Sir Paul Nurse
The Royal Society
6-9 Carlton House Terrace
London SW1Y 5AG
29th January 2011
Dear Sir Paul,
I understand that the Royal Society has changed its motto from ‘Nullius in Verba’ to ‘Respect the facts’. This is unfortunate.
In your factoid-riddled Horizon programme for BBC2 you allowed a NASA computer scientist to tell the audience, without a challenge, that temperatures have risen .7 deg. during the last 50 years. This was supposed to be a problem. Yet of course 50 years ago temperatures were at their lowest since 1922 (GISS figures) and therefore such a rise is not at all surprising, especially considering that temperatures have levelled off over the last fourteen years (Dr Phil Jones in a BBC interview 2010). By choosing a convenient starting point it can seem alarming, but it is not. You should, as a scientist, have challenged his assertions – ‘nullius in verba’. But if you merely ‘respect the facts’, you are at liberty, it seems, to ignore them.
The suggestion that a rise over 30-40 years will continue is like suggesting the following:
Since June 22nd last year a small but discernable daily reduction in daylight has been taking place such that by December 22nd daylight hours had nearly halved. If this trend continues (even though there has been a small increase in the last month), in about seven or eight months‘ time there will be no more daylight. We desperately need government funding to research and cure this dangerous trend.
Unfortunately that describes rather well current AGW thinking. In investigating all dubious activities the best thing to do is to follow the money‘. And, behold, billions of dollars, pounds and euros are being spent on “research” into AGW and in subsidies for idiotic “renewable” energy sources.* It has given NASA – already a rather corrupted bureaucracy – a new lease of life. As we know, in the UK, corruption of science has grown apace along with the foolish policies of mostly very gullible politicians. It is the poorest who now suffer the most – carbon taxed and bullied into expensive energy consumption (59p per litre of petrol is a carbon tax – the fuel escalator introduced by conservative chancellor Clarke as a designated green tax).
I am tempted to suggest you should stick to genetics. Climate is clearly outside your comfort zone.
Yours sincerely,
Rev Philip Foster MA
1 Barnfield, Common Lane,
Hemingford Abbots,
Cambridgeshire PE28 9AX
01480 399098
* particularly idiotic as peak oil/gas is now hundreds of years away and peak coal not even on the horizon. Burning fossil fuels is wholly beneficial to the biosphere.