The doomsayers of climate change are not having a good week. They are being ‘beset round about’, as the Bible would put it.
First, Channel 4’s splendid documentary, and now a hard-hitting article in the Telegraph by Janet Daley. She pours scorn on their repressive tactics and self-righteous manner, and restates the case now resounding everywhere that before swallowing their burdensome dogma, we must first see scientific evidence:
I don’t know about you, but before I can feel comfortable asking people in emerging economies such as India to forgo the benefits of economic growth and mass prosperity, before I can sentence some of the poorest people in the world to living indefinitely without modern technology, before I am even prepared to ask the lower-paid of this country to give up the improvements in their quality of life to which they have only just become accustomed - I want to hear any and every argument that is to be had about this theory.
And to the comrades in the green movement, I would say this: before you slam the lid on debate, and put your invasive restrictions into place to deny people freedoms and comforts that have transformed their condition, you had better be damned sure that you are right.
And she is right. If climate change is a scientific fact, then the green movement should not be nervous about allowing debate. It is only a religion that would insist that contrary evidence be not countenanced. So far, we have seen envirofascists telling us that ‘the climate change debate is over’. It is not over. In fact, it is only just beginning. It will not be over until we have incontrovertible proof one way or the other.
If we are to accept wholesale the claims of the green lobby without investigating their veracity, then we are dealing with the subject as one would a religion. However, even in religion, there are false prophets, and every religion has guidelines for determining who are the false prophets in its midst.
I don’t know how it works in other religions, but this is the Biblical test for if a prophet is true or false: look to the evidence. We are asked to ‘examine everything carefully, [and] hold fast to that which is good’.
Yes, as far as pronouncements by prophets are concerned, not even religion (at least, not Christianity) demands unthinking acceptance. We are to be rational, use our God-given faculties, test the evidence, and then ‘hold fast’ to whatever passes that test.
So having satisfied neither the scientific nor the Biblical standards, perhaps these repressive false prophets may wish to think again.
March 12th, 2007 at 12:03 pm
Bel,
If you haven’t seen it yet “The Great Global Warming Swindle” is being broadcast again tonight on More 4 at 22:00
March 12th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
Bel,
What really troubles me, apart from the name calling (enviro-fascists), is that people actually still doubt thousands of scientists. Are people choosing to believe what they want and not actually reading the reports? If the scientists are wrong then all is well, but if they’re not?
Interestingly, about half of all media reports state doubts about climate change. About 2 per cent of scientific reports doubt climate change and these are funded from various fossil-fuel companies.
Debate is occurring, however we often see climate scientists on one side and economists on the other. Apples and oranges?
About time the economists listened and the neo-cons stopped pretending to have the answers. This issue should be beyond cheap political slanging matches. Time will tell. But that’s another generation’s problem, right?
March 12th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
Hello Greg. Interesting that for your example of namecalling, you point out ‘envirofascists’. What about ‘climate change deniers’, or comparing people who question climate change to holocaust deniers? Does that bother you as well?
Fact number 1. It matters not that (assuming you are right) only ‘About 2 per cent of scientific reports doubt climate change’. It is not about the number; it is about the quality of research. We do not decide scientific fact by show of hands, with the majority carrying the day.
And who, incidentally, do you think funds the ‘envirofascists’? In the matter of who funds whose research, may I suggest that the climate change doomsayers’ hands are not 100 per cent clean? There are vested interests there, and to pretend otherwise is to be naive.
If anybody is ‘pretending to have the answers’, it is those like Miliband’s Defra who will have us believe that ‘the debate is over’. The debate is by no means over, and if the climate change doomsayers were sure of their facts, they should not mind too much if people want to debate them and test them.
Yes, time will tell. Scientific fact should win out at the end of the day, if this false religion doesn’t stifle it first.
March 12th, 2007 at 1:17 pm
Thanks John, I shall make sure I record the Channel 4 film for posterity. What’s the betting it won’t also be circulated in schools as Al Gore’s film wil be?
March 12th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
Greg, I would urge you to watch the TV programme if you can because many of the points that you have raised above were answered.
You accept the thousands of scientists claim which is being banded around at the moment, particularly by the UN IPCC, but the programme interviews several leading scientists who requested that their names should be removed from the list published by the IPCC because they didn’t agree with the conclusions, the methods adopted to edit the report, or the political interference - all to no avail, they are still claimed as supporters of man made global warming.
You also repeated the belief that anyone disagreeing with the “envirofascists” is in the pay of the oil companies. Many of the sceptical scientists in the programme were asked if their funding came from these sources and all denied it. It was also pointed out that the “wicked capitalists” are probably going to make fortunes whichever side of the debate wins. Research investment and future profits from energy; whether oil, nuclear, wind or whatever will all end up in the same hands so the evil strawmen of the oil companies are probably not too worried, particularly as they will never run short of customers for their oil. If not motorists it will be petrochemicals and plastics.
The group of scientists which comes under the greatest suspicion in the TV programme is that supporting man made global warming. For example, and I apologise for probably getting the numbers totally wrong as this is from memory, the US spent a few tens of millions of dollars on climate research in the 1980’s and now it’s $10 billion per year. In addition, it’s near impossible to get government funding for research which refutes man made global warming, or for researchers who deny the new religion.
