And another thing…

UNLESS you’re a climate scientist with a record of publishing learned academic papers, you are not qualified to have an opinion on the subject. So says Mehdi Hassan in the New Statesman this week.

He’s writing about the rather entertaining row that has erupted between The Spectator and environmental journalist George “Yay for the recession!” Monbiot over the latter’s refusal to debate the science of climate change with the magazine’s latest hero, Ian Plimer.

In response to new Spectator editor Fraser Nelson’s mention of “the US Senate list of 700 scientists who dissent over man-made global warming”, Hassan writes:

they’re simply wrong, in a tiny minority and not even qualified to proffer an opinion on the subject: the vast majority of them are not climate scientists, nor have they published in fields relevant to climate science (my emphasis).

So the question arises: is Mehdi Hassan a pubished climate change scientist? If not (and I suspect he isn’t, but if I’m wrong I apologise) then why is he offering an opinion on man-made climate change, one way or the other?

For the record, I’m not a published climate change scientist (so I hope Mr Hassan will forgive my expressing an opinion), but am inclined to accept the views of the overhelming majority of the international scientific community and accept that climate change is man-made and can therefore be ameliorated through policy.

What really gets on my nerves, though, is how this debate has been polarised along political dividing lines: with very few exceptions, those on the left believe in the Al Gore analysis and are utterly dismissive of those who disagree with it, contemptuously and arrogantly dismissing them as “climate change deniers”. This is an offensive and stupid term, seeking to associate even those with genuine doubts about the scientific consensus with neo-Nazi holocaust deniers.

Similarly, if you’re of a right-wing bent, you’re more than likely to dismiss the “man-made” factor of climate change and categorise all environmental campaigners as unreformed Marxists using the issue as a Trojan horse with which to destroy capitalism.

The row between Monbiot and Nelson/Plimer is infantile. A lot of people would be interested, I think, in watching an informed and civilised debate between the two camps, if they can only bring themselves to get off their high horses and start showing a bit of tolerance and respect for the other side.

Sh*t, I’m starting to sound like a LibDem…

FRASER Nelson is a highly respected journalist among the Tory faithful. Among Labour types? Not so much, to be honest…

I’ve had my disagreements with him in the past. His contempt for everything to the left of Mrs Thatcher is well known and utterly undermines what political judgment he has. He’s a good writer, though, and he would be more respected as an objective commentator if only he would lose the hatred of everything Labour.

So that presents me with a problem. Having made clear that I don’t think much of his views, he writes this in today’s News of the World:

FORTUNATELY, I have had very few dealings with Fraser Nelson.

A couple of things you probably don’t know about Fraser: despite his peculiar, affected accent, he’s actually Scottish! Yes, I know!

And secondly, he used to work on The Scotsman. It was while he worked there that he was keen to interview me because he had heard I took a somewhat harder line on welfare reform than did the government at the time. We spoke on lobby terms, which most proper journalists don’t need to have explained to them. Fraser, however, couldn’t quite grasp the idea, and melodramatically and unnecessarily described his source as “a Labour back bench MP speaking under the strict condition of anonymity”. Yeah, it’s called “lobby terms”, Fraser. Ask some of the big boys, they’ll explain it to you.

The article itself, even for The Scotsman, was odd. He reported that it was Labour, rather than the Conservatives, who trebled the number of Incapacity Benefit (IB) claimants, even though, in discussion, he seemed to accept the historical fact that IB was a genie that his great heroine, Mrs T, had deliberately let out the bottle. However, since she was a member of the Tory Party, she could, by definition, have made no mistakes in his eyes.

Now he has described Castlemilk and Easterhouse in Glasgow as “beautiful names, scummy estates”. I would love Fraser to visit Castlemilk (in my constituency, as it happens) and see for himself its transformation from an estate with huge problems in the ’70s and ’80s, to one of the most vibrant communities in the city. Yes, there is still a high level of benefit claimants there, just as the Conservatives planned back in the ’80s. But it really is a bit rich for Fraser to criticise Labour for not having been able (yet) to repair all the damage done by his party.

I consulted my staff about how I should finish this piece; my own suggestions for how to describe Fraser were advised against. After all, if I’m criticising someone else about their use of language, I should try to rise above his level.

Fair enough. My original version would have been quite unparliamentary. Use your imagination.

Update: My Scottish Parliamentary colleague, Charlie Gordon MSP, has tabled a motion at Holyrood on the subject.

