By tracing the inception of this particular environmental concern back to the Stockholm Conference of 1975 (previously there had been some concern about global cooling) his research also demonstrates that the political impetus to address this problem stems from a period of general hippy/greenness before there was any persuasive evidence that an increase of CO₂ in the atmosphere might be a problem.  Therefore, we are witnessing a movement the origins of which lie more in the realm of the social sciences rather than the natural sciences – a fashionable cause stemming from self-righteous, affluent western angst in search of a rationale. He explicitly poses the question; is it possible for the developed and developing nations to agree ways of implementing their mutually virtuous aspirations to save the planet that were formulated at the Paris Conference of 2015? He concluded that it is not, and shows that the disparity in objectives can be traced back to 1975.

Robin’s paper can also be read as posing a broader question. Given that the Stockholm Conference took place long before there was any real evidence that CO₂ might be a problem, has the political movement that gathered momentum over the past four decades, culminating in the impasse reached at the Paris Conference, been inspired by science, or has climate science satisfied the requirements of a political movement? In that case there would be no problem to solve.

Enjoy!

How developing countries took control of climate negotiations and what that means for emission reduction.

The main reason why, despite countless scientific warnings about dangerous consequences, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions continue to increase is rarely mentioned. Yet it’s been obvious for several years – at least to anyone willing to see it. It’s this: most countries outside Western Europe, North America and Australasia are either unconcerned about the impact of GHGs on the climate or don’t regard the issue as a priority, focusing instead for example on economic growth. Yet these countries, comprising 84 percent of humanity, are today the source of 75 percent of emissions.^[1] Therefore, unless they change their policies radically – and there’s little evidence of their so doing – there’s no realistic prospect of the implementation of the urgent and substantial cuts in GHG emissions called for by many Western scientists.

To understand how this has happened, I believe it’s useful to review the history of environmental negotiation by referring in particular to five UN-sponsored conferences: Stockholm in 1972, Rio in 1992, Kyoto in 1997, Copenhagen in 2009 and Paris in 2015.

Stockholm 1972

In the 1950s many Western environmentalists were becoming seriously concerned that technological development, economic growth and resource depletion risked irreversible damage to humanity and to the environment.^[2] Clearly a global problem, it was agreed that it had to be tackled by international, i.e. UN sponsored, action.

The result was the UN Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm in 1972.^[3] From its outset it was recognised that, if the conference was to succeed, an immediate problem had to be solved: the perceived risk was exclusively a Western preoccupation, so how might poorer countries be persuaded to get involved?^[4]

After all, technical and industrial development were essentially the basis of the West’s economic success and that was something the rest of the world was understandably anxious to emulate – not least to alleviate the desperate poverty of many hundreds of millions of people.^[5] The diplomatic manoeuvrings needed to resolve this seemingly irreconcilable conflict set the scene for what I will refer to as ‘the Stockholm Dilemma’ – i.e. the conflict between Western fears for the environment and poorer countries’ aspirations for economic growth. It was resolved, or more accurately deferred, at the time by the linguistic nightmare of the conference’s concluding Declaration which asserted that, although environmental damage was caused by Western economic growth, it was also caused by the poorer world’s lack of economic growth.^[6]

After 1972, Western environmental concerns were overshadowed by the struggle to deal with successive oil and economic crises.^[7] However two important European reports, the Brandt Report in 1980 and the Brundtland Report in 1987, dealt with the economic gulf between the West and the so-called Third World.^[8] In particular, Brundtland concluded that, because poverty causes environmental problems, the needs of the world’s poor should be given overriding priority – a principle to be enshrined in the climate agreement signed in Rio. A solution was the now familiar sustainable development.^[9]

Rio 1992

Western environmental concerns were hugely reenergised in the late 1980s when the doctrine of dangerous (possibly catastrophic) global warming caused by mankind’s emissions of GHGs, especially carbon dioxide (CO₂)_, burst onto the scene.^[10] As a result, in 1992 the UN organised the landmark Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) – the Rio Earth Summit.^[11] It was the first of a long series of climate-related international conferences that led for example to the so-called ‘historic’ Paris Agreement signed in 2015.

A key outcome of the 1992 Earth Summit was the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Adopted in 1992 and commonly known as ‘the Convention’, it’s an international treaty that came into force in 1994. It remains to this day the definitive legal authority regarding climate change.^[12] Article 2 sets out its overall objective:

‘The ultimate objective of this Convention and any related legal instruments that the Conference of the Parties may adopt is to achieve … stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.’

It’s an objective that’s failed. Far from being stabilised, after 1992 emissions accelerated and, by 2018, emissions per annum had grown by nearly 70 per cent.^[13] This was essentially because the Convention attempted to solve the Stockholm Dilemma by dividing the world into two blocs: Annex I countries (essentially the West and ex-Soviet Union countries – the ‘developed’ countries) and non-Annex I countries (the rest of the world – the ‘developing’ countries). This distinction has had huge and lasting consequences – arising in particular from the Convention’s Article 4.7:

‘The extent to which developing country Parties will effectively implement their commitments under the Convention … will take fully into account that economic and social development and poverty eradication are the first and overriding priorities of the developing country Parties.’^[14] [My emphasis]

In other words, developing countries were, in accordance with Brundtland’s conclusion, expressly authorised to give overriding priority to economic growth and poverty eradication – even if that meant increasing emissions. And that’s why the Annex I/non-Annex I bifurcation has plagued international climate negotiations ever since: for example, it’s the main reason for the Copenhagen debacle in 2009 and for the Paris failure in 2015 (see below).

Annex I countries had hoped – even expected – that the Rio bifurcation would be modified so that, in line with their development, major developing countries would eventually become members of the Annex I group.^[15] But such hopes were dashed at the first post-Rio climate ‘Conference Of the Parties’ (COP) held in Berlin in 1995 (COP-1) when G77 countries (larger developing countries) plus China insisted that, if the process was to proceed at all, there must be no new obligation imposed on any non-Annex I country.

This principle arose inter alia from ‘the Berlin Mandate’ – confirming the bifurcation and its associated ‘common but differentiated responsibility’ principle as institutionalised tenets of the Convention. And, before the next climate conference in 1996 (COP-2 in Geneva), G77+China made it clear that this should not be changed.

