Weathering stormy science

THERE SHOULD be a word in English, and I’m sure the Germans have one, to describe the sensation of ‘hearing people making an inane observation, and doing so as if they’re the first person to make it’. The word needs coining because I’m pretty sure you get the feeling persistently. How many times have you been subjected to a half-wit in the pub opining ‘I personally think they should introduce television replays in soccer. After all, they’ve got the technology now’? Or ‘have you noticed that the more time we spend with our Facebook “Friends” the less time we have for our real friends?’ Back in the 1980s a favourite was ‘How come there are EEC food mountains but children are starving in Africa?’, but then we still have that sturdy, perennial classic: ‘why is it that when a man sleeps around he’s a stud, but when a woman does she’s a slag?’

A recent addition to this list, which if you live in northern Europe I guarantee you have heard or read this month, is: ‘if global warming is supposedly happening, then why is it so cold?’ The snow and blizzards have not only secretly delighted the British and the Irish, two peoples united by a common love of whining and complaining, but by many ‘denialists’, who somehow perceive the cold snap as proof that global warming is a myth. Many drew the opposite, but corresponding, conclusion after the blistering summer of 2003, which according to similarly mindless ‘believers’ was clear evidence that global warming was happening.

Linguistics are important here, for it seems that so many otherwise intelligent people on both sides of the argument fail to comprehend the basic distinction between ‘weather’ and ‘climate’. But I think this failure is witting, and reflects a profound malignancy at the heart of of the global warming debate: it is too politicised. People believe what they want owing to their prejudices.

I don’t pretend to be an expert on global warming. This is partly because I don’t feel I need to change my behaviour either way. I work from home, I haven’t eaten meat since 1996, I haven’t stepped on an airplane since 1997 and I have never even driven a car, let alone owned one, so suffice to say my ‘carbon footprint’ is pretty low as it is. And I would never vote for a single issue party in a general election, so what the Green Party says is irrelevant to me.

But my lack of engagement also owes to the frustration with the tone of the debate, and I suspect I’m not alone. Broadly put, ‘warmists’ tend to be of a leftist persuasion, who see ‘warmism’ as a means to raise taxes, punish the rich and force them onto public transport like the rest of us, and generally enlarge government. And this, concomitantly, is why many on the Right tend to be ‘deniers’. Each camp throws statistics and accusatory metaphors at each other: ‘What about the great “global cooling” panic of the 1970s? You got it wrong then’, ‘Yeah, but you only say this because you’re a selfish capitalist pig’, ‘You only believe in global warming because you hate humanity’, ‘You talk of “nature’s revenge” much as Christians speak of “God’s punishment” “, ‘You only deny because you are in the pay of big corporations’ and other such ad hominem distractions. The willing failure of elements on both sides to distinguish between weather and climate is a symptom of a debate that has been hijacked by politics.

It is a crude bi-polarity, of course, and there are exceptions. But sometimes only those who buck the trend recognise it. As the right-wing ‘warmist’ Hugo Rifkind put it in The Spectator recently: ‘Why should believing scientists put you on the left? Why should this be a political spectrum thing at all? It has become one, plainly. But why, most crucially, doesn’t it bother people on both sides of this argument that their views are so suspiciously convenient? ... My new theory is that hardly anybody who talks about climate change is actually talking about climate change. It’s become a proxy subject for people who want to talk about all sorts of other things instead. So, realistically, the only voices to which one should pay any attention at all on the subject are either the experts (such as scientists) or those belonging to people who think one way, but might be expected, on the basis of the rest of their politics, to think the other.’

Of course, pigeonholing is nothing new in politics. People are often surprised when I say I’m a right-wing, vegetarian. Yeah, but so was Hitler, stupid.

The evidence suggests that since the Industrial Revolution global temperatures have been rising. And it doesn’t even matter whether it’s man made or not. The question is: is it happening? And if it is, will it be bad for us? If so, what can and should we do about it? Whether it’s freezing cold in Ireland today and boiling hot in Australia now is largely irrelevant.

Perhaps global warming is all a scam: if they evidence proves as much I’d be willing to accept it. But if only both sides of the political divide were prepared to accept inconvenient truths - either way - then we would have greater clarity, and more engagement, on the matter. A first step in the right direction would be to consult an English dictionary. And, please, no more trite and meaningless observations. No more metaphors. Just the science.

Patrick West is a journalist and author ‘Beating Them At Their Own Game, How The Irish Conquered English Soccer’ Liberties Press, 2006)