Hullo. This is my first message on the GP forum so if I say something too outrageous or inappropriate then please someone gently let me know.
I studied Astrophysics at St. Andrew’s University and have no doubt in my mind that climate change is real. Global warming is part of that theory and the question that has been asked for over forty years is whether or not it is driven by human beings. The notion that all science that says that global warming (or global heating to use Monbiot’s more accurate term) is human in origin is government-funded and therefore biased just isn’t borne out by the evidence of how much scientific research takes place. Of course there are governmentally-funded projects but, as someone else mentioned, there is also oil-company driven research. Most of the research in between is neither and that overwhelmingly points to the fact that it is “very likely” (90%) that global heating is caused by human emissions. I like to think of it like this. If one person on TV tells me the weather today is a 90% chance of rain, I’ll almost certainly take an umbrella. If literally tens of thousands of scientists from all around the world all in completely differing but related fields, including those scientists with accurately tested computer models, say that there’s a 90% chance of rain, I’m definitely taking an umbrella! This is the same with climate change and in particular with global heating.
The idea that it’s a con is far more convenient and easier to swallow than the idea that we’re to blame, I think. Honestly, most governments couldn’t organise a you-know-what in a brewery… do we really think that all the governments around the world could then mutually co-ordinate a global scientific con? And, if they did in order to tax us, how come when they meet every year they can’t even agree on a simple process in which to tax all the people through some kind of carbon-tax mechanism? If it were a con, why are governments around the world so unbelievably bad at taking this agenda forward? Why were they last to respond to this, not the first? Isn’t it more likely that (a) our governments live with short-term re-electable aims in mind and that they know that a carbon tax is an election loser so they’re less likely to want to push a carbon agenda than we are and (b) a guy who talks about science from behind a balaclava is probably not the most reliable source of information on the complex mechanisms of the Earth’s atmosphere and associated heating patterns involved therein! I’d like to see what scientific papers he’s published on the topic!
The question is not about natural cycles but about the speed of the cycles and how we are utterly beyond any sense of natural cycle now. This is borne out most clearly in the current extinction crisis that is clearly the most rapid that our planet has ever faced. That alone is evidence that we’ve gone way beyond any discussion of natural cycles, in my mind.
As a former Astrophysicist, I would like to quickly respond to a couple of comments about science and scientific debate. Science is about consensus but it’s also about falsification (as Karl Popper once described). If a theory doesn’t stand up to rigorous testing, it is either changed or even abandoned - this is falsification. Having read a fair chunk of the actual scientific evidence on this matter (i.e. the actual papers not the media presentation of them), there is no doubt in my mind that the more research that takes place in terms of the causes of global heating, the more refined the theory becomes and the more evidence there is to support it. Whenever an alternate theory is posed (e.g. “it’s the fault of the Sun”), it is rigorously tested and still found wanting, not because of some secret con but because the numbers simply don’t add up. For some reason which I still don’t quite understand, though, the media has turned it into a debate. But when did we debate any other aspects of science? I don’t remember watching Newsnight and having a scientist explain electricity and someone who isn’t from a scientific background say, “Actually, it’s not about electrons, it’s about little pixies in wires” for the presenter to say “Well, an interesting balanced debate”!!! Scientific debate needs to take place in scientific circles and when it does on global heating the evidence is overwhelming - it’s just inaccessible to the general public. But at the same time no scientist has the right to be dogmatic and say “It is absolutely proven” because the nature of science means that it could be disproven. But when the thousands of scientific papers from around the world are essentially disproven by a Youtube video from a balaclavad nobody, I do worry about the role of honest scientific research in our society.
Yes, I’ll happily pay a carbon tax, yes, I do believe that there are bad scientists who argue both for and against human-induced climate change but, no, I will not believe one anonymous man whose agenda and scientific background are impossible to determine against the overwhelming array of actual evidence that is gathered every year from good scientists that suggest that unless we utterly change society right now then literally millions of people will die and half the species on our planet will go extinct. I’d rather take the precautionary principle mentioned by someone else and trust the experts in the field, not the masked man with a website, a publisher and a chip on his shoulder.
Well done to you for raising this, though, because once again I believe it shows the biggest failings of the scientific community today are (a) an inability to explain why human-induced global heating is as obvious as the Big Bang (still a theory but an almost… almost… undeniable one) and (b) allowing themselves to get dragged into debate as opposed to producing accessible proofs.
