Minority Report
What is it like to be a free thinker?
Some of my friends live ‘alternative lifestyles’ and others campaign for minority rights. Many of my friends can’t believe it when I tell them that I don’t go along with the current almost universally accepted theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW), especially as I am so active in renewable energy projects, have driven an electric car for twelve years, live in a new house that I designed and built without a heating system, and help people in energy poverty with energy use reduction.
In the nineties I interacted with some of the thinking on AGW and helped it get retitled as Climate Change. Even in this phrase there is still a strong underlying assumption concerning global warming. “Sit down Tony you are rocking the boat”, is what they say. I occasionally meet people who think like I do but are afraid to put their heads above the parapet. I warn them that it is not nice when one does so, as one gets shot at, told to shut up or sit down. On occasions I have suffered abuse and even been told that I am an idiot for taking the stance that I do. I have two degrees in science. I am big on rational thought and kindness and see these as lacking in our society. I have been discriminated against, vilified, prevented from taking part in some events. I am concerned about the juggernaut effect, everyone jumping on the bandwagon of climate change, massive funding for research into it, effectively zero funding for anything not following the party line. There is an almost complete block on publications from all other standpoints. The phrase ‘most scientists’ winds me up, most scientists don’t work on climate science. Then the weather - floods, heatwaves, fires are all blamed on CC when not everything can be, there has always been extreme weather and there always will be. The polar ice has always been melting round the edge as seawater is salty it causes calving, yet this is frequently used as proof for CC. Unusually, I was invited onto the panel for the Reading version of COP26 and at the end of my three minute presentation I said, “…..and some of you might not agree but I do not do any of the things that I have mentioned because of Climate Change or because of AGW; I do them because “WE SHOULD BE DOING THEM ANYWAY”!
The whole gathering erupted with enthusiastic applause (I was expecting either silence or booing) it was a nice surprise to be clapped. I don’t think they realised that I was a skeptic because people like me don’t get invited to such events 🙂. I got several e-mails afterwards from people who are fully committed to climate activism saying that they were completely with me on the “we should be doing it anyway” line that I introduced, those were very nice. There’s already been one cherry picking incident in the Climate Change field and it caused quite a furore.
True science is where the facts are looked at and a theory developed. In the case of climate change, we seem to be starting with the theory and anything that fits it is then avidly followed up and published, but things that don’t fit are ignored or suppressed. The idea of peer review is a very good one, but sadly it is not working as it ought to in the field of climate science. Doing the right thing for the wrong reason in some circles used to be considered to be doing the wrong thing. In this instance I remain silent on it but am concerned that when when the tide turns and the realisation that CC was not man made after all we may cease to care about the environment as much as we do at present. I like the outcomes but would rather that it was being driven for the right reasons, ie that we should be doing it anyway.
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Tony