Topic that's for the birds

I live in the Severn Valley, near Slimbridge and within walking distance of the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust, whence Berwick swans traditionally migrate in winter from their summer breeding grounds in Siberia. Right on cue, at the start on the Copenhagen conference on climate change, it was announced that a record number of swans had arrived, heralding a cold winter. It takes some imagination to plan such a conference, anticipating attendance of up to 20,000 in a Scandinavian country with limited land access in the middle of winter at a time of the least daylight! A further leap of expectation was that anyone with a scintilla of knowledge of the Chinese government would assume it would accept outsiders auditing China’s carbon emissions.

Two other issues may be considered particularly unworkable. Firstly, the prospect of a legally binding treaty on carbon emissions is, surely, plain silly. How would this be enforced? Secondly, whoever thought that a mea culpa stance by developed countries would not have developing countries seeking punitive compensation, and to what end? Would the Ganges delta be turned into a huge Asian version of Holland? Developed countries have no money to pay the bills anyway. I have spent my career assessing and solving applied scientific problems and then selling solutions and innovation to often sceptical clients. I find so many problems with the anthropogenic warming theories that it is difficult to know where to start.

Climate scientists are a relatively new species, who only 30 years ago were predicting severe global cooling and, curiously, the resulting same set of weather extremes as now attributed to warming. From this geological contradiction flows the strange assumption that we are living in a benign climate period such that a variation in global temperature of ±2°C would be catastrophic, even though history shows that humans have prospered in warmer periods.

The next difficulty is that the promoters of the theory never concede any previous claims as erroneous, even though they may be comprehensively opposed by experts, such as on the rise in sea levels, the spread of malaria, or the loss of snow on Mount Kilimanjaro. Yet conversely, an indication of the scant knowledge of the deep oceans, where 85% of volcanoes are located, was demonstrated by the recent discovery of 5,000 living species. Further, after we are told that "everyone knows" that the catastrophe scenario is proven, humans can actually control the average rise in world temperatures to a limit of +2°C, or better still, +1.5°C! At this point, I submit, alignment with reality is completely lost.

Why do so many eminent, mostly academic, scientists support catastrophy theories? I do not think the answers are too difficult. Most scientists who receive high honours do so for achievements in a very narrow sphere – necessarily so for the advancement of the subject. Although they may talk plausibly on wider issues, the mindset is rarely amenable to practical systems design or holistic thinking. Furthermore, the promotion of applied science in a commercial context implies a personal financial risk which has not yet been faced by academics promoting extreme anthropogenic warming.

There seems to be a quite extraordinary faith in the power of computer modelling, which, in this instance, is being applied to a "chaotic" system. In reality, computers do as they are told, and when the outcome is erroneous it is invariably due to faulty input or specifications, to the regular chagrin of systems designers.

Another important issue relates to the strident hyperbole broadcast on the BBC by those such as the South African, Sir David King, former chemistry lecturer at the University of East Anglia (home of the infamous leaked emails), and former World Bank economist Lord Stern. They seem to have no idea that if a concept is not sold first time round it is extremely difficult to recover the situation.

The key is to be straight with the public and spell out the real changes to our lifestyles, implicit in the totally notional reductions in carbon emissions bandied about by the like of Messers Brown and Sarkozy. "Should it be 20% by 2020, Gordon? Oh no, 30%, Nicolas."

There is simply no form of sustainable energy available yet to meet the draconian targets. A splendid book on sustainable energy by Professor David MacKay (from an old East Anglian university of which I am an alumnus) analyses the options in a manner similar to techniques we used to assess alternative industrial and operational systems. It is most instructive. If the debate is transferred from the negative to the positive, surely most people would agree that the availability of fossil fuels for energy, and many of the planet’s resources, is finite – aside from the pollution of the environment and destruction of our fellow species. We therefore have to find a realistic scale of practical alternative energies as a matter of urgency.

I have a very simple solution. Let us tell the "warmist" professors that we accept their insistence that "the science is proven" and "everyone knows the arguments are conclusive". Then there is no more need for continued funding of research on the subject – not a penny more. All the funds would be transferred to engineers and applied scientists in the real world to produce practical alternatives to the burning of fossil fuels, which would also create a more pleasant environment. Such an exciting and positive course to pursue, as distinct from the doom and gloom scenarios.

Meanwhile, as I finish this piece, I look out through my window over a snow-covered landscape and watch the swans of Slimbridge pass by. They seem to know rather more about the weather than the comedians at the Met Office.