Richard Tice seems not even to have a grasp of secondary school science and has shown himself to be quite unable to understand the modern technological world we live in.
Global warming has been accepted since the late 1970s when even the oil companies realised what was happening. It is also clear that it is an existential threat for very many of the plants and animals on earth, including mankind.
Margaret Thatcher realised that very early on that global warming was a major threat and delivered a speech to the Royal Society in 1988 and to the United Nations in 1989. Following these speeches funding was provided for the Meteorological Office Hadley Centre for Climate Science and Services. This developed the climate model, “HadGEM”, which covers both the oceans and atmosphere at high resolution and is used world-wide. It works closely with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This established the UK as a major contributor to the science underpinning the ongoing study of Climate Change.
Sadly, in the later period of her retirement Lady Thatcher fell prey to the influence of right-wing anti-science lobbyists which she praised as “free market” sources and claiming that “thankfully, the issues have been clearly analysed and debated by scholars in the United States”.
The long list of these sources, however, contained such lobby groups as the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation, now prominent supporters of Donald Trump. Moreover she was relying, not on the scientific papers which she had once been quite capable of reading and understanding, but on leaflets and booklets written for the public. In particular, she drew heavily and uncritically on a pamphlet entitled “A plain English guide to climate change” published in 1997 by the Reason Foundation, a lobby group which the following year received $70,000 from Exxon Mobil to “assess public policy alternatives on issues with direct bearing on the company’s business operations and interests”.
By this time she was well into her 80s and was warning that the international effort to tackle climate change “provides a marvellous excuse for worldwide, supra-national socialism.”
It would appear that this unreasonable anxiety of what she feared as “socialism” became a dominant trope at a time when, sadly, she was well past her former intellectiual powers.
However, and ironically, the scientific basis of climate change science which she helped establish in her early years lives on to the credit of the UK and its scientific community.
We have known about global warming for 202 years.
We have known that carbon dioxide was implicated in this rise for 170 years.
We have known that burning fossil fuels – the first one being used was coal – was going to affect the global climate for 128 years.
In 1824 Joseph Fourier calculated the Earth is warmer than expected from its size & distance from the sun. He suggested the atmosphere somehow traps some heat.
In 1856 Eunice Foote showed CO2 absorbed this heat.
In 1898 Svante Arrhenius warned industrial activity would cause global heating.
In 1938 Guy Callendar showed that global temperatures had riseen by 0.3°C the previous fifty years, which he linked it to fossil fuels use.
In 1958 Charles David Keeling begans tracking rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.
In 1968 a report by the Stanford Research Institute warned the American Petroleum Institute about melting ice caps and rising sea levels.
In 1988 James Hansen a scientist with NASA testified to the U.S. Congress that global warming was already happening.
We must do two things urgently:
1. Reduce carbon dioxide emissions as much as we can to slow down this warming – which will take a long time.
2. Meanwhile, take comprehensive measures to adjust to the immediate effects of a changed climate.
Richard Tice, do keep up!
(pic Unsplash)