|
For various reasons, my first ever article on the “Global Warming Scam” done in 2008 is no longer easily thorugh the Lenzie Village website where it was published. 6 years on, how good was it?
 Global Temperatures & CO2
February’s Update news: According to revised official Met office1 figures, January 2008 was still the coldest month globally in 14 years2. At only 0.056°C higher than the nominal reference3 We must look back to February 1994 to find a colder month. Global temperatures peaked in February 1998 at 0.75°C and with February coming in at 0.194°C there is a definite and accelerating cooling trend of -0.1°C/decade.
By the Met Office’s own statistic’s it is highly unlikely that the forecasts could be consistently too high by chance and therefore this is clear proof of a consistent error in the forecasting model. That is to say, the cooling temperature clearly contradicts the theory of manmade global warming, because although CO2 levels continue to rise, global temperatures have cooled.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 1 For Official Met Office monthly data click the graph 2 Initially reported as 0.037°C 3 relative to the average temperature for the period 1960-91 4 Monty Python and the Holy Grail |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Now stand aside, worthy adversary4
There was a time (around the turn of the millennium) that I thought anyone who didn’t believe in Global warming was a deluded, oil-industry paid Charlie-ton! And, I had a point, because at that time the evidence was clearly showing a rise in temperature in the latter half of the 20th century and there were some people who simply would not admit that temperatures had risen and that there was reason to be concerned. But then again, there was a time when we all thought the world was going to end at midnight 31st December 1999, because what the experts told us was the “an impending disaster” known as the millennium bug. Strangely, the millennium bug never happened, and we all seem to have forgotten how close we were to the end of western civilisation!
Looking back now, it wasn’t just the “deniers” as the global warming brigade call them who were deluded, it was sensible, scientifically trained people like me who were wrong. My excuse? In life, even if you are a trained scientist, you simply cannot check every detail yourself and you have to judge arguments based on the authority and credibility of people presenting those arguments. Even someone trained in the most rigorous science (physics) like me has to rely on others and unfortunately, sometime we misjudge people.
My “tipping point”?
It happened when I tried to engage a group of these “climate experts” in a simple discussion. Working in the wind industry, I had met numerous of these so called experts at conferences and whilst some of what they said seemed a little over the top, the simple fact that temperatures had risen seemed to suggest there was a lot of truth in what they were saying. Moreover, I saw these people as “lovable underdogs” in a way seeing them as those eco-warriors “fighting the capitalist tyranny of the oil companies”. When you see the “pro-warming” group as the honest underdog, and the anti-warming as being in the pay of the oil-lobbyists you tend to listen to those you think are “honest”. Then through my interest in energy matters, I read that there wasn’t enough oil and gas to cause global warming and try as I might I couldn’t find any mention of this by the “pro-warming lobby”, so I wanted to see how this fitted in with their calculations. It seemed an innocent question and fairly obvious that if CO2 causes temperature increase, and the amount of manmade CO2 is limited by the amount of fossil fuel, then there must be a physical limit to the amount of warming that is possible, and I simply wanted to know what the worse case scenario was if all the accessible fossil fuel was burnt.
What I didn’t realise was, that this didn’t fit in with the climatologists view of the world: it wasn’t part of their calculations, it wasn’t something they even considered. When they say “if we carry on burning fossil fuels”, they didn’t consider the possibility that fossil fuels might run out, they literally meant that there was no limit to available fossil fuels. As someone firmly convinced of global warming, it was very strange, to find myself being labelled a “denier” for simply stating the obvious: that there was a practical limit to the amount of fossil fuels and therefore there must be a limit to the amount of manmade global warming.
To cut a long story short, I finally came to my senses when I realised that I had met precisely the same people with the same attitudes at school – I began to realise these climatologists weren’t using the normal rational arguments you expect of scientists, they never answered simple questions like “where is the proof that CO2 is causing global warming”. They spouted facts and figures, dodged and dived, citing this authority and that, never really allowing themselves to be pinned down nor to answer the simple questions like “what happens when the oil runs out” …. imagine my horror, when it turned out these climatologists were same narrow minded, “born again Christians” who stubbornly refused to believe in evolution, that it took millions of years to create the Universe, or that Jesus might have been a human, the same people who frustratingly answered every question by asking one back.
