It's the weather, stupid

While AGW (anthropogenic global warming) advocates like to point out that extended cold weather episodes (like those afflicting huge chunks of the globe) are just weather and not climate, there's also no shortage of them seizing every severe weather episode as evidence of global warming (or climate chaos as some of them prefer to refer to it). This was the case in the UK with last summer's severe floods. Warmists were happy to pin the blame on CO2-induced climate change.

Of course the research suggests that this isn't the case. As reported by the BBC: The UK's summer floods of 2007 were a freak event unrelated to global climate change, according to a report from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH).

How many people will take notice of this? In the same way that the European heatwave in 1998 is now known not to have been due to global warming but a consequence of the la Nina event that year, it's still firmly embedded in the popular consciousness as being caused by CO2. It's a regretable part of human nature that we remember the initial accusation and not the subsequent 'not guilty' finding. Of course that plays well for climate alarmists everywhere...

Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change

Not that you would have seen much mention of this in our UK media... Unlike the fuss made about warmist conference and declarations.

Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change

"Global warming" is not a global crisis

We, the scientists and researchers in climate and related fields, economists, policymakers, and business leaders, assembled at Times Square, New York City, participating in the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change,

Resolving that scientific questions should be evaluated solely by the scientific method;

Affirming that global climate has always changed and always will, independent of the actions of humans, and that carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant but rather a necessity for all life;

Recognising that the causes and extent of recently observed climatic change are the subject of intense debates in the climate science community and that oft-repeated assertions of a supposed 'consensus' among climate experts are false;

Affirming that attempts by governments to legislate costly regulations on industry and individual citizens to encourage CO2 emission reduction will slow development while having no appreciable impact on the future trajectory of global climate change. Such policies will markedly diminish future prosperity and so reduce the ability of societies to adapt to inevitable climate change, thereby increasing, not decreasing, human suffering;

Noting that warmer weather is generally less harmful to life on Earth than colder:

Hereby declare:

That current plans to restrict anthropogenic CO2 emissions are a dangerous misallocation of intellectual capital and resources that should be dedicated to solving humanity's real and serious problems.

That there is no convincing evidence that CO2 emissions from modern industrial activity has in the past, is now, or will in the future cause catastrophic climate change.

That attempts by governments to inflict taxes and costly regulations on industry and individual citizens with the aim of reducing emissions of CO2 will pointlessly curtail the prosperity of the West and progress of developing nations without affecting climate.

That adaptation as needed is massively more cost-effective than any attempted mitigation and that a focus on such mitigation will divert the attention and resources of governments away from addressing the real problems of their peoples.

That human-caused climate change is not a global crisis.

Now, therefore, we recommend --

That world leaders reject the views expressed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as popular, but misguided works such as "An Inconvenient Truth."

That all taxes, regulations, and other interventions intended to reduce emissions of CO2 be abandoned forthwith.

Agreed at New York, 4 March 2008