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Writing about the climate crisis My slow awakening to climate change Climate sceptics answered: | I read with interest the letter of Dr Chevriere and have looked at the material he recommends. I have to express some qualms at his choices. One is an author of fiction. The other, the climate scientist he recommends, is certainly well known but mostly for his support for tobacco companies in arguments about smoking and ill-health. It is certainly going to be a tough job to find arguments that will carry weight with Dr Chevriere because he dismisses those whose views he finds unpalatable as self-interested or power-hungry. It is perhaps worth remarking that in an unprecedented collaboration all the major scientific academies in the world (obviously including the US National Academy) together issued a joint statement urging governments to take action on climate change before it was too late. Note that these academies are typically made up of each country’s most distinguished scientists and engineers whether from industry, universities or government laboratories. These are people who have the technical expertise to evaluate the arguments of the climate scientists but for the most part have no conceivable vested interest other than wanting to see a safer planet for their children and grand-children. The most common argument offered against taking action is that this has all happened before and that extreme climatic excursions are simply a fact of life on Earth and have nothing to do with burning fossil fuels. It is true that there have been major changes in the Earth’s climate in the geological past driven by variation in the amount of sunlight received by the Earth through slight orbital changes. However, there are two aspects of the present situation that are different. First, there is no precedent in the geological past for the rate of temperature change that we are experiencing today. Second the rate and the amount of change corresponds well with the predictions made by one of the world’s best chemists at the end of the nineteenth century - Arrhenius was not scare-mongering; as a Scandinavian he thought that some global warming would be a good thing and though that burning fossil fuels to add CO2 to the atmosphere was a likely way of achieving it. What he did not understand was the fundamental coupling between the atmosphere and the oceans and the host of other less desirable consequences for world climate and the acidity of the oceans. Interestingly many of actions that governments might take to mitigate the onset of climate change are the same as those that they might wish to take to improve energy security and price stability, namely increased use of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power for the generation of electricity and use of biofuels for transportation. So even if Dr Chevriere finds it hard to accept climate change, he may still end up doing the right things for other reasons! Lord Ron Oxburgh | ||||
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Wingo is the project we started here on the archipelago outside Gothenburg to create a model of winning sustainable local development. You can visit wingo's website here. The website of our wind park has only just been registered. | |||||
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