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Or Tim Flannery—who must be a clever fellow: with just a doctorate in kangaroo
palaeontology he managed to land a job as Australia's Climate Commissioner which paid
A$180,000 a year for a three-day week, all courtesy of the Aussie taxpayer. Go on,
have a stab. Your starter for ten: what was Flannery's undergraduate degree at La Trobe
University?
Sorry, no prizes. I gave you the answer already—and I hope you find it as puzzling as
I do. These people, they're forever invoking the scientific 'consensus' on global warming
and saying we should trust the experts at the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change
and at learned institutions like the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research
Organisation and the Royal Society. But what special knowledge are these English
Literature graduates bringing to the party that enables them to make these
ex cathedra
pronouncements as to who we should and shouldn't trust? An ability to make a passable,
modern language translation of Beowulf? A deep insight into the nature of patriarchy in
Georgian England, with special reference to
Emma
and
Pride and Prejudice
? The fact of
their having almost understood some bits of James Joyce's
Ulysses
?
All that being said, it's really not my intention here to mock people with English
Literature degrees in particular or non-scientists in general. On the contrary, my purpose
in this chapter is to demonstrate that they are in some ways better qualified to contribute
to the climate change debate than your average scientist. There are two main reasons
for this. One is that in the last thirty years or so, the science on climate has become
so systematically corrupted that the supposed experts propounding it can no longer be
trusted. And the other is that the debate about climate is—and always has been—one
which has far more to do with ideology, rhetoric and propaganda than it does with
the how-many-angels-candance-on-the-head-of-a-pin argument over the extent to which
manmadeCO
2
emissionsmayormaynotbealteringglobalmeantemperaturesbyfractions
of a degree.
But it's amazing how many otherwise well-informed, intelligent people still don't get
this. Here, for example, is
Washington Post
columnist Michael Gerson in a piece arguing
thattheongoingreluctance oftheUSpublictograpplewithglobalwarmingstemsfroman
aversiontoscience.'Theonlypossibleanswerscomefromscience.Andfornon-scientists,
this requires a modicum of trust in the scientific enterprise.'
3
Gerson is speaking here, I suspect, for an awful lot of people who haven't looked too
closely into the global warming debate but feel, instinctively, that this must be a scientific
issue—to be resolved by scientists—rather than a political one, in which anyone can offer
an opinion. Perhaps you're one of them yourself. You'll have read the chapters by say, Ian
Plimer, Pat Michaels or Bob Carter and have gone: 'Well that all seems very reasonable.
The experts have spoken and the science is perfectly clear. What exactly is the problem?'
