George Monbiot – not a scientist

The Guardian kept up its green offensive against Martin Durkin's Ch. 4 programme on climate change today with an article by George Monbiot. Monbiot criticises the programme for its lack of scientific rigour. He starts out with the following problem. Science proceeds by the dialectic resolution of conflicting theories seeking to explain observable data, and, more importantly, accurately predicting data which is yet to be observed.

Therefore, in order to explain accurately the present trends in the world climate, what is required is a variety of theories which fit the observable data. These may then be debated and used to produce a consensual theory which accurately predicts data yet to be observed . Debate, however, is something which Monbiot, in common with all left-wing crusaders, doesn't want. So, there's Monbiot's little problem. How do you stifle debate and still claim the scientific moral high ground.

What you do is to firstly point out that several well known historical figures challenged the accepted wisdom of their time. The accepted wisdom of our time, according to Monbiot's apocryphal gospel, being that man is to blame for global warming. So, challenging the accepted theory is good.

Well, err...no. The technique employed here is to rubbish Durkin, and by association anybody else who challenges Monbiot's views. So, he equates Durkin, and all other sceptics, with some zany Minister of Health in South Africa who believes you can cure AIDS with magic potions. Which merely proves, pretty much generally I suspect, that African governments are composed of self-aggrandising, self-enriching morons. It adds absolutely nothing to the scientific debate regarding global warming. This is literary sleight of hand, not scientific rigour.

He continues by stating that the main premise of the programme was that global warming is caused by sunspot activity in one way or the other, and that these theories do not fit the known facts. Cue another little literary deception. This was not the main exposition of the programme. Solar activity was certainly put forward as a more probable candidate than man-made CO² emissions, but it was not the main premise of the programme.

If anything, the idea which was given the greatest weight was that the science had been hijacked for political purposes. This of course is what Monbiot is doing. Having a hatred for western capitalist industrialism, he eagerly espouses any idea that will help his cause. If I was to use his methods, I would now list some of the crackpot schemes in which Monbiot has been involved. I won't, although they are easy enough to discover. I do wonder though just which individual has been editing the Monbiot Wiki entry with text lifted straight from the self-publicising Monbiot website.

Monbiot goes on to point out that some of the detailed ideas put forward by Durkin have subsequently been challenged. So they should be. That is the way that the scientific method progresses. However, the green religionists should realise that the reverse also holds true. That challenges to the man-induced global warming theory are just as valid.

The article continues with yet more literary jiggery-pokery. He invokes other, almost certain, items of quackery, and invites us to believe that the sceptical stance on global warming is analogous. His list includes 9/11 conspiracy theories, MMR vaccine and autism, homeopathy and others.

So what? These have nothing to do with global warming. The history of science is littered with ideas which have been disproved. Far more than with those that have been proved correct. Current orthodoxies are forever being overthrown. These are weasel words being employed by Monbiot to make his own political point. You could just as easily list other ideas that were greeted as heresy at the time and which have since been incorporated into the orthodoxy. It would prove nothing.

He proposes also that the programme was cherry-picking facts in order to make its point. This accusation is just as easily applied to Monbiot and his fellow-travellers. They ignore the bits they don't like, particularly previous warming and cooling episodes in the earth's history which refuse to reconcile themselves with the recent rise in man-made CO² emissions.

He finishes by rubbishing Channel 4 in general and its approach to science in particular. His accusation being that they seek controversy for its own sake. So they should. It is only by having all the facts in the open that debate is possible. Controversy, not burning disbelievers at the stake, is what freedom of though is all about. It is what moves humanity onward.

After examining the literary subterfuge which Monbiot employs to stifle debate, his sneering comment that Ch 4 cannot tell the difference between a clipping from the Daily Mail and a peer-reviewed scientific paper is more than just a little hollow. The article is intellectually dishonest. It employs sneaky methods to denigrate by association. Monbiot is most definitely not a scientist, nor does he seem able to construct a rational argument.