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As a scientist who worked in an environmentally related field for more than three decades, one thing that sets me into rant mode quicker than anything else is when academics, from whom more rational comment should be expected, try to imply that there is consensus among scientists on the existence of medium to long term “global warming” and its anthropogenic causes. A glaring example of this was in an article in the Sunday Telegraph of 03 September, when historian turned crystal ball gazer, Professor Niall Ferguson, tried to set us all to rights.
Referring President Bush’s comments on the debate on whether global warming is man-made or has natural causes, Professor Ferguson made the breathtakingly all-encompassing statement “there may be such a debate … but not among scientists, the overwhelming majority of whom now believe ….. that we are already ‘experiencing dangerous human disruption of the global climate …’ ” *
Apart from the sweeping generalisation of that statement, it
is factually incorrect. There is an
on-going debate among scientists not only on the underlying causes of climate
change but also on the very nature of that change. The Scientific Alliance in its
newsletter of 11 August comments “… the more objective approach would be to
look for signs of change in either direction (for example the cooling of
This rational approach is in stark contrast to Professor Ferguson’s next statement, attributed to Professor John Holdren, that “if the current rate of global warming continues ….. sea levels could rise by as much as four metres this century.” This is a classic example of a non-statement. The current rate of global warming remains an unknown quantity about which there is vigorous scientific debate. Leaving that aside, stating that sea levels could rise by as much as four metres this century means no more than, between now and the year 2100, sea levels may either have fallen, remained where they are or risen but apparently by no more than four metres.
This is possibly not a very compelling reason for having to, as Professor Ferguson suggests “act now to slow, if not halt, the pace of climate change.”
In the Business Section of the Daily Telegraph on 11 September, Ruth Lea, the director of the Centre for Policy Studies, had an article entitled “Costly futile gestures in the climate change debate”. This article was a reasoned and rational discussion of the debate on whether mitigation or adaptation should receive more emphasis in dealing with issues arising from perceived climate change. Ms Lea included informative comment on the farcical situation surrounding the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme.
Ms Lea’s article provoked an outraged response from Lord
Rees of
Rather than entering into rational debate as should be expected from a President of the Royal Society, Lord Rees enters into a harangue more in keeping with a fanatical medieval inquisitor condemning a heretic. Those who express opinions similar to those of Ms Lea will probably be reassured to think that environmental fundamentalists probably consider burning at the stake to have too large a “carbon footprint.”.
In the same letter Lord Rees makes a typically quasi-accurate prediction, of the type beloved of climate change gurus, when he states that “long-term cuts in emissions of at least 60 per cent that will be required from industrial countries if we are to stabilise greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at twice pre-industrial levels.” Such figures can only be based on long term predictive modelling – an extremely unwieldy tool to produce any firm future data on the state of a naturally chaotic system such as the Earth’s Atmosphere.
* I can’t resist another dig at Professor Ferguson’s amazing statement about there being no debate among scientists on anthropogenic global warming. It would be equivalent to saying, as a qualified chemist, that the overwhelming majority of historians now believe that the single most important contributory factor to the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 was the failure of Richard III to find another horse at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485.