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I
welcome to Sputnik orbiting the world
with me George Galloway and me gatri
Jeremy Corbin used to be his brother now
he's Jeremy Corbin's brother his brother
appears Corbin to me I've been
interviewing him for many years long
before he was famous principally for
being a prince of the Republican royal
family and that's because he's not just
a weatherman he's a climate scientist of
the top rank moreover one who challenges
what Dr Johnson called the grimmest
dictatorship of them all the
dictatorship of the prevailing Orthodoxy
most others are ranged against them but
then that was the case with Galileo too
so facing not the Spanish Inquisition
but the Sputnik Inquisition I'm glad to
welcome Pierce Corbin Pierce they try to
paint you as a renegade a dissident a
Maverick but in fact you're just about
one of the most highly qualified people
in this country to speak on this matter
well of course I got a first class
degree in physics I studied theoretical
physics solid state physics and I've got
an m and astrophysics so I understand
sun earth relations and researching into
that I've written papers on Galaxy
formation and the mean ma density of the
universe well I'd like to have you back
to speak on that latter point about
Galaxy formation but not today um the
essential cause the proximate cause of
your disagreement with the climate
change Lobby is that you don't believe
that in so far as there is global
warming that man and man-made activity
is causing it summarize that would you
well actually it's not even a question
of belief it's a question of fact if you
look at the graph uh you can see that
the projections of the CO2 Theory uh
show this should have been continuous
warming now and they still say that be
warming whereas World temperatures
according to satellites which are
accurate show a uh leveling out and now
a decline which is completely contrary
to their theory that would be a very
serious State of Affairs given the
entire world has been mobilized around
the thesis that we were on a path of
ever upward global warming well of
course but it it you see the United
Nations intergovernmental panel on
climate change is not a scientific body
it's a political body it's for
negotiations between governments and
what in fact happens through this
process is the Western countries Britain
Europe are being
de-industrialized and their their
activities are being exported to other
countries and the production of CO2 is
just being moved from Britain and Europe
to India and so forth so there's not
actually any reduction in CO2 by their
measures there is a reduction in jobs
and the people who make money out of it
are the big corporations the big Banks
people like us and so forth who play
games with investing in SOC called
saving the planet actually they're
saving themselves and yet most of the uh
support for the prevailing Orthodoxy
comes from people on the liberal left
doesn't it you wouldn't get much change
in the guardian on arguing your point of
view in fact most of the dissidents
appear to be people on the right they
are but not entirely OB just been to
quite a successful conference in Paris
not the big one on TV our own
alternative conference and the point was
made there by a number of delegates you
don't have to be either left or right to
stand for scientific truth and there was
people there from the left and people
there from the right and the point is we
insist on accountable science
evidence-based science and all the facts
show that the CO2 theory is nonsense it
involves fraud and we've Now set up an
International geoethics committee which
is going to go hard against fraud by
governments and government scientists so
all these green taxes all this
de-industrialization in the name of
combating global warming it's your case
that these have been all fundamentally
flawed yes absolutely and what about
hybrid vehicles would would it not be
the case that if the global warming
argument is not true that they would not
have flourished or things like harrid
vehicles are experimental fine do it but
I mean they're not the answer to
anything because all you're doing in
terms of CO2 you're just making the CO2
in a power station somewhere and making
into electricity so you know it's might
be less diesel fumes in a city which is
a good thing but in terms of so-called
saving the planet by reducing CO2 it's
nonsense unless you turn over to nuclear
power but then of course the nuclear
power has all sorts of issues if people
get hold of way plutonium we could have
a few problems indeed so if not global
warming I want you to show the viewers
what it is that causes fluctuations cuz
that's what we are now talking about not
an Ever upward uh curve but fluctuations
in global temperatures I have brought
along a prop that might be useful I have
the whole world in my hands okay I told
you it was Sputnik orbiting the world
so what we want to do is show on this
I'll stand up for that the jet stream
now the jet stream is upper air which
moves very
fast um goes round and around the globe
it's this is a very simplified version
but the point is when the globe is
warmer the jet stream is
shorter and the cold bit to the South is
sorry the warm bit to the South is
bigger and the cold bit to the north is
smaller smaller okay and in periods of
of low solar activity the jet stream
gets longer goes further south and has
more waves in it now that's the
situation perfect uh Circle no no it's
waving around it's more like the Gangi
