The Politics of Global Warming
As we approach the world meeting of heads of Governments at Copenhagen, those who are opposed to climate change and who admit to being sceptics, deniers and purveyors of secret truth are becoming more shrill.
I cannot remember such an emotional outpouring of resistance to what scientists have been saying since the controversy over evolution as the means of explaining the diversity of life and its differentiation. There have been some scientific differences in interpreting the evidence of climate change, and now there has come some evidence that seems credible. Some illegally obtained emails from a Government climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia have been spread around the world with claims to reveal the whole international systems of frauds.
These are claimed to explain how massive climate fraud has been perpetrated, how Governments have been seduced into paying up unlimited funds, how Muslims and in different parts of the world, communists, are using the frauds as part of their efforts to control the world. It is claimed that this is part of an attempt to shift power from the Western world to the Eastern world, and from wealthy countries to poorer countries.
These emails have damaged the climate change case, have left some scientists with their reputations in tatters and their integrity ruined. I think it is true that in one place at least, there was an attempt to prevent scientific data from being made public and threats were made against scientists taking opposite views. Those guilty of fraud or coverup should be sacked and blackballed by the scientific community.
But I am not sure they damage the whole corpus of scientific argument. It is said that while many scientists in different fields have questioned a human contribution to climate change, those scientists who are specialists in global warming and the impact of carbon are 98% united in their views.
These emails are not ‘’the final nail in the coffin’’ of global warming theory. But they do reveal that some scientists were engaged in weird beliefs. These included believing in a Communist World Government being advanced at Copenhagen. This has been supposedly achieved by some of their member scientists succeeding in trapping infrared radiation in the planet’s atmosphere. They were also responsible for the thinning of the Arctic ice cap by secret nuclear power stations around the Arctic circle, attached to giant immersion heaters. They also engineered space-based lasers to dissolve the world’s glaciers hence causing rising sea levels.
These scientists are also claimed to have gained control over the world’s biologists. Meanwhile, ignorant farmers, gardeners and birdwatchers have added their own observations to support the biologists who have also been successful in driving migrating birds, fish and insects into higher latitudes, and to releasing several million tonnes of plant pheromones every year to accelerate flowering and fruiting.
As a final crowning achievement it is asserted that a world government will be established under the guise of controlling man-made emissions of greenhouse gases. I have read in some emails sent to me by these Christians that this is due to a Masonic secret society of scientists (have they been reading Dan Brown’s novel?).
This is all weird and implausible. These conspiracy theories are the product of novelists and psychologically sick people. Unfortunately these people often gather round religious groups and political groups. Ultra right wing groups – so certain, so sure of their ideas, and so against anything new – are full of these sick people with their sick ideas. They oppose Al Gore, Barrack Obama, and Kevin Rudd with equal hostility.
Family First’s Senator Steve Fielding, himself a trained engineer, believes in climate change but he rightly urges caution on the issue of Carbon credits and will vote to delay the vote until after Copenhagen. You can check his balanced statements, by clicking here.
In the meanwhile, we non-scientists should not allow ourselves to be swayed by zealots of any side. We should read sensibly, allow our common sense to reign in any desire to flee in fear or panic. God is in control. He gave us intelligence to understand evidence, and wisdom to discern truth. Decide to use both.
Rev the Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes AC MLC