Many of the obituaries of Nigel Lawson, Lord Lawson of Blaby, have glossed over the work that dominated the last 20 years of his life. This was warning of the dangers and unrealistic costs of removing fossil fuel and the dire economic and social consequences of what has come to be known as Net Zero. The Daily Telegraph spent a page detailing the significant events in his life, but three brief mentions of his Net Zero and climate science concerns didn’t even coalesce into a single sentence. Of course, the Guardian didn’t go out of its way to discuss his concerns, but it did provide a short obituary paragraph that gave a summary of the work that dominated his later years (presumably to discredit him).
His main interest, however, was a campaign to counter the case for global warming. He set up a think tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, designed to challenge international attempts to mitigate the impacts of global heating. Lawson claimed that economic growth should not be slowed down to prevent a possible eventuality, but that policy should be made pragmatically in response to what had already happened.
Lawson came to politics relatively late in life after a successful career as a financial and political journalist. After the near-collapse of a Britain dominated by hard Left statism in the late 1970s, the Thatcher governments of the following decade helped boost free markets, entrepreneurship and living standards. Lawson was the Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1983-1989, and is credited with introducing many of the successful tax and economic reforms that transformed the British economy at the time. His success is often attributed to a combination of careful planning, thinking the unthinkable (whoever thought telephones shouldn’t be run as a state monopoly by the Post Office?) and a practical approach to the art of possible politics.
His later work on climate science and the gathering moves towards Net Zero undoubtedly appealed to his considerable intellectual abilities. The Guardian correctly noted that he didn’t wish economic growth to be slowed for a possible eventuality. Writing an essay for a climate compilation book in 2015, he noted that hundreds of millions of people suffered in dire poverty in the developing world. Asking these countries to abandon the cheapest available sources of energy is, at the very least, he said, asking them to delay the conquest of malnutrition, to perpetuate the incidence of preventable disease and to increase the numbers of premature deaths. “Global warming orthodoxy is not merely irrational. It is wicked,” he added.
Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and water vapour warmed the planet, accepted Lawson, but he raised serious scientific questions about any danger this posed. In particular, he noted that scientists had not agreed on the sensitivity of the atmosphere to a doubling of CO2 and how much temperature would rise. In fact, since Lawson wrote his essay, these estimates have been generally lowered in most scientific circles. He stated that temperatures had been much higher in the past, without any human involvement. And he queried whether any rise in temperature would actually be a bad thing. “It would, after all, be surprising if the planet were on a happy but precarious temperature knife-edge, from which any change in either direction would be a major disaster,” he suggested.
Lawson had an elegant riposte to the so-called precautionary principle which is often used to justify the expenditure of vast amounts of money just in case there is some dramatic change in the climate. To him the most important use of the precautionary principle was against the precautionary principle. There are only so many things one can take precautions against, particularly since there are many scientists who fear the Earth is heading for a new ice age. “It would be difficult, to say the least, to devote unlimited sums to both cooling and warming the planet at the same time,” he dryly observed.
On the balance of probabilities, noting all the suggested advantages and disadvantages, Lawson concluded that in a nutshell, “global warming is good for you”. Short shrift was given to what a few years ago was the burgeoning pseudoscientific practice of claiming bad or ‘extreme’ weather was “consistent with what we would expect from climate change”. Noting these “weasel words”, he asked, so what? “It is also consistent with the theory that it is a punishment from the Almighty for our sins – the prevailing explanation of extreme weather events throughout most of human history.”
The fact remains, reported Lawson, that empirical studies show there has been no perceptible increase, globally, in either the number or the severity of extreme weather events. To this day, similar studies confirm this view.
It seems this last analysis led to his cancellation in most mainstream media, particularly at the BBC. In a recent World Weather Attribution (WWA) guide for journalists titled ‘Reporting extreme weather and climate change’, the former BBC Today Editor Sarah Sands bemoaned the time when Lawson managed to suggest there had been no increase in extreme weather. I wish we had this guide to help us mount a more effective challenge to his claim, wrote Sands. These days, she said, attribution studies have given us significant insight into the horsemen of the climate apocalypse. We have evidence and we have facts, and they are a secure foundation for news, she added.
