A number of times over the last few years, I have been ridiculed with the familiar jibe of the environmental zealots, that the equivalent of holding my position on climate change was to deny the earth was round. It remains to be seen whether my scepticism will be vindicated, but how encouraging it is that the climate change debate is finally heading back to just that- a debate. It is no longer acceptable to dismiss ‘the sceptics’, such as myself, as simply round earth deniers. I say this with some emphasis, because the tide only began to change very recently.
Only two years ago, Nigel Lawson struggled to find anyone who would publish his excellent book on climate change, ‘An Appeal to Reason’. I recall the Question Time audience (see below for my thoughts on this bunch) uniting in a collective gasp when Peter Hitchons so much as dared to suggest that the case for climate change had not yet been proven. Indeed, if you were a sceptic back then, you could be forgiven for having moments of doubt as to your position- such was the strength of ridicule and incredulity being directed against you.
Well done for holding firm.
At the end of last year, two polls were carried out in The Times and the Daily Telegraph showing that a near majority of people in this country did not accept the consensus on climate change. It is with some regret that following this, the climate change scientists discredited themselves with a succession of embarrassments, not least the latest not-so-quickly-disappearing Himalayan glaciers which went to the top of the IPCC. (Secretly, I mean regret for them and absolute smugness for me.)
But smugness aside, let me try to achieve what Nigel Lawson implored us all to do- to have a cool look at global warming. For me, there seems to be some fundamental problems with the climate change consensus at every stage of the argument.
Firstly, is the globe actually getting warmer? The answer is not certain, yet the IPCC insists on telling us that it is. If one takes the time to have a look at the evidence (not least that from the Hadley Centre, which works with the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia) the forecast is far from clear. Even if it does point to a slight rise in temperature, can we be sure that it will rise to the extent that the IPCC has predicted?
Let us jump this hurdle for a moment and accept that the planet is getting warmer. Is this warming solely created by the activity of humans? The answer again is not conclusive. Indeed, on this point, a wealth of scientific studies and theories have concluded that humans are not responsible at all; that natural variations or the effect of water vapour from clouds are the more likely culprits.
But let us jump this hurdle too and accept that global warming is not only taking place, but that we alone are causing it. Can we actually do anything about it? It seems to me that there is foolish arrogance in those who believe that humans themselves can control the temperature of the planet, as if turning up the thermostat in their homes. Correspondingly, there has been absolute failure in trying to do anything significant about it, as Copenhagen proves. More importantly for me, however, is a moral question: Were we to act in the way that some of the greenists expect in trying to reverse climate change, would we be denying millions of people in the developing world the industrial revolution- the chance to escape poverty- that we in the developed world have already had the fortune of?
Further still, even if we were to grant the environmentalists this hurdle also, (by now completing almost enough to make up the 110 meters sprint event) would their response necessarily be the right one? If global warming is happening and it is caused by humans, I am afraid the right way to respond is not by assuming we can irrevocably change our way of life and the development of our people. The correct response is to do what every other human community has done in the tens of thousands of years that we have roamed the planet- adapt! We should be investing a significant amount of time, energy and resources (or at least a proportion that is currently being thrown at global warming scientists) into adaptation through technology.
There is a definite breakthrough in this debate and I hope that the opportunity that this provides is grasped by the eminent sceptics that have previously been ridiculed and silenced. It seems the earth may be flat after all!
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