In exasperation at a miserable Question Time - written 27/11/09

What an absolutely dismal night of general ignorance and stupidity. One might hope that Question Time, being the flagship political programme that it is, would be stocked with reasonably intelligent, well read, and capable individuals, instead we got Melanie Phillips.

This is the woman who still harbours suspicions that Obama might be a Muslim (God forbid!), called Civil Partnerships for homosexuals 'toxic', argued that while 'individual Palestinians may deserve compassion, their cause amounts to Holocaust denial as a national project', advocates the teaching of creationism alongside evolution, and compared environmentalists to Nazis. Nice. Thanks BBC. And she hasn't even got the excuse of receiving a million votes in a European election...

So after the show had stumbled through a prolonged period of naive contributions concerning the war in Iraq, during which the only point anyone (with the exception of Melanie Phillips - something good at last!) managed to make, involved the sentence 'but he didn't have any WMD' - as if that was the crux of the matter - it moved onto a section concerning climate change, prompted I think (memory lapse) by the 'news' that some emails between climate scientists at UEA had been hacked into and distributed, and they appeared to cast doubt on climate change research (more on this later). So off Mel went, 'climate change is a fallacy'; 'the amount of ice is actually increasing rather than decreasing'. The mind can only boggle at which particular item of junk science or dodgy report she had gleaned her worthless information from, but just to demonstrate how easy it is for a statistic drawn from thin air, run through a couple of typos, and spat out by the likes of a Daily Mail columnist can become a solid piece of evidence against the extent of climate change, this is well worth having a look at - http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/05/10/junk-science/

All I can say is thank fuck for Marcus Brigstocke, who made a robust defence for the devastating impacts of climate change, only to receive a smug shake of the head from Mel. The debate, sadly, only continued to go downhill. The next contribution came from a well-meaning but woolly-between-the-ears lady, who was aghast at Mel's denial of climate change, when so many had suffered in recent days in 'the Cocklemouth floods'. Here's an article explaining why the floods happened - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8376031.stm. As you can see, they were caused by a number of intertwining and complex factors, and 'the only aspect of the downpour which climate change may have contributed to...[was that] sea temperatures in [the] source region were some 2°C to 3°C above the November average, enhancing the potential absorption of moisture by the airstream.' While the article clearly doesn't dismiss the role of climate change in these abject weather conditions, it is quite clear in its explanations that this was a freak event, caused by a number of highly unusual factors. Bringing up such a negligible event (in the sense of climate change only having a minimal impact) during a serious discussion on climate change is pretty unhelpful, leaving the 'climate change camp' open to legitimate criticism, and potentially undermining the argument. Of course it was further dwelled on by Nicola Sturgeon MP (from whom as an MP you might have expected a little more knowledge), who described it as an excellent reason to do something about climate change.

Then it was David Davis' turn to say something stupid. He said he was '80%' sure global warming was man-made. Fair enough. Then he said that it was important not to be wrong though. Fair enough. We need to be certain. Yeh. Because if we're wrong we will slow down growth. Ye...what? I mean yes, we will slow down growth, and sorry why is that a negative? Davis did that horribly condescending thing (which always seems to go unnoticed), of sweeping away the cultural importance of entire continents in one swift phrase. He declared that by slowing down growth it will be the poorest people in the world who suffer, as if somehow they all definitely want, nay need, to be like us, all suited and booted, driving around in their flash cars, chained to the joys of capitalism. 'The Way' is the West. This is what it's all about, he seemed to say. Growth. Yeh. We all seem really contented.

There was then an inane comment from a woman quite clearly employed by the airline industry, bemoaning the recent tax hikes on aviation fuels. Her argument went something like this: 'yeh, them boats use loads of fuel and that, they're not getting no tax, why don't you give us a break, and tax them instead'. I think this point speaks for itself.

So after a brief rummage around the issue of Scottish independence, which as ever managed to blather on about how hard done by Scotland is, tied as it is to its low-lying, trouser-wearing neighbours, while simultaneously (and rather miraculously) managing to avoid the West Lothian Question, it was all over.

Bed time I thought, oh but here's 'This Week', i'll just have a quick watch...and up came the issue of climate change. Diana Abbot brought up the Cumbrian floods again - for fuck sake. And then Michael Portillo proved himself to be an absolute tosser. He started yacking on about how climate change is all a bit over-hyped and doubtful. Said he'd read an article by Nigel Lawson which made him doubt it all (it wasn't by Nigel Lawson, but it did feature him heavily and it's here - http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article3778985.ece). How Portillo managed to garner anything positive from the article, i'm not quite sure, but there you go. This is Nigel Lawson, who called his daughter Nigella Lawson. I mean really. Perhaps worse than that (perhaps), he was the man responsible for deregulating the banks when he was Margaret Thatcher's chancellor, so you can blame him for the mess we're in. Anyway read the article for yourself. It's most amusing.

Portillo then went on to not only prove himself an idiot, but to actually commit libel. He declared his doubt had been shown to be justified by the recent evidence that scientists at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit had been 'doctoring the data' (quote unquote) on climate change. This was the 'story' we touched on earlier. Some hackers broke into a UEA server and stole a large amount of data and private emails from the Climate Research Unit - here's the story http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/20/climate-sceptics-hackers-leaked-emails. The emails were then circulated on the internet, and cherry picked for incriminating statements to show that climate change is a hoax. Nigel has of course called for an inquiry into these claims of manipulation! Anyway, here is an explanation of what actually happened and what the emails were about - http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/. And I hope Portillo gets his fucking arse sued off by those scientists for his ill-informed accusation of bad practice.

What hope is there for man's progress towards sustainability when the politicians in charge and the journalists giving us our news are so hideously miss-informed? For me it's not really about climate change or global warming, it's about sustainability and 'treading lightly'. I don't believe we should leach off the world's resources. We should make as little impact as possible, and if global warming slows down as a result of that then jolly good. Perhaps it won't, perhaps it's just a natural and unavoidable cycle. The Earth will certainly cool down or warm up one day, whether man were here or not. But all the evidence points towards this particular warming being down to man's actions. The sooner we lose our arrogance and realise that it is not 'our' world, it is 'the' world and we must try and be as one with it as much as possible, the better. And the sooner people like Mel, Nigel, and Portillo shut their fucking pie-holes, then also the better.