id21 viewpoints

Questioning climate change: Is it really dangerous and fossil fuel induced?

Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen from Hull University's Department of Geography and Editor of Energy & Environment questions climate change.

Who benefits from disasters and the claims of dangerous, man-made (but still avoidable) global warming? Not that disasters never happen, but do we have the right diagnosis?

I would like to add a note of optimism to the id21 report Risks of disaster and climate change based on a report by the New Economics Foundation and Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies called 'The end of development'. It warns of the reversal of human progress, unless of course humanity responds as these 'experts' advise. Such claims call for political analysis.

There have been so many false alarms raised by the 'green' (environmental) lobby! I am old enough to remember the death of the ocean, the death of the forests, then limits to growth, the population bomb… Now we have melting glaciers when the facts show (overall) an increase of ice in Antarctica and falling sea levels in Greenland.

We do live in an interglacial period and solar impacts are largely ignored by the climate modellers. Far too much credence is given to computer models. We cannot as yet (if ever) simplify the complexities of climate into mathematics. But what an opportunity for green ideologues! Also, may the cure be worse than disaster?  

Kyoto is likely to be a break on development with increased debts, altering priorities from 'above' and wasting much needed resources. By selling their cheap emission reduction options now, future reductions, if necessary, will become more expensive.  

Climate change, seen from a more rational perspective, consists of natural or unavoidable changes that are neither new, necessarily more serious, nor even uniformly bad. Humans have affected climates for a long time and not only through 'emissions'. Indeed we may have 'developed' because we had to adjust the climatic changes, such as glaciation.

There is no consistent correlation between carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and surface temperatures. The climate system is by no means well understood, and certainly a long way from being quantified enough to take preventive measures that will have the desired result.

The real danger today is that human mistakes and policy failures are far too readily blamed on 'global warming' (and hence the USA, industry, aeroplanes or, in future, China). Climate determinism undermines rational thought, and policy responses are likely to fail because problems have been wrongly diagnosed by those who claim to have the solutions.

I do not see knowledge and genuine concern for the afflicted acting as the driving forces of climate alarmism and disaster prevention, but rather an ideology misusing science. NGOs adopting alarmism and pessimism are already destroying societies with poorly considered disaster relief and aid. Ever larger research lobbies and single issue 'helpers' are clamouring for public attention and funding, and do so by predicting disaster only they, or rather their advice, can prevent.

The green beliefs so many of these groups currently espouse appear to be founded on guilt, self-loathing and pessimism concerning almost everything. While I would not accuse the New Economics Foundation of deliberately misleading us, I do see it as jumping on a rolling band-wagon that is likely to crash soon because it generates unhelpful blame games, relies on the politics of fear and profoundly misuses science and economics for ideological purposes.

The advocated 'sustainable' policies may well prevent developments that serve poor people while de facto promoting those that serve the rich through the creation of new markets for expensive 'green' goods, the decline of tourism, support for population control. Forests should not be replaced by fields and plantations, farms should make way for eco-tourists. Industrialisation should be slowly stifled. (For evidence, read the green guru, James Lovelock, or listen to Sir Crispin Tickell.)

All I can advise in good faith is a closer look at climate scepticism (the journal I edit has tried to keep this debate alive) and more awareness of the governmental, and hence political nature, of the IPCC and the UK Hadley Centre.

Environmentalism is an ideology of the guilty rich wanting to return to some poetic idea of 'Nature' that has never existed. 'Global warming' provides for a vast but expensive research agenda for earth systems science and energy technology, as well as green 'imperialisms'. What is called the new economics, given its fears and search for local autarchy, may in fact be quite old and rather 'brown' in colour.

Contributor
Dr. Sonja A. Boehmer-Christiansen

Further information
Dr. Sonja A. Boehmer-Christiansen
Reader, Department of Geography, Hull University
Editor, Energy & Environment, Multi-Science
Hull HU6 7RX, UK
Tel +44 (0)1482 465349
Fax +44(0)1482 466340

Email Sonja.B-C@hull.ac.uk
www.multi-science.co.uk

See also
International Environmental Policy: Interests and the Failure of the Kyoto Process, Edward Elgar, by Sonja A. Boehmer-Christiansen and A. Kellow, October 2002
‘Science, Equity and the War against Carbon’, Journal of Science, Technology and Human Values, Winter 2003.28 (1) pp.69-92 by Sonja A. Boehmer- Christiansen
‘Climate Change and the World Bank: Opportunity for Global Governance? Energy & Environment, Vol.10, No.1, pp.27-50 by Sonja A. Boehmer- Christiansen, January 1999
‘A winning coalition of advocacy: climate research, bureaucracy and ‘alternative’ fuels’ Energy Policy, Vol. 25, No. 4., pp.439-44, by Sonja A. Boehmer- Christiansen, 1997
‘Britain and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’, Environmental Management and Health, Vol. 6, No. 5, pp.14-25 by Sonja A. Boehmer- Christiansen, 1995
'Global climate protection policy: the limits of scientific advice - Part I.' Global Environmental Change, Vol. 4, No. 2, 1994, pp. 140-159 by Sonja A. Boehmer- Christiansen, 1994
'Global climate protection policy: the limits of scientific advice - Part II.' Global Environmental Change, Vol. 4, No. 3, 1994 by Sonja A. Boehmer- Christiansen

June 2006

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