Kyoto 1997

The impact of this was made harshly apparent at the next conference: COP-3 in Kyoto in 1997. Kyoto was supposed to be critically important – the original hope had been that negotiations would result in all countries accepting commitments to reduce their GHG emissions. But because the US had decided that it wouldn’t accept obligations that didn’t apply to other major countries^[16] and because of the Berlin Mandate, in the event the agreed Kyoto Protocol reduction obligations applied only to a few, largely Western, countries.^[17] As a result and because developing countries were refusing even to acknowledge that they might accept some future obligation, it was becoming obvious to some observers that the UN process was getting nowhere – somehow the developing countries had to be persuaded that emission reduction was in their best interests.

But how? The passage of 25 years hadn’t resolved the Stockholm Dilemma – difficult enough in 1972, the UNFCCC bifurcation and Berlin Mandate had made it worse. Yet it was recognised that, were it not for these, developing countries might simply refuse to be involved in climate negotiations, making the whole process meaningless – something the UN and Western countries refused to contemplate. So, if Kyoto was a failure, it was arguably a necessary failure if there was to be any prospect of emission reduction. And that was the story for the next twelve years: at successive meetings the major developing countries, ignoring increasingly dire climate warnings from Western scientists, refused to consider amending the UNFCCC bifurcation.

A result of that refusal was that developing countries’ economies continued their spectacular growth, resulting in rising living standards and unprecedented poverty reduction.^[18] And unsurprisingly, emissions also continued to grow: in just 12 years, from 1997 (Kyoto) to 2009 (Copenhagen), increasing by 30 percent.^[19]

Copenhagen 2009

In 2007, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC), a body that reports every seven years on the current physical scientific understanding of climate change, published its fourth report (AR4) – a report that intensified the West’s insistence that urgent and substantial emission cuts were essential.^[20]

A result was an ‘Action Plan’ agreed at the 2007 climate conference (COP-13) in Bali.^[21] It set out how it was hoped all countries would come together at Copenhagen in 2009 (COP-15) to agree a comprehensive and binding deal to take the necessary global action. Many observers regarded this as hugely significant: Ban Ki-moon, then UN Secretary General, speaking at Copenhagen said, ‘We have a chance – a real chance, here and now – to change the course of our history’’.^[22] And, as always, dire warnings were issued about the consequences of failure: UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown for example warned that, if the conference failed to achieve a deal, ‘it will be irretrievably too late’.^[23]

There was one seemingly encouraging development at Bali: developing countries accepted for the first time that emission reduction by non-Annex I countries might at least be discussed – although they insisted that developed countries were not doing enough to meet their Kyoto obligations.^[24] So the key question of how far the developing countries might go at Copenhagen remained obscure – for example was it at least possible that the larger ‘emerging economies’ such as China and India and major OPEC countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia might cease to be classified as ‘developing’? The EU and US not unreasonably thought that should happen: it was by then obvious that, unless all major emitting countries, including therefore big developing economies, were involved, an emission cutting agreement would be neither credible nor effective. Some Western negotiators hoped that the bifurcation issue might at last be settled at Copenhagen.

But it wasn’t. In the event, developing countries refused to budge, insisting for example that developed countries’ historic responsibility for emissions was what mattered. As a result, the West was humiliatingly defeated, with the EU not even involved in the final negotiations between the US and the so-called BASIC countries (Brazil, South Africa, India and China).^[25]

One commentator noted:

‘There was a clear victor. Equally clearly, there was a side that lost more comprehensively than at any international conference in modern history where the outcome had not been decided beforehand by force of arms.’ ^[26]

The Copenhagen failure was a major setback for the West.^[27] It was now established that, if the developing countries (including now powerful economies such as China, India, South Korea, Brazil, South Africa, Saudi Arabia and Iran) rejected a suggestion that their economic development be subject to emission control, that position would prevail. Yet by 2010 these countries were responsible for about 60% of global CO2 emissions ^[28] and, without them, major global emission cuts were clearly impossible.

The years following Copenhagen, from Cancún (COP-16) in 2010 to Lima (COP-20) in 2014, reinforced the West’s concerns as developing countries continued to insist they would not accept binding commitments to reduce their emissions.^[29]

Paris 2015

It was becoming obvious that, if there was to be any prospect of emission reduction, there had to be some fresh thinking. So the UN proposed a new methodology for the summit scheduled for 2015 in Paris (COP-21): instead of an overall global reduction requirement, a new approach should be implemented whereby countries would individually determine how they would reduce emissions and that this would be coupled with a periodic review by which each country’s reduction plans would be steadily scaled up by a ‘ratcheting’ mechanism.

But, when countries’ plans (then described as ‘Intended Nationally Determined Contributions’ (INDCs)) were submitted to the UNFCCC secretariat prior to Paris, it was clear that little had been achieved: hardly any developing country had indicated any intention of making absolute emission cuts. Instead their INDCs spoke merely for example of reducing CO₂ emission intensity in relation to GDP or of reducing the percentage of emissions from business-as-usual projections.^[30]

In any case, other provisions of the Agreement signed in Paris in effect exempted developing countries from any obligation, moral, legal or political, to reduce their emissions.^[31] For example, the Agreement was described in its preamble as being pursuant to ‘the objective of the Convention [and] guided by its principles’ and further described, in Article 2.1, as ‘enhancing the implementation of the Convention’. In other words, the developed/developing bifurcation remained intact and developing countries could continue to give overriding priority to economic development and poverty eradication. Moreover, under Article 4.4 of the Agreement, developing countries, in contrast to developed countries, were merely ‘encouraged to move over time towards economy-wide emission reduction or limitation targets’. Hardly an obligation to reduce their emissions.

It was not an outcome many wanted. For example, when ex UN Secretary General Kofi Annan was asked in early 2015 what he would expect to come out of the Paris summit, he replied:

‘Governments have to conclude a fair, universal and binding climate agreement, by which every country commits to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.‘ ^[32]

And Western negotiators had intended that Paris should have a very different outcome from that achieved. Hence this 2014 statement by Ed Davey, then UK Secretary of State responsible for climate negotiations:

‘Next year in Paris in December … the world will come together to forge a deal on climate change that should, for the first time ever, include binding commitments to reduce emissions from all countries.’ ^[33]

But it didn’t happen. Developing country negotiators, led by China and India, ignored the West’s (in the event feeble) demands. And Western negotiators, determined to avoid another Copenhagen-type debacle, didn’t press the issue. Hence the Paris agreement’s failure to achieve the West’s most basic aim: that powerful ‘emerging’ economies should be obliged to share in emission reduction.

The Stockholm Dilemma was still unresolved.

