The religion of climate

I have to have a laugh sometimes. Someone said to me recently “Do you believe in Climate Change?”. My answer? “I didn’t know it was a religion”. I asked the person if they had looked at the science behind climate change. They said yes. I said “do you accept the science”. They said no. I said “what alternative analysis do you have”. They looked at me blankly. I think really they didn’t want to accept the premise of consequences that the science of climate change predicts from changing our atmospheres 200ppm of CO2 to 350ppm CO2. There is always a consequence to changing a balanced condition. The answer is if we change the conditions back (to 200ppm) can we recover from climate change. The scientist proposition is if we hold carbon to less than 400ppm we should hold climate change to 2C. That sounds like a feasible goal and a desirable goal. So why are we arguing rather than acting?

Because we don’t want to accept the presented science facts. We have accepted the science on skin cancer….. so we keep out of the sun. We have accepted the science on CFC’s and the Ozone hole, so we have created substitutes. We have accepted the science of lead and heavy metals as a poison, so we have modified paint and substituted lead in petrol. We have accepted the science of Acid rain, so we scrub coal fired power station exhaust from SO2 by-products. We have accepted the science of increased food production from Genetically modified plants, we have accepted electricity, electronics, Xray machines, antibiotics, plane flight, cellular telephones, TV, computers… all the results of science and legitimate research…..but apparently we listen to a plethora of non-climate scientists tell us not to “believe” in climate change. We might as well ask a geologist to do brain surgery since we want to ignore the specialist we have trained and educated to tell us about climate and the consequence of 400ppm.

So, when someone next asks you if you believe in Climate Change, ask them what religion they are pedalling, because it’s not an opening for true fact based scientific debate.