Powerful forces indeed to ensure that “thousands” of scientists stick to the official script.
March 12th, 2007 at 9:42 pm
Hi Bel: I totally agree with you. I blogged on this again last night and you can see George Osborne’s carbon footprint. Although I travelled around 16000 miles last year in the air, I am sure he managed more. I wonder how much those 16000 miles will cost me in the future? The sun is getting hotter. No surprise there. It was hotter in medieval times than it is now and where were the SUVs in the crusades? The enviromentalist lobby want us to swallow their version of the truth, which of course is not the truth at all.
March 13th, 2007 at 8:53 am
Have just heard Milliband being torn to shreds by John Humphreys on BBC Radio 4. Dids you hear it?
March 13th, 2007 at 7:05 pm
Greg: “Debate is occurring, however we often see climate scientists on one side and economists on the other. Apples and oranges?
About time the economists listened and the neo-cons stopped pretending to have the answers. This issue should be beyond cheap political slanging matches. Time will tell. But that’s another generation’s problem, right?”
I’d like to ask: Do you live in a mud hut? Walk everywhere? Grow your own food?
If not, why not? Isn’t the environment more important that your comforts or way of life?
After you think on that, then ask yourself why you have the Global Doomsayers vs the Economists in a debate and if you still think it’s apples to oranges.
March 15th, 2007 at 4:14 pm
Melanie Phillips has also weighed in with a good piece. Her blog address is melaniephillips.com .
What baffles me is why anyone would give any credence to anything that Al Gore has to say on such an incredibly complex subject which involves at least 20 scientific disciplines. He’s not a scientist.
Al Gore dropped out of law school. Al Gore dropped out of theological college. Al Gore could not believe the American voters had rejected him for President of the United States and cost the country millions of dollars in an absurd investigation of “hanging chads” on voting forms.
And this is what people are listening to on universal science? Al Gore either doesn’t understand, or is dishonestly pretending not to be aware, that the earth has been warming and cooling for millions of years. Humankind is a comparative recent development on planet Earth. We’ve only been here for 100,000 years or so.
March 16th, 2007 at 1:07 am
Oh, and I forgot - how these little incidentals slip one’s mind! - Al Gore invented the internet!
Dropped out of law school. Dropped out of theological college. Never tried for a science degree in any discipline whatsoever, but he invented the internet and knows the holy truth about “climate change” - aka by the discredited term “global warming”.
Never managed to parlay the “hanging chads” in Florida into an election victory, though, when real mathematicians were in charge.
Al is quite the fantasist.
Only very rich people are able to promote their fantasies this way. Al Gore and his family have been unimaginably rich tobacco farmers in Tennessee for generations. I don’t know for sure (and can’t be bothered to devote any more time to Al to research it), but I would imagine his tobacco plantations have been the recipient of federal funds - or at least tax breaks for generations.
Al Gore’s a fantasist and a phony.
And now he’s grown a beard. The man’s a loon.
March 16th, 2007 at 1:19 am
Verity, an amusing piece on Al Gore by Mark Steyn; I don’t know if you’ve seen this. Worth a read.
Amusing, but conveying a very serious message.
March 16th, 2007 at 3:31 pm
Thanks, Bel. I hadn’t read that, although I try to catch every new Steyn piece hot off the press.
I wonder why Al doesn’t sell his gazillion shares in Occidental?
June 3rd, 2007 at 1:44 am
a few of you have two things wrong. Number one, whether or not you like Al Gore is an entirely seperate issue than the validity of climate change science. If you want the real scoop on the issue, go to the people conducting the actual research. they are overwhelmingly in agreement with the statement that climate change is a problem and human activity is causing it.
The second point is just as important. In the post above, Janet Daley, says its wrong to stop the worlds poorest people from developing their economies. NO environmentalist is saying we need to. what they are saying is that the developed nations need to take the lead in reducing emissions, and developing nations NEED to have allowances to increase emissions.
the US blocks those efforts at every turn. So that is where you need to put your blame.
November 27th, 2007 at 4:18 am
pejos puzudope gukma
muxi http://ri712259.poirhuo.info/sitemap1.html [url=http://xa604139.poirhuo.info/sitemap1.html ]kagi[/url] suwo http://pi737414.poirhuo.info/sitemap1.html [url=http://sa140910.mmerash.info/sitemap1.html ]xoni[/url] civy http://me154937.foirya8.info/sitemap1.html [url=http://ce660074.mmerash.info/sitemap1.html ]vibo[/url] bezyc
December 13th, 2007 at 5:04 pm
Why is it when you type in climate change into Google the first 10 or so pages are pro climate change, and you really have to dig to find the rational stuff?
I thought the internet was supposed to free the mind of humanity and enable us to communicate as never before. All i see is that even the internet is now a soap box
for all the self indulgent, deluded, rude, obnoxious twats that believe they really are most important people alive on the planet today.
June 11th, 2008 at 6:59 pm
thanks for being so honest and ambivalent.
i would say that climate change is also curiosity about
our environment not just a stance. it does affect our
cultures.