Well, my vacation has come to a close. I’m easing my way back into work with a conference in Sydney and will be back in the US in a few days. Although I hadn’t intended to, I have pretty much taken a break from the website while I’ve been in Auckland (although have been writing some stuff that I haven’t yet put up on the site). But I’m eager to get back into the swing of things. Here’s something that caught my eye today in the Times – an article about David Bellamy (who I hadn’t heard of for years), suggesting that global warming is not to any significant degree caused by human activity. Apart from the substantive issue here, one thing that I find interesting about this is his suggestion that the mainstream scientific community effectively censors alternative points of view. If this is true (and I have no way to gauge whether it is ot not) it would represent an interesting parallel to what some people believe happens in the area of evolutionary biology. Here’s an excerpt -
‘They call me a global warming heretic,” says David Bellamy, the conservationist who has dismissed the imminent demise of the planet under a tidal wave of melted polar ice caps as “poppycock”.“I have assured them that they cannot burn me at the stake because of all the dioxins my body will give off.” The bearded botanist emits a hoot at this scientific bon mot, but in truth he isn’t finding his current predicament very funny at all.
Ever since he stuck his head above the undergrowth to question the view that man-made carbon dioxide emissions are responsible for climate change, Bellamy has found himself frozen out of the debate on global warming. Rather than blaming pollutants, he argues that the current change in climate is simply part of an eons-old global cycle; one that humans are as powerless to stop as they are blameless in starting.
“Natural climate change has been happening for a long time,” he says. “If you were sitting in London 10,000 years ago there would be woolly rhinos walking around because it would be the end of the ice age. Now we are in a pretty wobbly phase and some people are saying that this is caused by carbon dioxide pouring into the atmosphere and drowning us all. I just don’t believe that.”
The problem is that the thought police of the conservation community will brook no dissent and have contrived to silence his voice and that of his supporters. “I always thought that was what science was all about: arguing publicly and publishing both sides of the point, finding the answer,” he says. “But we simply cannot get our stuff published. They don’t tolerate dissent because they are not telling the truth. There is no consensus whatsoever on global warming; there are just as many people dissenting but they will not publish those papers in journals.”
He believes the reason that non-believers are being silenced is fear: after all it is reassuring to think that whatever the cataclysm ahead we at least have the power to head it off. Much less comforting to believe that there is nothing we can do.