FRASER Nelson has actually written something which I don’t think is completely bonkers: namely that some green activists will be delighted by the drop in consumption and productivity  – and, of course, the number of people in work – caused by the recession.

This is a point I made in a speech on Heathrow back in October. George Monbiot has written in eager anticipation of the downturn in an article entitled Bring on the recession. Strange how people who would normally express concerns about the economic plight of people living in the Third World, are now more concerned that the same Third World citizens are becoming richer (A Good Thing) and are therefore demanding a higher quality of life (Another Good Thing).

But let me paint you a picture: imagine if the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change announced tomorrow that “we got it wrong – climate change isn’t caused by man. Sorry about that. As you were.” (Now, I know that won’t happen because the IPCC were right, but bear with me here, okay?)

What would your reaction be? I know what mine would be: delight. I’d be celebrating. I’d be popping the Champagne. Celebrations tempered, of course, by the realisation that global warming is something we can’t affect and we’ll just have to deal with. But such an announcement would be good news, yes?

Well, no, not for some (probably a minority of) environmentalists. Because for them, the fight against global warming has another aim: the defeat of capitalism, of economic growth, of prosperity.

Which is why I find their arguments so nauseating. It must be lovely to be a high-profile journalist whose own income is high and reasonably secure. And it must be so easy to offer to sacrifice the jobs and the livelihoods of millions of working people for the good of the environment.

But unless we can find a way of saving the planet without sacrificing prosperity – here and in developing countries – then the fight is already lost.

INTERESTING, isn’t it, that Fraser Nelson of The Spectator, seems to be losing faith in ‘David’. In his latest posting over at Coffehouse he describes the detail in Cameron’s economy speech earlier today as “worryingly wrong-headed”.

But it’s Nelson’s first two paragraphs which seem to define his attitude to ‘David’:

I’ve read and re-read Cameron’s speech on the economy, hoping that I had somehow missed the radical message to answer Gordon Brown. I have given up.

Britain is facing a tsunami of unemployment, two years of recession if we’re lucky and what do the Tories have to say? They’ll set up a new quango, and try to tinker with council tax. We had new phrases: instead of “irresponsible capitalism” we’re told there will be “responsible free enterprise”. His dreadful “social responsibility” phrase is making a comeback in the form of “economic responsibility” and remains just as vacuous as a concept.

I can’t believe that CCHQ regard this vote of no confidence with anything other than grave disquiet.

As one Labour peer said to me this week in the tearoom: “Cameron can’t win an election on the centre ground because that’s not where his party is.”

To be fair to Cameron (and I usually try not to be), he has chosen in the last three years to adopt the politics of the centre ground, so maybe he means it. But I doubt if his constant banging of the “We’re the party of the NHS” drum, or turning his face against grammar schools, is winning him many converts from previous devotees of Thatcher.

And I would count Mr Nelson among them.

Fraser Nelson was predictably cruel in his comments about Khalid Mahmood’s question yesterday at Prime Minister’s Questions: “He stuttered, gasped, looked at his papers. How difficult can it be to ask one question?”

Well, you’ll never know the answer to that, Fraser, but believe me, it’s a lot harder than it looks, and certainly a lot harder than sitting in your office criticising the efforts of others.

Asking a question – any question – at PMQs is surely the most daunting of experiences. For a start, there are nearly three hundred people opposite who are positively willing you to fail. And that’s before you even consider that you’re being watched on live TV throughout the land. You’re also aware that there are reporters in the gallery ready to snipe and sneer at the first sign of a stumble. And on top of that, there’s a huge amount of pressure from your own supporters who desperately want you to succeed. Writing a blog or a column is a cake walk next to that.

As a back bencher I asked the (previous) PM a number of questions on a range of subjects, from child benefit and apprenticeships to drugs and knife crime, although the only one people remember was on light pollution, in 2003. Having instigated the Science and Technology Select Committee inquiry into the effects of light pollution on astronomy, I stood up to ask “when was the last time the prime minister had a clear view of the Milky Way galaxy?”

All. Hell. Broke. Loose.

The opposition started bawling and shouting, our side started cheering; an awful din. The only thing to do was plough on (no pun intended). I got to the end of the question without stumbling or forgetting my line and – crucially – without being called out of order by the Speaker for taking too long. I had been well and truly bloodied. I felt exhilerated. But it could so easily have gone wrong. It often does, and, frankly, no journalist who has not experienced it himself, and who therefore has no grasp of the pressures individuals are under at that moment when the Speaker calls your name, has the right to criticise those who have.