It isn't godly being green

It is an insult to science to rule that belief in man-made climate change is a religious conviction
Myles Allen, guardian.co.uk 5 Nov 09;

A British judge has decided that belief in human influence on climate has the status of religious conviction. This is being celebrated as a success by some activists. As a scientist who works on climate change, I find it deeply alarming. Is Jeremy Clarkson similarly entitled to protection if he declares himself a conscientious objector and wants to keep his 4x4?

It is yet another symptom of general confusion over the status of science among the public, politicians, the judiciary and, indeed, just about anyone who is not a practising scientist.

I don't ask anyone to believe in human influence on climate because I do, or because thousands of other scientists do. I ask them to look at the evidence. As Einstein is said to have reacted to an article entitled 100 scientists against Einstein: "If I'm wrong, one would be enough."

The scientific case for human influence on climate is not a political opinion, made stronger simply by lots of people signing up. Nor is it a religious conviction, made stronger, in Mr Justice Burton's phrase, if it is "genuinely held". It is based on evidence and understanding that has withstood some of the most intense scrutiny in the history of science.

If I could come up with convincing evidence that greenhouse gas emissions do not cause dangerous climate change after all, evidence that similarly withstands the scrutiny of my peers, I would get, and deserve, a Nobel prize (and for physics this time, not peace). If a scientist finds something that appears to conflict with mainstream opinion, she or he publishes it like a shot – this is not the behaviour of an adherent to a "genuinely held philosophical belief".

There is, of course, a moral and ethical dimension: to what extent should we concern ourselves with what happens to the generation-after-next? But very few of those arguing against emission reductions actually claim they don't care at all what happens in the 22nd century. They argue that emission reductions will not make a substantial difference to the risk of dangerous climate change. That is a testable hypothesis, and one which looks, on the overwhelming weight of current evidence, to be wrong.

To be fair, Tim Nicholson, the activist who brought the case, seems to be aware he may have opened a Pandora's box, stressing that climate change is not a new religion because it "is based on scientific evidence". But that means he should have lost his case: one of the key arguments the judge used was that, in his opinion, the case for human influence on climate was not "a view based on the present state of information available". But that is precisely what scientific evidence provides: if countervailing information becomes available, I would revise my view, as would any genuine scientist.

There is a very dangerous trend to regard climate scientists as just one of many "stakeholders" in the climate change debate. Journalists have taken to asking me whether I take steps to reduce my personal carbon footprint, presumably as a test of whether my beliefs are "genuinely held". If anyone thinks this is relevant, they don't understand how science works. I know climate scientists who drive Priuses and climate scientists who drive 4x4s: this is not a factor I consider when reading or reviewing their papers.

Working as I do in a University traditionally dominated by the Humanities, I suspect many of my colleagues would also be suspicious of a scientist arguing she or he occupies a privileged position. Memories of Cold War arrogance die hard. Of course, unlike the pope, science is not infallible: that is precisely the point. But nor are scientists just another participant in a political, philosophical or religious discourse. Our job is to provide the factual framework within which that discourse takes place. Some of the darkest episodes of the 20th century occurred when we forgot this distinction.

The problem is not Mr Justice Burton's views on climate change. The problem is his view of science. This decision should be appealed, and the appeal should be supported by the Royal Society and universities everywhere, in the name of science in general. Myles Allen heads the Climate Dynamics group at the University of Oxford, and was an author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Welcome to the age of the eco-martyr. God help us
Nothing will harm climate change campaigners as much as a judge decreeing that the green movement is a faith
Catherine Bennett, The Observer 8 Nov 09;

Following Mr Justice Burton's ruling that green beliefs should enjoy the same protection as religious ones, many committed recyclers will have been wondering how green you have to be to become unsackable. Would buying Duchy Originals do the trick? Or would you need to be sustainably crucified or burned at the stake, prior to receiving compensation? In recitations of his own creed, Tim Nicholson, who won the ruling allowing him to claim discrimination, sets the bar rather lower.

"I no longer travel by aeroplane," he told an employment tribunal, by way of piety credentials. "I have eco-renovated my home, I try to buy local produce, I compost my food waste, I encourage others to reduce their carbon emissions and I fear very much for the future of the human race, given the failure to reduce carbon emissions on a global scale."

Don't we all? Or intend to, anyway? Give us an eco-renovation, but not yet. That's religion for you, isn't it? We stray, occasionally, particularly where the smellier food waste is concerned. Even St Tim, one notices, does not disclose what part, if any, the car plays in his "low carbon lifestyle". Or specify how cold it has to be before he turns on the central heating. Indeed, following his court victory , the great martyr admitted that, just five years ago, he walked in darkness. "I flew abroad on holiday and for work, drove fast cars and had no knowledge of or concern about carbon emissions."

