Dorset NFU’s Tim Gelfs asks why questioning costs, data and green policies now risks branding you a sceptic rather than sparking discussion
So, is Mr Trump right about the hoax of climate change? Probably not … Is Project Fear alive and well? It certainly looks that way!
Call me cynical, but with so much money being made from climate change fears, it seems to be in no one’s interest to challenge the thinking or to report opposing views.
Let’s look at the polar ice caps: we’ve all seen the reports that they are shrinking and we’re all going to have to grow webbed feet. All true, and seemingly well-documented. But no one has reported in the main media that it looks as though the ice fields have grown in the last year?
Our weather forecasts, with the help of digitalisation, have changed beyond recognition – remember Michael Fish with his handful of magnets? Back then, a heatwave was depicted by a yellow sun with the number 30 on it, stuck to a map of the UK. Now, it is in glorious technicolour with every shade of red you can imagine. I’m surprised the telly doesn’t melt!
We are told that we are setting record temperatures ‘since records began’ … that’s just the last couple of hundred years. On the scale of the planet’s life, that would barely register: insufficient data from a scientific point of view.
A fool’s game
Then we have our biggest culprit of all, CO2, the evil gas that is driving up global warming. If we don’t stop producing it, we’re all doomed, Captain Mainwaring! What is not so well reported is that more than 90 per cent of its production occurs naturally. We humans are only responsible for somewhere around five per cent: but we must do our best to not only reduce its emission, but also help with carbon capture by sequestration. It sounds commendable – indeed, our illustrious fount-of-all-knowledge climate minister has chucked billions of pounds at it. But are we playing a dangerous game with not enough knowledge? CO2 is the gas of life: take too much out of the atmosphere and we have a real problem – probably a bigger problem than having too much?
Is it just me?
And then, around the world, we have the biggest money-spinner of all: Green Energy, the saviour of all our climate issues. But you’re not allowed to question how much carbon is produced in making the solar panels or wind farms. Nor what the cost is, at end of life, for disposal? I have asked, and no one can give me an answer. And literally no one wants to talk about the pollution of a lithium mine.
By now you’re probably thinking I am a climate sceptic – if digital ID was already in place, I’d already have a big black mark next to my name!
But I’m not, not really. What I don’t like is anything we are not allowed to challenge. If the arguments are so robust, what are they scared of?
Climate change IS happening, we can see it for ourselves. Sea temperatures around the UK are higher, you can see that just by looking at the species such as tuna appearing off our shores. We go out in the sun and it does feel more intense than it did 30 years ago (or is that just getting older?). The weather patterns seem to be changing. Where are our bleak mid-winter days spent thawing out pipes and using several cans of easy-start on the scrapper tractor? Not that I am missing the ice on the inside of the window, you understand, nor the permanently cold feet for a couple of months!
Are we responsible? Or is it just a natural cycle? It seems sensible that we’re having some effect on climate change. I don’t think the world is designed to have eight billion people living off it without some effect. If it is down to us, then one thing is for sure: it is not going to be solved in the West. Asia and South America will decide the outcome, and poverty will be the driver.
The uncomfortable truth is that if we allow the world’s biggest populations to live in poverty, survival will take priority over climate change! We’d be much better off if we spent our money on pollution and resolving waste … but that’s for next month!
