What is it about global warming that turns sane men into ranting alarmists?

Neil Collins

The science of climate change is far from settled, but one thing’s for sure: energy bills are set to rise. So why don’t Labour’s gurus offer practical policy ideas instead of doom-laden prophecies?

The idea of the IPCC would be familiar to students of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, where a computer was asked to provide the answer to life, the universe and everything: it turned out to be 42. Likewise, the IPCC would provide the definitive answer to whether the world was getting warmer, and whether it was our fault. Since the prospects for grants for further research would be much diminished if the answer was no, it was not hard to predict what it would say.

In its predictions for rising temperature, however, it has been no more accurate than other weather forecasters. This decade has been a bitter disappointment to the warmers, and North America has just experienced its coldest winter for 30 years. The promise or threat of Mediterranean summers in Britain has been broken. The warmers now forecast that the warming is just resting, and that it will resume from 2010. We’ll see.

However, it’s easy to sneer. Whether we’re warming or not, we can be pretty confident that energy is going to be expensive. The oil price is a leading indicator which sets the cost of gas, coal and thus electricity, and if we want to maintain a decent standard of living, we’re going to have to use it much more efficiently.

The Climate Change Bill, currently struggling through parliament, ought to be a step along this road, but it’s not. It’s more like the road to hell, paved with good intentions, but woefully short of practical measures. It contains targets and goals and promises to ‘maximise social and economic benefits and minimise costs to the UK as we pursue these goals’. Well, golly gee, that’s groundbreaking stuff. As Julian Morris of the International Policy Network points out in his critique of the Bill, there is no logic in the arbitrary target for emissions reduction (although it’s not 42 per cent).

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Kit

July 4th, 2008 12:41pm Report this comment

I assume Abby Taubin's "little financial encouragement" will mean higher taxes and energy bills for the rest of us. No thanks.
If micro-generation was financially viable or an efficient method of generating energy we would all be doing it.

Amelie

August 7th, 2008 2:47pm Report this comment

Over the last few years I have read/watched with interest all the coverage on Global Warming and would like some straight answers.
Who are the main greenhouse polluters, I've read that 20% come from cows, and that 20% actually comes from the leaf degredation in the forests around the world, so my question is what percentage of the harmful gases are actually created by man, industry and driving cars ?
My impression is that we can actually have little affect overall, since we account for very little of the greenhouse gas creation.
Therefore is this just over hyped ? Is the Global warming industry too big for us to have a good look at the real facts and get back to reality ?

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