Hot under the collar

by Editor, Colin Inman

13th February 2010

So there is to be an inquiry into the leaked emails from the East Anglian Climate Research Unit, and whether there we attempts to conceal or manipulate data. Does it matter? Isn’t this just an irrelevant distraction from actually taking steps to reduce carbon emissions, just re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic while the ship goes down?

Part of me feels just that. The inquiry is an irrelevance, particularly as it will not advance the scientific research one iota. While the whole episode has caused enormous damage to the cause, it has to be seen in the context in which it occurred.

The Research Unit were the subject of repeated data access requests, many of them almost identically worded, as part of a concern campaign by sceptics not just to get information, but to deliberately disrupt the work of the unit by tying them up in red tape, so that they would have been spending their time responding to pointless and vexatious information requests, rather than the research they were trained and paid to do. An easier solution would have been complete transparency through publishing the data online so that there was no need to do more than refer the enquirers to the relevant online link. By failing to give the data requested researchers seem to have given the impression they had something to hide.

It is also clear that the researchers had become caught up in the vitriolic disputes that have come to characterise the climate debate. These have become so heated that peoples’ health has suffered from the abuse. Phil  Jones, the head of the unit, has ended up on medication, and was reported in “The Times” as having considered suicide. “

Sometimes in considering the rights and wrongs of a situation, it is worth asking the question “Who wins?”  That to say, who wins and who loses if the sceptics or the believers are right. Well if the sceptics are right, we all win in the sense that global warming will not be as catastrophic as the majority of scientists now seem to fear. Also winners will be the oil, coal, and gas companies, and the motor industry, which will be able to carry on business as usual and reap the profits, along with their directors and share holders.

If the sceptics win the argument but prove to be wrong, it might seem that many of the present generation are winners if we can carry on profligate lifestyles at the expense of future generations. So there may be short term winners, and long term losers.

 If the believers are right, then there are no real winners unless we are able to take concerted action to limit and mitigate global warming. We will be forced to make sacrifices, change our life-styles, and pay more taxes. The worst scenario might be one where we are forced into austerity and sacrifice but leave  it too late to make any difference.

The more optimistic might argue that we can use new technology to implement alternative energy sources to limit the level of sacrifice that it is needed.

So where should we go with this? In my view the inquiry is a waste of time, and a distraction from what needs doing.

One concept matters in this: the precautionary principle. We only have one earth. For all the talk of bases on the moon or on Mars, or colonising other solar systems, those are pipe-dreams. We cannot afford a space programme while the economy is struggling, as the Americans have discovered. We have to err on the side of caution. It is far better to act early and follow the advice of the climate scientists who are warning the greenhouse gas concentrations are becoming dangerously high, than  wait and see what happens, like children who have hidden a firework in a bonfire.