Who Are the Real Climate Criminals?

If there's one thing that's supposed to annoy us British about Americans, it's their environmentally unfriendly ways. And not just George Bush and his Exxon-funded cronies. It's the whole lot of them – as highlighted by the recent ABC News poll where "global warming" scored a big, fat zero (see page 6) in the US public's list of priorities.

Contrast with London's Mayoral candidates all battling to save the planet. The "central pledge" of New Labour's Ken Livingstone to his electorate includes: "London will tackle the great environmental problems, above all climate change, to ensure that our success is sustainable." And the whole thing is only one sentence long. Boris Johnson (Conservative) pledges "a ban on bottled water, a ban on internal flights, recycling, green procurement and sustainability”. Both claim to be against Heathrow's third runway on environmental grounds. And there's still somehow room for a Green Party candidate. Politics: available in any colour, as long as it's... well... Green.

But is our superciliousness towards the green credentials of the USA really justified? Are we really that different here in the UK? Not according to an Ipsos Mori poll last year, which indicated that more than half of us are not convinced that the science of climate change is robust enough to justify a Green revolution. Despite the vast sums of cash available to the environmental PR machine to keep the looming ecopalypse at the front of our minds, nobody's really that interested, it seems.

Funnily enough, environmentalists like to blame their failure to capture the public's imagination on oil-funded “deniers” (whose budget is a fraction of Greenpeace's alone). Or they'll blame the selfishness of the public itself, who need to be hectored into making "ethical" consumer choices... and taking fewer baths.

But is there another reason for our complacency? Could it be that we have a better nose for eco-friendly bullshit than Livingstone's "London will tackle the great environmental problems, above all climate change, to ensure that our success is sustainable", or Boris's "a ban on bottled water, a ban on internal flights, recycling, green procurement and sustainability” give us credit for? Both look like nothing more than attempts to convince us that they're taking armageddon seriously, rather than serious attempts to make the world a better place.

So why, given the public's lack of interest, isn't there a candidate with the balls to stand up and challenge Environmentalism? Where is the candidate who thinks a third runway is a good thing? It's not as if Londoners don't want to use airports. Or who thinks there aren't enough roads? Or that a new de-salination plant is a better idea than saving water by hectoring Londoners with "if it's yellow, let it mellow, if it's brown, flush it down"?

Perhaps it's because green policies can’t actually do any harm. We might be ambivalent, but we're hardly going to vote against saving the planet. Which is perhaps why everyone from the BNP through to Socialist Worker are striking a green pose. Environmentalism is attractive to unimaginative politicians precisely because it's seen as inoffensive and uncontroversial.

Except that it is offensive. And it should be controversial. Just ask Gareth Corkhill, the father of four who was fined a week's wages by Copeland Borough Council and slapped with a criminal record for overflowing his wheelie bin by 4 inches. (And environmentalism is supposed to be 'progressive'!). Once authorities get it into their heads that human concerns can take second place to a higher purpose - saving Mother Nature, Gaia, or whatever you want to call her - no reason exists for them to imagine that they owe the public anything, or are even accountable.

Environmentalism isn't the left-wing conspiracy that those whom it accuses of being a right-wing conspiracy are wont to accuse it of being. It's just very convenient, that's all. Public servants can become policemen; they can suddenly make life more difficult in the name of saving the planet. Eco-Proles can be farmed out to Eco-Homes in Eco-Towns that lack flushing toilets and where the only water you are allowed to use is that which falls on your land. And to complain is to have the blood of future generations on your hands, or to be a bin-abusing 'carbon criminal'. Environmentalism turns the purpose of government and public service on its head.

Environmentalism is all very convenient - for everybody except real, live human beings. So who's more in tune with their electorate on environmental matters? Copeland Borough Council? Boris? Ken? Or George Bush Jr?

56% of You are Fascist B***ards

We mentioned yesterday that Ipsos MORI regard the majority of the UK population as ignorant sheep who can't come to an informed decision even if it's handed to them on a plate. Well, next to what Caroline Lucas, Green Party MEP for the UK South East region, thinks of them, that all sounds almost complimentary. According to eGov, she prefers to compare the climate scepticism revealed by Ipsos MORI's poll to holocaust denial.

The media’s attempt to seem balanced is in fact distorting the public’s understanding of perhaps the most pressing issue facing us all today – and it’s tragic. It doesn’t make any sense: would the media insist on having a holocaust-denier to balance any report about the second word war? Of course not - but by insisting on giving so much airtime to climate change deniers, it is doing exactly the same thing.

