David King at the ECC

Sir David King, the chemist and former GCSA who now advises William Hague on climate change is to appear before the Energy and Climate Change Committee at around 9:45.

The direct link to the meeting is here, for those who want to try different players. I have emailed the committee about their continuing use of Silverlight, and they tell me they are going to discuss the point in future.

Comments

[Phillip Bratby]

A quick glimpse at what Wikipedia says about him, his associates, his quotes and how he has wasted £billions of public money gives you all the information you need to know what sort of impartial alarmist advice he will give to Hague on climate change.

[jones]

He has just made a connection between the recent Somerset floods and climate change?

It was POLICY decisions that led to the flooding. The EU being firmly in the frame.

[Steve Jones]

Managed to stomach 5 minutes of his waffle. An earnest discussion about tackling a problem that doesn't exist through carbon tax, cap and trade and, surprise surprise, more regulation. He mentions a slowly-slowly approach to exploiting shale gas and then says it won't make an economic contribution in the short term!

[Fenbeagle]

Is it me?...I don't believe a word he is saying.

[Fred Sage]

Was that Tim Yeo Chairman: I thought he was banged-up - He should be.

[Anthony Ratliffe]

King demonstrates the most astonishing ignorance when he claims that hurricane Sandy was the most intense to hit "so far north" in North America. This is flatly untrue, and he should be asked to retract the statement. Given he is so wrong about a simple thing I happen to know about "first hand", what else is he wrong about?

Tony.

[John Shade]

I found watching this video to be a dismal and arid experience. Here was a slick operator at work, with a good stock of catchphrases to hand and an opportunity to deploy them almost without challenge. I couldn’t help but think of him as a well-spoken taxi-driver of the Private Eye stereotype, one who has just happened to have had a lot of green activists ‘in the back of his cab’, and who can spot a good opportunity when he sees one.

There is, I suppose, a huge appeal for such people in having a simple idea upon which they can build their castles in the air. The term ‘greenhouse effect’ is a bonus, since so many of us have been inside greenhouses when they were unpleasantly hot. The link to industrial progress is another, since by being critical of it they can hope to be on the side of the presumed mass popular support associated with environmentalism. In essence, they can address very important political and economic issues from their CO2-inflated pedestal, and have a sense of widespread potential or actual support. The weakness of the case against CO2 will one day deflate that pedestal, but my goodness, in the meantime what a platform it provides for the ambitious. I guess we have yet to see peak-harm from their influence.

Tim Yeo, another self-important chap standing on the same inflated pedestal, helps his comrade-in-arms along by handing him so much uninterrupted time for his low-grade ramblings. The mutual reinforcement they provide for each other is almost palpable in this clip. They are riding the C-wave (the C in CAGW) even as some of its bulwarks such as, it would seem from Richard Betts’ remarks on this blog, the UK Met Office, are distancing themselves from it.

King, though, is not invulnerable. The salesman’s nightmare is to be publicly put on the spot by someone more knowledgeable than they are on some key topic upon which they have just opined, in an event attended by many people who might have an influence on those from whom they seek advantage. This seems to have happened to King in Moscow. A Delingpole article has the essence of it:

According to Christopher Booker's The Real Global Warming Disaster, Sir David was horrified to find so many sceptical scientists at the conference and tried, unsuccessfully to have them censored. The final straw came during a speech by Professor Paul Reiter, one of the first IPCC contributors to point up the flaws in the IPCC process: the 2001 report had utterly misrepresented his expert views on insect-borne diseases in order to make it seem as if the incidence of malaria would increase with "global warming."
As Booker recounts:
"When King himself then put forward the now familiar claim that global warming was responsible for the melting of the ice on summit of Kilimanjaro, Reiter challenged him by referring to various studies showing that the melting had been taking place since the 1880s. It was due not to global warming, these had concluded, but to deforestation causing a sharp drop in local precipitation. Apparently unable to answer Reiter's point, King broke off in mid-sentence and led his delegation out of the room."
Illarianov was appalled by the behaviour of Sir David and his delegation, he wrote afterwards:
"It is not for us to give an assessment to what happened but in our opinion the reputation of British science, the reputation of the British government and the reputation of the title "Sir" has sustained heavy damage."

One day, or so I like to think, Illarianov's remarks will apply a fortiori to what led to the Climate Change Act, and the unfolding of the schemes of those who seek to gain advantage of it. I still cling to the hope that the Energy and Climate Change Committee will yet contribute in a big way to exposing the damage that this foolish act has wrought, both in the passing of it, and downstream. Peter Lilley’s questions and comments were very good, but they flowed like water off a duck's back over Sir David and his phrases. Is there someone out there with the time to get his words, line by line, and critically review them? I think it would be informative.

[Pharos]

Yeo Hague and King - The Holy Trinity of smug, arrogant pomposity.

[Paul in Sweden]

I listened to them talk, I watched the video but all I could see is a bunch of idiots trying to pound square pegs into round holes. They have a predetermined conclusion, facts do not matter. On the positive side they are trying to minimize the financial damage they realize they have caused.

[fenbeagleblog]

Why has someone been using 'match pots' on the back wall. Can't they decide what colour to paint it?...I'll go for the cream.

[Messenger]

I bet they paid several thousand pounds of our money for that matchpot painting. FOI, anyone?

[mariwarcwm]

I couldn't watch more than three minutes of the pompous clown. How very depressing. How long does it take for the tide to turn on this lunacy?