Climate change challengers have arguments worth considering
He feels I would not have been “dismissive” of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had I “bothered to familiarise” myself with its history and work.
He assures us its members are not “a few mad scientists with an axe to grind”, but “top scientists”, “eminent specialists” and “learned people”.
If so, why not discuss hypotheses — such as cosmic rays and cloud formation as agents of climate change — dispassionately in order to inform, not dismiss?
My point was that, on the face of it, the IPCC treated Svensmark and other researchers, inside and outside the Danish National Space Centre, dismissively. The reason, I suspect, has to do with the claim the IPCC are “independent scientists”, as stated by Dr Michael.
Scientists depend on funding for research, and he who pays the piper calls the tune.
The IPCC is, after all, an “intergovernmental” entity and, therefore, cannot be relied on for academic independence.
There is much more than scientific funding riding on the idea that we face a climate change catastrophe — as exemplified by a recent meeting in the Caribbean at which Richard Branson, Tony Blair and others were reported by the International Herald Tribune to be salivating at the commercial opportunities. Dr Michael invokes the “hardening” scientific “consensus” about climate change for “the future of humanity”. Your columnist Ryle Dwyer, over a year ago (March 17, 2007), reminded us, as a warning against “science by consensus”, of Galileo’s forced recantation of the “heresy” that the earth orbited the sun.
As recently as the 1970s, there was an emerging consensus about the threat of global cooling.
Mr Dwyer also noted concern by scientists, some associated with the IPCC, at manipulation of report findings to serve a political agenda. Al Gore, Nobel laureate and darling of the current consensus, seemed to misunderstand the relationship between CO2 and climate change.
The scientific validity or otherwise of the theory of anthropogenic CO2 emissions as a cause of warming will rest not on the fervour of advocacy, but on empirical proof.
I must repeat that the burden of proof rests on those who hold that “this one is different”.
That is the lesson of the history of climate change, none of the many previous episodes of which, over 4,600 million years, can have been caused by us through the operation of SUVs, aeroplanes or the like.
The lesson of the history of apocalyptic visions is that they have all been caused by us but none has come to pass.
On that basis, it would seem best, in discussing climate change — as the title of Bjorn Lomborg’s book pleads — to “cool it”.
Dr Colmán Etchingham
Department of History
NUI Maynooth
Co Kildare
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