Thursday 27 August 2009

Hannan: poor weather forecasts call climate science into question

Alex Smith of Labour List is rightly horrified at calls for Daniel Hannan to be silenced, putting out the call for us to hear rather more about the influential creed that is Hannanism and not less.

I get the impression that Conservative Central office may have a different view - and that Mr Hannan may have agreed to take a rather lower profile, before the current Enoch row blew up.

This is a shame, as 'Daniel Hannan explains modern Conservatism' could become a request show. It is the sort of political education project. I think it could fully merit state funding, even in these austere times. If not, then I am sure Next Left and LabourList would be happy to team up with the Daily Telegraph and ConservativeHome to ensure it reaches the widest possible audience.

Personally, I would be particularly interested to know whether Hannanism accepts that the scientific evidence about man-made climate change is convincing.

After all, given Hannan's influence in the Conservative Party, he could be a powerful cross-party advocate among the 'vote blue, go green' troops for the global climate change deal that Ed Miliband is working so hard with governments across the world to achieve.

Unfortunately, I get the impression that Hannan may be gently sceptical about climate change too - with a pretty convincing knockdown argument that you would normally have to get out of your house and down the Dog and Duck to hear about, taking the opportunity to send a small coded signal to his fan-base on his blog early this month:


If [the Met Office] can’t accurately forecast the weather two months in advance, why should we let them speak with such sacerdotal authority about what the temperature will be a century from now?


Damn! And just when we were doing so well with that cross-party consensus too.

But I wouldn't be surprised if we don't hear much more of Hannan's views of the causes and consequences of the climate crisis before December.

So please don't silence him, Dave, whatever you do.

But if you do want to show us your decisive leadership on this one, perhaps you could make him put a windmill on his roof as penance.

2 comments:

_______ said...

Philip Blonde is launching his new think tank in autumn:
http://www.respublica.org.uk/

This'll be one to watch and we'll see if progressive conservatism actually lives up to its name in being progressive.

Oriel boy said...

I assume Hannan's comment about the Met office was in relation to the fact that this summer wasn't a "barbecue summer". But you see, the Met office never predicted a "barbecue summer", firstly because as scientists, the term "barbecue summer" is hardly scientific, but also because they predicted something along the lines of "there's a 60% chance the summer will be warmer than average", which the media duly turned into "THEREZ GONNA B A BARBEE SUMA LOLZORZ!!!!111"

As someone on the internet said about Simon Jenkins recently, and could now so easily say about Hannan, he doesn't understand what a stochastic process is.

Nor does he understand the difference between climate and weather. The difference is simple. If Hannan doesn't know what an average is, then maybe he could talk to a few ten year olds, as they could teach him.