England continues.

The election of Barack Obama as the next President of the United States is something I welcome because it gives an opportunity to see if basic change is possible in the policies of the United States – if, in particular, issues of poverty can be realistically tackled. He will find many obstacles barring his way, but I wish him the very best.

Climate change played little part in the election, because neither Obama nor McCain was prepared to challenge the consensus that human-produced carbon dioxide is to blame. It would be political suicide to do so in an atmosphere where the media has swallowed the whole mea culpa scenario – and, to be fair, I have no reason to believe that either candidate disbelieves it.

So nothing is likely to change in that area, and no doubt Mr Obama will surround himself with the usual suspects as advisers and therefore not hear any other views. I will continue to make observations that cast doubt on the reality of human-generated climate change because I believe it important to be aware that the thing is not settled.

Surprisingly, my local UK paper, the Norwich-based Eastern Daily Press, has held up its hands and admitted that it is to blame. Its front page at the end of last month contained a huge picture of the world and read: “The proof – it’s our fault”. While the EDP is to blame for many things – not giving the full picture on climate change, for instance – it probably isn’t to blame for climate change itself, or even for the creation of the world.

The accompanying story reveals that the writer does not know the difference between evidence and proof and is in fact taking a rather gullible view of a paper in Nature Geoscience about polar warming. The paper suggested “for the first time” that there was a discernible human influence on both Arctic and Antarctic, but this is based on climate models that “don’t have the variability that nature provides”, according to atmospheric scientist John Christy. Climate models, basically, can’t prove anything.

The report looked mainly at the Antarctic peninsula, which accounts for about two per cent of the continent, whereas most of Antarctica is cooling. And just 1,000 years ago the Arctic was warmer than today – with no greenhouse gas contribution. A further article in Science magazine points to wind-induced circulation changes in the ocean as the dominant cause of recent ice losses from glaciers draining both the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. Little of this kind of thing reaches the popular media.

Nor does the recent record of the Met Office, which likes to promote human-induced climate change. Association of British Drivers environment expert Paul Biggs points out that on 4 January 2007 the Met Office predicted: “This is likely to be the warmest year on record globally, beating the current record set in 1998.” On 11 April they got even more enthusiastic: “There is a high probability that summer temperatures will exceed the 1971-2000 long-term average.” The Guardian joined in: “Britain set to enjoy another sizzling summer.”

On 31 August the Met Office announced that summer 2007 was the wettest on record, with “normal temperatures”.

On 3 April 2008, the Met Office had another shot: “Summer temperatures across the UK are likely to be warmer than average, and rainfall near or above average.” The summer of 2008, as most of us will remember, was one of the wettest and most miserable on record.

The Met Office predicts a 0.3C rise in temperatures by 2014, despite recent cooling, but what about those sunspots? Or rather, the lack of them? For more than 200 days this year the sun has shown no sunspots at all – unique in the last half century. Since a low number of sunspots is believed by many climatologists to lead to cooling of the earth, where does this leave us?

A recent scientific paper says: “Future behaviour cannot easily be predicted – even in the short term. Recent activity has been abnormally high for at least eight (11-year) cycles.” Such activity is often followed by a minimum solar activity, so it might reasonably argued that we are due for a cooling influence from the sun.

Elsewhere I read that the world is now colder than in 1940. On 29 October, the United States beat or tied 115 low-temperature records for the date. Alaska, which was unusually warm last year, recorded -31C that night, beating the previous low by more than 2C. London had snow in October for the first time in more than 70 years.

The 2007-08 temperature drop wasn’t predicted by the global climate models, but it had been predicted by the sunspots since 2000. Both the absent sunspots and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation now predict a 25-30-year global cooling.
Well, we shall see. In the meantime, we will spend huge amounts of money curbing CO2 emissions and taking other futile measures to combat change. Whatever we do, let’s not talk about the possibility that it may be pointless.

On the way back from a spectacular holiday in Switzerland, during which my wife and I enjoyed journeys in 23 trains, I was asked – among other things – to say why I had chosen that particular holiday. First on the list was “environmentally friendly”.

I refrained from ticking that box – not because I would have preferred it to be environmentally unfriendly, but because its alleged environment-friendliness wasn’t the reason I had chosen the holiday. I chose it because I like trains, and I like Switzerland.