Delta but but you know goes all over the
place but basically it can be simplified
in terms of a stream so if you have the
jet stream say going sth like this then
this will bring a lot of very cold air
from the Arctic and wh through Britain
and that will bring snow snow down into
the Mediterranean and on this side
especially in the summer you can have
these great streams of air which come
from the Sahara up into Russia so we had
that super heated Russia in in uh 2010
for example um August
2010 and the motion of the jet stream is
controlled by solar activity and we can
predict changes in the jet stream and
extreme weather now the carbon dioxide
Theory cannot explain anything about the
jet stream they add as much CO2 as they
want into the modals it does not affect
the jet stream whereas the solar
activity does so we say that under the
climate change act in Britain section
six Clause 2 where it says as the
science changes then the measures have
to change we said look the science has
changed it's not what the climate change
act assumed so there has to be a
discussion in Parliament in Britain and
Europe to revise what what they think
and actually apply proper science the
logic of which would be get rid of all
carbon taxes that's what we say but
let's discuss it and therefore save the
British steel industry for example which
has been closed because of high
en this will be very hard for them to
accept because they have moved the
establishment and the political class
and the liberal media class has moved so
monolithically towards the uh
traditional global warming thesis they
work decades on it to get governments
all over the world to agree on the okay
but who has worked you see if scientists
don't agree they're marginalized uh not
given jobs in universities and so forth
now I've got plenty of friends in in in
Academia who just shut up you know
because to speak out we're give them
trouble but I'm a scientist that is
supported independently by selling
forecast to Farmers so nobody can touch
us financially so we say what we want
now outside we've got uh storm Desmond
uh people are getting ready to shiver
through uh another bitter winter
pensioners not being able to uh pay to
keep themselves warm choosing between
food and heat and all the Norms of uh of
a contemporary capitalist uh
Society it's always been I mean I I'm
not qualified to really critique your uh
your thesis but it's always seemed
rather a a tall tail to me that we were
causing whatever fluctuations that they
were cuz if you look at the actual
amounts if if if the whole atmosphere
was Big Ben tower then the amount of
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is just
like an inch on the top of Big Ben tower
and man's contribution to that is a
millimeter on top of the inch so we're
asked to believe that man's one mm
controls that 1 in which is insane
because of course if that's true it
means that termites and ants who produce
10 times as much CO2 equivalent as man
have to follow man's bidding well well
of course they don't it's an insane idea
it's an insane idea I was going to say
this this this would therefore if you
turn out to be right and I wouldn't put
money against it uh would be the the
greatest hoax I was going to say the
greatest hoax since but I can't actually
think of a hoax that compares with it uh
uh what lay behind that hoax well what
is behind this hoax if you can call it a
hoax well it's an Unholy Alliance of all
sorts of people I mean people that uh
young people who want to do good they're
told this is Sav in the world so they're
joining big corporations they love it
because it involves collecting taxes and
spending taxes on behalf of big projects
like giant wind farms or or um solar
power and so on now those projects on an
experimental basis can be good but to
impose them on people thereby trebling
their energy costs is just completely
wrong it is holding back the development
of the third world not helping it in any
way whatsoever no we've got uh storm
Desmond uh outside our door here but of
course we've now descended into another
storm another uh hot front uh in
Syria uh I know you don't speak for your
brother but you do have a voice yourself
how is war around the world uh affecting
the planet I would have thought a great
deal more than a millimeter on top of an
inch on top of Big Ben well no I I think
the the war around the world it just
causes suffering and the the backlash
from
bombing uh plenty of innocent people as
well as the people they're looking for
is just going to be more had his at home
which I think is completely insane I
mean what you've got to do to stop this
war is to cut it off at source and you
the funding look Saudi Arabia Qatar
Pakistan and turkey are all funding Isis
we're back to money again are I'm
keeping hold of the world Pierce Corbin
thanks very much for coming on board the
Sputnik thank you very much coming up
next possibly the most prolific writer
on God's green earth fr is Becket stay
tuned welcome back to Sputnik 1956 was a
seminal year Britain's Imperial
pretentions came to a crushing end H in
the Suz Affair the Soviet Union
denounced Stalin invaded Hungary and the
US formly declared itself the
unchallengeable leader of what it called
The Free World Francis Beckett is the
author of Inc CLM Atley and much else
besides and he has chronicled that year
in mesmerizing detail in his latest book
which is why we're glad he's back on
board the Sputnik Francis you know I
enjoy your work I have more of your
