And another thing…

UNLESS you’re a climate scientist with a record of publishing learned academic papers, you are not qualified to have an opinion on the subject. So says Mehdi Hassan in the New Statesman this week.

He’s writing about the rather entertaining row that has erupted between The Spectator and environmental journalist George “Yay for the recession!” Monbiot over the latter’s refusal to debate the science of climate change with the magazine’s latest hero, Ian Plimer.

In response to new Spectator editor Fraser Nelson’s mention of “the US Senate list of 700 scientists who dissent over man-made global warming”, Hassan writes:

they’re simply wrong, in a tiny minority and not even qualified to proffer an opinion on the subject: the vast majority of them are not climate scientists, nor have they published in fields relevant to climate science (my emphasis).

So the question arises: is Mehdi Hassan a pubished climate change scientist? If not (and I suspect he isn’t, but if I’m wrong I apologise) then why is he offering an opinion on man-made climate change, one way or the other?

For the record, I’m not a published climate change scientist (so I hope Mr Hassan will forgive my expressing an opinion), but am inclined to accept the views of the overhelming majority of the international scientific community and accept that climate change is man-made and can therefore be ameliorated through policy.

What really gets on my nerves, though, is how this debate has been polarised along political dividing lines: with very few exceptions, those on the left believe in the Al Gore analysis and are utterly dismissive of those who disagree with it, contemptuously and arrogantly dismissing them as “climate change deniers”. This is an offensive and stupid term, seeking to associate even those with genuine doubts about the scientific consensus with neo-Nazi holocaust deniers.

Similarly, if you’re of a right-wing bent, you’re more than likely to dismiss the “man-made” factor of climate change and categorise all environmental campaigners as unreformed Marxists using the issue as a Trojan horse with which to destroy capitalism.

The row between Monbiot and Nelson/Plimer is infantile. A lot of people would be interested, I think, in watching an informed and civilised debate between the two camps, if they can only bring themselves to get off their high horses and start showing a bit of tolerance and respect for the other side.

Sh*t, I’m starting to sound like a LibDem…

FRASER Nelson has actually written something which I don’t think is completely bonkers: namely that some green activists will be delighted by the drop in consumption and productivity  – and, of course, the number of people in work – caused by the recession.

This is a point I made in a speech on Heathrow back in October. George Monbiot has written in eager anticipation of the downturn in an article entitled Bring on the recession. Strange how people who would normally express concerns about the economic plight of people living in the Third World, are now more concerned that the same Third World citizens are becoming richer (A Good Thing) and are therefore demanding a higher quality of life (Another Good Thing).

But let me paint you a picture: imagine if the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change announced tomorrow that “we got it wrong – climate change isn’t caused by man. Sorry about that. As you were.” (Now, I know that won’t happen because the IPCC were right, but bear with me here, okay?)

What would your reaction be? I know what mine would be: delight. I’d be celebrating. I’d be popping the Champagne. Celebrations tempered, of course, by the realisation that global warming is something we can’t affect and we’ll just have to deal with. But such an announcement would be good news, yes?

Well, no, not for some (probably a minority of) environmentalists. Because for them, the fight against global warming has another aim: the defeat of capitalism, of economic growth, of prosperity.

Which is why I find their arguments so nauseating. It must be lovely to be a high-profile journalist whose own income is high and reasonably secure. And it must be so easy to offer to sacrifice the jobs and the livelihoods of millions of working people for the good of the environment.

But unless we can find a way of saving the planet without sacrificing prosperity – here and in developing countries – then the fight is already lost.

I WAS reminded by one of my own correspondents to write something about this rather embarrassing faux-pas by the Tory health spokesman Andrew Lansley.

Andrew’s Marie Antionette moment was expressed thus:

Interestingly on many counts, recession can be good for us. People tend to smoke less, drink less alcohol, eat less rich food and spend time at home with their families.

Actually, no. Recession is not good for us. Even when the economy’s doing well, life is very, very difficult for an awful lot of people – people in full-time employment who are managing, somehow, to keep up with mortgage payments and bring up a family. So when those jobs, those homes and those families are threatened, it probably doesn’t come as much comfort that people have less cash for fags, booze and nice food. Does Lansley actually think that unemployment is enjoyable? An opportunity to spend more time with your family? I don’t know if Andrew or anyone close to him has ever experienced real, hopeless unemployment. I doubt it somehow.

But it’s interesting, isn’t it, how those who don’t fear for the security of their own jobs are complacent about recessions. Take George Monbiot. On 9 October 2007 he wrote an article headed “Bring on the recession”, in which he said:

I hope that the recession now being forecast by some economists materialises… I recognise that recession causes hardship. Like everyone I am aware that it would cause some people to lose their jobs and homes. I do not dismiss these impacts or the harm they inflict… A recession in the rich nations might be the only hope we have of buying the time we need to prevent runaway climate change.

I expect a well-paid journalist like George Monbiot will never want for freelance work in these environmentally-aware times. So why should he fret over the fate of a few million people less fortunate than him?

I prefer the reliable sense and wisdom of the incompartable David Aaronovitch, who is one of the few columnists in Britain who can be bothered to grasp the enormity of the personal disaster that unempoloyment is. In today’s column in The Times, he wrote:

Employment is the key question: the need to keep people at work and earning, rather than to allow unemployment, and all its attendant moral, social and fiscal hazards, to soar. The habit of worklessness is one of the most debilitating vices that any people can acquire. Some of us have forgotten this.

I sympathise with Andrew Lansley to a certain extent. He’s not the first politician to have written something on his blog only to regret it later (ahem). But he clearly meant what he said, even though he regretted writing it. And I’m sorry to go on about it, but it is in the same league as Norman Lamont telling the Commons that “unemployment is a price well worth paying”.

It’s not. And if the Tories still don’t get that, they don’t deserve to be in government.