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I hate to say I told you so, but I have predicted the failure of the Copenhagen summit to agree to binding commitments for over a year.

The Copenhagen fiasco was not just foreseeable, it was inevitable. The inability of the international community to break the climate deadlock reflects the incompatible national interests and demands that divide the west and the rest. This is now a permanent feature in what is likely to become an indefinite moratorium on international climate law-making.

In light of the Copenhagen non-agreement, there will be increased pressure by EU members states to water down unilateral emissions targets that are conditional on an international treaty. Just like Japan, it will be impossible for Europe or, indeed, the UK to continue with policies that are burdening national economies with huge costs and damaging their international competitiveness.

Climate politics face a profound crisis. Revolts among eastern European countries, in Australia and even among Obama's Blue Dog Democrats are forcing law-makers to renounce support for unilateral climate policies. In the UK, the party-political consensus on climate change is unlikely to survive the general elections as both Labour and the Tories are confronted by a growing public backlash against green taxes and rising fuel bills.

However, the biggest losers of the Copenhagen fiasco appear to be climate science and the scientific establishment who, with a very few distinguished exceptions, have promoted unmitigated climate alarm and hysteria.It confirms beyond doubt that most governments have lost trust in the advice given by climate alarmists and the IPCC. The Copenhagen accord symbolises the loss of political power by Europe whose climate policies have been rendered obsolete.

It is a remarkable irony of history that when the leading voices of the radical environmental movements of the 1960s and 70s occupy governmental power in most western nations, their political and international influence is on the wane. The weakening of global warming anxiety among the general public and the marked decline of western influence and authority on the international stage is a clear manifestation of the green slump.

This fiasco will further alienate an angry public


Excellent stuff - and in a pro-AGW newspaper too

Just to provide a bit of context to these remarks, Benny Peiser is a former member of the Scientific Alliance, an organisation which was financially backed by the director of the British Aggregates Association - which defends the interests of the quarrying industry - who was "totally fed up with all this environmental stuff". It has strong links with ExxonMobil front-groups, and was co-founded by a PR firm.

A thoroughly independent voice, in other words ...

The answer to your question is that, like so many climate change sceptics, you are confusing climate and weather. Climate is a long term trend. Weather is fluctuations in that trend.

Indeed the fluctuations are much larger than the slow change in the baseline ...

... which is why it is difficult to extract that baseline from the data in a way that is compelling to people without scientific training.

Weather forecasting, even in the short term, is difficult because the weather system is chaotic (in the technical sense)

You will all remember (I hope) in years to come that I said the only way to control population was to put a cap on age...not to put a halt to births ?

Hmmm...

; just like the experts who believe that climate change is man made.

And - shades of Ling here - why are virtually all climate "sceptics" men?

Maybe the propaganda pushing the pro-arguments are more emotive (than scientific) and hence appealing to women? (just look at those TV adverts)

Hmmm...

I suppose at the time he was considered to be an expert on his subject; just like the experts who believe that climate change is man made.

How people can take thousands of years of temperature data, with massive fluctuations, and look at a small section around the present day, which is not remaining constant, and surmise that it is down to our presence is beyond me!

"I am arguing that we can't measure feedbacks the way people have been trying to do it," he said. "The climate modelers see from satellite data that warm years have fewer clouds, then assume that the warmth caused the clouds to dissipate. If this is true, it would be positive feedback and could lead to strong global warming. This is the way their models are programmed to behave.

"My question to them was, 'How do you know it wasn't fewer clouds that caused the warm years, rather than the other way around?' It turns out they didn't know. They couldn't answer that question."

"We haven't figured out a good way to separate cause and effect, so we can't measure cloud feedback directly. And if we don't know what the feedbacks are, we are just guessing at how much impact humans will have on climate change.