Friday, February 21, 2014

Why do ill-qualified non scientists make so much noise on ClimateChange - on both sides of the debate?


There is rather a good blog on Conservative Home today by Peter Franklin saying we should be more trusting of scientific experts.  

Indeed we should  (mostly) "trust the experts" - which is why the Global Warming debate is so sterile. Climate change is highly complex and the study of it requires deep and expert scientific knowledge. It is not a subject for the layman. And yet because denial of Global Warming has become a totem of right wing credentials (why?) we have a plethora of those prepared to tell us all about it. And why it's some sort of Lefty conspiracy. From Nigel Lawson to James Delingpole, from Nigel Farage to Owen Paterson the Right unites to rubbish Global Warming. And their scientific credentials to to do this? Zilch.

How this has happened I've no idea. True the early warnings of how man was damaging the planet and it's climate were spread by some politicians of the left. Al Gore the classic example. But that didn't, or shouldn't , have meant that it was a Left/Right divide subject. Even a non scientist should be able to see that it is facile to have Climate Change divisions with the deniers on one side saying its bunkum and the Greens on the other saying we're doomed. The truth, of course, rests somewhere between these extremes and it is only the deepest most thorough application of science that will eventually tell us where. We are not there yet by a long way. Until we are is there any chance we could cut our the stridency ? I doubt it ! 

1 Comments:

At 4:24 pm , Blogger Carol Hedges said...

Absolutely. And making political capital of it, whatever side you approach it, is pointless. The only ''person'' who knows, if you so believe, is God. And He ain't joining the debate.

 

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