Heresy
Basically, by daring to question whether global warming might have a “natural end” when fossil fuel runs out, I was committing a heresy! It turns out that Global warming is little more than another doomsday religion clothed in a thin veneer of science, and to even ask whether it may self-limit, undermines the basic tenant of this religion and so is heretical! And, as a heretic I had to be converted or ostracised. Slowly I realised, that far from the “pro global warming group”, being a disorganised but well-being bunch of people trying against the odds to get their message across in the face of multi-national organisation hell bent on perverting the public perception, in fact if anything, the pro-lobby were a highly organised, ruthlessly efficient well-oiled publicity machine that was railroading their ideas based on only the flimsiest of evidence. And once I started asking myself “what exactly is the evidence to link CO2 with recent warming”, I began finding that virtually nothing I had assumed to be scientifically “proven” about global warming was anything of the sort. In fact, the whole theory really boils down to nothing more that the coincidental change of two (probably) entirely unrelated variables: global temperature and CO2. The science linking the two was non-existent, no one had sat down in a lab and proved a link, it was all someone’s opinion about this, someone’s interpretation of that, and much of the interpretation was clearly questionable – I had been conned, and what is worse I had conning other people by suggesting a link between manmade CO2 and a recent rise in temperatures when no honest scientist could have stated a causal link!
The Con Trick
Many people are concerned by global warming, but try to argue about the “evidence”. The fact is that science is on the side of the sceptic, it is not up to the sceptic to prove there is no link between CO2 and global warming, science requires those asserting a link to prove it. But global warming isn’t like that you can’t prove or disprove global warming, because global warming simply can’t be pinned down, it can’t be disproven, because it is fundamentally a scam. The scam behind global warming is one of the simplest cons known to mankind and to show you how it works, I will draw a parallel with fortune telling:
Environmentalism (aka Global Warming) |
Fortune Telling |
| Find some people who want to believe something. In this case, a public who are daily been told to consume more and more, who want to believe that “there’s no such thing as a free lunch” and so there must be a downside to all this consumption. | Everyone wants to believe in love, life, etc. |
| Look at every measurement of anything at all you can in the natural environment. Given enough measurements, and the natural variability of all measurements, sooner or later one of them is going to “look odd” and start heading “away from normal”. | Look deeply into your crystal ball muttering things about lovers, life, death, until you get a reaction from your client. |
| Having found a measurement heading “away from normal”, extend the line into the distant future and whether the outcome is historically seen as “good” (warm periods) or “bad” (cool periods), predict an “impending disaster”. | Having found a line of interest predict it forward using the usual ambiguous language of “love is coming into your life”, “I see death”. |
| Now find a suitable “peg” to link this doom with mankind’s “evil ways” (aka human consumption). In this case suggest the very small and inconsequential rise in natural CO2 which seems to be related to human consumption. | Ask the client to tell you how this relates to their life. Get them to tell you the person they think this relates to. |
| Having found your an “impending doom” variable and the “guilty conscience” variable, tentatively suggest the two are related. | Suggest your dire prediction might relate to the person suggested by your client (note it is the client that makes and confirms the link) |
| Having suggested a link between human consumption and the “impending disaster” allow the public’s innate belief in a downside for everything including consumption turn this “suggestion” into a certainty that “there must be a link”. | Though there is no actual prediction as such, just a suggestion that “love is in the air, and I see your friend is close” – the client’s own desire for a link allows them to use their imagination to add bells and whistles because this is what they want to believe. |
| Now get government to spend billions on “research” which effectively tries in ever more complicated ways to replicate the line you originally drew, giving the external appearance of being “scientific” and ensuring that there are more and more so-called “scientists” on the pay-roll daily re-enforcing the idea of this “scientific” prediction without anyone ever fundamentally questioning the fundamental assumption of a link. | Having convinced the client that they have a prediction, let them tell everyone in their words about your prediction and let them work to bring it to fruition. |
| If temperatures rise, take all the credit, if they don’t rise – bamboozle the public (mention the difficulty of predicting the climate, blame the politicians for “not having listened to the warnings” carefully hidden in all the reports. … ) and quickly find another scare “even worse” to preoccupy them. | If your prediction has any truth at all claim this as the “miracle” of your powers, if it does not, remind them about all the predictions you have “successfully made” (got right by chance) and if necessary remind them about the ambiguous language you used and show how “they did not fully understand the nuances of the prediction and so misunderstood”. |
The reason global warming works as a scam, is that most people have a gut feeling that it ought to be true. We want to believe that all this consumption has got to be bad. Unfortunately, this makes our society extremely susceptible to accept anything that fits in with this belief. Whilst it is possible there is a link between CO2 and temperature, the actual historical evidence suggests that changes in world temperature lead changes in worldwide CO2 levels, so if anything the relationship is that changes in temperature lead to changes in worldwide CO2. But mere evidence like that doesn’t affect for those who believe there must be a link.
