Huhne sucker punched

Huhne takes three punches in the Mail's piece today. First and most obviously about those speeding points.

Surely Southend Magistrates Court has a record of where and when the offence was supposed to have occurred?

The second punch was in November 2010, when someone hit Huhne in a family argument on the street in Clapham. Join the queue....

But my favourite punch is the one David Rose delivers to Huhne's carbon budget, calling it "strangely out of date" and based on failing science.

Stringent carbon dioxide targets would drive industry abroad.

Moreover, only two per cent of the world’s CO2 emissions emanate from Britain – far too little for our reduction to make a global impact.

Rose questions whether the science is "settled" and reports on a recent climate conference.

Phil Jones from UEA "has previously admitted that, in surprising contrast to what computer models were predicting 20 years ago, there has been ‘no statistically significant warming’ since 1995".

I raised this with Mr Mitchell, asking how long this would have to continue, despite uninterrupted increases in the level of CO2, before he would start to question the validity of the models and the theory of man-made warming that they underpin.

His answer sounded peculiarly unscientific, implying it would take a lot more than the absence of actual warming to shake his faith. ‘People underestimate the power of models. Observational evidence is not very useful,’ he said. ‘Our approach is not entirely empirical.’

Plimark reminded the conference that the world was often warmer before industrialisation. Why? If we can't explain that, how do we know industrialisation is to blame for the stalled warming we saw late in the last century?

One of the most striking contributions came from Professor Henrik Svensmark, director of climate research at Denmark’s National Space Institute. He argued that one of the key determinants of climate is the level of cosmic rays from outer space that hit the Earth: these high-energy particles ‘seed’ the clouds by forming what he termed ‘ultra-fine condensation nucleii’. More rays mean more clouds, and in turn, a cooler climate.

According to Prof Svensmark, quite small variations in the amount of cloud cover have a big effect on temperature, leaving man-made CO2 emissions with a small ‘residual’ role.

Rose concludes that the day as a whole had shown that the scientific disputes are pressing, urgent and real.

In the light of that, Mr Huhne’s determination to bankrupt Britain through unsustainable targets looks as ill-judged as his alleged attitude towards accepting responsibility for speeding.