Tim Rice was a guest on today’s Breakfast with Frost. He was asked to pick interesting stories from today’s papers. One story he chose concerned the fact that Death Valley has had so much rain recently that it now has vegetation and wildlife for the first time for ages.
This led to a brief discussion on global warming and climate change. Rice seems to hold some fairly bizarre theories on this. Whilst he admits that it is happening he doesn’t think that it’s caused by our industrial society. He said something like (and I’m quoting from memory here so it won’t be exact) “when you see the power of nature causing events like the tsunami then it’s difficult to see how climate change can be caused by a few people driving around in 4x4s”. He then compounded his stupidity by adding “if in a hundred years we have camels roaming the deserts of Somerset then we’ll just have to accept it and learn to adapt.”
He’s a very, very stupid man.
I’ve been thinking about this, and don’t believe it’s quite as black and white as you’re suggesting.In my view the court is still out on the causes of global warming, and I’m not even sure if it’s 100% decided that the phenomena is really more than the natural fluctuation of the Earth’s temperature. We’ve had many ice ages in the past, surely man didn’t cause those.A quick search finds this link http://capmag.com/article.asp?ID=50 which refers to a petition signed by scientists against the Kyoto accord, but I’m sure you’ll say this is politically motivated rather than scientifically :-)But calling Tim Rice stupid for having a different viewpoint on this is going a bit far I thought.
That link is to a news story from 1998. There’s been a lot of research done in this area over the last seven years and I really think that you’d be hard-pushed to find many scientists who don’t believe in it these days. See, for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming#Scientific_opinion which says “the current scientific consensus is that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities”.It’s not so much Tim Rice’s viewpoint that I was calling him stupid for, but rather the fact that he characterises potential human contributions to climate change as “a few people driving round in 4x4s”. This shows a fundemental misunderstanding of the (possible) causes of climate change.
I shouldn’t really start a discussion (it’s not an argument yet is it :-) ) unless I want to follow through. Statistics can prove anything if you present them properly, and wikipedia has some interesting things to say here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age about recent past climate changes.
I agree that gas guzzling 4X4s are a bad idea in cities. I am really worried about the depletion of fossil fuels and have given up one of the family cars partly in an attempt to reduce my own involvement in this. There is too much pollution, and too many people.
I do think however that one volcano erupting has as much affect on the climate as years of human activities, so a few more cars are possibly not a significant factor when put in relation to other things.
At least Tim’s flippant remark has gotten us talking about it!
Most peole who deny climate change are right wing wankers like Geroge W bush. Tim Rice falls into the same category. His only interest is in driving a 4 by 4 when and where-ever he wants to. He will not be around to see camels in Somerset in 200 years time because he will be dead, an event that cannot happen soon enough.A new offence of “climate-change denier” should be coined for peole like him as scientists, bar a few mavericks given air time by the likes of Murdoch, are now pretty much agreed on this.