mr president five hundred years ago there was a consensus amongst learned men that the world was flat
they were wrong
in the nineteen seventies after three decades of global cooling there was a consensus amongst scientists that we were facing a new ice age
they were wrong
in nineteen ninety-nine everybody believed that the millennium bug would create a global disaster by closing down computer systems across the world
weapon systems would fail commerce would stop aircraft would fall out of the sky
they were wrong
nothing at all happened
today we are told there is a consensus around catastrophic man-made global warming
it too is wrong
nor is it a consensus
the myth of consensus is a propaganda triumph for the alarmists but repeated surveys both of the scientific literature and of working climate scientists show a wide range of views on both sides of the debate with many believing that the jury is still out
it is true that the world has warmed slightly although slowly and intermittently over the last one hundred and fifty years but this is entirely consistent with well-established long-term natural climate cycles that gave us the roman optimum the medieval warm period and the little ice age
there is clear evidence that while the world has warmed slightly other bodies in the solar system have also warmed
ice caps have shrunk on mars yet nobody imagines that industrial emissions or four x four s are to blame
we are now planning to spend unimaginable sums of money on mitigation measures which simply will not work and which by damaging our economies will deny us the funds we need to address real environmental problems
as a british journalist christopher booker has remarked global warming alarmism is the greatest collective flight from reality in human history