Imperial College-led World Weather Attribution specialises in near-instant weather attributions. It does this by modelling two imaginary climates, one without and one with humans producing CO2. Any weather event supposedly magnified in the latter is said to be due to human-caused climate change. Roger Pielke, a noted science writer and a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, is unimpressed: “I can think of no other area of research where the relaxing of rigour and standards has been encouraged by researchers in order to generate claims more friendly to headlines, political advocacy and even lawsuits.”
If the Telegraph obituary writer failed to pick up the importance of Lawson’s climate work, no such error was made by the newspaper’s columnist Allison Pearson. Commenting on his founding of the Global Warming Policy Foundation in 2009, she said it pushed back against the complacent, settled wisdom on climate change. “Amid growing alarm about the cost to the U.K. of a Gadarene rush towards Net Zero, his scepticism feels more vindicated by the day,” she added.
Nigel Lawson was an old school, inquiring journalist, and a great, game-changing politician. Your own correspondent owes him a debt of gratitude since the reforms of the Thatcher Government opened up the City of London with greater opportunities in financial journalism, broke the sclerotic power of print unions to control the manufacturing process, and provided genuine tax incentives for entrepreneurship – in my own case, the publishing business.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. He is the former owner of Evandale Publishing Ltd.
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Well done, Chris!
Another great piece and an obituary that Nigel will be proud of.
Who is the 1 down vote nut job ?
Wouldn’t be at all surprised if it was as a result of an algorithm from DS themselves, just so comments don’t look implausibly positive and lay things open for accusations of “fake ratings”.
Tyranny does not ask politely that you accept it. ———–Climate Change is one of those tyranny’s.———- It does not ask what you think. It tells you what you are supposed to think. It never debates, and instead it ridicules, harasses, and excludes. It demands you accept it even though the whole pseudo science is full of holes and uncertainties, and the facts never fit the theory. The most basic parameters are not even known. How sensitive is the climate to CO2? UNKNOWN. ——-How do clouds affect temperature? –UNKNOWN.– Climate Change is a top down political agenda that uses irrational fear about the planet to bludgeon people into accepting Sustainable Development.—- NET ZERO is where the wealthy west are to stop using the fuels that brought them prosperity because it is deemed we have already used more than our fair share of them, not because we are causing dangerous changes to climate. Because there is not a shred of evidence for that. Nigel Lawson knew all of this and so did Margaret Thatcher. ————Most people will be unaware that NET ZERO that is estimated to be going to cost up to 2 trillion quid was simply waved through parliament with no questions asked and the public were never consulted. ————Tyranny does NOT consult.
Well put
The point of Lawson’s 2009 book was to distinguish the question of what to do about global warming from the question of what was actually happening to the climate.
The latter question is scientific, but the former is unavoidably economic and political.
The green activists run them together, but they are clearly wrong to do so.
But there are no scientists or experts who know what the climate will be doing in 50 or 100 years time. Computer model projections full of assumptions and speculations that do not match what is actually occurring in the real world are NOT science and they are NOT evidence of anything. Yet public policy costing trillions is based entirely on the output from those models.
The likes of Lord Lawson are ignored by the modern Not-a-Conservative-Party. Instead, they follow the doctrine of Zac Goldsmith.
What a tragedy that Lord Lawson has died ….. and the Eco Nutter, Lord Goldsmith hasn’t.
Goldsmith lost his seat at the last election and was given a peerage by Johnson.
Johnson’s brother was given a peerage by Johnson. Lets see what he gives his father.
Funny that there is nothing for the sister.
I took more notice of the late Lord when he so eloquently started to go against the climate ponzi scheme. I think the GWPF is a great legacy.
Lord Lawson does indeed deserve full recognition for his efforts in fighting the climate scam. And much of his time as Chancellor does him great credit, as a far-seeing innovator, the likes of which are greatly missed today.
But I’ve yet to read a convincing explanation for his liking for the ERM, supposedly setting interest rates to shadow the Deutschmark. What is clear is that he kept interest rates too low for too long, leading to the ‘Lawson Boom’ which, with its John Major aftermath, did so much damage to the Conservative Party and the country.
