20151203_TW
Source: BBC1, This Week
URL: N/A
Date: 03/12/2015
Event: Piers Corbyn on climate change hype: "It's a con, and must be closed down"
Credit: BBC1, This Week
People:
- Piers Corbyn: Astrophysicist and weather forecaster
- Alan Johnson: Former Chancellor and Labour MP for Hull West and Hessle
- Andrew Neil: Journalist and broadcaster
- Michael Portillo: Journalist and former Conservative MP
Andrew Neil: But first... We don't feel the cold much, here in This Week - Michael only needs to cross his legs and we all feel the heat. But in the interests of turning up the temperature in this draughty little studio, we're turning to this week's UN climate change talks in Paris. Now, while there's broad agreement on the need to reduce the use of fossil fuels, there's more disagreement than the average Shadow Cabinet meeting about how best to meet carbon reduction targets. One man who thinks we're all getting too hot under the collar about climate change is scientist, long-term weather forecaster and brother of Jeremy - Piers Corbyn, who thinks all this talk about CO2 and increasing world temperatures is a myth. Here's his Take of The Week.
[Piers Corbyn is seen operating an ice cream kiosk, to the tune of "Hot in Herre" by Nelly.]
Piers Corbyn: Despite the hype in Paris, the fact is there's no such thing as man-made climate change. Yeah, the truth is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, of the United Nations, is a political, not a scientific body, and it even amends scientific documents before publication, to conform to diplomatic niceties. [Piers Corbyn bites into an ice cream cone.]
The climate alarmism plastering the media and the so-called science put forward by the United Nations is fraudulent. And what Sir David Attenborough says is a disgrace to science, and we challenge him to open debate. And one thing we will ask him is: just look at this graph. [Holds up piece of paper with graph.] The upper curve is what their UN models predict - and you can see they fail and fail and fail again to show what really is happening in the world. The world now is cooling and our own scientific examination of solar activity shows it will cool even more rapidly in the next 20 years.
When it comes to CO2 emissions, they're failing on their own terms. They're actually not cutting them but exporting them - they've closed the British steel industry to reduce CO2 in Britain, and it's regrown in India to make more CO2. This is absurd - we've lost jobs. So, let's be clear - the climate-change energy charges on your electricity bill are actually a poll tax on the poor, which even causes people to die in winter, when they cannot foot the bill.
So why is it happening? Follow the money. Huge profits are being made from carbon trading, from expensive climate change grandiose projects. Big Oil benefits from price rises, banks benefit from any trading. You do not... Ice cream, tea, coffee, French baguette - we got it all, here...
Now is the time to start a full debate, here in Britain, on the future of the climate change story. It's a con, and must be closed down. That's all for today.
Andrew Neil: And from the Piccadilly Whip ice cream stall in Tower Hill to the politically-whipped here in Westminster. Piers Corbyn, welcome to the programme.
Piers Corbyn: Good to be here.
Andrew Neil: Now surely, surely for you to be right, nearly all the world's leaders - from the President of America to the President of China, plus most of the world's climate scientists - are engaged in a massive conspiracy to hoodwink us. That can't be right, can it?
Piers Corbyn: Well, of course, most of the climate scientists, as you say, but that isn't true. Of this so-called survey of scientists, of 12,000 papers, I mean 0.3% of them actually stated that they - from their work - that CO2 had, man's CO2 had been the cause of warming. The other papers said nothing at all, including papers...
Andrew Neil: Most of the world is signed on to this, all the leaders have their own scientific advisors, they - although they'll argue about what to do -
Piers Corbyn: No, they're appointed, you see - it's the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, they appoint people to advise, themselves. The IPCC is a political organisation, not a scientific organisation.
Andrew Neil: Why could so many people be hoodwinked, and why?
Piers Corbyn: Well, it's easily done, and it has been done before - there's many things in the past which have been untrue and believed. Such as - you know, Galileo had a problem bringing forward the truth, John Harrison had a problem bringing forward the truth for 30 years, about how to measure latitude [sic - probably meant to say "longitude", here.] Ten years, people believed that - or didn't believe that - continental drift was impossible, because of the entrenched interest groups.
