9:07am Wednesday 13th January 2010
By Keith Thomson
Making up your mind about climate change is not a matter of belief, taste, or upbringing, like preferring the Daily Telegraph to the Guardian. It’s not about choice. It’s about understanding the science, the way that the physics and chemistry works, and it is not negotiable.
The facts, the processes and the experiences of climate change are rock solid, backed up by a consensus of the international scientific world, building on almost two centuries of work and now using up-to-date satellite technology and computer power. This science landed a man on the moon, so unravelling a changing climate is just similar hard graft.
The only uncertainty is how much climate change there will be and by when, yet there are groups and individuals who maintain that it’s a scam and not happening. They discount reality and generally have a common political philosophy and a commitment to the free market as the way forward. They clearly feel threatened.
It wasn’t a surprise that the USA and Australia refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol as they were strongly influenced by their large fossil fuel coal and oil industries. Despite political changes, these energy providers still support interest groups which work to deny climate change, support scepticism and give a platform for dissent.
They suggest that all will be well if we leave everything to companies that build traditional vehicles, supply electricity from coal-burning power stations and mine and drill wherever they wish. They maintain that coal is clean, that shareholders come first, taxation should be low, government intervention minimal and national security the primary concern.
To them, CO2 is irrelevant and climate change is due to the sun, cosmic rays and clouds, and they are constantly supported by a range of right-leaning newspapers that don’t like taxes or Europe.
Thus, the Daily Telegraph’s non-scientific columnists argue that climate change isn’t man-made, and they include a Lord Walter Monkton of Brenchley, a classicist, former Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson, president of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, who supported the closure of the coal mines for the wrong reasons, and global warming sceptic Christopher Booker.
Some American papers have similar climate views, but they would be hard-pressed to match the list of 100 reasons debunking man-made climate change that the Daily Express published recently. Number 45 suggests that the reason we now live longer than before the Industrial Revolution is because there is more CO2 in the air!
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