Might that change in the future? Well, despite an IPCC ‘Special Report’ in 2018 recommending huge emission reductions by 2030,^[34] events since 2015 indicate that’s unlikely. For example, UN Secretary General António Guterres convened a climate ‘action summit’ for September 2019, calling for national plans to go carbon neutral by 2050 and new coal plants to be banned from 2020.^[35] But, in response, the environment ministers of the so-called ‘BRICS’ countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) reaffirmed their commitment to ‘the full implementation of the Paris Agreement adopted under the principles of the UNFCCC, including the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities’ principle.^[36] In other words, these five countries (the source of 44 percent of emissions) were insisting that they should continue to be exempt from any reduction obligation – whatever the IPCC might recommend.

Unsurprisingly Guterres’ summit was a failure: Japan, Australia, South Korea and South Africa were excluded because of their support for coal and the US, Brazil and Saudi Arabia because they’d criticised the Paris Agreement. Yet absurdly China and India were allowed to speak despite being the world’s biggest coal developers and despite India saying that it was in no position to enhance its NDC (the term now used for INDCs). And China’s representative said nothing about how or when Beijing might improve its NDC, let alone start a process of emission reduction.^[37]

It was not surprising therefore that COP-25 (December 2019 in Madrid) got nowhere, with China, India, Brazil and Saudi Arabia in particular indicating no serious intention of reducing their emissions.^[38] Might that change – might major developing countries enhance their NDCs as required by the ‘ratchet’ provision of the Paris Agreement? The test will be the next UN conference (COP-26) to be held in Glasgow in November 2021 – postponed from 2020 because of the COVID-19 crisis.^[39]

Nothing that’s happened recently justifies optimism. For example, coal consumption in developing countries, especially in India, China and Southeast Asia, is still increasing,^[40] as are overall global emissions.^[41] The early 2020 emission reductions caused by Covid-19 lockdowns seem likely to be short-lived: as countries emerge from the pandemic determined to strengthen their economies, emission increases will almost certainly continue.^[42]

The harsh reality is that nothing has really changed since the Copenhagen debacle over ten years ago.

Conclusion

At the time of the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 the West’s emissions were 46 percent of the annual global total – today they’re only 25 percent of a far greater amount. Thus it’s clearly impossible for the West alone to meet scientists’ calls for urgent and substantial emission reduction. That can only happen if the rest of the world reverses its climate policies. And that’s most unlikely. Yet this key issue is largely overlooked in the West – by left and right, by ‘denier’, sceptic, ‘lukewarmer’ and ‘alarmist’, by the mainstream media, most scientific papers, most blogs, all activists and many respected academic and scientific organisations, by politicians, governmental and non-governmental organisations and by financiers, banks, celebrities and social media.

What so many seem not to have noticed is that, over the past forty years, the nature of the climate debate has radically changed as a result of major political and economic developments throughout the world: what was once the Third World has for several years been powerful enough to ignore the West and take charge of environmental negotiation. The increasingly meaningless distinction between the ‘developing’ world and the ‘developed’ world initially introduced by the West as a way of getting poorer countries involved in climate negotiation has paradoxically become the reason why progress on GHG reduction has become virtually impossible.

And there seems to be little the West can do about it.

Robin Guenier, June 2020

Upload PDF: The West vs the Rest 2.1.1

Robin Guenier is a writer, speaker and business consultant – now retired. He has an MA from Oxford and is a barrister. After twenty years as CEO of various high-tech companies, he founded (1995) an independent business consultancy, Guenier Ltd, specialising most recently in project risk; an early assignment was as CEO of the Central Computing and Telecommunications Agency reporting at ministerial level to the UK Cabinet Office. He was founder chair of the medical online research company, MedixGlobal. He has been a regular contributor to TV and radio and has had speaking engagements throughout the world. He has various charitable interests and is a Freeman of the City of London.