I am afraid that in the Great Reckoning of the Green Dictatorship that may be deemed to be insufficient, just as it is not enough to go for a run nowadays: you have to be sponsored. Where we just used to have fun, now we have to demonstrate our worthiness credentials. This is a pity, because having fun is one of the things that makes us truly human. Self-righteousness isn’t. Choosing to do good is a personal matter, and it is to be heartily recommended. Forcing people to do what we personally think is good (and not obviously good, like refraining from dropping litter) leads to the Inquisition and other horrors.

And that’s where we’re heading. Already, to challenge the global warming hegemony is to risk being categorised as unfeeling, selfish, uncaring and a bad citizen. The BBC has just broadcast three programmes – The Climate Wars – with just this assumption behind them: that ignoring climate change is irresponsible, because we can do something about it. This despite Dr Iain Stewart, the presenter, demonstrating conclusively in the last episode that climate change is a natural phenomenon, has happened many times in the past and could strike at any moment irrespective of anything we do.

He seemed oblivious to the fact that if this was so, all our puny efforts to reduce emissions and impoverish our lifestyles would have no effect whatsoever. Our efforts need to be directed to detecting changes and deciding how to adapt to them – not futilely trying to stop them. Readers of this site will know that I am sceptical about attributing warming to carbon dioxide emissions, and why. The BBC’s latest propaganda has not changed that, but I was surprised at their continuing to advocate what has already been discredited – like the hockey-stick temperature graph – their distortion of other evidence, and their failure to mention two critical points (among others): that the world has been cooling in the last decade, and that the effects of carbon dioxide are logarithmic and not exponential – which means they will be much less than you might expect.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is often quoted as the authority on the causes of climate change, and we frequently hear that hundreds or thousands of IPCC scientists support the theory of greenhouse gas forcing, so who are we to argue? Paul Biggs puts this into perspective when he points out that “only 62 scientists reviewed chapter nine, Understanding and Attributing Climate Change. Of the comments received from the 62 reviewers of this critical chapter, almost 60 per cent of them were rejected by IPCC editors, and of the 62 expert reviewers of this chapter, 55 had serious vested interest, leaving only seven expert reviewers who appear impartial”. He adds: “Go and read it for yourself!”

No-one does, of course. I bet Oxfam didn’t, before issuing their report Forecast for Tomorrow, attacking energy giants Shell and E.ON for “threatening the lives of millions of poor around the world” by “pushing global emissions to dangerous levels”. I bet Avaaz.org didn’t either. Avaaz is an “independent global campaigning organization that works to ensure that the views and values of the world’s people inform global decision-making”, and it frequently tries to persuade its members to influence elected representatives “to stop catastrophic global warming”. Pressure from organisations and charities such as these is one reason the global warming bandwagon is so hard to stop. Why do they do it? Because it seems right, and they don’t have time – presumably – to read the fine print. Irresponsible? I couldn’t possibly comment.

The fallout from all this is seen in many areas, one of the most obvious of which is transport policies. If you believe cars are at least partly to blame for impending global catastrophe, then you are more than likely to implement anti-car policies. You are also likely to be annoyed by people who enjoy driving, especially driving quite fast. Latest figures show once again that exceeding the speed limit was a factor (just one factor, mind you) in only 6 per cent all accidents, and only 13 per cent of fatal ones. Still we devote practically all our road safety efforts to slowing people down and none at all, as far as I can see, to a sensible revision of speed limits with the aim of preventing punishment of competent drivers.

By far the biggest factor in all accidents is carelessness – or to use the police jargon, failure to look or failure to judge another person’s path or speed. This is even more true (a massive 57%) in the case of pedestrians involved in accidents, but where is the campaign to combat carelessness? The immediate response to an accident involving a pedestrian, from both residents and the media, is to demand that the traffic be slowed down. As with global warming, no-one is interested in examining the facts and figures: they do what seems right, and what makes them feel better. And then they’re surprised when it doesn’t work.

Twelve Green Party councillors in Norwich are against the dualling of the remaining single-carriageway section of the A11, a move that would increase safety and decrease pollution. Why? Presumably because it would make life easier for drivers. No doubt they are in favour of “eco-driving”, which persuades the gullible to drive dangerously slowly, frustrate their fellow-road users and feel morally superior at the same time. Eco-driving advocates also advise us not to accelerate or brake unnecessarily hard. Who would have thought of that? Sometimes, of course, it’s necessary, but you have to use judgement for that.

A correspondent tells me that near Hunworth in Norfolk there is a road sign that says Please go slowly round the bend. Too late. We already have.

