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Answers to citizenship questions:
In response to Anthony Seaton (22 November), may I just state that I have no wish to start any kind of heated (if you’ll excuse the pun) debate about climate change. I wrote a much longer and more reasoned article on this subject for SR last year, but it was not published.
It is true that there has been a period of more or less consistent warming since around 1850, and this would explain the sea-level rises and changes to coral reefs. That warming trend stalled in 1997 and has remained stalled until two years ago when global land temperatures started to drop. Deep ocean temperatures started dropping at least four years ago, and probably earlier; ocean temperatures are the drivers of change in land temperatures.
Sea-levels have also dropped by up to 2cm in the last few years. For as much sea and land ice that has been lost in the northern hemisphere (and it’s not nearly as much as some would have you believe), a similar amount has been formed in the southern hemisphere. Even the IPCC issued a press release a couple of weeks ago stating that their predictions of continued warming were erroneous and that the planet is indeed starting to cool. How long this cooling period will last is anyone’s guess.
Carbon dioxide levels have continued to rise while warming has reversed – and that’s an indisputable fact. It is difficult to square this with the notion that man-made CO2 levels are driving warming. It may be worthwhile pointing out that about 98% of atmospheric CO2 is created by the oceans, and not by us.
I’m very flattered that Mr Seaton would think that governments will be influenced by ‘voters like me’. Is that an insult, or an unintentional admission that the green lobby is losing ground across the board because people are getting just a little bit suspicious of all these green taxes being added to their bills? And it’s not just we plebeian voters who are getting edgy, it’s governments all over the world who are being told that what they thought was the case, in regards to warming, is not actually the case. The Al Gore ‘inconvenient truth’ effect has well and truly worn off (after making him loads of dosh) and is now seen to have been a convenient untruth.
And it’s not just ‘voters like me’ who are doing the telling, it’s other informed scientists and civil servants. Armed with this knowledge the new fossil fuel bonanza is well and truly on. It’s the Yukon and Klondike all over again, this time with shale oil and gas, and renewed mining for coal and coal gas. Just yesterday, as I predicted, it was announced that the moratorium on fracking is to be relaxed and that up to 60% of Britain may well be exploited for shale oil and gas. And for Mr Seaton to suggest that proliferation of nuclear fuels is a ‘promising move’ just bemuses me. For one so attuned to the welfare of the planet, how can he possibly think that storage of lethal, spent nuclear residues is remotely planet-friendly? It will leave a far more disastrous legacy for our descendants and their descendants than any fossil fuel extraction.
Basically, when it comes to an understanding of global warming/ climate change it all depends on what ‘facts’ you wish to take on board, and real facts are rather thin on the ground when it comes to anthropogenic global warming. If you can say that global warming/climate change is man-made, then you can tax it. If you admit that it’s natural, poorly understood and difficult to predict, then you can’t tax it.
For every article Mr Seaton can show supporting his belief, I can show several that take a different view and are equally backed by evidence, recent evidence. Do not underestimate the ‘green’ political patina that has covered the underlying truth about the cyclical changes in our world. See online evidence for the BBC’s biased reporting of this whole isssue when they employed 28 people in 2008 to advise them on how they should present global warming to the nation. Four of these people were largely unknown scientists, the other 24 were environmentalists and activists with a very distinct agenda (you know the groups). So much for BBC impartiality – it’s a national disgrace with potentially serious and more far-reaching consequences than their mishandling of sexual abuse reporting.
So far, so acceptable, in as much as we are all entitled to our opinions. But when statements are made that attack the intelligence, integrity or credentials of a writer, then I find it unacceptable. ‘Ms Jaafar shares with other deniers of man-made climate change the technique of confusing other non-scientists by misleading assertions.’
Mr Seaton, you know nothing about me. How do you know I’m a non-scientist? How do you know that my academic/professional qualifications are less relevant to the subject than are yours in the medical field? You have made assumptions that are quite probably gender-biased, at least at an unconscious level. What else are you assuming without foundation? Are my assertions, if you so wish to call my statements of facts, any less worthy of consideration than your assertions? Your use of the pejorative term ‘denier’ is so predictable. In response to my short comment, instead of being impersonal and reasoned, you mounted a personal attack, palpably patronising and condescending and dripping with contempt. What are you so afraid of? More voters like me?
I think I’ll leave it at that. If any SR reader wishes to bone up on all this and just wants one good, impartial book to read on the subject, for one is enough when it’s not your thing, please ask SR to give you my email address and I’ll point you in the right direction. I will not respond to further comments or articles on this subject.
Judith Jaafar
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