10 reasons to reject global warming

Nick van der Leek’s comment on my climate change column got me to thinking. He says that the facts in my column, on the apparent inaccuracy of, unaccountability for and secrecy about the source data used by the global warming lobby, are just “details”. He says mentioning it in the media constitutes mere pedantry. He believes that articles like mine, which don’t pretend the debate is over, “confuse people even more”.

Unless he was referring to the inadequacy of the prose itself, my readers may take offence at this insult to their intelligence. So should his own readers. After all, he once told them:

If bloggers are to add any value to the internet in the near to medium term, and make any impact on the media machine, we need more credible writers, prepared to be who they are, write what is worth caring about, and being willing to back what they say.

I’ll let you be the judge of my credibility, but I am who I am, I write about what I believe is worth caring about, and I’m willing to back what I say — not only as a blogger, but even more so as a columnist. Yet he argues that my column did not add any value, because “the most obvious just gets left behind”. I missed what is “self-evident”, namely a fairly arbitrary factoid, worth more for an opportunistic bet than for serious discussion, from which one should reach a broad conclusion that in turn permits one to lecture people on their habits. They “ought to” change them, my correspondent says.

I have no doubt that — in addition to smoking, about which he rightly lectured me already — my other habits are indeed slothful, dissolute and iniquitous. I have no doubt he knows how we all should live. I have only the deepest respect, and indeed awe, for the cosmic enlightenment of greens and cyclists. However, even if he were a bona fide saint — not that I’m saying he isn’t, you understand — telling the rest of us how to live borders on petty fascism. Even if he’s right that “human beings may be largely responsible for climate change”.

My real point, however, is simply that he’s wrong. I’ve made a list, and counted the ways. Here’s why I don’t believe in global warming.
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