I am an atheist about God, but an agnostic about “climate change”, that is to say about potentially catastrophic climate change which is being caused by Man and must be stopped by Man.  (The climate always changes.  I know of nobody who doubts this.) I genuinely don’t know, and would genuinely like to.  All the stuff I hear is hearsay.  The only stuff that convinces me is when each side says of the other: They would say that wouldn’t they? People like Perry de Havilland object to “We Must Act Now” not because of the science, or not only because of the science, but because they don’t like what would then have to be done about it.  As don’t I.

But the truth has nothing to do with whether it is likable.  Sexually transmitted diseases are horrible.  They are also a reality.

Change of tack to another hobby horse of mine here, by way of further illustration: I think that Islam itself is a huge problem for the rest of the world, rather than merely “Islamic extremism”.  To put it another way, I think that Islam itself is “extreme”.  If this is true, it is a horrible truth, because it makes the “war on terror” about a thousand times more difficult than it would be otherwise, because what it says is that separating the “Islamic extremists” from the regular believers in Islam, in the usual counter-insurgency way, is going to be extremely difficult.  Islam itself will continue to crank out terrorists, indefinitely, until Islam itself is somehow changed in a big way.  Tough.  The truth doesn’t care what you think of it.  And if We really Must Act Now about “climate change”, then the fact that this will place the entire world under the thumb of disgusting environmentalist scum World Governors is just one of those things.  If that is the truth, then we will either ruled by Green Scum (as the late Chris R. Tame used to call them), or we will fry and die.  The truth doesn’t care what you think of it.

Interestingly, I heard a grizzled old greeny on the telly actually make this point about the ideological nature of the anti-We-Must-Act-Now-ers, a few nights ago.  I can’t recall his name, but in connection with this latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, he said that the objections to the We Must Act Now case were “ideologically driven” rather than “science driven”.  This was an interesting switch of tack.  Until recently, the WMAN-ers have dismissed anti-WMAN-ers, in my hearing anyway, as either corrupt or intimidated: either bought or bullied into submission by the big oil companies.  Now the WMAN-ers are, it would appear, realising that they are fighting at the very least an ideological battle rather than a mere PR (i.e. doomed) campaign.  Very wise of them.  They are.  But, their purpose in conceding that the anti-WMAN-ers mean what they say, is to argue that they mean what they say because they want to, rather than because the science justifies it.  The anti-WMAN-ers are “ideological” as in wrong.  And the WMAN-ers are also, a lot of them, very “ideological” indeed, in my opinion.

Meanwhile, I have been googling about the Medieval Warm Period, or “Anomaly” as the WMAN-ers call it, referred to in Perry de Havilland’s Samizdata piece.  (He also links to this press release.) The WMAN-ers apparently explain this as a local, north Atlantic phenomenon.  Which would suggest that this bit towards the end is quite important:

Adhikari and Kumon (2001) in investigating sediments in Lake Nakatsuna in central Japan have verified there the existence of both the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age.

Because it would suggest that the Medieval Warm Period/Anomaly was not quite so local after all.

But what do I know?  I merely mention this in order to poke the nest with a stick, as it were.  I hope for comments, that is to say.

Talking of which, thanks for all the recent comments here.  Much appreciated.  But, I realise that comments on new subjects here take their time to accumulate.  You have to prove that you are genuinely interested in a subject before people bother to correct you on the subject, or for that matter for interested parties even to learn that you are interested.

One thing though.  Comments merely repeating that the WMAN-ers are indeed ideologically driven, wrong, and scum, will be superfluous to requirements here, i.e. to my requirements.  I already know that a lot of WMAN-ers are ideologically driven, and that a lot of the anti-WMAN-ers think that they are all ideologically driven, and accordingly also all wrong, and all scum.  No need to tell me this again.  By all means agree about such insults along these lines amongst yourselves, but count me out.  Unless you can back them up with some science, cogent thoughts about the science, links to science etc.  Then you will have my attention.