Comments on: Wobbly

By: orlp

orlp — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:03:06 +0000

I was not really writing to defend Clive James. But there is a minority of serious scientists who do not share the consensus opinion, and my comment concerned the manner in which they are treated.

As regards acid rain, my point was twofold: firstly the the problem was definitely not as serious as it was presented, and not necessarily due to the causes presented either. For instance, the problems in the Black Forest turned out to be of long standing and due to monoculture and planting trees in swathes, and the problems in the Scandinavian lakes were proved not to have been caused by British emissions.
Secondly the evidence presented for the problem was skewed with frequent pictures of dead trees and dead fish and no pictures showing healthy stretches of forest. Yes, acid rain was a problem, but not as deadly as it was portrayed. Yet anyone who dared to say so was treated in much the same way that climate change sceptics are treated today. The measures taken across Europe to combat it turned out to be quite sufficient although the green lobby at the time decried them as “inadequate”.

I do think we have to do something about CO2 emissions, but I do not believe the doomsday reporting we are incessantly bombarded with and I deprecate the moral stance behind it.

By: Robert Hanks

Robert Hanks — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:48:06 +0000

I’m not quite sure what point orlp is making. Were sceptics saying that acid rain wasn’t a problem at all? It was, and is; but steps were taken to reduce emissions of sulphur (and, as it happened, the UK government had its own reasons for wanting to get rid of coal-fired power generation). Now acid rain isn’t as much of a problem as was feared. I don’t see how that makes environmentalists wrong and sceptics right.

Re: Clive James – my problem with his Radio 4 talk was his insistence that there is no scientific consensus on climate change. He seemed to want consensus to mean the same thing as unanimity: clearly, scientists aren’t unanimous; but from everything I have read I would say there is a very clear consensus among them.

By: Thomas Jones

Thomas Jones — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:05:01 +0000

Well, maybe. Though I learned about climate change (or the greenhouse effect as it was then known) at primary school in the 1980s. It’s been mainstream science for over twenty years.

By: orlp

orlp — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:51:17 +0000

In the 1980s the equivalent to today’s climate change was “acid rain”. Then, as now, there were dire claims made in the name of “The Science”, and sceptics were demonised as fools at best and evil at worst. In particular it was predicted that within 10 years Northern Europe would be denuded of its forests and Scandinavian lakes bereft of any life. In the event, while there was environmental damage, these predictions failed to materialise. In part this was because of the “insufficient” measures taken towards combating the threat, but some of the damage (for instance, the problems in Germany’s Black Forest) turned out to be due primarily to other causes and not to acid rain.

By: Camus123

Camus123 — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 11:26:21 +0000

An excellent piece by Jenny Diski. Monbiot tends to go over the top at times but then Kepler kept himself alive by casting astrological forecasts for wealthy businessmen- surely there are some scientists in America who do the contemporary equivalent and wait to find out what their boss wants them to say. Climate change? Dunno, but then I don’t matter.