THE FLAT EARTHERS

Many years ago, when I was student, we had a talk one evening by a man from the Flat Earth Society.

His audience was about 200 science students and academics. We listened in polite silence to his explanations about ships disappearing over the horizon, and what happened at the edges of the earth. But when he invited questions, his careful arguments were torn to shreds and ridiculed mercilessly by the students. I felt really sorry for him.

The flat earthers today are the climate change deniers, but I don't feel the least bit sorry for them.

Of course, they agree the global climate is changing, but they insist it's due to natural variability, with minimal input from human activity.

The scientific consensus is that global warming is taking place, and cannot be explained without including the artificially enhanced greenhouse effect, due to the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone and CFCs.

A handful of critics outside the consensus can usually be traced back to oil companies like Exxon Mobil, and many are free market fundamentalists.

The fact is that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased by 37% since the industrial revolution, to the highest levels for at least 600,000 years. Temperatures on Earth now are higher than they have been for at least 8,000 years.

Politicians now have to make a choice.

Suppose we reduce our carbon economy, and it turns out that the scientific consensus is wrong?
We will have created hundreds of thousands of jobs in insulation and renewable energy manufacturing. Thousands will have been taken out of fuel poverty, peak oil will be less of a shock, the oceans will be less acidic and energy security will have been tackled.

Now suppose the Flat Earthers are wrong. We will end up with acid oceans, acid rain, fuel poverty, civil unrest, unemployment, catastrophic climate disruption, droughts, floods, crop failures, disease, massive environmental migrations of refugees and war.

Any sensible politician would put our money on decarbonising the global economy.

This is called the Precautionary Principle.