TOO LITTLE TOO LATE: TIMES EDITORS WORRY ABOUT CLIMATE HYSTERIA

The Editors of The Times, 7 April 2007

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A CLIMATE OF INTOLERANCE

Facts, not emotion, should inform discussion of climate change

Few scientists or rational politicians doubt that global warming is a serious

issue that poses long-term dangers to the planet. The scientific evidence that

the world's climate has changed and that this change is accelerating is

convincing. But it is also beyond doubt that the world is in danger of being

held captive by powerful lobby groups that have distorted data, made unjustified

extrapolations and attempted to stifle debate on one of the most important

issues of our time. 

The warnings issued by the Intergov-ernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in

Brussels yesterday are a collection of worst-case scenarios. The report,

approved by 130 governments and endorsed by 2,500 scientists (few of whom

probably had any hand in writing it), makes scary reading. It predicts a

catastrophic future for millions of humans and other species. Global warning

will bring hunger, floods and water shortages. Greenhouse gases will change

rainfall patterns, intensify tropical storms, accelerate the melting of Arctic

ice and mountain glaciers. Africa faces starvation, coastal cities will be

swamped and China will see the rapid advance of the desert. 

Some of these dangers may well be real. But many are deliberate exaggerations,

as the IPCC's mandate was to highlight the dangers if global temperatures were

to rise by up to 4C (7.2F). That assumption is far from proven. But it is enough

for some environmental groups to speak of "an apocalyptic future", a "nightmare

vision" and a "humanitarian catastrophe". 

Every group is entitled to lobby hard for its cause. But to jump on a band-wagon

and blame everything on climate change is neither good science nor sound

lobbying. China's deserts have been threatening its cities for hundreds of

years. Africa cannot be simultaneously threatened by endless droughts and by a

rapid increase in malaria. Children are threatened by global warming, but they

have also been helped by the economic development that some lobbyists seem to

regard as a criminal activity. Tens of millions of children in India and China

who would have died 30 years ago are not dying because increased wealth has

brought better food, cleaner water and improved access to healthcare. 

Companies and individuals have a responsibility to examine their behaviour and

reduce their impact on the planet. But that self-examination should be rational

and real and not debased by left-leaning fear-mongers, whose social agendas are

recipes for impoverishment and hardship. 

The real danger of the zealots is that they brook no argument. This does not

mean that scientists should take a myopic view of figures that point to danger,

such as the rise in carbon dioxide levels to about 380 parts per million, far

exceeding the "natural" range for the past 650,000 years. But even to ask what

is the natural range is regarded as some sort of heresy, and to ask questions

about the precise contribution of anthropogenic influences is to commit a

thought crime. There have already been examples of environmental scientists

hounded out of their jobs for daring to question the prevailing orthodoxy. The

IPCC summary is inevitably a political narrative, one in which each word and

phrase will be endlessly and selectively parsed by the likes of Greenpeace and

friends. 

The planet deserves the benefit of the doubt. Climate change is serious and must

be a political priority. But the arguments must be subject to free and rigorous

debate and the facts separated from fanciful predictions - the environment is

too important to be bequeathed to the hysterical. 

Copyright 2007, The Times