Thatcher Said That Climate Models Underestimate Warming

9 Responses to Thatcher Said That Climate Models Underestimate Warming

1. Chilli says:

   April 9, 2013 at 2:00 am

   Steven, in defence of Mrs T you have to realise that the UK was being held to ransom by the Coal Miners Union at the time she made these speeches. For her the climate scare was just a convenient method of reducing the unions grip on the UK by expanding nuclear power. I understand that in her later years Thatcher spoke out against the climate change scam and green lunacy in general.

   Reply
   • stevengoddard says:

     April 9, 2013 at 2:11 am

     UK and US Conservatives need to stop pandering. It is pathetic.

     Reply
2. Chilli says:

   April 9, 2013 at 3:01 am

   Her speeches on climate change were pre 1990. But here’s what she said in her 2003 memoir:
   ” Statecraft, in a passage headed “Hot Air and Global Warming”, she issued what amounts to an almost complete recantation of her earlier views. She voiced precisely the fundamental doubts about the warming scare that have since become familiar to us. Pouring scorn on the “doomsters”, she questioned the main scientific assumptions used to drive the scare, from the conviction that the chief force shaping world climate is CO2, rather than natural factors such as solar activity, to exaggerated claims about rising sea levels. She mocked Al Gore and the futility of “costly and economically damaging” schemes to reduce CO2 emissions. She cited the 2.5C rise in temperatures during the Medieval Warm Period as having had almost entirely beneficial effects. She pointed out that the dangers of a world getting colder are far worse than those of a CO2-enriched world growing warmer. She recognised how distortions of the science had been used to mask an anti-capitalist, Left-wing political agenda which posed a serious threat to the progress and prosperity of mankind.”
   http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/7823477/Was-Margaret-Thatcher-the-first-climate-sceptic.html

   I think we need to cut her some slack for her early ill-informed well-intentioned speeches on the subject.

   Reply
3. Will Nitschke says:

   April 9, 2013 at 3:53 am

   Someone who changed her mind when the facts changed. Who would have thought?

   Reply
   • tckev says:

     April 9, 2013 at 9:18 am

     Not only someone but a politician.

     Reply
     • daveburton says:

       April 9, 2013 at 8:47 pm

       “When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?” -John Maynard Keynes

       “If an honest man is wrong, after it is demonstrated that he is wrong he either stops being wrong or he stops being honest.”
       -unknown (related by Andre Bijkerk)

       Margaret Thatcher was an honest lady. When she got more information, she stopped being wrong. Too many other early climate alarmists in the same predicament stopped being honest.

       Reply
4. DarrylB says:

   April 9, 2013 at 4:05 am

   Richard Courtney gives an excellent account of how all this began—at least from the perspective of the UK. Also, Lady T. had only a minor in chem, which is more than any current politician..

   Reply
5. higley7 says:

   April 9, 2013 at 1:31 pm

   Let’s not forget that Thatcher only embraced the CO2-Global Warming Scam in an effort to coerce the coal mining unions into cooperating with her demands. She demonized CO2 because they were being obstinate and then found that she had to keep up the ruse or lose face totally.

   Reply
6. Brian G Valentine says:

   April 9, 2013 at 9:08 pm

   No sympathy. She was told by knowledgeable people this was junk science and went along with it anyway.

   Reply