Maybe his Brexit support was an admission of his errors? I don’t know.
But maybe scams like the ERM, and indeed the Climate agenda, have the capacity to beguile the best of minds. This, I am sure, is a phenomenon that needs probing and understanding.
Yes, and Norman Lamont’s “green shoots of recovery”.
I remember my father framing the accidental “photo” developed from the first frame of a 35mm film. It was three vertical bands of white, yellow and orange. He titled it,
“Norman Lamont’s Green Shoots of Recovery – Neither Green, Nor Shoots”
Whatever your prior beliefs the WWA guide for journalists is worth reading. It is very clear while avoiding oversimplifying things. For example, attribution studies are no longer just a case of “modelling two imaginary climates” (if they ever were).
If you believe that, then you clearly haven’t read it……
‘(In 2004) They took the following steps: First, they simulated the modern climate…..Second, they simulated the climate as it would be without any emissions……Finally, they compared the (simulated) numbers with and without global warming’
‘Current attribution analysis now consists of three separate but related methods. The steps listed above describe one part of the modern methodology: simulating and comparing the modern and pre-industrial climates with climate models.’
https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/wp-content/uploads/ENG_WWA-Reporting-extreme-weather-and-climate-change.pdf
Exactly – so it now consists of three methods – the steps described being just one of them. It seems like you agree with my point – right?
If you have read it, then you haven’t understood it.
Attribution studies were and still are about modelling two imaginary climates.
They now add further made up modelling dross to pretend that makes their models more reliable.
It does not.
As we continue to see, year by year, their models are less and less reliable.
‘In conclusion on the basis of observational data, the climate crisis that, according to many sources, we are experiencing today, is not evident yet.‘
A critical assessment of extreme events trends in times of global warming 13 Jan 22
As any fule kno: ‘All models are wrong’
There’s no use spending a lot of time getting every detail of something that’s obviously bullshit right because bullshit is always much faster produced than painstakingly refuted. We have no way of knowing how an earth without humans would look like because if we had, it wouldn’t be without humans. That’s a self-contradictory proposition which is enough to bury this nonsense summarily.
People who waste their time on someting like that are either very stupid or very deceptive and counting on others being too stupid to notice the obvious flaws in their word avalanches before getting buried by them.
We have no way of knowing how an earth without humans would look like because if we had, it wouldn’t be without humans.
On that logic we have no way of knowing anything about the earth’s climate (or indeed anything about the earth) prior to the emergence of the human race.
Anyhow, there is a massive difference between investigating how the climate would be without emissions and asking the earth would look without humans.
No, it’s not. The former is a proper subset of the latter.
BTW, trying to exploit ambiguities in human communication for point-scoring in this way is nothing but a tacit admission of not having any valid arguments. It’s always Sophistry to the rescue! then.
No, it’s not. The former is a proper subset of the latter.
It is still the same logic: Humans cannot see X therefore we cannot know what X would look like. If your argument is not of this form please explain how it differs.
BTW, trying to exploit ambiguities in human communication for point-scoring in this way is nothing but a tacit admission of not having any valid arguments.
To point out that your main argument is a fallacy is not point scoring or an admission of anything. We clearly have many ways of knowing what things would look like even when there are no humans present
There is no such thing as a planet earth of 2023 without the effects – whatever they are – of people burning stuff[*]. Any theory to the contrary is thus nothing but an inherently unverifiable speculation. But we could perhaps take a hint from nature itself: All planets known to us in some detail where humans aren’t burning stuff are stone dead and suffer from seriously extreme weather.
[*] An exothermic reaction turning carbon contained in some suitable material into various carbon oxides. Carbonmonoxide is poisionous to people, carbondioxide only to bankers and members of established political parties. We need more of that stuff!
OK Mr Morrison. How about compiling an Appeal to Reason 2.0. You could ask Spencer, Christy, Curry, Lomborg, Shellenberger, Happer, Koonin et al to contribute appropriate chapters. It would almost write itself.
All this government has to do to get voted back in is to return this country to 1990.