Bogus Science
The real scam of course, is to call global warming “scientific”. The basis of science is testable hypothesis. That is to say, you develop a theory based on the data available which you then test against new data. What makes Global warming bogus, is that the theory has been developed to fit a recent rise in temperature, and then that theory is being “tested” by seeing whether it fits that same data – and guess what it does! At its very simplest, what this means is that during the decades 1970-2000 temperatures, rose, and someone drew a line through this rising temperature and then they say “it’s proved” because look the temperature has risen along the line we predicted! This is the science of quack medicine. This is the science of spoon-benders of ESP, it is not proper science.
But of course, in science it is not possible to prove anything by the absence of data. So the “Pro” pseudo-scientific lobby have a great advantage, for having found two variables that might appear to be linked, the available data inherently coincides with their interpretation and so they are able to spread the “gospel” of causality, even though this is entirely untested. But those who are more rigorous and therefore sceptical, cannot disprove an apparent link until more data comes along …. and even when contrary data becomes available, this will only cause a temporary halt to the bogus science, because pseudo-scientists by their very nature have no problem “tweaking” the theory to incorporate “explanations” for such “temporary aberrations” and so such pseudo science can never really be proved “wrong”.
Indeed, it is only if the rigorous scientists, can develop a more plausible mechanism and test this against data, that there is any real hope of debunking this bogus science. And although there is some suggestion that world temperatures seem to change periodically is due to solar activity (historically, the number of sunspots seem to affect the world’s temperature) this relationship is complex and poorly understood and the so called “scientific consensus”, sucks up all the funding that might take this science forward. The problem is that the news media and through them the public are so obsessed with global warming, that most publicly funded research money comes with strings saying “this money must be used to help solve global warming”. So, it is understandable, that the researchers who get the money are those who are most vocal about tackling global warming, and the researchers least likely to get funding are those who express any doubt about CO2 being the cause of the temperature rise in the latter half of the 20th century. The result is that virtually nobody is looking at the other possible causes of the 20th century’s temperature rise and so in the absence of funding looking at alternatives, their is now an overwhelming “consensus” amongst “scientists” not because a link has been scientifically proven, but because the only explanation which any significant number of scientists are investigating is the consensus.
To put it another way, the science community is being manipulated by the environmentalists who demand that the scientists explain the warming of the latter half of the 20th century. But having no proper scientific explanation, and having only researched one possible causation, the science community have no option but to offer rising levels of CO2 as their “best” explanation of the warming, not because it is a “good” or scientific explanation, but because however bad it is, there is currently nothing better!
Proper science makes predictions and then tests those predictions against the real data, and guess what, since around 2000 worldwide global temperature have been stable. But, given the rate at which global temperatures change, it will be at least 2020 before we will really know whether this stabilisation is real, a temporary halt in the rise, or a possible turning point suggesting cooling temperatures. Worse still, it will only be sometime around 2030-40, and only if temperatures continue to be cooler than 2000-2010 that we will know that those climatologists making so much money from spreading the gospel of global warming were like those who spread the crisis of the “millennium bug” – talking absolute rubbish!
What we must do?
Fortunately, whilst “tackling global warming”, isn’t doing a lot of good, it isn’t likely to do much harm either, and it does keep a sizable & troublesome section of the population preoccupied. Whilst it is unlikely that burning fossil fuels is going to lead us into the “fiery hell” of global warming (indeed, historically warming tends to be beneficial to mankind) the idea that we must reduce fossil fuel usage is useful, because the key fossil fuels for the western economy (oil and gas) are fast running out.
However, unlike “global warming” which is something “we have to do something about” (i.e. we have to actively stop ourselves burning oil) if oil begins to run out, we don’t have to do anything – because that’s not how it works, we don’t have a choice – you can’t burn oil that isn’t there and when oil runs out, the price will rise until it is as such a level that people simply cannot afford to drive their cars, heat their homes, even turn on the fridge – if that is what it takes to reduce our energy consumption. “What must we do?” isn’t the right question, the energy that was stored in fossil fuels took millions of years to lay down, and we can’t replace it. When it is gone, it is gone, and whilst nuclear may marginally stem the end, it can’t stop us going back to what will be essentially a pre-fossil fuel economy.
