The Bishop of Chester was under fire last night after suggesting mankind is not to blame for global warming, which he said would happen "come what may".
Friends of the Earth condemned the comments by Rt Rev Dr Peter Forster, insisting scientists were united in their certainty that global temperatures were rising because of carbon dioxide emissions. The green group said everyone had a responsibility to "wake up to the threat posed by climate change", adding: "The debate is over. The alarm bells are ringing."
The row followed the Bishop of Chester's speech in a House of Lords debate on energy, in which he said discussion about the causes of global warming was "still open". Describing himself as a "scientist in a previous incarnation", Dr Forster - whose diocese includes Wirral - said there was no consensus among climate scientists that "carbon dioxide levels are the key determinant". And he told peers: "Climate science is a notoriously imprecise area, because the phenomena under investigation are so large. "That makes precision difficult to achieve."
The bishop's views are in stark contrast to those of his near-neighbour, the Bishop of Liverpool, who once warned that the chances of Earth surviving the century were no better than 50/50.
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MAKING POOR PEOPLE POORER IS A "LEGITIMATE WAY TO CUT EMISSIONS"
Higher energy prices are a "legitimate" way to cut greenhouse gas emissions, Gordon Brown's chief adviser on climate change said on Friday, even as the government faces mounting pressure from MPs to ease fuel taxes.
Adair Turner, the chairman of the government's climate change committee and new head of the Financial Services Authority, told the Financial Times that, as a matter of principle, "everyone accepts that putting a price on carbon is a crucial instrument" to cut emissions. "That will put up the price of energy and there is no way round that. We should not deny that is what these policies do," he said.
Lord Turner's comments underline the growing conflict between environmental policies - which rely on increasing the cost of energy to encourage people to cut their emissions - and the government's need to respond to widespread concerns over the effects of high energy prices. The timing of Lord Turner's intervention could hardly be worse for Mr Brown. As Labour on Friday suffered its worst poll rating since records began in 1943, the prime minister remained under intense pressure over his handling of the fuel crisis.
Mr Brown this week unveiled a flurry of measures including state support to ease fuel poverty, signals of a U-turn on motoring taxes and a minor boost to North Sea oil production. He highlighted the impact on families of "the cost of filling up at the petrol station and in the rise in gas and electricity bills". Though he refused directly to criticise Gordon Brown, Lord Turner said the emphasis should be on encouraging people to cut their fuel use, rather than easing price pressures: "There are huge opportunities for energy efficiency."
He added: "If you are worried about the impact on low-income groups of fuel prices, the response should be to intensify support for them to improve their energy efficiency, rather than say you have to give up on climate change objectives."
Lord Turner will wield the greatest influence of any official over the government's climate policies for the next six months as he crafts a strategy for emissions reductions for the next five years and beyond. After that, he will give up his climate change responsibilities to focus on the FSA.
The Tories have latched on to fuel prices as an electorally potent issue, which played well in the this month's Crewe by-election victory. Alan Duncan, shadow business secretary, accused the government of having "desperately tried to make it look as if they're doing something about energy prices. In fact they're not."
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British universities' witch-hunt against the Jews
Today, the Universities and Colleges Union is discussing whether universities should single out Israeli and Jewish scholars for active discrimination. Yes, you read that correctly. The UCU is debating a motion which not only raises the spectre yet again of an academic boycott of Israel but demands of Jewish and Israeli academics that they explain their politics as a pre-condition to normal academic contact. The motion asks colleagues
to consider the moral and political implications of educational links with Israeli institutions, and to discuss the occupation with individuals and institutions concerned, including Israeli colleagues with whom they are collaborating... the testimonies will be used to promote a wide discussion by colleagues of the appropriateness of continued educational links with Israeli academic institutions... Ariel College, an explicitly colonising institution in the West Bank, be investigated under the formal Greylisting Procedure.
The implication is that, if they don't condemn Israel for the `occupation', or practising `apartheid', `genocide' or any of the other manufactured crimes laid at Israel's door by the Palestinian/Islamist/neonazi/leftwing axis, they won't be able to work. Their continued employment will depend on their holding views which are permitted. The views they are being bludgeoned into expressing as a condition of their employment are based on lies, distortion, propaganda, gross historical ignorance, blood libels and prejudice. And this in the universities, supposedly the custodians of free thought and inquiry in the service of dispassionate scholarship.
