This question is posed by Philip Stott in two recent postings on his blog entitled “Pascal’s Wager And ˜Global Warming’” and “An Obstinate Rationality“ .Stott’s blog is worth adding to your “favourites” and visiting frequently. He used to give an annual lecture to my students and invariably was awarded top marks in the student assessments of the lectures to which they were subjected.
I find him a convincing sceptic. An example from “An Obstinate Rationality”:
“Whenever I hear politicians and activists talking about “stopping climate change”, or “saving the planet”; when I see the rich buying indulgences in the form of carbon credits, or carbon offsets; when I hear politicians talking about “zero-carbon houses”, when no such thing exists; when I hear scientists declaring that we can manage the most complex, coupled, non-linear, semi-chaotic system known to humans by fiddling at the margins with one factor – and to a degree Celsius; when I see the blatant hypocrisy of newspapers like The Independent and The Guardian, which lecture us all, while selling foreign holidays, page after page; when I hear academics planning to fly to another world conference on climate change; when I watch one more hyped-up report, with shelving ice and doleful polar bears, on the tele; when I see yet another celebrity flying in to yet another world gig to tell us how to live the ˜Green’ life; when I hear claims that wind turbines will save the world; ….. an obstinate rationality prevents me from having anything to do with the carbon claptrap of the Global Warming Religion and the trivial pieties of our shallow Age.”