We don’t have to do anything – we’re not in control – we are a passenger on a driverless carriage with no option but to hang on and hope we survive the ride! That’s all we have to do!
Does it pay to be precautionary?
If my mistakes about Global Warming taught me anything, it is to be skeptical about everything I hear even from those proporting to have a rigorous scientific training. I even now question those who say something that seems blatantly obvious such as “fossil fuels are running out”. And, don’t make me laugh by mentioning the “precautionary approach”. That doesn’t help when you fundamentally can’t trust the people telling you to take the precautions. It comes down to this: Which way is it right to be skeptical? Is man made global warming real? If it is real is it going to benefit us as the past or is history somehow going to be overturned and the warmer period will be worse? But if mankind is warming the globe and warmth is good for mankind, isn’t the logical thing to increase fossil fuel use? Isn’t that the precautionary approach? So many people have been deluded, and so much nonsense written that the only precaution is not to trust anyone so don’t even trust those who say oil is running out – for there may be far more oil and gas, or there may be much less!
Only time will tell!
Review
I wasn’t looking forward to reading this as I was sure I would have made a huge clanger. Surprisingly the biggest changes are nothing to do with warming:
The first is that with the rise in fracking, I don’t see “the end of oil” as a big problem.
The other change is along with many other people I was misled about the views of sceptics. However, after forming the Scottish Climate & Energy Forum I learnt that almost no sceptics “deny” and so I am sorry I used this term.
The key thing about this post, is the Met Office predictions. Unfortunately, as so many others have found, historic temperature data keeps changing and so it is impossible to verify the figures. I found this as early as my submission to the climate gate inquiry. However, as I had monitored the HADCRUT figures for several years I am fairly confident the figures were right and the predictions were taken from the Met Office press releases.
The question, one has to ask is this: “what is the chances of getting so many predictions consistently high by pure chance?” This can’t be excused. Even if all the years are related, the Met Office knew this and would have taken this into account. So statistically they should have had about half high and half low. Instead there was a consistent bias causing a consistent error and that consistent error was a belief in global warming.
And finally, like flies, to dung – there will be some who criticise the graph. I still remember doing it. I just plotted the two series on one graph in excel and that is what it produced. It clearly showed that the trend in temperature had diverged from the trend in CO2.
Addendum
I notice the graph and text don’t quite tie up. From memory, I updated the graph for a couple of months after the initial post after the January 2008 massive dip. One of the reason I produced this original article was because of the blatant propaganda produced by the Met Office and BBC just prior to the release of this “coldest January in 14 years” – itself delayed in order to allow the Met Office to bombard the media with global warming stories ahead of the release of this data (which I sent out a press release and it was totally ignored).
The only people being scammed are those who take the time to read your nonsense. Are you sure you got a degree in physics and not psychics? Better check that diploma carefully.
Great work, Ian Forrester. You couldn’t find a single factual error in the article so you resorted to the logical fallacy “ad hominem.” In other words your comment should be read as a tribute.
Typical response from some one who doesn’t understand the actual meaning of ad hominem. If I had said “Scottish” “Sceptic” studied psychics rather than physics thus his post is nonsense, now that would have been ad hominem. However, I understand what is going on in climate science and what he wrote was in fact rubbish, something that someone with a degree in physics should be embarrassed to write.
Nice try but wrong.
http://www.globalwarmingskeptics.info/thread-2238.html
Why are we 33C warmer than we would otherwise be?
ie, If you use the wrong paradigm you will reach the wrong conclusions.
and,
http://www.globalwarmingskeptics.info/thread-2239.html
Is CO2 a negative feedback within earth’s climate system?
ie, the IPCC et al tried to ignore water vapour, whilst modeling it as a dominant positive feedback, when it is obviously a negative feedback. Similarly CO2 is portrayed by IPCC etal as a positive feedback, when it is a very weak negative feedback, so that we could be taxed and controlled for our CO2 emissions.
Ian, global energy budgets, of the Trenberth variety, do not include emissivity!!!
How is this so in grey body reality?
Remembering, black body is imaginary after all is said and done.
AND, albedo is NOT emissivity.
