Not so, as I hope to show on this page, but if I cannot convince you, that is a price I am prepared to pay for not making obeisance to highly quesionable if not downright dangerous posits just to chase votes.
There are lots of good reasons for encouraging sensible and economical use of resources. Sending waste to landfill is wasteful, costly and unsightly. Overdependence on coal, oil and gas where alternatives are available is undesirable because it makes us reliant on unstable regimes and compromises our foreign policy. For these and other reasons, I share a fair amount of common ground with the "green" agenda. I have upset some of my colleagues on the issue of wind turbines, because, in the right landscapes, I rather like them, though I cannot see them making much impact on our core energy needs.
Where I part company with the "green" lobby is on the notion that carbon dioxide is a "threat". Whilst I keep an open mind on the subject, the "evidence" so far advanced by bodies like IPCC does not stack up for me against the accumulated body of scientific background knowledge that I have grown up with. Furthermore, if I am right, the damage that will be done to the legitimate and sensible "green" movement by the backlash when the AGW bubble bursts is, in my view, a real threat, whereas carbon dioxide is not.
Here, very briefly, is my reasoning on carbon dioxide's place in the scheme of things.
| Links: | AGW links | Climate Change - links to Scientific Sites - mostly |