Newspapers, radio and television have a growing role in the reinforcement of dubious messages. Why growing? Because in the past editorial resources were larger, enabling more detailed research into stories; and the awful hanging, ominous shadow of PR was absent.

When I became a journalist, it was more important to be accurate than to be on message. In those days, “on message” was not a phrase that carried any meaning for us. We had other problems, of course.

Nowadays, certain “on message” assumptions are encouraged, most obviously in the field of climatology. Any reporter, writing on practically any theme, will drop in remarks about global warming, rising sea levels and the danger of CO2 “pollution” without having the vaguest notion about whether they are accurate or not. They are usually not, but it doesn’t seem to matter.

It happens in other areas, too. For instance, there is an assumption in the corridors of newspaper power – and in other media – that speed is to blame for most accidents. Research has proved that this is not at all the case, but the myth persists.

My local paper, the Eastern Daily Press, carried a story this morning (September 12) about the very welcome drop in deaths and injuries on the roads. And the headline was unexceptionable: “Pricey petrol slows road death rate”. The obvious logic here is that more expensive fuel has cut down journeys, with a resultant fall in accidents.

But the first paragraph of the story takes a different, more familiar tack. The death toll fell “as drivers eased off the throttle to beat soaring fuel prices”. Road safety experts generally were apparently saying this, though we have no real evidence of it. When pushed, the manager of Norfolk County Council’s casualty reduction team would only go as far as to that “if drivers are being a bit less heavy on the accelerator this can only help”, which may or may not be the case.

The operations manager for the Norfolk Safety Camera Partnership said he had been “getting the impression that people are speeding less”, which is pretty lukewarm, considering how he makes his living. And it is not until the last five words of the article that we get to the real, obvious reason, from an RAC spokesman: “there were fewer cars on the road”.

Why do reporters get into unthinking ruts like this? Are they under pressure or is it all their own work? I don’t know, but it’s sad that it takes a reader to make the obvious point that driving too slowly is more dangerous, not less. Writing in the same edition of the same paper, a person from Aylsham calls deliberately slow drivers “stoogers”.

One stooger wrote to a national paper to say: “I maintain a resolute 45mph …if others get too close I slow down even more for the sake of their own safety and mine”. Any decent driver would know that this would have precisely the opposite effect, but that view does not penetrate to those who write road safety stories. The EDP reader has it precisely right: it is “breathtaking, arrogant self-righteousness”. But there’s a lot of that about.

Later on in the same paper is an amusing example of this obsession with slowness that infects not only the media but local politicians. We read that a blanket 20mph limit for residential roads in Norwich is being discussed. An almost irresistible idea for those in greeny power. How to get it past the electorate?

Clearly a pilot scheme. As long as accidents don’t increase during that period, it can be hailed a success, and then it can be rolled out over the city. Again the headline is accurate – “Blanket 20mph limit being considered”: at least the sub-editors are on the ball.

But what about the story? Mostly accurate and careful enough, I’m delighted to say. We learn that a public consultation is planned, which is worrying, because that usually means it’s all a fait accompli – a suspicion confirmed when we are told what the whole scheme could cost: £350,000, since you ask. Mostly on buying all those lovely street-cluttering signs, I suppose.

The proposer of the scheme is given the usual tired waffle in favour of it, and if one were to go by the article, no-one is against. This is implicitly confirmed by the last paragraph, which reads: “Norwich will become the third city in the country to have a blanket 20mph limit.” No ifs, no alternatives: it’s all decided.

Presumably that’s an editorial decision.

Famed Norfolk explorer Richard Meek (recently placed an astonishing but well-deserved sixth in a list of people having the most influence on life in Nelson’s County) has brought a moment of great significance to my attention.

According to an item in the usually reliable Eastern Daily Press, he points out, Hingham’s disused Scout Hut is to be converted into a house.

This may not strike many people as a noteworthy phenomenon, but this is no ordinary Scout Hut. It is the very hut that provoked the launch of what became known as Hingham Democracy into an unsuspecting world.

Some years ago now, in the last century, there was a dispute over whether the hut should be sold or not. It was decided to take a poll of residents and to abide by the result – as long as 300 votes were cast. The result went the wrong way, but as luck would have it, only 299 votes were cast – once it was established that the 300th was a spoiled paper (I believe it was hanging chads, or something like that). So the referendum was set aside.