As you say, unlike many of those calling themselves “climate scientists”, I have the relevant degree in Physics and clearly have the relevant qualifications to assess the science.
However, “scam” is not a scientific term.
But I also have an MBA – which covering a broad range of social subjects, including economics, finance & law I think also gives me a relevant degree to judge whether there has been a “scam”.
So what is the point of your post? Or are you just following the greenspin manual on “how to talk to a sceptic” … (if all other attempts fail – try to suggest they don’t have a relevant degree?)
Ian, all you have done is make an unsubstantiated attack on me. I’m touched that you feel I’m so important that it’s worth attacking me, but I’ve got three children & a wife who are far better critiques of me, so your ad hominems are pretty dull.
However, you do seem to be able to raise some intelligent points about the climate. So may I suggest that you put some substance in your posts so we have something to discuss.
I’m going to reply here to a post to me on the previous thread,
Ian Forrester January 14, 2014 at 2:19 am
Reply: I agree that the current conditions are the result of different conditions, like the PDO, the sun and the aerosols but those things can also explain a significant part of the rapid warming of the 80s and 90s. The sun was particularly active, the Pacific and the Atlantic were in their positive phases and Europe and the US rapidly desulphurised. So some warming from CO2 could have been exaggerated by other conditions.
To get a measure of CO2 warming it is not enough to just consider the last 30 years, you have to consider at least the last 60. The rate of warming over the full period is not so scary. It is a common trick to either show the warming from 1850 and neglect to mention that the first part of it was mostly natural. The other trick is to show just the warming from the late 70s and neglect the true start point of 1950.
Is it still warming? Quite possibly but it’s warming that is invisible for all but the most recent measurements. How do I know that that ocean warming hasn’t been fairly constant since the end of the LIA? Too much hype is put on measurements that are extremely short. It doesn’t preclude the need for panic but it does weaken the case.
When it comes to records, they’re all woefully short and continuously fiddled with. I know how GISS and the Met Office have managed to crow bar more warming into the global series. I have strong doubts whether those stations they’ve added give a better picture. I would have much more confidence if each change was properly explained and justified. If it’s truly necessary to cover more areas of the planet to observe a few more tenths of a degree of unobserved warming then it completely invalidates proxy reconstructions. If we have to look to the deep oceans to find the lost warming then not only are land based proxies useless, then land based temperature measurements are just for show.
Computer models may include current conditions in some of their model runs but it doesn’t make them significant. One could make the model show every temperature possibility between absolute zero and the melting point of steel but it wouldn’t be useful to predicting the future.
We could go on batting points too and fro but the bottom line is climate science has lost its chance at blind faith. It’s symptomatic that I have to point out the things above when you should have mentioned them. If your arguments rely on only showing part of the picture you lose ground when someone points out the gaping holes.
Personally I think only time will tell me what the future has in store.
Excellent article, which, makes good points still relevant 5 years on. The sticking point for me is the statement “Fortunately, whilst “tackling global warming”, isn’t doing a lot of good, it isn’t likely to do much harm either, and it does keep a sizable & troublesome section of the population preoccupied.”
I wonder if, having now witnessed the effects of AGW mitigation policies, you have changed your mind about the harmlessness of “tackling global warming”.
Oooh, he hit the spot there, didn’t he?
As fine an example of playing the man instead of the ball as I have ever seen on any blog anywhere.
I assume as you have lapsed straight into personal abuse you don’t actually have any argument with ScottishSceptic’s arguments, and are purely over-excited because your religious beliefs have been questioned – indeed, trashed.
Congratulations on having so spectacularly proved ScottishSceptic’s point.
Now go away and have a nice cup and a lie down.
So, still no attempt at rebuttal, just personal abuse.
No wonder you lot have lost the argument.
You haven’t a clue what you’re talking about, have you? You’re just reciting your catechism.
What a funny little chap you are!
Yes and no. The tangible harm: destruction of the landscape, power cuts and widescale deaths from rising fuel prices and destroyed economy – potentially war – have been avoided.
So, in some sense they are just glorified sculptures dotting the landscape which the next generation will see as our follies. Much like the old factory chimneys – although obvious factories had a purpose and wind did not.
