John Kay says in the Financial Times that President Bush is right regarding his assertions on climate at the recent G8 meeting at Gleneagles. Bush emphasized uncertainties on the science and the economics: Kyoto has large costs and negligible benefits for the US. Greenhouse gas controls that exclude developing countries are ineffective; while research and development on new technologies should take priority over emissions reduction targets.

Hopefully this heralds the beginning of the end for Consensus Science which might excusably be mistaken for conspiracy. Forecasts of catastrophic warming derive from contested computer models. Although some warming at the end of the 20 Century is observed in surface samples, weather satellites and balloons recorded cooling between 1940 and the mid seventies, leading popular scientists to warn of a new and overdue Ice Age. There has been no clear trend since.

Recent forecasts of rapid warming favoured by the Consensus depend on the hypothetical hockey stick which was used by the IPCC [2001] as evidence for anthropogenic global warming. It showed. a sharp recent temperature rise in the Northern hemisphere after a relatively flat trend for 1000 years. This model is now discredited. McIntyre and McKitrick [MM-2003] found the data had been manipulated. When MM recalculated temperatures with corrected data (but retaining the same methodology), they obtained quite a different temperature history, bearing no resemblance to the hockey stick (which can be fitted to random data). This debate has affected respected journals like Science and Nature, which are no longer willing to provide a forum for conflicting views.

Meanwhile the original data from which the hockey stick was derived cannot be extracted. Washington is currently split by the Congressional attempt to establish if research supported by public funds should be available to other scientists for independent verification.

The recent [6 July] but largely overlooked report on climate by the Economic Affairs Committee of Britain's House of Lords explains how science can be conflated with politics and so-called consensus used to justify advocacy. Once scientists lose their reputation for impartiality, the outlook is truly bleak.