All-Party Parliamentary Environment Group Newsletter
by  Peter Ainsworth MP, Chairman of APEG - March 2010

The nature of scientific enquiry is disputatious; it always has been and  - I hope – it always will be.  Rancour has been alive and well within the Royal Society, for example, since it was founded over three hundred years ago.  Representations rise and sink; theories achieve acclaim, are rebutted and fall into oblivion; the process of scientific understanding is organic and dynamic.  This was not what I was taught at school (where I was rubbish at ‘Science’).  In fact, Science turns out to have been an Art all along, susceptible to human vanity, pride and avarice, just like everything else.  As a graduate of English Literature I find that very reassuring.

The recent rows over the IPCC’s version of climate change, involving foolish email exchanges at East Anglia University, and the sloppy checking of data about the rate of glacier melt in the Himalayas have given climate change sceptics just the ammunition they needed to get their show back on the road.  And it is back; and it is having an impact upon public opinion; and public opinion affects political priorities; and political priorities affect investment decisions.

The coverage given by the media to the gloating of the climate change sceptics over the ridiculous, but essentially minor, cock-ups of the scientific establishment reflect the hunger for dispute and argument which has always characterised news reporting.  After all, harmony does not sell newspapers.

But the dispute over minor details, however large the headlines they have obtained, is a dispute between anoraks.  Some of the anoraks have distinguished scientific credentials, some have sincere beliefs, and some just want to sell books.

The question about the extent to which human beings are contributing to climate change is a distraction, an irrelevance and a side-show.

The point is that the environment is the only place that we have to live in.  It matters more than the economy, or health or education or defence because it forms the context of all our lives, wherever we live.  If we screw up the environment there will be no bail out.

It would take a very foolish or a very brave person to argue with the overall thrust of scientific opinion on climate change.  But even the most foolish can surely understand that we need, with a growing global population, to be more responsible about our use of the world’s natural resources; that we should be striving to reduce dependence upon depleting reserves of fossil fuels; that we should seek to cut waste in all its forms, including energy; and that becoming more self-sufficient will make us stronger, safer, and more contented.   Any successful economic model will need to be built around those ideas.

It doesn’t take a scientist to work that out.