Cameron’s Claim Not Supported By Evidence
By Paul Homewood
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-25656426
Readers will recall that the Prime Minister, David Cameron, replying to a question about recent wet weather at PM questions in January, replied:
"I agree with you that we are seeing more abnormal weather events. Colleagues across the House can argue about whether that is linked to climate change or not. I very much suspect that it is.”
So I fired off this FOI request to the Department of Energy & Climate Change:
Please advise:
1) What evidence the PM has that "abnormal events are increasing"
2) What evidence he has that the recent bad weather is in any way "abnormal"
On Feb 3rd, DECC replied that they did not hold this information, and suggested I contact the Cabinet Office, which I duly did.
I have just received their reply:
In other words, they are admitting there is no evidence at all that recent weather was “abnormal”, or that “abnormal weather” is increasing. It is simply the PM’s opinion.
Perhaps, Cameron needs to stand up again, and make this clear.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
I doubt that he will.
Perhaps you need to send this to a “sceptical” M.P., if there are any.
Nice work Paul 🙂
Oooh I love to dance a little sidestep….
At least Charles Durning was more enjoyable.
Bwahahahahahahaha!
Lame answer of the year! Cameron is such a plastic cowboy.
Paul said: they are admitting there is no evidence at all that recent weather was “abnormal”, or that “abnormal weather” is increasing
That is not what the letter says.
Reblogged this on Tallbloke's Talkshop and commented:
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Lol. 🙂
You are being too harsh. Of course Mr Cameron is seeing more abnormal weather events; it is part of his job to whizz around the country making excuses for the Environment Agency so he sees all of them, rather than just the ones in Witney that he saw when he was a humble constituency MP.
Global Warming – not occurring ‘cos Cameron can’t ‘see it’!
Perhaps he should review recorded historical weather data first before he made such a brash remark. http://www.breadandbutterscience.com/Weather.htm
Paul, I just came across your excelent website and realised that you have been extensively reporting on UK flooding. Please check my audit of the UK Met Office’s own precipitation data which clearly shows that their chief scientists has mislead the public either by incompetence or by design: http://www.l4patterns.com/uploads/uk-flood-f.pdf
Dr Darko Butina
Interestingly, in the USA where security laws require heads of corporations to tell the truth, Warren Buffett says extreme weather events have not been increasing. In fact, Berkshire Hathaway’s insurance businesses profited from the lack of hurricanes.
The Wall Street Journal, tongue in cheek, refers to Buffett as a climate change denier. 🙂
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303630904579418754090426372?mg=reno64-wsj
Hmmm… “Seeing”. Isn’t that some form of superstitious, quasi-druid practice used to convince gullible people to do stuff that they wouldn’t do if they thought about it rationally?
You should put in an FOI request to identify when Cameron was initiated as a seer. 😉
The disrespectful arrogance of the reply is interesting. How dare a citizen respectfully request their leaders offer evidence of what they is claimed? How dare a citizen expect a leader to be historically literate? I have stated it before- the popularity of the AGW social movement is a manifestation of a much deeper failure of society
Where I come from visual observations can be considered ‘evidence’.
Reblogged this on CraigM350 and commented:
So it’s official. Climate change policy is effectively based upon looking out the window 🙂
Unbelievable semantics – pedantic nonsense to disguise deliberate ignorance. “we are seeing” has more weight than the subject matter, and normal language used to describing how people perceive the environment which surrounds us. Nicholas (what else?) is the type of shiny-arse pissant bureaucrat who helps obfuscate real issues and perpetuate the lies and buggery that’s got us surrounded. If “Cunningham’s Benevolent Dictatorship” was running the country – things would immediately change. It’s all designed for one end – to manipulate the ignorant masses. Hitler did it, but now are MANY hitlers! PC
I ‘suspect’ Cameron is FOS due to climate change…..where’s my grant money now?
Paul,
Is there a member, somewhere in the House, who is willing to ask the Prime Minister the appropriate question during PMQs?
Stephen
Sent from my iPhone
>
I’ve got two ideas, as there are not manu ” sceptics” in Parliament.
I’ll update tomorrow, but if anyone else has “candidates” in mind, let me know.
It is so easy to go around after any storm and say that the climate is all screwed up. That is grandstanding to the dumbest of the dumb. Any idiot should be able to see thru it.
I think ‘we are seeing’ is code for ‘f**k off’.
BTW we can only ‘see more’ if we know what we ‘saw before’ and we have some definition of ‘abnormal’.
Cameron is a politician – the only evidence for increasing in bad weather needs to be: if 51% of the population believe in global warming – that’s good enough for him
Owen Paterson has just been on R4 “World At One” and said something like, “the climate is changing and there is clearly a human element”, implying there is a non-human element.
So the government seem to defining “weather” as non-human climate change.
It’s all getting very confusing. People need to define “climate change” more precisely.
In this case the adage ‘seeing is believing’ takes on a new, and less encouraging meaning. Political leaders making ill-considered claims on the hoof is bad enough, but trying it on with such a daft weasel in distraction when asked to explain is actually pretty serious.
This was, and remains, a legitimate question, calling him out, and so far only ‘answered’ by a minion trying a semantic dodge.