And if you want to know what is actually going on, we can tell you - that graph I showed shows that the theory they put forward is not working. So, under the Climate Change Act, Section 6 Part 2, it states very clearly that if the science changes, i.e., the information changes, then the measures have to change and should be discussed.
Andrew Neil: But you -
Piers Corbyn: But what we're saying is we have to reopen the debate on climate change and actually not impose these charges, which are closing British steel, for example.
Andrew Neil: But you said, you claimed, in your Take there, that the world is now cooling.
Piers Corbyn: Yes.
Andrew Neil: But that's not borne out by either the land or the satellite temperature measurements -
Piers Corbyn: It is. It is -
Andrew Neil: Not up till now.
Piers Corbyn: Look at the graph, again. Yes, it is. Yes, it is.
Andrew Neil: But the past temperatures -
Piers Corbyn: Look at the graph. The graph shows that.
Andrew Neil: Temperatures now, temperatures now are, on average, about 0.5 degrees above where they were 35 years ago. But people argue about a pause -
Piers Corbyn: The 0.5 degrees is a fraud, and you can find that on our website.
Andrew Neil: But that's - all the satellite measurements I know show -
Piers Corbyn: No, no, no. Not the satellite measurements. The so-called land measurements show an increase but they are fraudulently chosen, because they changed the data sets on the way through, and you can go on the WeatherAction.com website and see this, or many other sites -
Andrew Neil: We've had, since - people argue about a pause, whether that's there or how long it will last.
Piers Corbyn: A pause, yes.
Andrew Neil: But since 1997 - '98, we've had some of the warmest years on record.
Piers Corbyn: Oh, we had some very warm years, yes.
Andrew Neil: But how could it be called average -
Piers Corbyn: - average in the last - the recent peak is the same as - taking away the data fraud - same as the peak in the late 1940s.
Andrew Neil: Michael, you're a bit of a sceptic, I think, on global warming, but would you go as far as Piers?
Michael Portillo: Well, I'm not scientifically qualified, which Piers is. But what has made me very suspicious is that I do feel there has been a sort of bandwagon around all of this. I'm so pleased to hear Piers on the BBC, because at one point the BBC said that the debate was settled and they didn't want to hear anything more from climate sceptics. But even if one did accept that there was global warming and that it was man-made, the assumption is that the way to tackle this is by massive human self-sacrifice in the developed countries. And I think Piers makes a very good point that what that does, actually, is to export jobs and to export the possibility of creating carbon dioxide to other countries.
But in any case, it seems to be that the first thing you have to ask yourself is: what is the cost of dealing with climate change? I mean, climate change has occurred frequently in the past, and human beings have had to adapt to it. So, assuming that we might adapt to it in the future, rather than trying to prevent it - and I think there's a huge loss of humility in believing that we can prevent it - you know, what would be the cost of that, what would be the consequences? And I don't think we've ever had that rational debate.
Andrew Neil: But that's what the Stern Report was about. That did the costing [Piers Corbyn is shaking his head] -
Michael Portillo: I think people -
Andrew Neil: Well, you can argue with it but that's what it did.
Michael Portillo: I think people have got themselves into -
Piers Corbyn: But it's a laughing stock around the world, the Stern Report.
Michael Portillo: I think people have got themselves into a frame of mind that, you know, human beings are basically sort of evil, that there's a - that we are overindulging ourselves, that what we need to do is restrain ourselves, that globalisation is the consequence of - is the cause of this thing, that capitalism is somehow involved in this. I mean, you know, I think the whole thing lends itself to hysteria.
Andrew Neil: Alan, what's your take on this?
Alan Johnson: Well, would that it were true. I mean, if Piers was absolutely right, then there is no global warming and -
Piers Corbyn: Correct.
Alan Johnson: - there shouldn't be the... but, Piers, I'm not - like Michael, I'm not qualified, scientifically -
Piers Corbyn: Well, do you agree that [?] we should open the debate.