Notes and references

1. See: https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/overview.php?v=booklet2019 ↑
2. See for example Fairfield Osborn’s book The Plundered Planet (1948), William Vogt’s Road to Survival (1948), Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962), the dire predictions in the Club of Rome report, Limits to Growth (1968) and, in particular, Barbara Ward’s report, Only One Earth (1972). Many of today’s environmentalists share the view that economic growth causes environmental degradation. An interesting example is Michael Moore, whose recent documentary Planet of the Humans (https://vimeo.com/423114384) has caused so much controversy amongst environmentalists. It’s clear from this interview that an important reason for making the film was concern about what he sees as serious damage done to the natural environment by ‘renewables’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bop8x24G_o0. ↑
3. Organised by Canadian Maurice Strong ‘widely considered the creator of the global environmental movement’: http://tiny.cc/6h6lqz ↑
4. At the time these countries were commonly referred to as ‘underdeveloped’, as the ‘Third World’ or as the ‘Global South’ – sometimes as ‘developing’.↑
5. Franz Fanon’s book The Wretched of the Earth (1961) was very influential in intellectual circles in the West at this time. Indian PM Indira Gandhi’s keynote speech at the conference sets out the dilemma clearly: http://tiny.cc/dl6lqz. A significant comment: ‘The environment cannot be improved in conditions of poverty.’ ↑
6. See Part One, chapter I (especially ‘proclamation’ 4) of this UN report on the conference: http://un-documents.net/aconf48-14r1.pdf. For a detailed review of the conference, this is interesting: http://tiny.cc/eq6lqz. ↑
7. See: https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/oil_shock_of_1978_79 ↑
8. For Brundtland, see Our Common Future: http://tiny.cc/ol7lqz ↑
9. ibid – see paragraphs 27, 28 and 29 which do little to clarify the meaning of this rather vague concept. ↑
10. Heralded in particular by James Hansen’s address the US Congress: http://tiny.cc/8y6lqz ↑
11. See: http://tiny.cc/g46lqz ↑
12. For the full text of the UNFCCC see: https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/conveng.pdf ↑
13. See Note 1 above. Also the graphical and interactive presentation here is especially helpful: https://knoema.com/atlas/World/CO2-emissions. ↑
14. The omitted words are concerned with a different, but arguably equally important, issue: finance and technology transfer from developed to developing countries. See Note 27 (below) re Hillary Clinton’s qualified proposal about $100bn a year being made available for poorer countries by 2020. ↑
15. See Article 4.2 (f) of the UNFCCC, under which parties might review ‘available information with a view to taking decisions regarding such amendments to the lists in Annexes I and II as may be appropriate, with the approval of the Party concerned’. ↑
16. See the Byrd-Hagel resolution adopted unanimously by the US Senate in June 1997: https://nationalcenter.org/KyotoSenate.html. It stated that the US would not sign a protocol putting limits on Annex I countries unless it imposed specific, timetabled commitments on non-Annex I countries. ↑
17. For the text of the Kyoto Protocol see: https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/kpeng.pdf. Note in particular how Article 10’s provision that it did not introduce ‘any new commitments for Parties not included in Annex I’ ensured that developing countries were not bound by the Protocol’s emission reduction obligations. ↑
18. See this report about how China, by lifting more than 850 million people out of poverty, has accounted for more than 70 per cent of global poverty reduction since the 1980s: http://tiny.cc/etmmqz. ↑
19. See: Notes 1 and 13 above. ↑
20. See: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar4/syr/ ↑
21. See: https://www.preventionweb.net/files/8376_BaliE.pdf ↑
22. See: http://tiny.cc/8tmmqz. ↑
23. The full extract: ‘If we do not reach a deal at this time, let us be in no doubt: once the damage from unchecked emissions growth is done, no retrospective global agreement in some future period can undo that choice. By then it will be irretrievably too late.’ See http://tiny.cc/8ummqz. ↑
24. In particular those confirmed by section 1(b)(i) of the Bali Action Plan – see 21 above.↑
25. See this overall review of the outcome: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8426835.stm.↑
26. Rupert Darwall: The Age of Global Warming, 310 ↑
27. The ‘Copenhagen Accord’ was an attempt by some countries to rescue something from this debacle: https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2009/cop15/eng/l07.pdf. A non-binding document (the Conference only ‘took note’ of it) it stated for example that global temperature should not rise more than 2ºC above pre-industrial levels – although it didn’t specify a date for this.
    Note: an important (and lasting) outcome of the Accord was the developed countries’ goal of providing $100bn a year by 2020 to poorer countries. It was proposed by Hillary Clinton (then US Secretary of State) with this significant qualification: ‘the money is only on the table so long as fast-growing nations like China and India accept binding commitments that are open to international inspection and verification’ (http://tiny.cc/dxmmqz). Directly relevant to my article, this seems to have been forgotten in recent years. RG ↑
28. See Note 1 above. ↑
29. For example, this report from the 2013 conference in Warsaw shows how little had really changed over the years: http://tiny.cc/azmmqz /. And see this report on the 2014 conference in Lima: http://tiny.cc/v0mmqz. ↑
30. For example, China’s INDC said only that it planned to ‘achieve the peaking of carbon dioxide emissions around 2030’ (no mention of the level of such ‘peak’ or of what will happen thereafter) and to ‘lower carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by 60% to 65% from the 2005 level’. And South Korea merely said that it ‘plans to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 37% from the business-as-usual (BAU, 850.6 MtCO2eq) level by 2030 across all economic sectors’, i.e. emissions will continue to increase but not by as much as they might have done.Note that ‘Intended Nationally Determined Contributions’ (INDCs) are referred to as ‘Nationally Determined Contributions’ (NDCs) in Articles 3 and 4 of in the Paris Agreement – see Note 31 below. All NDCs submitted to the UNFCCC secretariat can be found here: http://tiny.cc/75foqz. ↑
31. For full text of the Paris Agreement see: http://tiny.cc/k2mmqz. ↑
32. See: http://tiny.cc/15mmqz. ↑
33. See the Ministerial foreword here: http://tiny.cc/16mmqz. ↑
34. See: https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/ ↑
35. See: https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/un-climate-summit-2019.shtml ↑
36. See: http://tiny.cc/y8mmqz.. ↑
37. See these reports: http://tiny.cc/banmqz and http://tiny.cc/mbnmqz. ↑
38. See this report: http://tiny.cc/5cnmqz. ↑
39. See: http://tiny.cc/jenmqz. ↑
40. See for example these reports: http://tiny.cc/fonmqz, http://tiny.cc/f5q4qz, http://tiny.cc/t807qz and http://tiny.cc/c207qz. ↑
41. See for example http://tiny.cc/11e8qz and http://tiny.cc/vrg9qz↑
42. See for example Fatih Birol’s comments reported here: http://tiny.cc/k65pqz. And here: http://tiny.cc/arnmqz. Also see these reports: http://tiny.cc/zsnmqz, http://tiny.cc/0g3nqz, http://tiny.cc/w78nqz and http://tiny.cc/90h9qz. This is also relevant: https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/ieo/pdf/ieo2019.pdf (go to pages 23 to 26).↑

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Between January 2008 and January 2014 nearly 300 posts appeared at Harmless Sky, and these attracted over 21,000 comments.

It is probably fair to say that during this period attitudes to anthropogenic climate change were embedded in the minds of decision makers, the media, and the general public, and Harmless Sky was a significant player. The widespread impact of this developing apprehension was largely due to the alarmist and morally intimidating way in which the subject was presented by a group of vocal and very influential climate scientists, supported by belligerent activists who promoted their views and the mainstream media which was unwilling to apply normal standards of journalistic scepticism to a story with boundless possibilities. Questioning or dissenting from this new orthodoxy was widely portrayed as ignorant, stupid or just plain bad.

Meanwhile blogs such as Harmless Sky, Andrew Montfort’s Bishop Hill and Ben Pile’s Climate Resistance in the UK, and in North America Anthony Watts’ Watts Up With That? and particularly Steve McIntyre’s Climate Audit, ensured that there was still a minority of well-informed sceptics standing out against a global movement that increasingly looked like hysteria.

But by 2014, opinions were so polarised that neither side seemed to be listening to the others arguments any more, and blogging was becoming dull.

I had probably contributed over a quarter of a million words to Harmless Sky in the form of posts by then — the equivalent of four average length books — and the volume of comments that were posted, together with the site statistics, suggested that these had not gone un-heeded. But the expenditure in terms of time and effort — but not money of course — was enormous. The reputation of a climate sceptical blogger is permanently under heavy fire, and survival depends entirely on never making an error of fact, or putting forward a view that cannot be fully backed-up by credible evidence. Writing posts is only the tip of the iceberg; the submerged seven-eighths is sheer, dogged, time-consuming, bloody-minded, slogging, research.

So the debate had stalled, and my type of blogging, which concentrated on comment and analysis rather than breaking news, seemed redundant for the moment. A new approach was needed.

In my case this took the form of writing a book based on what I had learned about the role our highly privileged and influential national broadcaster, the BBC, had played in promoting alarm about climate change. This focused particularly on the way in which this immensely powerful organisation, with global reach, has exploited its reputation for impartial and authoritative reporting to the full in order to promote one side of a major controversy while denigrating or ignoring any opposing evidence and views. Once again, a huge commitment in time was required, but initially the outcome was gratifying: a fully referenced, evidence laden indictment of the broadcaster’s malpractice.

