So that just about wraps it up for global warming

[alitalf]

I watched "The Great Global Warming Swindle" a couple of days ago. It increased my knowledge of some of the reasons I had already had doubts about the theory that human activity was causing any significant fraction of the climate change that is happening, as well as adding other reasons not to be a true believer.

Global warming caused by human activity seems to have many aspects including; a misunderstanding, a scam, an excuse to increase taxes, and a cult or a religion.

Comments

[emperor]

Are you aware of the pedigree of the chap who made that film? He previously made a set of anti-global-warming films, about which the regulator upheld complaints that he deliberately distorted what interviewees said such that they appeared to support his thesis when in fact they opposed it. Furthermore, he appears to have done so again in making this film.

Ben Goldacre, who does the excellent Bad Science column in the Guardian, has written a couple of columns on the program, which you can find online here and here. Now, climatology is far from my specialty, but Dr Goldacre's commentry on science done in areas of my expertise in the past has always been very good, so I'd be inclined to give his comments considerable weight.

The Royal Society, not known for jumping on bandwagons, has a page on the issue, too.

The IPCC's latest summary for policymakers summarised a lot of the evidence on climate change into a short report.

[stephdairy.livejournal.com]

That programme was based in large part on ideas in a paper which were later refuted by the paper's own authors.

Lots of people where I work (Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge) are bubbling with fury at the bad science in that programme and at its potential to mislead members of the public. I see their point...

(S) (pointed here by emperor)

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

Even if this chap is correct, which I very much doubt (from the comments above and my own knowledge on the subject) why shouldn't we as human beings try to make a difference?

The global warming issues aside, and taking just one element as an example, do we (that is everybody) enjoy living in an environment which is polluted by vehicles that use far more fuel than they need? I think the answer to that one is "No". Wouldn't it be a good idea, from a health perspective if nothing else, if we could reduce the number of those types of vehicles? I think that answer to that is "Yes". And an effective way of doing it is to put up the tax on those types of vehicles. An even better way is to outlaw then altogher, but I think you (and many other people) would like that even less than raised taxes on them.

Disclaimer: I haven't seen the programme, but I've met up with similar sorts of theories on the subject.

[alitalf.livejournal.com]

After spending as long as I had available looking at the sources you cite, I have to say I am shocked and surprised that the programme appears to have faked one of the graphs used to make the case.

I haven't found anthing showing fakery in the other material so obviously, but it does throw doubt on the accuracy of other information put forward.

OTOH I had been sceptical about some of the claims about human effects on climate previously, though my best guess was that the actual effect of man was less than widely claimed, not that it was completely insignificant.

[alitalf.livejournal.com]

Well, the story does seem to change according to what the government can use to try to justify higher taxes. Though the programme appears to have been far from accurate in one important respect, and by extension perhaps not to be relied on too much elsewhere, I also don't trust the pressure groups that push for extreme measures.

Since you raise the subject of cars, charging a different amount of road tax according to how much CO2 they emit per mile is nearly equivalent to adding a tiny bit more on the fuel tax - except that the former requires a bureaucracy, costs a lot to run, and there are more snouts in the trough. If you remember, the Labour gov in the 1970s was going to abolish the road tax and add the equivalent amount on to fuel tax, because it was more difficult to evade. They did increase fuel tax more and didn't actually increase road tax for at least one year, maybe two.

Then the Conservative gov said they weren't going to abolish the road tax, and that it had to be increased because it cost £50 per car per year to collect, and the tax was not enough higher than the costs. I doubt it is that cheap to collect now, particularly with added complexity.

I don't have the knowledge or time to form an opinion on human action causing more or less climate change that I would actually trust, if anything serious depended on it, but I trust some of the environmental pressure groups much less than that. If it is possible I trust the government less than all but the most extreme pressure groups.

[didiusjulianus.livejournal.com]

I do largely agree, but the current problem with the ideas for putting up taxes on larger/less economical vehicles is that it tends to penalise those who a. use them for sensible reasons at least some of the time, such as those living in rural areas who need them for their work, or to get to their homes in the winter, and who can't always afford to have a second smaller vehicle for the rest of the time, and b. those who have more people to tranport regularly, such as carers of children and elderly relatives, rather than penalising those who have them as status symbols largely tranporting one person on congested city roads, who will often continue to do so, because they can afford to.

It's also true that drivers of smaller more economical cars (and their passengers, even more importantly) statistically come off much worse in car accidents, so unless we can prevent all larger cars being on the road (not to mention vans and lorries) I shall be sticking with relatively large cars if I can afford to buy and run them, in order to protect the occupants who are my reponsibility.

