Climate Denial
Yesterday evening I attended an event at the Abbey in Bath called ‘Climate Change: A Public Debate’ to which over three hundred and fifty people from Bath and the surrounding areas also turned up to listen.
Yet, for the organisers to call the speaking event a debate was incredibly (and probably purposefully) misleading because in fact all members on the panel of so-called ‘experts’ were in complete agreement and therefore there was no actual debate of any kind at all. Not once did they disagree.
This point was starkly illustrated within the first five minutes of the ‘debate’ fully beginning. The first question put to the panel by the Chairman of the event, Roger Nunn, was something along the lines of ‘where are we in the Climate Change debate’ and could the panel briefly explain Climate Change.
This was put first to Professor Anil Markandya who is, it should be noted, a lecturer in Economics at the University of Bath (ie. not an environmental scientist) and also a member of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Professor Markandya proceeded to tell the assembled audience that Climate Change was caused by human activity in releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and that there was a consensus among the scientific community on this supposed ‘fact’. The other three panellists unsurprisingly agreed entirely.
Yet, how exactly can something firstly be called ‘fact’ when it is scientifically disputed, and secondly where is the consensus when many scientists still profoundly disagree with the theory (for it is only a theory) that man-made CO2 production is the main component of global warming?
There was in fact only one dissenting voice on this point during the night which came from my friend Matthew. In his question (which was more of a statement really) he pointed out that of fundamental importance is whether or not humans are causing ‘Climate Change’ or ‘Global Warming’. If humans, through industrialisation and CO2 output are not the cause of what can loosely be called ‘Climate Change’ or ‘Global Warming’ then there is absolutely no reason for humans to massively reduce CO2 output as was the constant suggestion by the assembled panel of ‘experts’.
Matthew highlighted that there was not a complete consensus on this issue, shown by the fact (amongst others) that five hundred leading scientists had signed The Manhattan Declaration recently which specifically declared that:
Global climate has always changed and always will, independent of the actions of humans, and that carbon dioxide CO2 is not a pollutant but rather a necessity for all life … and … that there is no convincing evidence that CO2 emissions from modern industrial activity has in the past, is now, or will in the future cause catastrophic climate change.
Equally there had been a number of relatively prominent reports and documentaries including The Great Global Warming Swindle which have starkly disagreed that humanity is causing catastrophic climate change. Matthew also pointed out that the Chairman and joint organiser Roger Nunn had received numerous emails asking that he place a sceptical voice on the panel so that an actual debate may take place, but that Roger Nunn had continually refused.
Andrew Pendleton, who is the Climate Change adviser to Christian Aid was given the opportunity to reply to Matthew’s point. He immediately dismissed the Manhattan Declaration as ‘bad science’ that should not be allowed to cloud the ‘way forward’. The Great Global Warming Swindle by Martin Durkin, not without its errors like all reports, was again casually dismissed by Mr Pendleton. The reason? A few of the scientists on the programme had received funding from the Oil Industries. While this is entirely true, this of course does not tackle the point of whether the evidence or the science these scientists have put forward is correct or not. In fact Mr Pendleton seeks to bypass that altogether.
In much the same way the IPCC and those who wish to perpetuate the man-made causes of Climate Change orthodoxy, such as the UN, Governments and the EU have huge vested interests in doing so and are funded by those who have equally large vested interests. Everybody has biases. That is the point. The IPCC was set up to specifically find that man causes climate change through use of CO2 – and guess what, it surprisingly found them.
Mr Pendleton also took the opportunity to smear those in what he called ‘climate denial’ to those who did not agree that there was a link between smoking and lung cancer, or HIV and Aids. However, he and others like him have deliberately used the word ‘denial’ do so because it purposefully invokes undertones of the only other time the word ‘denial’ is used in such context: Holocaust denial. This is the sort of level to which Mr Pendleton and his ilk unfortunately stoop.
‘Climate Change’ has now become almost entirely a politicised issue and separated in most part from any scientific research that may be occurring. In that sense I suppose the political belief in man-made carbon causes of global warming or climate change is much like religion in a way. Whatever contrary evidence is placed in the way is ignored or dismissed as ‘bad science’ or biased in some way or other. This brings to mind something Martin Luther is said to have written:
Reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed. Faith must trample underfoot all reason, sense, and understanding, and whatever it sees must be put out of sight and … know nothing but the word of God.
Despite evidence and research to the contrary, the political agenda of man-made causes of climate change steams ahead undeterred.
At the end of the ‘debate’ we stood outside the Abbey entrance and handed out to those leaving a double-sided A4 reproduction of an article by Christopher Booker and Richard North printed in the Telegraph in November last year called ‘The deceit behind global warming’. On the sheet we also included a few website links to videos of The Great Global Warming Swindle, and other sceptical websites and blogs.
We managed to give out all of our one hundred or so leaflets and we hope that those people we gave them to will take the time to read the article and have a look at the opposing opinions that have been put forth to the current orthodoxy of man-made causes of Climate Change.
Your Comments:
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- Matthew Butler
Of course, the purpose of this “debate” was never really to debate at all. The organiser and chairman, Rev Roger Nunn, is a thoroughgoing environmentalist and general leftist, who never misses an opportunity to insert green and generally left-wing propaganda into his sermons (amazingly, he managed to fit global warming into a sermon on Palm Sunday). It was clear that his aim was not to facilitate free intellectual enquiry but to propagandise for the green movement. Indeed, he stated at the start of the “debate” that the purpose was to “raise concern” about climate change, which if you take my position is rather a dud point, because there is no point in being concerned about something you can’t control, except to help people to adapt to it.
From my correspondence to him, it was clear that he had never read, or tried to engage with, any of the sceptics’ arguments: his argumentation was shockingly lazy and complacent. For example, when arguing that a sceptical voice should not be represented, he quoted Anil Markandya - a partisan member of the panel - as saying that the IPCC represented a consensus of the world’s top scientists, obviously not realising the endemic corruption at the heart of the IPCC, which is obvious if you just take a brief look at the process of writing its reports.
And there’s another point here: just imagine if, for a debate on whether we should abolish the monarchy, the Chairman refused to represent a pro-monarchy panellist and supported this by citing a republican panellist to confirm that the vast majority of people supported abolishing the monarchy. Everyone would instantly realise what a sham that debate would be. But this is effectively what Rev Nunn did.
In any case, since making my intervention several members of the Abbey congregation have thanked me, some of them saying that although they did not agree, they were glad that I said it nevertheless. It’s heartening to know that there are fair-minded people out there who actually want to see the subject properly debated.
