Professor Michael Kelly Writes To The Times
Sir, Andrew Motion (report, Feb 23) is correct to castigate climate change deniers, but he is profoundly mistaken in linking all those who oppose the current climate science orthodoxy into one group. The interpretation of the observational science has been consistently over-egged to produce alarm. All real-world data over the past 20 years has shown the climate models to be exaggerating the likely impacts — if the models cannot account for the near term, why should I trust them in the long term?
I am most worried by the billions of pounds being misinvested and lost as a consequence. Look out to sea at the end of 2015 and see how many windmills are not turning and you will get my point: there are already 14,000 abandoned windmills onshore in the US. Premature technology deployment is thoroughly bad engineering, and my taxes are subsidising it against my will and professional judgment.
Professor Michael Kelly
Prince Philip Professor of Technology, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge
You need to buy The Times for more magisterial opinions.
This letter is published in full as it appeared in The Times as the author notes it has been edited from what he wrote.
If I told you that the first sentence of my letter was edited, your readers might be mollified.I wrote:
Andrew Motion (report, Feb 23) is correct to castigate climate change deniers, as the climate has always been changing, but he is profoundly mistaken in linking all those who oppose the current climate science orthodoxy into one group.Michael Kelly
Comments
A very sensible opinion that will, I'm afraid, be completely ignored by policy makers of all political colours
Posted by: Peter Stroud | February 28, 2012 11:45 AM
I've just seen the "Prince Philip Professor of Technology" in a new light. Does this explain the scorn with which the Duke of Edinburgh blew away Esbjorn Wilmar, managing director of Infinergy, which is building offshore turbines around Britain, last November? A brilliant letter especially the final sentence:
The only question is whether any "climate change deniers" really exist. Those that like to use the term were challenged on Judith Curry's for a definition and Steven Mosher was amongst those to respond:
Not so much a straw man as a vapour one.
Posted by: Richard Drake | February 28, 2012 1:08 PM
From the letter:
Just how slow do these people's brains work? They couldn't see that 5, 10, 20 years ago?
Where was their mental capacity then? If they can think of these failures of models now, why on Earth did they not think of them long ago?
And the others! Like Oxburgh's panel members - If this question was PUT to them, and they blew it off, then this question they knew about and yet did nothing with it, and they intentionally did nothing.
This is all such an indictment of their mendacious cover-up scam on the U.K. public and the world.
And why was Kelly not screaming bloody murder back in 2010? If he can write now about it, why not then?
This is not even a "shame on them" thing - this is "Let's lock 'em up and throw away the key, for attempted robbery from the public till."
Posted by: Steve Garcia | February 29, 2012 4:35 AM
Remeber John Christy:
"We have a vested interest in creating panic because money will then flow to climate scientists"
Posted by: LaMaisonDieu | February 29, 2012 3:51 PM