Not unlike St Paul, Tim then went on a journey and had an epiphany. After a 6,000-mile jaunt to New Zealand in a 50-year-old Morris Oxford, the young quantity surveyor asked himself: "How could I continue to live in a way that would increase the already dangerous high levels of CO²?" Not going on any more 6,000 mile car journeys was just the first step on his road to an exemplary, low carbon lifestyle in which, he reveals, he does not eat much meat.

Following his conversion, St Tim went to work for Grainger plc, which describes itself as "the UK's largest listed residential landlord". On the face of it, this seems about as sensible a scheme as a campaigning feminist taking a job in a lap-dancing club. Was the epiphany of the gradual variety or was it more of a missionary thing? One recalls that St Paul was specifically instructed, during his conversion, to go and preach to the contemporary of Grainger plc: the Gentiles. Writing about his court victory, St Tim said: "I hope that in practice it will encourage people who share my beliefs to speak up about climate change in their workplace and seek practical measures to cut emissions."

In practice, it seems likely that his achievement in getting climate change classified with the supernatural will do more planetary damage even than a 6,000-mile trip in a 50-year-old Morris Oxford. Some wonder if St Tim has not been possessed by the spirit of Christopher Monckton. For short of the collective apostasy of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it is hard to imagine a more rewarding episode for sceptics who have always said that environmentalism is a matter of faith, not facts. For them, the most effective way of discrediting the movement is to depict it as an alliance of gullible consumers and doomy, secular preachers, who rant about sin, self-scourging and the apocalypse because they can't produce any evidence. Disparaging analogies with religion, implying that it has no science worth challenging, have followed the movement almost since it began, finding their most elegant expression in a well-known speech made by the late Michael Crichton. "Environmentalism is the religion of choice for urban atheists," he said in 2003. "Increasingly it seems facts aren't necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief."

Too many environmentalists have helped make his point. Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, was so liberal with panic that the same Michael Burton, in a court case funded by sceptics, found nine "inaccuracies" that, he said, made it unacceptably "partisan". For instance, in attributing the melting snow on Kilimanjaro to anthropogenic climate change, Gore went against the scientific consensus (David Miliband has made the same mistake). One wonders if this experience contributed to Justice Burton's suggestion in the Nicholson case, that environmentalism is as much a viewpoint as a rational respƒonse to physical evidence.

As for Nicholson, he could have been designed to embody the common objection that the green movement is populated by affluent, I'm Not a Plastic Bag-carrying caricatures, who think it meritorious to advertise their eco-friendly tat or Cameronesque affectations. Does his "we don't eat much meat" generally inspire admiration? Or unworthy thoughts along the lines of Orwell's, when he raged against the middle-class cranks who, he argued, were putting working people off socialism? "If only the sandals and the pistachio-coloured shirts could be put in a pile and burnt," he wrote in The Road to Wigan Pier, "and every vegetarian, teetotaller, and creeping Jesus sent home to Welwyn Garden City to do his yoga exercises quietly!"

By chance, Orwell identifies at least three of the possible types who, following Burton's ruling, may take the opportunity to make a nuisance of themselves under the pretext of the Employment Equality (Religion and Belief) 2003 Regulations. Lawyers are already crowing over the procession of vegetarians, humanists, feminists and – why not? – climate change sceptics, who are expected to find that their deeply held beliefs have been callously disrespected.

But even without Nicholson, this dismal outcome was predictable once the Labour government had chosen to enhance the place of religious faith in public life, instead of making a stand for secularism. Once it had encouraged religious people to believe that workplaces should take account of their myriad spiritualities, it had, in spirit of fairness, to extend a similar right to cause mischief to people who strongly believe in non-religious stuff.

The difficulty with a belief such as environmentalism, Burton said, is testing the "genuineness" with which it is held. So, probably, the more extreme the protestations, the better the chance of a pay-out. That's something for future green martyrs to bear in mind. Haven't we all heard voices telling us to buy local produce where possible? Aren't you hearing one, right now, saying that, for green believers, Earth Day is right up there with Christmas and Easter?

In fact, one wonders if it would not have been more prescient of Professor David Nutt, after being sacked by Alan Johnson, to say that his beliefs on the decriminalisation of drugs were dictated by an undeviating adherence to the shamanistic practices of Carlos Castaneda and thus privileged, like all similar codswallop, by the 2003 act. The counter-argument that he should, in that case, have found a job somewhere more congenial is, as we know, far too rational to be worth entertaining.