A friend, doing her bit to ratchet up pressure on the world's hapless politicians in Copenhagen, asked all her friends to sign the "Save Copenhagen" online petition that was doing the rounds last week. One wrote back to her to say:
"Claire - I am not convinced by the evidence on climate change. Even if global temperature changes are increasing, I am not convinced that there is enough evidence that it is due to human activity or even that carbon dioxide levels are a CAUSATIVE factor. Temperatures have risen and fallen by 7 degrees at least 10 times in the past 1 million years, obviously not due to human activity.
"The problem is that there are a huge number of hysterical people who are blind to the actual evidence. These people are often anti capitalist and anti everything. I also think it is important that people are allowed to voice their views and are not regarded as ‘heretics’ when they refute the evidence. An example is that Ed Milliband said that it should become ‘socially unacceptable’ to argue against climate change. This I regard as extremely dangerous and against the general principles of freedom of speech. Therefore, I hope you don’t mind me declining to take part in your petition but I hope that we can respect each other’s views."
My friend then writes to me "Hi Alexis, How would you counter this argument?!" Here's my reply:
"Hi Claire - The world has been hotter in the past (slightly – four times in 800 million years) but the level of greenhouse gases has never been anything like as high as it is now. We know there is a causal relationship between global average temperatures and greenhouse gases although it can go both ways ie CO2 does not always lead temperature, sometimes temperature leads CO2. Look at the graph - a child can see that there’s a link.
"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s climate scientists, who put together a report every four years based on all the previously published science, and who have to achieve an unheard of level of consensus between themselves for a global group of scientific specialists so that governments can sign off their conclusions, puts the likelihood that the current round of global warming is manmade at more than 95% probable. Would you fly in a plane if the world’s aeronautic engineers said it was more than 95% likely to crash?
"Your friend is, I think, the one who is hysterical. All the evidence points in the same direction. The only people who deny that this bout of climate change is manmade are either nutters (like Lord Lawson) or powerful interests defending the status quo (fossil fuel companies) or publicity-seeking fake climate scientists (like Bjorn Lomberg) some of whom are funded by powerful interests to muddy the waters in the same way that “scientists” were once paid to create doubt about the dangers of smoking by the tobacco companies.
"No serious climate scientist will deny that climate change is happening and that it is manmade. The only points of contention are what exactly happens next, in what order, and when will we lose control of the process? Will the the Amazon burn up at 2ºC of global warming or 3ºC? Will the methane that is currently locked under the frozen tundra of Siberia and Canada get released at 3ºC or 4ºC? Can we still control the process at 4ºC (as Lord Adair Turner seems to think although it’s not clear on what science that is based) or, more likely somewhere between 2ºC (which most climate scientists now privately say is inevitable) and 4ºC?
"The nutters, the powerful interests and the fake scientists all have their reasons for creating doubt. The media hates consensus and so fans the flames of confusion by pitching Nigel Lawson against a respectable climate scientist and suggesting that there is still a debate over whether climate change is happening or whether it is manmade. It should be intellectually unacceptable to argue against MANMADE climate change.
"There will still be plenty of argument about what we should do. I personally don’t believe that capitalism or democracy can deal with climate change or the end of cheap fossil fuels, the other looming catastrophe of our times (at least for the industrialised world). We are living with an economic model that requires growth and growth is seen as in some way an end in itself. It is not – growth does not make us happy, it just gives us more stuff.
"As a nation we have not got happier since the 1960s. It’s the same throughout the industrialised world except those societies, like Denmark, where highly regulated capitalism has created a much flatter income distribution and a more interventionist social model. I’m a trained classical economist but I no longer believe in capitalism in a world that does not price the biosphere.
"I would like to see a model which includes the need to live within the natural limits of the earth i respectful harmony with its other inhabitants (plants and animals); where community resilience, the ability to withstand external shocks (like Tesco no longer being able to supply strawberries in January because the oil price has hit $600/barrel) is more important than Just-In-Time global production; and where wellbeing or happiness is once again (as it was for Jeremy Bentham et al) the primary role of governments not pointless measures of growth or money supply or industrial production.
"So in conclusion I think you should not “respect his views” on manmade climate change as they are wrong. He is a flat earther in this respect. If he wants to have a discussion about what comes next or about whether capitalism can mutate (yet again) to deal with this crisis, then fine. But his doubts about manmade climate change are not respectable – they are mad."
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