Two prospective publishers expressed enthusiasm at first sight, but on reflection both withdrew their offers of publication.

The first, a think tank with limited means, withdrew because it feared the reaction of the BBC. Of course there was no question of my text inviting an action for libel or defamation — as a blogger one is well used to avoiding such risks — but even dealing with a vexatious threat of action can be costly. Their concern was understandable as the BBC is inclined to be vindictive, and has its own well-staffed and funded litigation department.

The second publisher, with a reputation for shining light into corners that powerful forces would prefer to be left in darkness, withdrew even when a date for publication had been agreed. Very soon afterwards, the managing director, and the CEO of a think tank that was being lined up to promote the book, began to appear regularly on the BBC as pundits; particularly on Today and Any Questions. Such publicity has no doubt been most beneficial for both of them.

About eighteen months ago, the Harmless Sky website became inaccessible due to my failing to update obsolete software, and there was little incentive to rebuild it at that time. Now I have begun to do so.

I also decided to publish an Amazon version of my BBC book in the runup to the IPCC COP 26 conference in Glasgow this September, but that jamboree has been cancelled because of the Covid19 pandemic. It seems unlikely that anyone is now going to be very interested in predictions of a so-called climate crisis by the end of the century until economic recovery from the present very real global health crisis forces decision-makers into some hard choices. Do they make provision in the form of heavy expenditure for real threats, in the form of future and possibly even more lethal pandemics, or a putative crisis that is almost entirely based on the output of models?

Therefore publication must wait until climate change becomes a live issue again. In the meantime, as electronic publishing is new to me, I am revisiting some of the posts at Harmless Sky that seem to have withstood the test of time — not all of them about climate change — with a view to compiling them as The Harmless Sky Bedside Book, just as a practice run. For that reason, the blog needs to be back on its feet again, but perhaps more as an archive now than as an actively updated forum. The layout remains in its very dated 2008 format, but I think that, in spite of fashions having changed, it is still clear, easy to read and navigate, and easy on the eye too. In any case I have become quite fond of it.

If anyone has noticed this reappearance — welcome!

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A Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year
to all  those of you who are still passing by, and there still seem to be quite a few.
(Photo by JudyN)

The post Greetings 2015 appeared first on Harmless Sky.

The post Greetings 2014 appeared first on Harmless Sky.

Reading each and every comment is one of the less well-recognised duties of a conscientious blogger, a task that can become very time-consuming and demanding. Moderation is of course one of the reasons for this, courtesy another, but also learning from others is a very important part of it, and Max’s comments always came under that heading. I must have read tens of thousands of words that he contributed from his home in Switzerland and always with interest and respect. I never needed to fear that moderation would be necessary because his tone was always courteous, even in face of the most severe provocation. His approach to any discussion, however heated and controversial, was calm, friendly, well informed, and utterly rational. One always knew that any argument or assertion that he put forward could be well supported with references and I do not remember any time when what he said was effectively overturned by others. Such characteristics as these must have done much to promote rational climate scepticism among those who had the good fortune to come into contact with Max.

As a blogger, I was always happy when a post passed muster with Max, and must admit that when drafting a new post it was not unusual to be assailed by the thought, ‘Max won’t let me get away with that’, and then settle down to further revision. It’s remarkable how the web can bring people into one’s life and allow them to become part of it to an extent that you would not think possible when you have never seen them, spoken to them, or come to know anything about their real lives.

At this sad time our thoughts and sympathy will be with Max’s wife. He will be remembered with respect and affection by many, and of course all those comments will live on as a very durable contribution to the great climate change debate.

UPDATE 08/06/2014 17:30

Robin Guenier has just reminded me of a time when two Harmless Shy contributors – with very different views on climate change and also very different blogging styles – decided that they should put their money where their mouths were. This is what Max told Robin, who had been involved in the discussion, in an email he received last year:
I recall our exchanges with P—- M—– (now tempterrain), and remember how certain he was that global warming would resume “with a vengeance after 2009”. We started off with a bet of $1,000 on whether or not the next 3 years (after 2009) would exceed the 1998 record temperature, using the HadCRUT3 surface temperature record. In our off-line exchanges, Peter then asked for the amount to be reduced to a token amount of $100, and we agreed that the loser would pay this amount to the charity selected by the winner.

I haven’t checked in a couple of days, but the last time I did the December 2012 figure still wasn’t published.
Robin tells me that a later update confirmed that $100 (Australian I suspect) was duly paid to the Salvation Army by the looser at Max’s request. In view of what I might be able to deduce about tempterrain’s views on organised religion from the many comments of his that I have read, I suspect that Max had a great big grin on his face when he chose that one.

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The G8 is a forum for the governments of eight of the world’s largest economies. During an eight-year cycle each nation takes it’s turn to act as chairman and set the agenda on an annual basis. Of course this opportunity does not occur for every government leader. Some may be in and out of office during the years when others hold the post, but there is no doubt that presidency of the G8 provides politicians with an opportunity to be seen playing a major role in international affairs. Of course it is also important that the G8 president should have solid public support at home for the policies that he chooses to be the hallmark of his term in office.

In 2005, Tony Blair had been prime minister for 8 years and was under pressure from his Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, to stand aside. There can be no doubt the ‘Blair legacy’ was by this time a major consideration in formulating public policy. This golden opportunity to strut the world stage could play a valuable part in bolstering his rather tarnished reputation and particularly so in 2005, which was a general election year in the UK. Finding policy initiatives for the G8 agenda that would enhance the prime minister’s image as a caring man of the people, and command public support at home too, would be a crucial task at such a time.

Downing Street finally decided that the two subjects that would best serve the purpose were African development and global warming. The prospect of saving not only Africa from chaos and starvation, but also the whole of humanity and the planet from environmental catastrophe would surely fit Blair’s messianic persona perfectly. There is some inside information about the processes by which this decision was taken.

In 2007, Sir David King retired from the post of Government Chief Scientific Adviser and was inclined to reminisce about the influence he had had on public policy during his term in office. During an interview on the BBC Today programme in late 2007 he had this to say:

… in that early period in 2004 there was much discussion about what we would be doing during our G8 presidency, and the response – and I think this was because it was taken up so well with the media, so let me say something nice about the media – the result was that we lead the G8 with climate change and African development, both of which I was very very strongly in favour of.
BBC Today Programme 20-12-2007

In other interviews Sir David provided clues as to how this came about, and the decisive influence that he had on events:

When I became chief scientist in 2000 Tony Blair was still very cautious about nuclear power. He did not even have an adequate understanding of climate change until 2002. For those first two years I was battling against the odds.”

