Heat and Hate

'What's the weather like?' Andrew asked without saying hello.

'I can't tell, it's dark,' I said, picking up the lamp I'd knocked over on the way to the telephone.

'I mean do you think it's getting any warmer? Or colder?' he asked.

'Is this a global warming question?' I asked.

Silence.

'Yes,' he said eventually. 'It is.'

'And you're asking me?'

'I wanted some reliable opinions.'

'Andrew, you have access to the best kept weather records in the world. You can see anything you want.'

'Yes, but - '

'But what?'

'None of data make sense,' he said.

'Why?'

'It depends too much on the selection you choose,' Andrew said. 'I want to get this right. We're about to spend billions on trying to do something about it.'

'Don't bother,' I said.

'What?'

'Don't bother. The Antarctic ice is getting thicker, reversing a 6,000 year old trend; some glaciers are melting, but others are growing; we could just be coming out of a mini-ice age. You remember Mr Kappelman going on about that at Adams Hall.'

'Yeah, I do,' Andrew agreed.

'What was the other thing he was always saying?' I challenged.

'That data of even a thousand years wasn't enough to interpret geology - and by implication, weather patterns.'

He said this grudgingly, but he had remembered correctly.

'So what's your conclusion?'

'That there isn't enough data. That we couldn't do much anyway,' he said.

'That's about the size of it, but it doesn't mean we should de-forest the planet or pump too many toxic chemicals into the atmosphere or into our water supplies.'

'These aren't the answers people want to hear,' Andrew said. 'We keep getting hit with the fact that we're the world's largest energy consumer.'

'The US is also the world's largest manufacturer,' I said. 'Twenty percent of everything that is made is made in America. Of course we're going to consume more than 5% of the energy. But that doesn't give us license to waste resources - though there's enough natural gas in America for the next 600 years, and enough coal for thousands. Making fuels like methane, alcohol and so are easy, too.'

'You make it sound like there's nothing to worry about,' Andrew said.

'No, there's a lot to worry about: bad science, politicians rewriting results - like they did with the asbestos report, and the IPCC document in 1995. There's danger in politicians strangling the economies of the world and de-railing development in poor countries because of some mistaken ideas about the ecosystem.'

'If I vote against these measures, I could lose my seat.'

'Sounds like you've got to get some help educating the public.'