Suffolk Humanists

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Something that climate change sceptics might understand

Posted by Margaret on Friday, Feb 4, 2011

If you watched BBC Four’s Storyville, Meet the Climate Sceptics, last week, you may have been exasperated by the arguments put forward by leading climate change deniers Lord Christopher Monckton and Telegraph columnist James Delingpole. Monckton has been to the USA and Australia to talk to the climate change deniers on TV and at public meetings, where he’s been received with huge enthusiasm. Delingpole has also been to the USA, where he’s appeared on right-wing TV host Glenn Beck’s programme, rubbishing the science behind climate change. His scientific ignorance, as displayed on another BBC Four programme recently, Horizon – Science Under Attack, doesn’t inhibit him. He had the cheek to argue with Nobel prizewinner Sir Paul Nurse, President of The Royal Society, that he was wrong about climate change. These two ignoramuses, and others like them, attract a lot of attention in climate change sceptic circles because neither they nor their audiences understand the science of climate change, and they don’t want to understand it. Unfortunately, scientific ignorance is widespread, even among those who’d like to believe that the sceptics are wrong. For many, it’s just too difficult. This is why a video by US high school science teacher Greg Craven is so clever. You don’t need to understand the science. Craven offers a simpler argument about acceptable risk; which is the greater risk, economic damage or global disaster? Watch his YouTube video, and make up your own mind.

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