King had arrived in office in 2000 determined that climate change, which he saw as the biggest threat to humanity, would be his great central issue. “Britain’s Co₂ emissions were steadily rising despite our promises to reduce them, and the closure of ageing nuclear power stations and replacement with gas and coal was the main reason for that. That had to stop.”

In King’s view, Labour might never have listened to him but for the epidemic of foot and mouth disease (FMD) in 2001, which turned his office of science and technology from a government backwater into a centre of influence. “The outbreak of foot and mouth turned out to be crucially important,” he admitted. Unimpressed by Whitehall’s efforts to stem the epidemic, he called in mathematical modellers, who found it was out of control. He convinced Blair that it could be got under control within days by a draconian policy of mass slaughter, which brought the sight of millions of burning animal carcasses to television screens across the nation.

“It looked terrible,” he recalled, “but almost immediately the epidemic began slowing down. It showed the government what science could do. I could never have had such power in government if FMD had not happened.”

King was quick to capitalise on his new-found influence. In 2002 he “engineered” the opportunity to give the Zuckerman lecture for the British Association for the Advancement of Science, choosing climate change as his topic. Then he delivered the same lecture to Blair and the cabinet, both in person and on paper. “For Blair that was a turning point,”It was when he read that lecture that he realised that we had to do something about climate change.”

Was King being immodest or was Blair really so ignorant? Labour had, after all, been parroting the rhetoric of climate change and reducing greenhouse gas emissions for nearly a decade. “I think the point is that Blair had not understood the urgency,” King said. “He knew about climate change but until then it had just been another political problem.”
I pushed Blair’s nuclear button, The Sunday Times, January 13 2008

That King’s influence on government was established by his advice during the Foot and Mouth epidemic seems significant. Mathematical models have long been a tried and tested tool in epidemiology where they can be used successfully to track and predict the spread of disease. Of course climate change is another field in which mathematical models play an important part; in fact you might say that the credibility of climate alarmism almost entirely depends on them. King does not say that the apparent credibility of the models employed at the time of the Foot and Mouth epidemic added weight to what he told Blair about climate change, but it would seem very likely that that was the case.

A Sunday Times report with the scathing headline “Tony Blair: ‘I’m a planet-saving kinda guy’”seems to bear out many of Sir David King’s claims.

Blair’s faith in science to achieve such changes [to renewable energy] seems unbounded, which is odd, given that he has no formal scientific training and used to speak out vigorously against the expansion of nuclear power when Labour was in opposition.

He does, however, have a history of investing huge faith in whatever people, issues or causes he chooses to adopt – sometimes in the face of all evidence to the contrary. His critics might cite the “dodgy dossier”, on which he based many of the arguments for the invasion of Iraq, his support for George W Bush and Peter Mandelson, and even his religious beliefs. This time, where does his belief come from?

…

Blair’s “new convert” passion, married to his natural optimism, has a certain persuasive power – if you don’t study the numbers too closely. He’s not just optimistic about science, though, he’s optimistic about the resolve of world leaders, too. And that’s an altogether tougher sell.

…

“Policy makers have undergone a paradigm shift in thinking,” he says. “I first put climate change on the G8 agenda in 2005. I had to struggle to do it and we came out with a rather general formulation about the 2050 targets for cutting emissions.
Tony Blair: ‘I’m a planet-saving kinda guy’, From The Sunday Times, July 5, 2009

In 2011 Sir David returned to the same theme in a Guardian article headed, ‘Needed: a world Leader’:

In January 2004 I caused some consternation, particularly in the White House, when I said that global warming was our greatest threat – greater even than global terrorism. My statement prompted George W Bush to call Tony Blair, demanding a gag order be placed on me. I refused to be gagged and that statement, along with others, spurred the UK to develop a leadership role on climate change in the international community. Seven years on – and with global climate talks struggling – that leadership is needed more than ever.

I still believe climate change is the pre-eminent threat facing our civilisation, but in 2004 there was considerable apathy. My statement precipitated considerable public and political attention for the scientific analyses demonstrating the probably catastrophic effects of climate change. Action followed. In 2005 Tony Blair hosted the G8 summit at Gleneagles, and the resulting communiqué was a giant step in raising the international importance of climate change.
The Guardian, Needed: a world Leader, 28 June 2011

Once again Sir David seems to be crediting himself with putting climate change on the agenda of the 2005 G8, but the mention of ‘apathy’ is significant. It is hardly likely that a prime minister would lead his G8 presidency on a matter of current public policy that would require voters to change their lifestyle, and make sacrifices, when they are not thoroughly fired up about it. In an election year such behaviour would be unthinkable. Action to promote a suitable level of concern about climate change would be necessary and it soon followed.

In early 2005 there was a conference at the Met Office’s Hadley Centre in Exeter with the eye catching title Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change. Of course there is nothing unusual about scientists gathering together for a few days to explore current research in their field, it happens all the time. But your normal science conference is organised by academics for academic purposes, and press interest is usually rather limited, to say the least. As for politicians getting involved, that really is very unusual. But this was a very special kind of conference, and it seems most unlikely that science, in the sense of seeking to discover the truth about the natural world, was the name of the game. It had been organised by politicians for political purposes. Here is what the conference website had to say after the event:

The aim of the Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change Symposium (held in Exeter 1-3 Feb 2005) was to advance scientific understanding of and encourage an international scientific debate on the long term implications of climate change, the relevance of stabilisation goals, and options to reach such goals; and to encourage research on these issues.

In a speech on 14 September 2004, the British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced the conference by saying:

“… we propose first to host an international scientific meeting at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Exeter in February. More than just another scientific conference, this gathering will address the big questions on which we need to pool the answers available from the science

…

The UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has been tasked to organise this event.

The passage that has been omitted at the start of the second paragraph is interesting. Looking at the text of Blair’s speech we find the complete sentence runs:

‘Prior to the G8 meeting itself we propose first to host an international scientific meeting at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Exeter in February.

The connection between the conference and Blair’s G8 presidency is unambiguous, but evidently that was something which the organisers preferred to draw a veil over..

