Boris sells out - by Richard... Monday, December 14, 2009

Boris sells out - by Richard... Monday, December 14, 2009

According to Delingpole - and he's right. Funny how the two great heroes of the Conservative right – Boris and Hannan – are wobbly on this issue. Career before country? Perish the thought.

CLIMATEGATE THREAD

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Containing the heresy - by Richard...

And so it goes on with dreary predictability, stoking up public concern and keeping the great unwashed in a permanent state of alarm. Latest offering – from The Daily Scarygraph(where else?) - is the headline: "British wildlife faces climate change devastation, warns Environment Agency."

Rising temperatures and sea levels brought on by climate change could have devastating effects on British wildlife from salmon to wildfowl, the Environment Agency drones, an excuse for several hundred words of "cut-and-paste" extruded verbal material. In the days before personal computers became widely available, I am sure there would have been blocks of Letraset text to use for the same purpose.

What is interesting is that there seems to be an informal "duty roster" as various groups take turns to deliver the "text of the day". Today, we have Lord Chris Smith, chairman at the Environment Agency in the lead. But the way the system works is that other organisations are then lined up to support the text. Thus, today we have in the supporting role, the Wildlife Trust, with depth added by Tom Tew, chief scientist at Natural England.

While appearing to be entirely separate and "independent" organisations, one only has to look at the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) and similar organisations, the role of which is to ensure that all the nature and environment organisations sing to the same hymn sheet.

One of those that got away, however, was the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO). Horror of horrors, yesterday it reported on the "results from a major monitoring study".

This pointed to the emergence of a "baby boomer" generation among garden birds including blue tits, goldfinches and great tits. The survey found that 21 out of 25 of the most common species had a better-than-average breeding season this year with the linnett, greenfinch and chaffinch among the most successful.

The outcome has been put down to "favourable weather conditions" - so much for "global warming" and Chris Smith's "devastating effects". The BTO is saying that rising populations demonstrate the remarkable resilience of the birds, coming after a succession of bad years. Some of the species which enjoyed a good breeding season have previously been the focus of concern due to declining numbers.

Even as we write, no doubt, the warmist advocacy groups will be doing their level best to bury this report and ensure that such heresy is not allowed wider coverage. Could that indeed be why today we have seen the Environment Agency, the Widlife Trust and Natural England come out of the woodwork today?