books than almost any other author but
the first chapter of this book I almost
called you up but it was too late at
night to tell you was one of the most
sustained ferocious brilliant and
eloquent CR critiques of what Britain
was like in
1956 thank you George I'll come back now
thank you so before we go worldwide tell
the viewers many of whom in these ukip
days are a bit nostalgic for 1950s
Britain what it was really like well I
don't think I'd advise anybody to go
back to 1956 if you were able to take a
trip back to 1956 you discover a world
in which women were supposed to regard
sex as a kind of commod
which you traded for a wedding ring um
in there's a there's a wonderful story
about 1956 told by David Lodge he says
that um he and his girlfriend uh firstly
um after six or eight months he felt her
breast outside the bra and so on until
about five years it's the it's the
longest warm-up session in history um it
was also a time when people genuinely
still believed that Britain ruled the
waves it was a time when if you or I
went into a barber shop we would say
short back and sides and it would be
considered unmanly to say anything else
at all um it was the time of the there
was a play just before 1956 in 1955 by
John Osborne who became famous in 1956
of course for look back in anger but in
1955 he' published he there' been a kind
of preliminary to that called epit for
George Dylan and there's a wonderful
Exchange in that epot where somebody
says and it would be perfectly
conceivable that somebody might say it
in in the years before 1956 somebody
said you know hler had the right idea
and the other person on the stage said
really and he said yeah but he went too
far and the other one says you think he
went too far and the first one says
definitely too far and that is a
dialogue if you can remember the era
which could have happened well I was
born in 54 so I don't recall 56 very
much but the jukeboxes began to change
of course in 1956 prior to that I don't
know Henry manini and his orchestra uh
the the big band sound rock and roll was
born in a way British rock and roll was
Bor British rock and roll was born in
1956 before 1956 and as far as you knew
anything at all about rock and roll it
was an American it was the American
version and it was an American import
Bill hilly in the comets and and it was
regarded as something pretty strange and
pretty odd and it's only 1956 when you
get homemade rock and roll you get Tommy
steel and you get the people who are who
are making it in Britain and suddenly it
becomes something that the British are
really keen on and really interested in
and the youth began to have purchas
didn't they yeah they did the word
teenager was pretty new at the time but
what it really meant was that for the
very first time people in their teens
had some sort of purchasing power I me
one of the many reasons I would advise
the young never to try to go back to the
50s which they're so often advised to do
is that they had no money no power they
were little people sent around in their
school uniforms um and if they wanted
something they had to ask somebody for
the for for the penny to go and buy it
it's only at that time that teenagers
start to be start to become people with
some sort of independent purchasing
power and some sort of decision making
power over o over what the society was
going to produce and they had attitudes
to race we've touched on but also to
women which seem like prehistoric
extraordinary there was a a musical of
the time called Salad Days it was very
very popular very famous musical and it
was very popular and ran for years and
there was a scene towards the end where
the woman where the young woman had been
um been she'd been a little bit
difficult So eventually the boyfriend
put her over his the in Span her and she
could and she didn't and she didn't
misbehave again and I and I saw the
exact exact scene in this television
documentary series it was all right in
the 60s it was all right in the 60s and
people look back at it with horror today
obviously I by the 60s in London perhaps
not in Scotland Geor in the provinces
but but I wasn't going to say we were
still spanking in the provinces well
into the 60s oh I wish I'd lived but um
no it it didn't happen um it in London
at any rate it wouldn't have been all
right in the 60s by the end of the 50s
people were starting to see that that
sort of behavior wasn't acceptable but
of course we' watched American films
we'd watched John Wayne who did it on a
regular basis yes indeed now of course
1956 and your book deals with the vast
seminal international events as well as
looking at British Society uh let's deal
with the first of those Suz uh known now
as a fiasco led to the fenestration of
the Prime Minister Anthony Eden was
already falling by the end of 56
replaced in January 57 by Harold
McMillan what was the story of Suz and
what was its lasting impact particularly
on the conservative party well the long
the long story is that Su was part of
Britain's um absurd pretention that it
could somehow or another make the Middle
East a better place by continually
sending troops in um so that uh we had
uh we had
absolutely the British government still
seem to labor under this under this
strange illusion um but the story was
the uh was that President NASA of Egypt
wanted to take over the sez Canal not
you and I might think
necessarily unreasonable thing to do
given that it flowed through his country
uh and he wanted the the the revenues
from the ships of past threat and of