To put the matter of ownership of this event, and its place in the political firmament beyond any possible doubt, here is what a press release from DEFRA dated 25th January 2005 says:

International climate changes scientists will gather in Exeter next week to look at the scientific aspects of the stabilisation of climate change.
…

Margaret Beckett, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said:

“This scientific conference will make a valuable contribution to our G8 Presidency and our wider aim of reinvigorating the climate change debate and stimulating further engagement for future action.

” We hope it will provide new information on the risks of climate change and provide a firmer basis for discussing long-term stabilisation action. However, it is not of course, a policy negotiation.”

So how was debate and engagement to be stimulated and reinvigorated? It would seem that the answer that is by unbridled alarmism provided with a veneer of scientific respectability,.

As a PR exercise, the conference was a huge success. Here is what the Today programme had to say on 5^th February 2005 after the conference had ended:

Presenter: On Monday we were told that that temperatures throughout the year would be rising by 11^o C. On Tuesday, the warning was of a mini-iceage, because the Gulf Stream has reversed. Even that couldn’t save the polar bear which was doomed on Wednesday. By Thursday, all aquatic life was in trouble as the oceans turned to acid. Those have been the dire predictions from climate scientists who have been meeting in Exeter this week and vying with each other to come up with the most scary forecasts.

But behind all the hype there was some serious science and some serious questions about how long we can continue to churn out carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Our science correspondent ,Tom Feilden, looks back at a week of spectacular headlines and forward to a world fifty years from now.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/listenagain/ram/today3_climate_20050205.ram

Notwithstanding the presenters remark about hype, Fielden’s report is concerned entirely with more scare stories: central London inundated when Thames Barrier is overwhelmed; a future dominated by rising sea levels, severe storms, freezing winters and long arid summers; collapse of Gulf Stream and record low temperatures; average temperatures dropping by as much as 10^oC (its not clear if this is at the same time as they rise by 11^oC); skating on the Thames and Channel Ports blocked by sea ice; melting of West Antarctic ice sheet; catastrophic impacts on wildlife and ecosystems; sea levels rising by 30m; and just for good measure, it may already be too late for the polar bear and the ptarmigan, nothing can save them.
To be fair, Feilden ends his report by saying that these warnings depend on the predictions of models and there are some who still question the reliability of these. But he also says that the debate at Exeter has moved on from whether it is happening to what we need to do about it. But by then the vision of Armageddon had been too firmly established for any caveat to be effective.

There then followed this astonishing exchange between the presenter and Sir John Houghton (sometime Met Office chief executive and chairman of the IPCC Assessment Working Group and as we shall see later, a conference attack dog) :

Presenter: We are hearing all these incredible predictions, what can we say for certain?

Houghton: At Exeter we were talking about those high impact, but very low probability, events that we’ve been hearing about just now …
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/listenagain/ram/today3_climate_20050205.ram

Of course the presenter’s use of the term ‘hype’ when referring to the stories that the conference had spawned, and Feilden’s mild caveat about models, would be unthinkable in BBC output today, but all this happened a year before the now notorious seminar on BBC Climate Change – the Challenge for Broadcasting was used to indoctrinate BBC management and programme makers with the correct line to take on climate change.

So often with events like the Exeter conference, only tantalising snippets about what happened escape weeks or months after the event. In this case a climate septic was present who was well equipped to report on the proceedings. Even after seven years of delving into the darker regions of the climate debate, and becoming pretty unshockable in the process, I still find his eyewitness account shocking. It’s not very long, but too long to copy here, and I implore anyone who has read this far to look at it before continuing.

Go to: Benny Peiser at the Exeter Conference

When the conference proceedings were published a year or so later, they were replete with

political authority in the form of a ‘Forward by Rt Hon Tony Blair MP’ and a ‘Ministerial Address by Rt Hon Margret Beckett MP. The battle to enlist hearts and minds in support of Tony Blair’s G8 agenda had been well and truly joined. But what more would be needed?

With the political spin doctors now applying themselves to managing public understanding of climate change it is not difficult to think that anything might be possible, even enlisting the services of our supposedly apolitical and entirely impartial national broadcaster the BBC.
In the next post I will examine the evidence that connects the Exeter conference propaganda fest with a senior BBC executive admitting that in the wake of the G8, impartiallity was about as safe with the BBC as a blood bank would be in the hands of Dracula.

(The title of this post has been ‘borrowed’ from a Sunday Times article that is quoted above and appeared under the same headline.)

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If you feel that such representations are worthwhile, but don’t have time to construct the detailed arguments in a letter yourself, you might like to write to the chairman of the committee saying that you have seen Andrew’s letter here and support what he says. Or you might like to attach a copy. (Download pdf version here) The address is to write to is: cmscom@parliament.uk and do remember to give your name and address.

Dear Mr Whittingdale

Over the weekend an article was published in the Mail on Sunday Describing the links between environmental NGOs and the BBC and the possibility That the last government effectively subverted the corporation’s output. Those involved with the BBC – staff and management and the BBC Trust – have repeatedly made false representations to the public.

This is not the first time that BBC has received adverse publicity as a result of clandestine links to environmental organisations: in 2011 it was revealed that BBC World was taking free programming from environmental NGOs. It is now clear that the corporation has become inextricably linked with the environmental movement

There is now an urgent need for an independent inquiry into the links between the BBC and green groups. Despite direct representations, the BBC Trust has shown no interest in examining these issues; nor is there any likelihood that it would do so in a fair and transparent manner. Previous scandals involving the BBC have shown that the first instinct of the Trust is to protect the corporation rather than the public interest.

I would therefore like to formally request that your committee institute an investigation into the links between green NGOs and the BBC, and in particular the so-called 28-gate affair.

Please note that I will publish any reply you give.

Yours sincerely

Andrew Montford

XX-XX XXX

XXXX XXXXX

XX X & XXXX

XXXX

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What is clear in the Mail on Sunday report is that funding for the 2006 BBC climate change seminar came from a government department. Also that the funds were channelled through environmental lobbyists who were organising the seminar. And it is possible that the government department that provided the funds had some input about the topics selected for the seminars.

The documents concerning the International Broadcasting Trust’s (IBT) application to the Department for International Development (DFID) were obtained by Terry Sanders who kindly sent them to me. He deserves a very big thank-you indeed!

The Mail on Sunday article does not mention the 2005 G8 summit, which Tony Blair chaired. The subjects that he chose to lead on were development in Africa and climate change. Those happen to be the very subjects that the seminars focused on at that time. It is also interesting that when Sir David King was reminiscing at the time of his retirement as Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government he not only laid claim to turning Tony Blair on to climate change, but he also seems to imply that he was instrumental in getting the subject on the G8 agenda.

