John Shepherd's Commentary on Life, the Universe, and Everything

Revised and extended version of a letter to the Guardian (6 Feb 2010)

Congratulations to Fred Pearce for his balanced and thoughtful articles last week on the climate email affair, and commiserations to Simon Jenkins and Simon Hoggart for having lost the plot so completely. Those who refuse to accept something despite a mass of evidence for it (like climate change and evolution) go far beyond genuine and constructive scepticism. We should call them dissenters, at least, if the term “deniers” is considered to be too insulting. And those who believe in something without a shred of evidence for it (like homeopathy or astrology) can only be called credulous. Scientists, who may spend decades making observations, and using evidence to test their theories, try hard not to fall into either of these categories. If our cars or our bodies need to be fixed, we seek out, trust and take advice only from those who are trained and qualified to do the job. Why should we not do the same when it is the future of the world in which we live that is at stake ?


On 28 Dec 2009, someone wrote to me :

“Firstly I assume that you are the John Shepherd who featured on Start the Week today, 28th December '09.

In it you mentioned that there are numerous worthy research programmes looking into methods of mitigating climate change, but that these are mostly underfunded.

Would it be possible to publicise a list of these, with a short description of what they are doing and what they hope to achieve, plus some contact details etc.? This might enable concerned citizens and the growing number of groups dedicated to this issue - and who now see that politics is probably unable to address the problem of climate change adequately - to consider fundraising for such programmes.

There are many organisations supported by voluntary public donation - but it is a prerequisite that donors must be convinced of a cause's worth. I sense that tackling climate change is a cause to which many people who currently feel helpless might gladly contribut

I am a member of 'Sustainable Frome' which is only one of a number of local groups resolved to helping to tackle climate change. Were a list of appropriate research projects to be forthcoming I would be happy to publicise it around our group and around other groups with which we have contacts.”

To which I replied…

Yes, I am that person. The ideas I was referring to are summarised in another Royal Society report, on the Low Carbon Future, which you can get at

http://royalsociety.org/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=5453

Pdf's of the slides of most of the presentations to the meeting are also available at

http://royalsociety.org/Towards-a-low-carbon-future/

Unfortunately this sort of research is very expensive: you'd be looking for hundreds of millions p.a., which is an awful lot of fundraising... As the chair of our local action group (the Hyde & District Climate Change Forum (see http://www.blissford.net/hdccf/) I think we can be more effective at the bottom up stuff (encouraging people to conserve energy). We are affiliated to the Transitions movement http://www.newforesttransition.org/ which does a lot of good things: are you part of that ??

John Shepherd