Philip Stott – England – World People's Blog

Linked with Global warming, a hotly debated issue.

Philip Stott is a professor emeritus of biogeography at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and a former editor (1987-2004) of the Journal of Biogeography … (full text).

It is written: More than 2,000 of the world’s leading scientists who sit on the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) are agreed. Global warming is happening – and it’s connected with fossil-fuel use. But there are disbelievers, too. Here are six climate-change deniers who have shot to fame for their views – and their talent for attracting publicity … Philip Stott is bit of a newcomer to global warming – his previous stomping ground was promoting GM food – but he’s been grooming himself to become Britain’s leading climatechange denier. ‘The myth of global warming was invented in 1988,’ claims the emeritus professor of biogeography at London University. Climate change, he argues, is unexceptional and anyway ‘humans have always coped with change’. Stott, an ardent self-publicist, regularly appears on radio and television. His favoured method is to cite carefully selected, contradictory data to undermine the IPCC consensus. A contrarian, it seems, in more ways than one, Stott claims to belong to the political ‘Left’ while maintaining a fiercely pro-industry stance … (on Toxic sceptics).

See Philip Stott’s latest lectures.

The video: Green_House_Conspiracy.wmv TVT, 51.49 min, 25.03.2007.

Philip Stott – England

Stott regards himself as a Humeian ‘mitigated sceptic’ [15] on the subject of global warming. He has not published scholarly articles in the field of climate change, although he has published books on the subject. Also, he has researched on the construction of environmental knowledge, including global warming as a Barthesian myth, for over thirty years … (Global warming).

In a letter to The Guardian on climate change, Stott attacked the scientific consensus as the problem, saying, ‘It is surely time in the UK for a more adult scientific openness about the limitations of our current knowledge.’ Yet in the case of biotechnology he seems unwilling to acknowledge any limitations or uncertainties. In fact, according to Stott, genetic engineering can already be confidently declared ‘an advance vital for human development’ and indeed, ‘essential for human survival’, being the ‘finest of all human adaptations’. These quotations come from an article which he describes as ‘one of my more balanced pieces’ (personal communication) … (full text).

Motion: Global Warming Is Not a Crisis – Read about the panelists participating in the Intelligence Squared U.S. debate over whether global warming is an actual crisis … (full text).

MARY SHELLEY, GALILEO, PROF STOTT & FLIGHTS OF FANCY, 7 March 2001.

Political Science, February 3, 2007.

Find him also on the University of Adelaide; on Google Video-search; on Google Book-search; on Google Boook-search; on Google Group-search; on Google Blog-search; on wikipedia.

See (his’ & others’) following blogs:

EnviroSpin Watch (Homepage): A Weblog monitoring coverage of environmental issues and science in the UK media. By Professor Emeritus Philip Stott. The aim is to assess whether a subject is being fairly covered by press, radio, and television. Above all, the Weblog will focus on science, but not just on poor science. It will also bring to public notice good science that is being ignored because it may be politically inconvenient … (head of his blog);
Anti-Ecohype, Climat Change;
See also his second blog GlobaL Warming Politics: “‘Global warming’ has become the grand political narrative of the age, replacing Marxism as a dominant force for controlling liberty and human choices. In this blog, I hope to be able to deconstruct the ‘myth’ in order to reveal its more dangerous and humorous foibles and follies. I shall focus as much on the politics as on the science” … (head of his blog);
He then edits his own campaigning website Anti-Ecohype (Homepage) which contains a number of his articles on topics such as climate, sustainability, biotechnology and forests. More recently, this website has been superseded by a ‘blog’ EnviroSpin Watch. At one time Prof Stott also ran a separate ‘Pro-Biotech’ website. He is a regular panelist on a ‘critical environmental programme’ (his description) – BBC Radio 4’s Home Planet. Although he presents himself as an expert debunker of environmental myths, Stott does not appear to have had a single paper published in a scientific journal in the fields in which he most frequently applies this ‘expertise’, eg climate change or tropical ecology. His views are also generally at odds with the scientific consensus on such issues. (see Jeff Harvey’s comments on Prof Stott’s lack of relevant scientific credentials) … (full long text);
A Parliament of Things: (this) is a collection of essays on nature and society by Philip Stott, Emeritus Professor of Biogeography in the University of London. While some of the essays are unique to this site, others have been expanded, or adapted, from essays previously published in a wide range of newspapers and magazines … (full text);
Journal of Biogeography … (Edited by Robert J. Whittaker);
BBC, Radio 4, Home Planet;
Lobby Watch.org.