Dr Karl: Global Warming Hype

Dear Dr Karl,

listened to another of your podcasts the other day, and you made a comment that having a debate about global warming is like being in a car heading towards a truck, and in the face of immediate danger, we take time to have a consensus among the passengers as to what we’ll do about it.

I challenge that – because if it’s an argument about global warming, we need to consider some other factors.

We’re in a car that appears to be moving, and we think it’s going forward. The car came without an instruction manual, and is full of twiddles and knobs and switches and levers and pedals that might alter its course, change its speed, slow it down or make it corkscrew off to the left or perhaps suddenly burrow underground. Off, way off, down the road so far that we can’t really make it out, is a thing. That thing might be a pizza, or it might be a walrus, we just can’t tell from here.

We can’t even tell if we’re definitely going to hit it, but you’re proposing that we immediately start twirling knobs and flicking switches and pressing buttons and screaming blue murder, all on the off chance that it is a walrus and that hitting a walrus is a bad thing. We might veer off course, only to find that it was actually a ferret and we’re about to be eaten by a giant robot T-Rex. All the while, our fervent panic about the walrus/ferret/pizza/T-Rex dilemma has made us blind to the fact that our car is overloaded, it has flat tyres and is running out of petrol.

That is global warming.

We are on a planet that appears to be getting warmer, and we think that warming is a bad thing, and we think that we’re causing it. We can’t tell what’s causing it, but we’re guessing it’s carbon emissions (though water vapour accounts for much more, and solar flares seem like another plausible explanation). We don’t know how to curb emissions, and we can’t be sure that our other options (bio-fuels, nuclear stations or a planet covered with ghastly wind turbines), won’t lead us towards greater unforeseen dangers, just as leaded petrol did.

The exhaust fumes don't bother me as much as the idiot at the wheel!

It seems you’re encouraging knee-jerk responses to long term, unquantifiable dangers.

Don’t get me wrong, I think toxic emissions are bad, but I won’t argue against guns because the gas of burned gunpowder smells yucky; ‘cos then we’d be likely to ban gunpowder but continue shooting people in the head. Toxic emissions are bad because they are demonstrably linked to asthma, heart conditions and brain problems. Emissions stink and suck for readily apparent reasons.

We are ignoring real problems and feeding an industry of fear and guilt. What about biodiversity? The shallowing of the gene pool is the most immediate threat to the health of the planet and our continuation as apex predators. Only simple organisms survive in simple ecosystems. We can see the effects upon a predator species when it’s prey become extinct, yet have been blinded by the fervent panic about slightly warmer summers, rising seas and arable arctic circles.

Consider this: A warmer planet with higher levels of CO2 could be a good thing. It might mean there is more area to inhabit, more places for plants, and more CO2 means more greenery. It might totally suck, but we just don’t know enough to start flicking switches.

Our car is full. We have overpopulated this planet and are continuing to at an increasing rate. Even worse: The high consumption, low value idiots of the world are doing most of that populating. We are reducing the diversity that made us such special creatures, just as we’re supporting and encouraging stupidity, obesity and indolence. Those things are by far the greater worry than whether it’s going to be 2 degrees warmer in 20 years time – but selective breeding and reduced consumption are difficult to sell.

What do you think?

Your faithful fan,

Harry Key.