Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
As I have pointed out on a number of occasions, the Foundation's Board of Trustees
decided,fromtheoutset,thatitwouldneithersolicitnoracceptanymoneyfromtheenergy
industry or from anyone with a significant interest in the energy industry. And to those
who are not— regrettably—prepared to accept my word, I would point out that among our
trustees are a bishop of the Church of England, a former private secretary to the Queen,
and a former head of the Civil Service. Anyone who imagines that we are all engaged in a
conspiracy to lie is clearly in an advanced stage of paranoia.
The reason we do not reveal the names of our donors, who are private citizens of a
philanthropic disposition, is in fact pretty obvious. Were we to do so, they, too, would be
likely to be subject to the vilification and abuse I mentioned earlier. And that is something
which, understandably, they can do without.
That said, I must admit I am strongly tempted to agree that, since I am not a climate
scientist, I should from now on remain silent on the subject—on the clear understanding,
of course, that everyone else plays by the same rules. No more statements by Ed Davey,
or indeed any other politician, including Ed Milliband, Lord Deben and Al Gore. Nothing
more from the Prince of Wales, or from Lord Stern. What bliss!
But of course this is not going to happen. Nor should it; for at bottom this is not a
scientific issue.That istosay,theissueisnotclimate change butclimate change alarmism,
and the hugely damaging policies that are advocated, and in some cases put in place, in its
name. Andalarmism is afeature notofthe physical world, which is what climate scientists
study, but of human behaviour; the province, in other words, of economists, historians,
sociologists, psychologists and—dare I say it—politicians.
And
en passant
, the problem for dissenting politicians, and indeed for dissenting
climate scientists for that matter, who certainly exist, is that dissent can be
career-threatening. Theadvantage ofbeinggeriatric isthatmycareerisbehindme:thereis
nothing left to threaten.
But to return: the climate changes all the time, in different and unpredictable (certainly
unpredicted) ways, and indeed often in different ways in different parts of the world. It
always has done and no doubt it always will. The issue is whether that is a cause for
alarm—and not just moderate alarm. According to the alarmists it is the greatest threat
facing humankind today: far worse than any of the manifold evils we see around the globe
which stem from what Robert Burns called 'man's inhumanity to man'.
Climate change alarmism is a belief system, and needs to be evaluated as such. There
is, indeed, an accepted scientific theory which I do not dispute and which, the alarmists
claim, justifies their belief and their alarm. This is the so-called greenhouse effect: the fact
that the earth's atmosphere contains so-called greenhouse gases (of which water vapour is
overwhelmingly the most important, but CO
2
is another) which, in effect, trap some of the
heat we receive from the sun and prevent it from bouncing back into space.