However, at a deeper level, we’ve seen a whole generation of academics going off into the wilderness believing in some holy grail quest for utopia. This has highlighted the demise of “thinking” in academia, where being part of the 3% that might look differently is considered the ultimate sin. This doesn’t bode well for further progress, and I am concerned that our under-performing academia may lead to the ultimate decline and fall of the western world as we know it with the rise of China in its place. We’ve also seen rising fuel prices for the poor and generally rising prices and higher taxation and I think that will have long term effects that we do not as yet understand.
The other problem is that we now have a division of society between the “peer-to-peer” realm inhabited by sceptics and the “institution-to-institution” realm inhabited by academics and mainstream politicians. The “battle” between sceptics and academics – between amateur and “professional” (paid) – between peer-to-peer climateers, and institution-to-institution climateers, is I think a symptom of a wider divide in society which of all I have seen, could have the most corrosive effect.
I think the result of the global warming scam, is that we have wasted many years on an idiotic non-problem when there were huge and real problems on the horizon. And the result is that we are now more divided as a society with a less effective academic sector, an economy being rapidly overtaken and a whole lot of changes to society which are changing our world in a way we cannot as yet appreciate.
So, the sooner we can get rid of this scare and start looking at the real problems – the better.
As it turns out the sceptics were right not to be worried about fuel running out as shale gas & also methane hydrates sources prove. (Although that mean they were wrong to try and scare us with their “peak oil in 2 years” claim gong since at least 1960). In the early days I assumed something was happening – partly because there was warming & partly because I assumed that if opinion is so overwhelming there simply must be some fire to this smoke,
My reason for doubting them was that they were resolutely opposed to any form of geo-engineering which would certainly any catastrophe, and their absolute opposition to nuclear power which, alone, could reduce CO2production to below even a theoretical threat. If they believed their own scare they simply could not be opposed to practical methods of preventing it.
If, on the other hand, they knew it was a fraud, promoted to scare us into their Luddism (as the quote from a Clinton aide you gave previously suggests) they would be bound to act hysterically against any good news. That is what happened.
I have not made an “unsubstantiated attack” on you. I have merely illustrated how wrong you have been in a number of areas: climate science, Highland clearances, existence of knowledge and acceptance of evolution long before Darwin’s Theory. If you cannot take criticism maybe you are not suited to writing a blog which is so full of misinformation.
Most of my criticisms have been substantiated by citing references which support my conclusions and are at odds with yours, which you usually fail to substantiate with references (self referral just makes you look even more pathetic).
What is there to say? I say the only record of population (from parish records) shows an increase in population in the highlands … you tell me I’m a liar.
We’re not talking about totals since actual accurate figures are very hard to come by in those areas and populations. We were talking about the atrocities that occurred. Do you deny that thousands of highlanders were forcibly removed from their homes, often by setting fire to them with the inhabitants still inside? Many died from starvation when they had no food and no way to earn money to buy any. It was a despicable part of Scottish history as you would know if you checked proper references and not cherry pick those that you want to believe.
I think that is ironic that you smear scientists you disagree with and claim that scientific academics are part of a huge conspiracy . Scientists don’t make stuff up since they can easily be shown wrong. Where are all the scientific papers showing that climate science is wrong? You can’t provide any since they either don’t exist or have been shown to be nonsense (e.g. Lindzen’s theories, Salby’s nonsense and all the Sky Dragon Slayer rubbish). However, there are a number of academic historians who want to rewrite history. They cherry pick and ignore things they don’t want to believe. Sound familiar?
Your obsession with the “clearances” with its one reported death – where the person responsible was acquitted by a jury contrasted with your heartless disregard for up to 250,000 deaths in Scotland in the colder-wetter climate of the 1690s shows you have no sense of moral right or wrong or any sense of proportion.
The highlands were destroyed by two events: the first was the 1690s famines, and the other was the migrations peaking in the early 20th century. In between the Highland population grew. Those are the facts.
Interesting legal theory there if the rigged jury finds someone not guilty then the death didn’t occur and wasn’t part of the atrocities. That is also only one event, there were hundreds if not thousands of times when families were forcibly re,moved from ther homes.
Why are you so defiant against accepting facts as determined by people who are far more experienced and knowledgeable than yourself? Is that a mental condition that all AGW deniers suffer from?
Who are you getting your flawed information on the Highland Clearances from? Don’t tell me you read the rubbish by Michael Fry which has been debunked many times?
Can we add “Highland Clearance Atrocity denier” to your resume? Any knowledgeable and intelligent person who has read any of the history of these times in Scottish history accepts that what occurred could only be defined as an insult to human dignity and human rights.