So impressed were New Labour by this pioneering new form of democracy that they adopted it wholemeal, which is why today everything is put out to consultation and the result of the consultation is ignored. It is not just New Labour who have benefited, of course. Most local councils fell in line, so did the health service and so did the Post Office. I think it is safe to say that Hingham Democracy is now the generally accepted way of proceeding when you know that your policy is unpopular or just downright silly. Which, it seems, is more and more of the time.

It would be nice if converting the hut into a house might signal a return to honest and fair-dealing in politics, but research shows that this is unlikely. Prospective owners should be warned what they are getting into. Some experts, including Professor V A R Scheinlich, believe that the wormholes and time-space distortion with which the Autonomous Republic of Hingham has been afflicted over the last decade are a punishment from God for the horror that Hingham has introduced into the world, but the Rev Nick Reppscumbastwick, a radical cleric tipped to be the next Archbishop of Canterbury, has gone on record as doubting this. Norfolk legend Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago blames great crested newts, which is consistent of him.

I personally feel it is significant in this context that a coypu has been sighted on Beeston Common, according to local correspondent and walker “Badger” Crusoe, who prefers to remain anonymous.

It is known that coypu always occur at times of great social change, especially in the Beeston area. But since the only previous coypu sighting in the last few years was in the Hingham republic, time-space distortion could be at the root of it.

Len “Kissme” Hardy, a consultant and comet-chaser now working in Beijing for the Olympics commentary team, believes the coypu sighting is a publicity stunt to promote the relaunch of the outstanding Norfolk martial arts film, Crouching Badger, Hidden Coypu. He is often correct, if a little tiresome.

You’ve got to laugh, haven’t you? Al Gore’s full-of-holes science film An Inconvenient Truth wins him a Peace Prize, but Channel 4’s counter to it, The Great Global Warming Swindle, “did not fulfil obligations to be impartial”.

Well, Mr Gore is certainly not impartial, and nor are the one-sided environmental lobby who have shamelessly manipulated the media and the public into believing that human-influenced global warming is a fact.

So successful have they been that regulator Ofcom decided that people were not misled by the Channel 4 documentary because “the link between human activity and global warming … became settled before the film was broadcast”.

The science is far from settled, of course. It is becoming less and less settled, with more and more embarrassing evidence coming to light – demonstrated by Lawrence Solomon’s iconoclastic book, The Deniers. Mr Solomon, a widely respected environmentalist, started out to discredit opposition to human-influenced global warming, but found so many distinguished experts in the relevant fields challenging the prevailing orthodoxy that he was forced to change his views.

Central planks of the global warming lobby have been blown out of the water, but mysteriously no-one takes any notice.

The famous Mann hockey-stick proof of unnatural warming? Shown to be misconceived. Drowning polar bears? They can swim, and they’re multiplying. Melting Antarctic? Most of it is cooling. Hurricanes? Nothing whatsoever to do with warming air. And to cap it all, the earth is actually cooling and will be for at least another seven years – maybe more, since solar physicists say the earth has entered a 30-year period of global cooling.

All the most recent evidence is against human-influenced climate change, but the green lobby have a stranglehold that they relish, because it gives them power. They must be delighted, and a little surprised, that we still believe. We have been brainwashed, and most of us love it.

Typical of the media desire to avoid challenging the green consensus is an article in the respected Eastern Daily Press last week, on the subject of economist Sir Nicholas Stern and his report, The Economics of Climate Change. It admits there was a nasty smell at the UEA while he was there, but this turned out to be some unidentified gas – and not carbon dioxide, for a change.

Still, possibly symbolic, thought the EDP does not explore this. Instead it headlines the piece “Together we can save the planet” – manifestly untrue – and concludes: “But if Lord Stern (as he is now, so it obviously hasn’t done him any harm) can see the chance to make the difference, then surely we must too.”

Hardly objective reporting, but it’s a signed piece by the environment correspondent, so I suppose that’s all right. Presumably no obligation to be impartial here, despite Lord Stern’s report being pretty much demolished shortly after its publication by distinguished environmental economists such as Dr Richard Tol. He details a number of major failings in the report, saying that the conclusions reached are twisted and absurd. He concludes: “The Stern Review can be dismissed as alarmist and incompetent.” Very strong words from an authority on the subject, so why are they ignored by the media? For those who are interested in both sides of the argument, there is much more in Mr Solomon’s book.

I am not saying that book – or the documentary – should be taken as gospel. There are mistakes in most things. No-one’s perfect. What I object to (when I’m not laughing) is the assumption that climate change orthodoxy is gospel, and that no-one is allowed to challenge it. Which is where we seem to be.