Alan Johnson: - this afternoon, I went to the House of Commons library and asked them - 97% of climate scientists say that climate change is real, that it's happening -
Piers Corbyn: Okay, that figure is untrue, it's false.
Alan Johnson: - and that it's man-made - well, you'll have to argue with the House of Commons library.
Piers Corbyn: Also, irrelevant. Irrelevant.
Alan Johnson: Here's the question.
Piers Corbyn: Evidence is what counts.
Alan Johnson: This is not a play upon your name - as I understand it, it's peer review that looks at these different scientific papers. Who's peer-reviewed your assessment?
Piers Corbyn: I've had many peer-reviewed papers, and the -
Andrew Neil: On this subject -
Alan Johnson: On this subject -
Piers Corbyn: And on the question of - no, what I quote is peer-reviewed papers. On the question of the accuracy of WeatherAction forecasts, that we've had peer-reviewed success rates [?] - which is based on, our forecasts are based on solar activity. I've written peer-reviewed papers on original meteorology, yes.
Andrew Neil: Your position is at the extreme end of scepticism, isn't it - I mean, it's really denial, it's not just scep- there are even climate scientists who can disagree about the exact temperature, consequences of CO2 -
Piers Corbyn: That's the lukewarmists' position.
Andrew Neil: But that's not yours - you're effectively in outright denial.
Piers Corbyn: Well, we're saying that the CO2 has no effect whatsoever, and that is borne out by history. If you look at history, CO2 levels follow changes in temperature, not the other way round. And that is because the temperature of the sea controls the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. The sea itself has got 50 times more CO2 in it than the atmosphere, so the sea surface temperature controls how much goes in and out.
Andrew Neil: Why have you not managed to convince your brother?
Piers Corbyn: Well, I think the situation in the Labour Party is that Jeremy has to follow Labour policy, and the Labour policy includes support the Climate Change Act.
Andrew Neil: He dines out on his climate change credentials.
Piers Corbyn: No, no, no. Within which, the Climate Change Act makes it very clear that as the science changes, then the measures should change. Which means now is the time for debate. Now my brother is very much in favour of debate and I totally support his leadership of the party, and I look forward to more debate on this issue.
Andrew Neil: Most climate change sceptics are on the right. Where are you?
Piers Corbyn: Well, I'm on the left. But there's plenty, plenty who are on the left - there's Tom Harris from Canada who's certainly, you know, he says: look, there's no reason for being either left or right on this issue - we stand for scientific truth.
Alan Johnson: There's a reason for being right or wrong, because the danger of this kind of thing is we've been through it, I believe, with GM crops. We've been through it with measles, mumps and rubella, when people stopped inoculating their kids because, you know... With due respect to you, renegade scientists said this was bad for them. And it would be horrendous if 97% of the world's scientists are right about 2% warming [possibly he meant "2 degrees"] and we throw all that aside and follow your conspiracy theory.
Andrew Neil: Let's not get hung up on the 97%, which - there is some -
Piers Corbyn: Andrew, what is science? Tell me, what is science?
Andrew Neil: What I want to ask you, because we've only got a few minutes -
Piers Corbyn: Evidence is what counts. Evidence.
Andrew Neil: I understand that. And there's a lot of evidence around, I would suggest, that conflicts with what you've told us tonight -
Piers Corbyn: No, no.
Andrew Neil: Let us move on. How do you think your brother's doing?
Piers Corbyn: Superbly. He's made a different situation in Britain, where, you know, young people are now participating more than ever in politics, the Labour Party's got the biggest membership ever, and more people joined, since he became leader, than membership of the Liberal Democrats.
Andrew Neil: And you don't think he's out of touch with mainstream Labour opinion, never mind the wider electorate?
Piers Corbyn: Well, there's a difference - look, I'm not here to talk about this, but there's a difference between Parliament and the party and the public, and he is fighting for proper discussion and proper representation and proper accountability in the party, and I support him.
Andrew Neil: Thumbs up to the brother.
Piers Corbyn [giving a thumbs-up sign]: Absolutely.
Andrew Neil: All right. Piers Corbyn, thanks for being with us, tonight.
Piers Corbyn: Thank you.