Was Margaret Thatcher the first climate sceptic? Margaret Thatcher was the first leader to warn...

Telegraph (UK) ^ | 12 Jun 2010 | Christopher Booker

[neverdem]

Margaret Thatcher was the first leader to warn of global warming - but also the first to see the flaws in the climate change orthodoxy

A persistent claim made by believers in man-made global warming – they were at it again last week – is that no politician was more influential in launching the worldwide alarm over climate change than Margaret Thatcher. David Cameron, so the argument runs, is simply following in her footsteps by committing the Tory party to its present belief in the dangers of global warming, and thus showing himself in this respect, if few others, to be a loyal Thatcherite.

The truth behind this story is much more interesting than is generally realised, not least because it has a fascinating twist. Certainly, Mrs Thatcher was the first world leader to voice alarm over global warming, back in 1988, With her scientific background, she had fallen under the spell of Sir Crispin Tickell, then our man at the UN. In the 1970s, he had written a book warning that the world was cooling, but he had since become an ardent convert to the belief that it was warming, Under his influence, as she recorded in her memoirs, she made a series of speeches, in Britain and to world bodies, calling for urgent international action, and citing evidence given to the US Senate by the arch-alarmist Jim Hansen, head of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

She found equally persuasive the views of a third prominent convert to the cause, Dr John Houghton, then head of the UK Met Office. She backed him in the setting up of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988, and promised the Met Office lavish funding for its Hadley Centre, which she opened in 1990, as a world authority...

[neverdem]

In an illustration of the truth behind the saying that revenge is a dish best served cold, Paul Mulshine from The Star Ledger, Newark, NJ, claimed that revenge on Britain's coal minor unions, which caused Margaret Thatcher no end of grief with strikes, was the main reason for Margaret Thatcher taking up the cause of the global warming alarmism, on the Bob Grant Show today. It's after his introductory remarks, his conversation with Roger Stone and taking five or so phone calls, maybe 30 minutes into the 1st hour. It's near the end of the Mulshine segment.

Pay attention after his initial rant about George Stephanopoulos. Stone has some choice remaks about Chuck U Schumer's manner of dressing too.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Thanks for posting this.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Related threads:

Increased CO2 Emissions Will Delay Next Ice Age ( And that is a good thing!)

Scripps blockbuster: Ocean acidification happens all the time — naturally

[GOP Poet]

bookmark

[SWAMPSNIPER]

All I needed to tip me off was for Algore to start pushing it.

[M. Espinola]

When the US & UK had real leadership:

[Caulkhead]

I helped Mrs Thatcher get re-elected in 1983 (albeit in a small way) and there was never any element of revenge against the unions. She was simply too logical to apply something as emotional as revenge into her thinking. It was far simpler - the unions thought they ran the country and she had to show them they were wrong. The mining unions simply refused to understand that fewer and fewer people were buying coal, they were expecting more and more pay for digging it up and foreign suppliers could undercut UK coal by a huge margin. You don’t need a degree in econimics to see where that was going.

[steelyourfaith]

Thanx for the ping Ernest_at_the_Beach !

 

Beam me to Planet Gore !

[steveab]

“.....the unions thought they ran the country and she had to show them they were wrong.” Way to go UK. Do to unintended consequences you are well on your way to being a third world nation as more and more of your wealth is sucked out of your pocket through CO2 Cap And Trade. Next stop: Serfdom.

[neverdem]

I helped Mrs Thatcher get re-elected in 1983 (albeit in a small way) and there was never any element of revenge against the unions. She was simply too logical to apply something as emotional as revenge into her thinking. It was far simpler - the unions thought they ran the country and she had to show them they were wrong. The mining unions simply refused to understand that fewer and fewer people were buying coal, they were expecting more and more pay for digging it up and foreign suppliers could undercut UK coal by a huge margin. You don’t need a degree in econimics to see where that was going.

Listen to the Paul Mulshine segment from the Bob Grant Show. That's why I linked it in comment# 1. That's how I heard it. If I misunderstood what Mr. Mulshine said, then I'm sorry. If I didn't, then your argument is with Mr. Mulshine. Regardless, Mrs Thatcher's fight with coal miners was the main reason for her to embrace initially global warming alarmism.

[Caulkhead]

“Regardless, Mrs Thatcher’s fight with coal miners was the main reason for her to embrace initially global warming alarmism.”

I disagree. Mrs Thatcher embraced GW for the same reason all other politicians do - it allows them to tax, something she badly needed to do at the time. She was IMHO wonderful, but not perfect.

[neverdem]

Mrs Thatcher embraced GW for the same reason all other politicians do - it allows them to tax, something she badly needed to do at the time.

I disagree. She was a Tory, and she regularly disparaged Labor for their lust of other peoples money. She trained as a chemist, as did I. Carbon dioxide absorbs infrared radiation. Extra carbon dioxide from human activity causing at increase in temperature is a plausible initial hypothesis, except actual temperature data says its probably insignificant compared to normal variability.