All the usual suspects welcomed Ofcom’s decision on The Great Global Warming Swindle and, quite typically, misrepresented it. To avoid wasting space here, details can be found at Climate Audit. The more things change, the more they remain the same.

Except…except that top Russian scientists have now gone on the attack, saying: “The Kyoto theorists have put the cart before horse. It is global warming that triggers higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, not the other way round.” Ice core results have always suggested this, though the figures have been typically twisted by green activists.

Russia’s signing up to Kyoto was purely political, says Oleg Sorokhtin, of the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Ocean Studies: “The Kyoto Protocol is a huge waste of money. The Earth’s atmosphere has built in regulatory mechanisms that moderate climate changes.”
In America influential physicists are suggesting that the IPCC has ignored the key question of climate sensitivity – how much the climate is influenced by levels of carbon dioxide. Not much publicity is given to the fact that this is likely to be “harmlessly low”, since the effect is logarithmic and not cumulative.

A paper published by the American Physical Society’s Physics and Society Forum plumps for natural variability of most of the earth’s recent warming and points out: “In the past 70 years the sun was more active than at almost any other time in the past 11,400 years … Mars, Jupiter, Neptune’s largest moon and Pluto warmed at the same time as the earth.”

Climate change research scientist Dr Roy Spencer has similar views on climate sensitivity, backed up by recent evidence. His comments can be found here.

In Australia, Dr David Evans, a scientist who devoted years to measuring the country’s compliance with Kyoto, has come to the conclusion that “since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, ‘When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?’”

Well if you’re on the global warming gravy train, it seems you either keep quiet or misrepresent the evidence. And as for those, including the media, who back the establishment without knowing very much about the details, the words of pre-global warming US journalist Walter Lippmann seem appropriate: “Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.”

Following publication in the Eastern Daily Press of the “Power 100” list of the most influential business people in Norfolk, I feel compelled to give publicity to some of those who were overlooked.

I have come up with a Top Ten who would possibly not be described as business people but who nevertheless have had a huge influence on the county in recent years.

Number 10 is Ian “Sam” Aufmerksam, of the School of Penguins, Chess and Road Surfacing at the University of East Anglia. Working in an environment that has shown itself to be particularly gullible, Prof Aufmerksam has maintained a sceptical approach to bandwagons of all kinds, As a result he has received almost no funding, but his work in many different areas has been ground-breaking. His discovery of carbon footprints in a field near East Rudham was particularly significant.

Number 9 is the Rev Nick Reppscumbastwick, a radical cleric who has introduced all kinds of new ideas, such as God, to the Church of England. He is also known for organising protests of various kinds; many people are loyal to him. His plan to build a big new church next to the proposed Olympic Stadium at Reepham was turned down by the National Secular Society, but he is continuing the fight.

Number 8 is Mrs Hicks, the mayor of Little London, near Corpusty. Her attempts to twin Little London with Norfolk new town Whynge, which was uncovered by a fall in sea level and is sometimes on the coast, have proved largely unsuccessful, despite a mutual interest in road humps. Mrs Hicks has never revealed her first name.

Number 7 is Len “Kissme” Hardy, a whole food chef and comet chaser from Hindolveston, whose adventures in the empty quarter south of Bungay overshadowed his many other interests, all of which had a lasting effect on parts of the county, especially Pondhenge.

Number 6 is Richard “Volcano” Meek, perhaps the most famous of Norfolk explorers and certainly the most talented. His fearless meanderings have uncovered the live extinct small hill at Thetford and the unknown mountains of West Norfolk, among many, many other things.

Number 5 is the Wymondham Duck.

Number 4 is Dorothea Goodchild, a well-known fiancee who disappeared mysteriously and is believed to be dead or at a secret hideaway known only to Len “Kissme” Hardy.

Number 3 is a consortium of great crested newts, whose enterprise in transforming newts from endangered species into beneficiaries of special planning concessions nationwide is believed to have had a “huge” influence on the building trade. The consortium’s drive to dehumanise society has resulted in its infiltrating most forms of central and local government. Excessive paperwork and targets were two of its most far-reaching innovations. A recent triumph was the introduction of targets for traffic police, who can only achieve outstanding success by arresting people who are not doing anything wrong. This is regarded as a breakthrough in newt circles.

