Anyone who thinks the global warming debate is done and dusted, need only type the words “climate sceptics’’ into a search engine and hang on for a white water ride.
It’s pretty scary territory, especially if you’re used to dealing with articulate, well-mannered climate scientists from the CSIRO or the Australian National University. They’ll happily explain the implications of oscillations in global mean temperatures without snarling like a car yard guard dog if you question any of the assumptions under-pinning their climate models. They like questions, because it gives them a chance to rummage out new graphs and peer-reviewed papers. Ask them about climate sceptics and they tend to use polite words like “worrying’’ or “disingenuous.’’ It’s a far cry from the insult and invective hurled about by the sceptics.
“You don’t go see Joseph Goebbels’ films to see the truth about Nazi Germany. You don’t want to go see Al Gore’s film to see the truth about global warming,’’ rails one Sterling Burnett, described as a “lead analyst’’ with the Texas-based National Centre for Policy Analysis.
“Nothing will stop the madness that has taken over the western word, an insanity that demands we destroy ourselves over the ludicrous claim that a tiny increase of a trace gas has endangered the world,’’ fumes Hans Schreuder, a retired chemist, who runs a climate sceptic website called “I love my carbon dioxide.’’
“Global warming is the biggest scam since the church sold indulgences back in the Middle Ages,’’ grumbles botanist David Bellamy who also claims “the latest data shows that both the northern and southern ice caps are actually growing.’’
Then there’s Herald-Sun blogger Andrew Bolt, who described a recent protest against climate change involving one of those “human signs’’ on a beach, as action supporting an ideology that required “greenshirts to stage rallies eerily similar to the ones once seen at Nuremberg.’’ Clearly he’s not sat through a screening Leni Riefenstahl’s Nazi-era epic documentary “Triumph of the Will’’, or he’d recall those rallies were on a cost and scale comparable to a modern Olympics opening ceremony. So why the odious comparison to a group of protesters mucking about on the beach to form a few letters?
Debate is great, but name-calling and invoking the spectre of Nazism to denigrate your opponents is grotesque. Ask anyone whose family has lived with the appalling legacy of those 1930s rallies. Go read “The Diary of Anne Frank’’, or the late Swedish film-maker Ingmar Bergman’s anguished recollections of being taken to a Nazi rally by his German host family while living abroad as a young exchange student. Faffing about on a beach to make a human sign just isn’t in the same league.
United States president-elect Barack Obama has warned the world seems poised to move from “shock to trance’’ on climate policy, dropping the ball on real action to move beyond dependence on fossil fuels. “This has been our pattern. We go from shock to trance,’’ he said in television interview. “Oil prices go up, gas prices at the pump go up, everybody goes into a flurry of activity. And then the prices go back down and suddenly we act like it’s not important, and we start filling up our SUV’s again. And, as a consequence, we never make any progress. It’s part of the addiction, all right. That has to be broken. Now is the time to break it.’’
Recently, we’ve seen the Rudd Government move to trance mode, backing away from recommendations to set a 20 per cent mid-term targert to reduce Australia’s greenhouse emissions. Tom Murphy, an economist and director of Charles Sturt University policy think-tank the Western Research Instiute has argued the government “lost its nerve’’ as a result of the global economic downturn. The government’s “disappointing’’ target of 5 per cent “fails to acknowledge the tremendous opportunity for green industries and green jobs’’ and Australia runs the risk of being left behind as the world economy “inevitably transforms to one that is significantly less carbon emitting’’ he says.
One of the reasons the re-emergence of climate scepticism is worrying – rathern than mildly irritating – is that it deflects attention from more complex issues, like the social and economic implications of climate change on Australia’s rural economies. Scepticism becomes a copycat pop- trash fashion statement, to be flaunted Paris Hilton-style.
Thankfully, Barack Obama’s new science adviser, John Holdren – a Harvard University professor of environmental science – has made his views known on “the climate-change sceptics who infest talk shows, Internet blogs, letters to the editor, op-ed pieces, and cocktail-party conversations.’’ Climate change scepticism is not just “regrettable’’ but dangerous.
“It has delayed - and continues to delay - the development of the political consensus that will be needed if society is to embrace remedies commensurate with the challenge,’’ he writes on Climate Shift blog.
“The science of climate change is telling us that we need to get going. Those who still think this is all a mistake or a hoax need to think again.’’