Marcus Brigstocke makes the analogy between CO2 and human excrement.
Feb 10, 2009 15:32:32
Cool your boots Guardianistas and enviro-squakers. Before you board your sustainably sourced wooden pedalos and set off for Northern Ireland with organic vegetables in hand ready to pelt the Democratic Unionist party's environment minister, Sammy Wilson for daring to air his reservations regarding anthropomorphic climate change, let's hear the man out. What does he think? Why does he think it? He's not convinced that climate change is caused by human activity, well let's suppose he's right. Brilliant. What a relief. Woohoo!
Wilson believes the warming planet has nothing to do with us, so he must have read some pretty convincing science from some pretty reputable sources to arrive at that serene position – after all, he's advocating nothing short of an astonishing scientific paradigm shift. I can't wait for him to reveal his scientific sources.
But I doubt that Wilson is a bad man. I think he's wrong but he's not saying that we should spend all that extra money instead on having a big party where we soak a plane in oil , set fire to it and watch as it flies into a refinery. No, he wants to free up money to tackle poverty, Aids, education and any number of other worthwhile projects – seemingly anything other than the environment. All laudable causes, but perhaps odd ones for the Northern Ireland Assembly's environment minister.
Here's what he has to say: "Most of the people who shout about climate change have not read one article about it." Although I think what he must have meant is: "The people who shout 'Climate change is not man made have not read one article about it.'"
But my being facetious is not going to convince him he's wrong. Only science can do that, using things like facts and evidence and research and well, you know, science.
I've been very lucky to have had the opportunity to work with climate scientists on two trips to the Arctic with Cape Farewell in 2007 and 2008. One of the most interesting things I read while there was in Wallace Broecker and Robert Kunzig's excellent book, Fixing Climate, where they discuss the introduction of underground sewage removal and the resistance to it from people I imagine to be very similar to Sammy Wilson. As underground sewage removal was proposed and planned, these towering Wilsons of their day claimed that it was too expensive to take the filth from the streets and carry it away underground and that the links between ill health and crap all over the pavements were unfounded. They lost the argument, mercifully, it cost us some money, but on balance I'm glad that I don't have to navigate my way through my neighbour's excrement to reach the station. If only CO2 emissions were as visible as sewage. It's so hard to make the case for leaving crap all over the place when people can see you're standing on a heap of it.
Back with today's Wilson, he says, "In 20 years' time we will look back at this whole climate change debate and ask ourselves How on earth were we ever conned into spending the billions of pounds which are going into this without any kind of rigorous examination of the background, the science, the implications of it all?"
I'm trying not to resort to patronising sarcasm and abuse as I look at this, but it's getting harder and the heat under my collar when confronted by this level of mendacity or ignorance is enough to melt an ice cap. Read a book you idiot, or the UN Earth Audit, or the Stern review, or the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's findings, or Google it, just read something, anything. Well almost anything, not Jeremy Clarkson. Oh, and check the source of what you've read.
Of course scientific argument cannot be won by democracy. According to a survey last month the overwhelming majority of climate scientists believe global warming is manmade (97% in fact). Not because their huge grants depend on it either but because the evidence has led them to that conclusion. Please someone show me the climate scientist living in a 20-room mansion and rolling out of expensive nightclubs with Krug in hand to be driven home in an Aston Martin – those grants are not as large as some might have you believe. Even if you lump in the ones who work for oil companies, 82% of earth scientists believe the data on manmade climate change.
Writing about the survey, Peter Doran, associate professor of earth and environmental sciences University of Illinois at Chicago along with Maggie Kendall Zimmerman, conclude that
"the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely nonexistent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes."
Wilson doesn't yet. But with further reading, I'm sure he will. In the meantime Sammy show us your science or it's to the pedalos and organic veg.
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