...human-caused climate risks abrupt, unpredictable and potentially irreversible changes. In other words, the most distinguished scientists from the country with the worlds pre-eminent educational institutions were trying to shake humanity out of its complacency. Why werent their warnings leading the news? ... When the glib talk about the scientific debate on global warming, they either dont know or will not accept that there is no scientific debate. ... If global warming is not new, it is urgent: a subject that should never be far from our thoughts. Yet within 24 hours of the American associations warning the British governments budget confirmed that it no longer wanted to fight it. David Cameron, who once promised that if you voted blue you would go green, now appoints Owen Paterson, a man who is not just ignorant of environmental science but proud of his ignorance, as his environment secretary. George Osborne, who once promised that his Treasury would be at the heart of this historic fight against climate change, now gives billions in tax concessions to the oil and gas industry, cuts the funds for onshore wind farms and strips the Green Investment Bank of the ability to borrow and lend. ... Tempting though it is to blame cowardly politicians, the abuse comes too easily. The question remains: what turned them into cowards? Rightwing billionaires in the United States and the oil companies have spent fortunes on blocking action on climate change. A part of the answer may therefore be that conservative politicians in London, Washington and Canberra are doing their richest supporters bidding [another proposition about which there remains no debate]. [However ...] Clive Hamilton, the Australian author of Requiem for a Species, made the essential point a few years ago that climate change denial was no longer just a corporate lobbying campaign. The opponents of science would say what they said unbribed [true believers unflapped by cognitive dissonance]. [A FINE article, well worth a careful reading. I put DGRs remark in the first comment below.]
Posted on: Sun, 23 Mar 2014 18:15:44 +0000
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