[alitalf.livejournal.com]

A thought occurs to me on pollution emitted by cars. The gov almost certainly intends to tax on theoretical CO2 emission per mile, but it may be that pollution doesn't match that. If they tested a good many representative samples of cars and measured unburnt hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, oxides of nitrogen and so on, that might not even nearly match fuel consumption.

For example, burn hotter to improve Carnot efficiency, and the result is to oxidise more nitrogen. Add a catalytic converter, and make the engine provide it with sufficient heat to work in UK winter, and 3% to 10%, (according to who you believe) more fuel is burnt.

Of course some of this is tested on the MOT, so cannot be worse than whatever figure is specified at least once a year. Still, if all the carbon tax aspect of things was on fuel - after all, there must be an exact correlation between fuel burned and CO2 emitted - and graduated road tax on pollution - that could be justified as an attempt to improve air quality, and it might even do some good in the long term.

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

Your last statement is rather wide sweaping and I would suggest not particularly accurate.

To take the Renault rage as a sample (for no other reason than I know some of the safety results) the Clio is a small car and the current model is very safe (scoring the maximum of five stars on the European safety tests). In contrast I understand that the older model of the seven-seat Vauxhal Zaffia MPV (around 2001) was very poor on rear-end safety: the passengers in the rear two seats were liable to serious injury if the vehicle was hit from behind.

It is probably more accurate to say that the more modern the car the safer it is, than to say that small cars are less safe than large cars.

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

The problem with any tax system is that it can be simple or it can be fair, but it can't be both.

To be simple every road user pays a similar amount of road tax. To be fair everybody pays by the mile travelled. Personally, I'd prefer the fair system, because I'd make sure that I would not get excessivly hit by the higher rates.

There are good reasons why, as you say, that, for example, people in rural areas may need to drive large (and less efficient) vehicles. This is why I favour the fair system. These people shouldn't be peanalised by being, for another example, a thatcher who needs to transport tools and ladders and staw around rural areas: things like those don't easily go in a small van and an SUV is probably the best vehicle for the job. People who run stables tend to have a genuine reason for using Range Rovers and the like.

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

I think the story changes because nobody really knows what the detail of the truth actually is. Also it is reported by the media; the media, as you well know, (a) don't understand things and (b) change the emphasis on things to produce a story that will sell papers or what have you.

The fact that governments use the change of governing party as way of justifying raising taxes has absolutely nothing to do with global warming. That is simply just a red herring.

As far as I'm concerned the tax on all but the most efficient vehicles should be raised by a very high amount. And the money raised should be put towards incentives for people to get energy efficient things (heating, transport, etc.), proper insulation, public transport infrastructure, reducing waste (including litter), etc.

People who can justify their need for things like SUVs (see my second comment to didiusjulianus) should be able to claim for a tax refund, or something similar. However, I can see this as potentially being open to abuse.

[alitalf.livejournal.com]

My main point is that I don't think it a good idea to collect one tax that is NEVER going to be abolished and that is cheap to collect, then supplement it with a tax that is very expensive to collect that is approximately equivalent in incentive terms.

A tax on inefficiency and therefore on carbon dioxide can be handled by taxing fuel purchased, and road tax appears to me as a way to employ more civil servants for little or no good purpose. The more complex the tax rules, the more bureaucrats in all likelihood.

I can't agree with your idea of charging a very high road tax on all but the most economical cars for many reasons. The most obvious is that scrapping and making cars has an environmental impact, and it is pointless to make an incentive for a low mileage driver to scrap a working car and buy a new one to save tax. That won't help the environment.

A tax on fuel does give an incentive to burn less, however you achieve that end. Only a small proportion of the tax collected is needed to pay for the collection, and the cost does not change if the exact rate alters.

As for the concept of giving people a refund if they can show they need the less efficient vehicle - that would be a bureaucratic nightmare at best and another corrupt system more probably. Oh yes, and it would waste a lot of the extra tax collected. [sigh] To my mind a tax on actual fuel purchased, not the amount that would theoretically used if you drove an average mileage at a specified speed in specified road conditions etc, is about as fair as you can get in the real world, and simple enough not to cost too much to run.

[the-marquis.livejournal.com]

The Independent have been banging on about the general badness (?) of that programme since it aired and in fact one of the talking head scientists on it has objected to the programme in the Indie, and is talking to regulators apparently, claiming that he was misrepresented and lied to about the editorial direction of the programme. Various bits of the graphs and science the programme used have been shown to have been manipulated and even based on inaccurate, and since superseded, research. C4 have stated in the Indie that all is well and that it provokes debate yadda, yadda.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

It also appears as thrugh the "scientist" behind the programme has engaged in some, erm, unscientific debate with some other, real, scientists - like telling them to f off.