DANGEROUS DENIAL

Faced with a man-made problem, the consequences of which could, and almost certainly will be, devastating, it's tempting to stick your fingers in your ears and go, "La, la, la, la, I can't hear you!"

What's interesting is that a minority of scientists are trying to get us all to do this.

Now, we know from the Lenchwick Windfarm fuss, and the behaviour of VVASP, that being a scientist doesn't automatically mean that you'll take an objective, rational position based on quantifiable evidence. Some people with scientific backgrounds do the exact opposite, digging up and publicising so-called "facts" which they know to be untrue.

Maybe that's just human nature.

But there really is no excuse for the sort of "scientist" who tries to persuade us all that man-made climate change isn't happening. That's extremely dangerous, irresponsible and morally unforgiveable behaviour.

Take the letter in last week's Evesham Journal. There's little point in going into every statement the author made, so we'll just focus on one of them - the one intended falsely to reassure that soft, emotional part of us that feels rather sorry for polar bears.

Polar bears, of course, have come to be rather symbolic of the plight of the natural world in the face of mankind's thoughtlessness. But according to Dr Tom Dine, writing in the Journal, we all seem to be getting worried about nothing.

Dr Dine tells us that the polar bear population had fallen to around 5,000 in the 1960s. It now stands at around 25,000. So - where's all this global warming, then?

Superficially, the good doctor's facts are true. Thanks to hunting, the polar bear population was in a parlous state in the 1960s. So a hunting ban was implemented in 1973. And the polar bear population quickly began to recover.

Note - nothing as yet about climate change. The near-collapse of the polar bear population, and its subsequent recovery, had nothing whatever to do with climate and everything to do with another sort of despicable human activity followed by a sensible, long overdue international agreement (sound familiar?).

So why has the International Union for Conservation of Nature warned that, "If climatic trends continue, polar bears may become extirpated from most of their range within 100 years", noting that eight out of 19 subpopulations of polar bears are declining and only one increasing (figures far worse than they were four years ago)? Why has the US Department of the Interior listed polar bears as a Threatened Species? Why has Russia listed the polar bear as a 'species of concern'? Why is the US Fish and Wildlife Service worried about the declining polar bear population in Canada's Hudson Bay? Are they all part of some crazy conspiracy?

The reason is well known to us all. As the polar ice cap melts at a rate faster than that predicted by scientists, the polar bear's natural environment is vanishing. And that IS a result of climate change.

What Dr Dine has done is gathered up some statistics and brazenly bandied them about without bothering to put them in context. This is the classic scientific approach to pulling the wool over everybody's eyes.

Or, to put it another way, a few scientists, rejecting the consensus of their peers, are trying to tell us that the obvious is something else. There can't be such thing as climate change because there are more polar bears in the world now than there were forty years ago.

That argument can only be sustained if you don't tell the whole story. And that's the problem with climate change deniers (and anti-windfarm loons). They'll selectively pick a couple of bits of information and carefully avoid letting you know the rest. Just to bolster their silly, and horrifically misguided, views.

So ... who's betting on a white Christmas? You know, the sort we used to get all the time?

Or are our warmer, wetter winters just another example of climate change not happening?

Get real. We're in trouble. And so are the polar bears.

Whatever you do, don't listen to those "scientists" who keep trying to tell you otherwise.