Also please define what you mean by “those are facts”. It seems to me that you make up you own facts to suit your political ideology.
The truth about the clearances
Ian, the reason I raised the topic of the clearances was to highlight how some people are obsessed with events in which I could find only one recorded death whereas not long before it is estimated that “a quarter of the population” died in the “ill-years” of the 1690s. With an estimated population around 1million, that is about 250,000 deaths in the 1690s – a period of colder wetter weather during the Maunder minimum – which you don’t care about.
In contrast, you are obsessed with events in which I could only find one recorded death.
From the evidence I found, the “clearances” were nothing more than the late introduction into the highlands of the farming revolution that had had exactly the same impacts throughout Britain. What was unusual is that unlike previous changes, these land improvements were reported by new-comers (teachers and ministers) – ironically brought in by altruistic land-owners for the betterment of their society.
From what I saw, the pattern in the highlands followed the same pattern in the lowlands whereby farm-workers choose to leave the land to move to the towns where they got a better living. As the growing population shows, these change in farming practices and the new towns were overwhelmingly beneficial and it was long after the so called “clearances” (or farm Highland Farming Revolution as it would more accurately be called) after 1850 that the population decline started.
But no, you cannot accept the simple fact that the period of the Highland farming reform saw population growth in contrast to the 1690s and post 1850 period which saw decline.
This is typical of the anti-industry and by proxy, anti-CO2 culture in academia which is incapable of understanding that ordinary people preferred the early industrial towns of relative wealth, health and freedom to their previous lives living in squalor. A squalor where you walked constantly in a muddy soup of cow shit and human excretion – and as you rightly point out – could be turfed out of your home.
Landlords constantly turned out tenants all over Britain in the same way companies now sack people – the difference was that when people moved to towns they could easily find a new job and a new dwelling. This gave them power over their own lives which they did not have in the countryside.
Ordinary people chose the better life of the early industrial/manufacturing age – first in the towns, and then in the colonies.
But no, like the Jacobites, you cannot accept that people preferred the new modern towns, factories and industries. You are living in the typical academic dream that the countryside in the 17/18th century was like today and somehow living in a house filled with cow shit was some kind of rural ideal inhabited by the “celtic noble savage”. You no doubt think people lived in such wonderful conditions (sleeping in the cow shit) that they had to be forced to leave the squalor of the country to go to the towns.
Unlike you, I have worked on a farm. I have walked through cowshit all day long, I have manually dug out stuck conveyor belts of chicken shit. I have had to scrub myself down to try to get rid of the smell of shit before I was fit to go out. I have lived in conditions similar to those endured by the highlanders – dwellings in fields, which turn to mud in a few days and where it is impossible to keep children clean. That was a few weeks in the summer. I cannot imagine bringing up a family in such squalid conditions in the winter! Where that mud is not soil – but human & animal shit – and if you think you can stop kids playing in the mud then you’ve never had kids.
And you think people wanted to live like that:- have your children’s feet & bodies caked in all manner of shit as they go to bed – with the only water, in a stream which you can only get to by paddling through puddles of shit – conditions so appalling that most country people would watch many of their own children die from simple diseases picked up in the unsanitary conditions of the shit-filled countryside.
The data comes census data, the statistical review and 1690s figures are from the only substantial academic work on this period which started as a thesis and was published as a book called “the ill years”.
The post 1690s figures are all primary data and the 1690 estimate is the mid-range of a number of researchers who came to their figures after an examination of parish registers.
If you knew anything about Scottish history, you would know there is no better data.
Allegations are not “substantiated” simply by making them, nor do you “illustrate” error) at least other people’s) by declaring it. If you have evidence produce it. Until then. you are just, as normal with the PC brigade, substituting insults for intellectual rigour.
Unfortunately that is all wrong. It is not the actual deaths during the clearances that is important it is the brutal way the evictions were carried out and the inhumane treatment aftewards. Why you are trying to white wash this period of history baffles me. I’m though with you since you continue to post nonsense even when you are corrected.
In which case, having actually read what he is criticising Ian will have spent as much time criticising the instance of “genocidal ethnic cleansing” Mike refers to in the London slums.
Or not as the case may be.
So you admit there was were almost no deaths (and the only one I found was tried by a jury). Now will you admit that evictions occurred all over Britain during the farming revolution – or does your sense of justice not extend to the victims in England?