course um this this horrified the
British government and to cut a very
long story very short the British sent
troops in militarily it was fairly
successful campaign they were starting
to overwhelm the Egyptian Army and
retake the canal but uh what they had
not done was to check it out with the
Americans beforehand President
Eisenhower was just up for reelection
and this hit him two or three days
before polling day in his reelection
campaign and his wrath was terrible and
the moment he was re-elected he gave a
Curt instruction to the British that if
they didn't withdraw immediately there
would be oil sanctions there would be
Financial sanctions there was immediate
selling of Sterling at an enormous rate
um and the British government was forced
to realize that if it did not withdraw
from suiz immediately the nation would
be bankrupt and thus the United States
declared itself the boss thus the United
States declared itself the boss mainly
through Eden's stupidity and foolishness
um the the United and and from then on
in you know from then on in no British
prime minister has done has if the if an
American president says to a British
prime minister jump the British prime
minister says how high and there have
been practically no British prime
ministers who have bucked that Trend
oddly the one who really who who began
to Buck it was Ted Heath to some extent
and because his vision turned
toit a European power but pretty well
every prime minister since then has been
an atlanticist and Harold McMillan's
first job when he became prime minister
in January 1957 was to crawl off to
Washington with as much dignity as he
could Master which wasn't very much and
and and take whatever crumbs uh the
American president was prepared to throw
in by way of a face saving exercise no
the Soviet Union uh in
1956 intervened in Hungary with
potentially disastrous results uh for
the international movement that was uh
Consulting around uh Moscow at that time
tell us about that well Hungary the the
Soviet Union intervened in Hungary uh on
the basis that there was there had been
a a tremendous revolt against uh the the
Hungarian government which was
essentially a Soviet satellite
government it was essentially a
government that that was it didn't
it wasn't totally controlled by the
Soviet Union but it was very largely
controlled by the Soviet Union there was
a tremendous reaction against that in
the years before 1956 which came to a
head in 1956 to some to to the extent
that at the same time as the SE Invasion
happened the Soviet Union sent troops
into Hungary now I suspect and the
papers tend to bear this out that it
wasn't entirely an accident that it
happened at the same time as the seers
adventure
and that if the British government had
behaved a little bit more sensibly over
sew we might never have seen Hungary
what happened I think was that krof saw
that the West wasn't really paying
attention was far too much far too bound
up with its own Affairs to take very
much interest in what was going on in
Eastern Europe so he invaded Hungary he
installed uh a a a government that was
going to be much more amenable to Soviet
guidance and so things remained for many
years
afterwards to what extent then can we
say
1956 was a major turning point in world
events I think it was a major turning
point in world events and an even more
major turning point in British events uh
it was the time when Britain was forced
to realize that it was no longer an
imperial power that it couldn't really
do anything on the world stage that the
Americans didn't didn't approve of it
was the time that um the Soviet Union it
was the first time that the Soviet Union
in order to keep control of the areas of
Eastern Europe which it had um in which
it had installed governments after the
second world war it was the time the
first time in which it actually had to
be seen to hold one of them down um it
was the time because of that and because
of kof's secret speech which happened
earlier in the year in which kof
denounced the the the crimes of Stalin
it was the point at which in Britain
the it it was the beginning of the end
for the British Communist party because
uh British the British Communist Party
found it harder and harder thereafter to
be able to sell the Soviet Union as a
model for socialism so really was a
turning point in world events in every
possible way it's a fantastic book I
don't agree with everything in it but I
urge everyone to read it thank you
George Francis Beck thanks for joining
us on the
Sputnik and now it's your turn to tell
us what you think through the portals of
social media what's rling gy so I asked
climate change man-made or not and
Ricardo Picasso makes a very strong
counter argument to Pierce's thesis it
may prove to be man's worst contribution
to planet Earth worse than War
imperialism and oppression we will never
change the world if we don't have one in
which to live and khit galini says we
surely can't change the climate but we
can try to stop human greed I must say
I'm increasingly interested in Pierce
Corbin's thesis I'm not really qualified
to be the judge but I hate prevailing
Orthodoxy because it is so very often
wrong and that's all that we've got time
for this week which alas means that's
the end of the show you can stay in
touch with us though on Twitter at rtor
Sputnik or on Facebook Sputnik on Russia
today it's goodbye from me gatri and
from me George Galloway it's been
marvelous
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