Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
7 Cool it: an essay on climate change
Nigel Lawson
There is something odd about the global warming debate—or the climate change debate, as
we are now expected to call it, since global warming has for the time being come to a halt.
1
Ihavenevershiedawayfromcontroversy,nor—forexample,asChancellor—worriedabout
being unpopular if I believed that what I was saying and doing was in the public interest.
But I have never in my life experienced the extremes of personal hostility, vituperation
and vilification which I—along with other dissenters, of course—have received for my
views on global warming and global warming policies.
For example, according to the Climate Change Secretary Ed Davey, the global warming
dissenters are, without exception, 'wilfully ignorant' and in the view of the Prince of Wales
we are 'head-less chickens'. Not that 'dissenter' is a term they use. We are regularly
referred to as 'climate change deniers', a phrase deliberately designed to echo 'Holocaust
denier'—asifquestioningpresentpoliciesandforecastsofthefutureisequivalenttocasting
malign doubt about a historical fact.
The heir to the throne and the minister are senior public figures, who watch their
language. The abuse I received after appearing on the BBC's Today programme in February
2014 was far less restrained. Both the BBC and I received an orchestrated barrage of
complaints to the effect that it was an outrage that I was allowed to discuss the issue on
the programme at all. And even the Science and Technology Committee of the House of
Commons shamefully joined the chorus of those who seek to suppress debate.
In fact, despite having written a thoroughly documented topic about global warming
more than five years ago, which happily became something of a bestseller, and having
founded a think tank on the subject— the Global Warming Policy Foundation—the
following year, and despite frequently being invited on
Today
to discuss economic issues,
this was the first time I had ever been asked to discuss climate change. I strongly suspect it
will also be the last time.
The BBC received a well-organised deluge of complaints—some of them, inevitably,
from those with a vested interest in renewable energy— accusing me, among other things,
of being a geriatric retired politician and not a climate scientist, and so wholly unqualified
to discuss the issue.
Perhaps, in passing, I should address the frequent accusation from those who violently
object to any challenge to any aspect of the prevailing climate change doctrine, that the
GlobalWarmingPolicyFoundation'snon-disclosureofthenamesofourdonorsisproofthat
we are a thoroughly sinister organisation and a front for the fossil fuel industry.