What makes it all the more appalling is that it is Israelis and Jews alone who are being singled out for this treatment. No other group is to be barred from academic activity unless they hold `approved' views; no state-run educational institution controlled by any of the world's numerous tyrannies is to be `grey-listed'. The UCU's own rules state that it
actively opposes all forms of harassment, prejudice and unfair discrimination.
Well, various Jewish groups in the Stop the Boycott campaign have obtained a legal opinion from two QCs which states that today's motion constitutes harassment, prejudice and unfair discrimination on grounds of race or nationality. It says:
If the Motion is passed it would expose Jewish members of the Union to indirect discrimination... Additionally, the Union faces potential liability for acts of harassment on grounds of race or nationality. The substance of the Motion may also involve the Union in becoming accessories to acts of discrimination in an employment context against Israeli academics...No doubt, if such Israeli academics speak in favour of the Palestinian viewpoint they will be immune from further action; if they are against it or possibly even non-committal they and their institutions are to be considered potentially unsuitable subjects for continued association...
The Union will accordingly be adopting a provision, criterion or practice which will put Jewish members at a particular disadvantage compared to non-Jewish members. That is because Jewish members are much more likely to have links with Israeli academics and institutions than non -Jewish members. To require Jewish members to act consistently with the Motion (if passed) would be to impose a professional detriment upon them as Union members which is based on their race. If they acted inconsistently with the Motion, we infer that they would also be subject to disadvantage or sanction under the Union rules or practices -- an alternative detriment. We do not see how any such detriment would be justified as pursuing a legitimate aim. No proper Union purpose is promoted by imposing this detriment on certain members. Thus the Motion will have the effect of indirectly -- and unlawfully -- against Jewish Members of the Union.
The opinion is thus unequivocal. Today's motion breaks the law; it breaks the UCU's own rules; it is prejudiced, discriminatory and unjust towards Israelis and Jews. But the motion also notes
legal attempts to prevent UCU debating boycott of Israeli academic institutions; and legal advice that such debates are lawful
In other words, two fingers to the Jews. Such is the disgusting and terrifying state to which Britain's intelligentsia has now descended.
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Britain's UCU: where is your boycott of academics from Cuba, China, Sudan.or the USA?
This sickening tripe, as reported by the Guardian, shouldn't be worth commenting on.
A lecturers' union was last night accused of launching a new academic boycott of Israel after it agreed a policy to call on its members to "consider" their links with Israeli institutions.
The University and College Union voted overwhelmingly at its Manchester conference to call on colleagues to "consider the moral and political implications of educational links with Israeli institutions, and to discuss the occupation with individuals and institutions concerned, including Israeli colleagues with whom they are collaborating"..
Academics argued that it was not a new boycott, but a show of their right to debate the issues facing Palestinian colleagues and, separately, links with Israeli institutions. Tom Hickey of the NEC and Brighton University, which proposed the motion, told delegates: "Being a student or teacher in Palestine is not easy . we are talking about not just impediment but serial humiliation and that's the order of the day in Palestine... In the face of accusations of anti-semitism and legal threats we refused to be intimidated. We will protect the union from legal threats but we will not be silenced.".
In a statement, the vice-chancellors' umbrella group, Universities UK, said: "We believe a boycott of this kind, advocating the severing of academic links with a particular nationality or country, is at odds with the fundamental principle of academic freedom."
...but we have to.
For the sake of brevity, we'll leave aside the obvious: that the double standards in not pursuing a boycott of Chinese, Sudanese, Zimbabwean, Cuban, etc academics shows a tendency to hold said peoples in lower moral and ethic regard than Israelis - i.e. Judeo-Christians.
No, what's interesting is that, when we look at the premise - accusations of human rights abuses of Palestinian-Arabs - for the boycott, we see an emptiness in their beliefs. You see, the repercussions to the threats to boycott products and academics from tiny, almost-friendless Israel, are small in consequence to the boycotters than were they to follow through on their principles. Were they to (a) continue to ignore the aforementioned list of genuine and disgraceful human rights abusers, and (b) aim their anger at some Big Boy offenders, who would they be forced to boycott?
The USA.
After all, who so these same people claim have killed, what, hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, Afghans, etc. - numbers that shrink even the most fabulously inflated number of slaughtered Palestinian-Arabs by Israel.
Are they going to live in a world without products, academic papers, medicines, technological innovations, Green Cards, UN funding - not to mention military help every time the peace-loving EU can't handle a field battle in their own back yard involving a country the size of an average sitting room? That, our lovely readers, that is why these moral cowards pick on tiny Israel.
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