Does more sun shine on the righteous?

Does more sun shine on the righteous?

Cold Thoughts

by Neil Everitt

The editor of ACR News posts his own cold thoughts about the ACR industry and anything else he cares to air.

25/11/2009 12:14:10
IN THE editorial in the September issue of ACR News, I commented upon how those who feel they have a righteous cause can sometimes pursue that cause so zealously that their actions can become morally skewed.

My references at the time were to those who pursue natural ventilation to the exclusion of air conditioning but it could now equally be applied to the climate scientists at the centre of revelations exposed by the "hacked" emails at Britain's Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia.

As one of the primary information sources for the UN's influential international panel on Climate Change (IPCC), some have claimed that the content of the leaked emails prove that the whole man-made global warming theory is a lie.

Certainly the scientists involved could be accused of manipulating evidence to fit their perceived theories; suppressing and even destroying evidence to the contrary and attempting to exclude dissenting scientists from the peer review process.

This is damning evidence but it is not surprising that a group of people who are so convinced that they are right should act in this way. It does suggest that they are so convinced that they are on the right route that they have ditched their moral compass, but it does not mean that their beliefs that man is responsible for global warming are wrong.

One thing the emails do show, however, is that despite claims to the contrary, the evidence of anthropogenic global warming is not as clear cut as they would have us believe. In particular the environmental scientists appear unable to explain how, despite CO2 levels in the atmosphere rising over the last 11 years, global temperatures have not increased with it as they would have predicted.

It is not an excuse to do nothing but it really is quite scary that long-term strategies could be decided in Copenhagen next month based upon apparent climatic trends that are not yet fully understood.