In the very week that President Obama announces he will be going to Copenhagen and committing the US to a carbon dioxide emission reduction target for the US, climate change sceptics refuse to accept that doing something about the issue is warranted.
The Obama promise of a 17% emissions reduction target below 2005 levels by 2020 were welcomed by some but described as inadequate by green groups. However a much smaller sector has been striving for media attention. Describing prominent scientists who try to warn people about climate change as ‘totalitarian’, Daily Mail columnist Melanie Phillips claimed on the BBC last night that ‘there is no evidence of global warming and that global temperatures are going down not up.’
Phillips told the gasping audience ‘you may find this hard to understand, but there is no evidence for global warming, the seas are not rising in any way out of the ordinary, the ice is not melting and the polar bears are increasing in number’. The audience, shocked by the claims were quickly becalmed by comedian and broadcaster Marcus Brigstocke, Scottish National Party deputy first minister Nicola Sturgeon and Lord Falconer who were quick to point out the irresponsibility of not accepting the possibility.
Brigstocke responded agrily saying that 2009 was the hottest year on record and 2010 is predicted to be the hottest year on record. ‘The Inuit people of Greenland will tell you than year on year they are seeing dramatic changes and that the ice is reducing’ he said. ‘To say that the planet is not warming and that we do not have a responsibility to deal with that is grossly irresponsible’. An audience member said that Phillips’ attitude was ‘disgusting’. David Davis MP said that he is ‘agnostic on the issue’ but that we need to think ‘broadly about how we deal with it’ whatever this means.
David Davis says the problem is that making promises and targets is great propaganda but it does not deal with the issue. The chair asked Davis how if he were in government, he would pursue the policies. Davis responded that the Tories are very pro a strong agreement at Copenhagen but that his recommendation is to build sea defences bigger. Bearing in mind he opposes wind farms for visual and economic reasons, building massive new infrastructure seems a very short term and expensive approach, a bit like a gold sticking plaster. Also it is not clear who is going to pay for the Bangladesh flood defences?
Scottish first minister Sturgeon said that there are many people watching the programme whose lives have been wrecked by flooding over the past week and who won’t take kindly to being told that climate change is not a problem. She said to the doubters ‘give it the benefit of the doubt because if we do nothing and the doubters are wrong we are going to be in a worse position’.
Scotland is one of the few countries who is actually delivering on its targets. Scotland has just introduced legislation putting into statute world leading carbon emission reduction targets of 42% by 2020 and 80% by 2050 targets. Sturgeon wishes the UK government would let Scotland sit around the Copenhagen table because they are one of the few countries that have something positive to say on this issue.
So whilst the majority of people appear to agree that we should do something about climate change there are still those who believe we should not worry about taking any responsibility because ‘polar bears are increasing’. For the top ten deniers take a look at George Monbiot’s blog. My favourite is David Bellamy’s claim that “555 of all the 625 glaciers under observation by the World Glacier Monitoring Service in Zurich, Switzerland, have been growing since 1980″ (the WGMS responded that this was “complete bullshit”).