What is certain is that the Government organised the 2005 Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change conference at the Hadley Centre, which led to a barrage of scare stories in the media, and that this was done in order to raise public awareness of the problem. A major seminar at the BBC early the following year, which was organised by environmental lobbyists who were being funded by a government department, must have seemed like a godsend to the Downing Street spin-doctors.

Lord Hall, as the man who encouraged Roger Harrabin to set up the seminar programme, features in this story too. He had left the BBC to run the Royal Opera House before DFID got involved with the seminars, so he bears no direct responsibility for what happened in 2005 and 2006. However since his return to the BBC he has thrown some interesting light on the matter, contradicting just about everything that the BBC has claimed about the seminar previously.

Here are some of the things that the BBC has said about the seminar:

It was described in John Bridcut’s landmark ‘Wagon Wheel’ report on BBC’s impartiality, which was adopted and published by the BBC Trust in July 2007, as:

”A high level seminar with some of the best scientific experts [on climate change]”

The BBC’s letter of 31st August 2007 refusing to disclose the information I had requested says:

”… information relating to the seminar is held to help inform the BBC’s editorial policy around reporting climate change.

…

The attendees at the seminar were made up of 30 key BBC staff and 30 invited guests who are specialists in the area of climate change.”

A BBC submission to my previous Information Tribunal appeal last year had the following description:

“The requested information concerns the organisation, administration and content of a seminar concerning editorial challenges to the reporting of climate change. The seminar was held in order to provide attendees with an understanding of the existing state of knowledge on the issue of climate change, to identify where the main areas of debate lie,to provoke the imagination of the media to deal with the scope of the issue and to consider the role of the BBC in the public debate.”

Lord Hall of Birkenhead, BBC Director General, in written supplementary evidence to the House of Commons Culture Media and Sport Select Committee 25/06/2013:

“ The title of the seminar was ‘Climate Change, the Challenge to Broadcasting ‘ … the guests were not ‘a panel of climate change experts’, nor were they ‘advising the BBC on what their approach to climate change should be. Seminars such as this do not set BBC editorial policy on how it covers climate change’”.

You just could not have a more explicit conflict of evidence, and surely it really is necessary now to dig down to the truth, however uncomfortable that might be.

With so much at stake where trust in the BBC is concerned, it would seem essential that, as the statutory regulatory body, the BBC Trust should now set up a genuinely independent inquiry into how editorial policy on climate change has been formulated and who has been able to exert influence on that process. If you think that this is the right next step, then you might like to write to the House of Commons Culture Media and Sport Select Committee (cmscom@parliament.uk). If enough people do so, then they just might put some pressure on Lord Patten to act next time he is hauled up in front of them. He has been on the receiving end of some pretty rough handling by that committee recently.

There is still a great deal more to come out about this matter, and I think that the best thing that I can do at the moment is attempt to answer any questions that people might have.

The Disclosed Documents

Documents that Terry Sanders obtained from DFID concerning IBT funding. These include a very recent additional disclosure which names some senior BBC executives and shows that Mark Thompson, then Director General of the BBC, was directly involved in negotiations over the seminar programme with the IBT.

1 IBT application for DFID funding.pdf

2 Correspondence.pdf

3 Grant Agreement.pdf

4 Grant Approval.pdf

5 Financials.pdf

6 Addional disclosure BBC names.pdf

The documents that I have obtained from the BBC, including lists of attendees, their brief biogs, Jana Bennett’s opening remarks, and a briefing document and some administrative documents.

1 BBC diclosures.pdf

2 BBC disclosures.pdf

Some of the files are quite large and may take some time to download.

Anyone seeking more context on this post may like to read Andrew Montford’s excellent The Propaganda Bureau or Christopher Booker’s equally excellent The BBC And Climate Change: A Triple Betrayal. Both deal with the earlier revelations about the BBC climate change seminar and its consequences.

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It is a letter from her grandfather to her grandmother on the eve of a trip to Ireland (from whence he came) and the night after addressing a local political meeting on his way to the port of Holyhead. The causeway he mentions is unchanged; a mile long embankment about 20ft high with the sea on one side, a road halfway up the other side, and a railway line on top. The weather was not very good.

The Station Hotel

Holyhead

29th Oct 1927

My darling Girl

Here I am after a queer night. The meeting was excellent, about 50 people, most well behaved.

After I had finished my speech I left and the sergeant [of police?] said to me “You cannot go home, all roads are under water; hopeless”. I said “I’m going to Holyhead. Which is the safest road? By Bethgelert or Portmadoc? He said “Portmadoc”. I went.

Reached the gate to causeway. Gatekeeper said “all safe”, though an awful storm was blowing. I went on. Soon I found sea was breaking over railway bank & falling on road. Car was swamped, engine stopped. I got out into a sea of spray& foam. Walked back, met three men who wanted to get to Portmadoc. Agreed to walk together. I started first, they followed – but I presume they went back as I did not see them again.

The noise & screaming of wind & sea as it plunged over railway and down on top of road, and myself included, were awful, and most frightening. Water was over knee deep on road, stones, rocks, galv’d. [galvamised] iron sheets from fences, were also on the road. I stumbled on, fell down in water several times, tripping over rocks and stones.

Many cars lay helpless on road all empty except one in which there was a girl frightened out of her life. Her companions had left her. I got into car and sat a while as I was nearly done up. Then we both got out into about 2 ½ to 3 ft of water, walked on to Portmadoc. I went to Sportsman Hotel, borrowed pyjamas, went to bed. They dried my cloths splendidly.

This morning took out men to car. Got it going again without much difficulty. Came on here. Asked sergeant in Penrhyn to let you know. All wires are down. They say living man never saw such a state of affairs. When I saw the road that I had struggled over last night in daylight I wondered how I am alive. Don’t see how it can be cleared for days. People who I met cannot understand how I got through.

I am crossing by 2.30 boat today. My clothes are the worse of the wear and I had to buy a new hat here. Luckily what are in bag are dry.

In greatest haste & best love

Yours

Pat

Hope your meeting went off well. The bridge at Penrhyn is down, all trains and road traffic stopped. Trees across roads everywhere. They had my road cleared however in time for me to pass.

My wife’s grandfather, as I remember him, was a vast man who possessed great strength of character, energy, and business acumen. Having survived constant danger during the Irish ‘troubles’ of the early 1920s, it is unlikely that he was easily scared. We still have his hip flask, a very fine example sheathed in crocodile skin with silver mountings. It is of 1 quart capacity.

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