We're glad that Lucas has finally admitted that she's against a "balanced media". We are less impressed with her attempts to make moral equivalents of healthy scientific scepticism and the most morally reprehensible acts she can think of. But she is not alone. We reported on Sunday how Lord May resorted to accusing Martin Durkin of making films denying the link between HIV and AIDS, and previously the Royal Society's statements about how scepticism of claims about the climate are comparable in some way to denying the link between smoking and lung cancer.

Anybody who cannot tell the difference between scientific scepticism and fascism lacks a moral compass. (And to think that Lucas has just been awarded Politician of the Year at the Observer Ethical Awards.) Environmentalism's moral disorientation means that in order to make a moral argument (or to explain their own failures), environmentalists have to draw on absolutes from elsewhere - whether they be absolute wrongs from the darkest periods of history, or absolute scientific certainties that don't even exist.

We don't need anything to compare Nazi atrocities with - they were horrors that spoke for themselves. But the morality of emitting CO2, which possibly raises global temperatures and might change the climate (in an unpredictable and unspecified way) isn't such an easy thing to measure. That needs science - really thorough, deep and tested science. We don't have that, yet. And we won't ever have it if we deny scientists the opportunity to pursue a value free investigation of the material world without calling them denialists.

Given that 56% of the public, according to the MORI poll, come under Lucas's definition of denialists, it's pretty obvious she doesn't have much regard for the intelligence of those she represents. If the public are so easily lead like sheep, can she say that her election victory wasn't due to 'media distortions'? Funny how people like polls when it suits them.

56 Per Cent of You Are STUPID (Or is it Just Ipsos MORI?)

Ipsos Mori are about to publish some research they've done, Tipping Point Or Turning Point? Social Marketing & Climate Change

Phil Downing, head of environmental research at the company, and one of the report's authors appeared on yesterday's Today program on BBC Radio 4 to discuss the findings.

I think there are two key headlines that we've found. The first is that concern about climate change on the whole is rising. And we find that very few people, only a very small minority, actually reject out of hand the idea that it is actually changing the climate, that humans have at least some part to play in that.

So what's the problem?

The more disturbing trend is there's still undecided or a large proportion who are ambivalent about the issue. And we see this filtering through to the number who say that they're not convinced that scientists can successfully model the climate. More frighteningly still that they believe the scientific debate is still raging, err, and the jury is still out.

But you don't need to be a global warming denialist, or even a sceptic to be part of the 56% of us who are unconvinced of science's current ability to successfully model the climate. Take for example, Kevin E. Trenberth's recent article on Nature's Climate Feedback blog:

There is no estimate, even probabilistically, as to the likelihood of any emissions scenario and no best guess. ... Even if there were, the projections are based on model results that provide differences of the future climate relative to that today. None of the models used byIPCC are initialized to the observed state and none of the climate states in the models correspond even remotely to the current observed climate. In particular, the state of the oceans, sea ice, and soil moisture has no relationship to the observed state at any recent time in any of theIPCC models.

And Trenberth is no 'sceptic'. He maintains that global warming is happening, and humans are causing it. He concludes,

... the science is not done because we do not have reliable or regional predictions of climate. But we need them. Indeed it is an imperative! So the science is just beginning. Beginning, that is, to face up to the challenge of building a climate information system that tracks the current climate and the agents of change, that initializes models and makes predictions, and that provides useful climate information on many time scales regionally and tailored to many sectoral needs.

Downing's research apparently fails to accommodate the complex and nuanced debate that evidently does exist. Furthermore, it seems that the public are far more sophisticated than he gives them credit for. Worse still, however, it is his own ignorance of the science, the debate, and his underestimation of the public that causes him to be 'disturbed' and 'frightened'. He then needs to invent reasons as to why the public don't see things the way he wants them to:

Given the actual consensus and the reality if the situation, it is a particularly disturbing statistic and does suggest one or two things. Firstly the impact of contrarian and negative messages, for example, Channel 4's great Global Warming Swindle are having an impact. Secondly, if the public is ambivalent, and you have a disconnect between what you believe on the one hand, and how you act on the other. The easiest thing is to change what you believe, rather than how you act.

If Ipsos Mori want to become opinion formers rather opinion pollsters, they'll need to be rather more persuasive than that. This 'research' only reveals the public opinion pollsters' low opinion of the public.