Number 2 is the noted scientist Prof V A R Scheinlich, whose expert analysis of the precise nature of the Autonomous Republic of Hingham, a landlocked sub-division of Norfolk, revealed the time-space distortion and wormholes that control its existence. He also publicised its pioneering form of “Scout Hut” democracy, based on inviting widespread consultation and then ignoring it. This was adopted not only by New Labour and most government organisations, but also by the Post Office and local government generally, and has had a vast influence on the lives of ordinary people.

Number 1, and a foregone conclusion in the eyes of most right-thinking people, is Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago, a Norfolk legend now well into his second century. As well as fighting hard against the incursion of great crested newts, he has also found time to invent the cutting-edge software Houseago 99, and through his company Houseago Inc has diversified so intensively that he cannot remember what exactly he is doing. Based in Erpingham, he was for many years fiance of Dorothea Goodchild and is still the nephew of Mrs Hicks. He has been linked with missing baggage from Terminal 5 and several reports that have exonerated whoever made the decision in the first place.

The debate about a 20mph speed limit for Norwich rages on through various humps, chicanes and diversions – though not too fast, of course, since that would be dangerous.

A really quite astonishing number of letters have been published by the Eastern Daily Press expressing opposition for a number of good reasons. I hope this might encourage two key Conservative county councillors, who inexplicably abstained when the decision was made, to do a bit of representation of the people and make sure the scheme is removed from the agenda.

The man behind the idea – Professor Rupert Read, a philosophy lecturer at UEA and a Green city councillor – has shifted his ground. After claiming that 20mph was the will of the people, and the proletariat should dictate (I paraphrase), he discovered that the people weren’t actually behind him and wrote to the EDP quoting hand-picked statistics and claiming 20mph was really necessary so that cycling and walking were more appealing.

I myself walk a lot and do the odd bit of cycling here and there. Slower-moving cars would certainly not make me do either activity more, especially as one of the irritations for pedestrians is waiting for crawling traffic to pass so that you can cross the road.

I’m not sure that Prof Read has ever driven a car, because he seems to be under the assumption that having a 30mph limit means you have to drive at that speed. No, professor, it’s a maximum. Drivers adjust their speed to the conditions, except idiots, who don’t take any notice of speed limits anyway.

He also seems to think – and he’s not alone in this – that a driver travelling at 30mph will hit a pedestrian at 30mph. No again: this only happens if the driver has his eyes shut or his feet are paralysed. Only an appalling driver would totally fail to anticipate a potentially dangerous situation. Even if a child runs into the road completely unexpectedly, a driver will have at least some time to brake or swerve. A well-taught or experienced driver would anticipate the possibility in advance and reduce speed anyway.

It seems clear that Prof Read advocates 20mph because of his blinkered Green agenda. He does not question man-made climate change at all, despite his lack of qualifications in that area, and uses that belief to fuel such schemes as this. In fact, of course, going at 20mph instead of 30mph will have no impact on climate whatsoever, even if you accept the unproved notion that people are to blame for warming the planet.

That idea is promoted widely at the University of East Anglia and must be hard to resist if you work there. In the words of the EDP’s environment correspondent, East Anglia is “the heart of climate change research”, and it is essential to keep it beating. Recently the Building Research Establishment opened a branch at the UEA, joining “other pioneering organisations, including the CRed carbon reduction campaign, the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and Carbon Connections”.

Clearly any radical reassessment of the causes and effects of climate change would have dramatic repercussions on jobs and funding at the UEA. Still, no worries yet. BRE’s associate director of manufacturing said part of the reason for the move was to “take advantage of the students from the school of environmental sciences”. Well, quite.

Elsewhere some churchmen are showing signs of trying to assimilate the new religion of climate change into Christianity. The Bishop of Stafford has been labelled a “modern-day demonologist” (whatever that means) for linking scepticism about today’s received wisdom on the climate with the crime of child abuse.

Not sure what the Bishop was thinking about in making that bizarre link, but not all bishops are on the bandwagon. The Bishop of Chester who, unlike Stafford, is a scientist, made a measured speech in the Lords in which he said: “Climate science is a notoriously imprecise and poorly understood area … The history of science is littered with scientific consensuses that have come to be overturned one way or another.”

Needless to say he came under immediate attack from the usual suspects, led by knee-jerk specialists Friends of the Earth.

Still confused about Christianity? Chinavasion, a Chinese electronics wholesaler, has recently launched an MP3 player just for you. It’s shaped like a crucifix and comes preloaded with the King James version of the Bible. According to the Cross MP3 Player website, it is “making a fashion statement” and, at the time of writing, “unavailable”.

It certainly takes confusion to a whole new level.