Saturday, December 12, 2009

Oh, this is painfully embarrassing. Lord Monckton talks to a Greenpeace campaigner.

I've had this experience myself - you know, talking to an earnest and well meaning environmentalist who simply hasn't got a clue.

I am always struck though by the inverse relationship these people exhibit between their passionate beliefs about nature and their actual knowledge of it.

One of the reasons I am a sceptic (at the moment) about anthropogenic climate change is that I have some appreciation of how variable the climate has been over just the last 10,000 years.

I'm also acutely aware of what we don't know.

Those shallow idiots who laughed at Donald Rumsfeld's keenly insightful warning about the limits of our knowledge and understanding need to themselves understand that when it comes to our planet's climate there are indeed not only known unknowns, but also unknown unknowns.

You can follow Tom Lewis on Twitter here http://twitter.com/tomllewis

Posted via email from Garth's posterous

2 comments:

Brentbo said...

Yes, it was painful to watch. What I thought was interesting was that she didn't retreat into name calling. She strikes me as a person that could easily change her mind.

Garth Godsman said...

G'day mate. Good point. These peple do really mean well by and large and we should be able to at least discuss things like civilised adults.