To England, where Rishi is combatting global warming by limiting degrees.
As the planet records its hottest week in the post-industrial period, and with a 1.5C temperature rise
baked in before the next World Cup, a merrie band of robbing hoods continues to berate the data.
The sceptics defy climate change armed only with memories of the heatwave of ’76. In their
vanguard are Rees-Mogg and Hartley-Brewer, so dim they named them twice, who push back
against scientific consensus on the grounds that it’s better to betray humanity, than be told
something by an expert.
Disbelievers argue that because science is never completely fixed, it must be doubted, and when this
attracts scorn, they use it as evidence that they are right. It’s called Galileo Syndrome, a grim malady
that feasts on the witless. One symptom that you’ve got it, is if you’re Toby Young.
Ninety-nine per cent of scientists agree that human activity is making the planet perilous for the 8
billion people who live on it, yet for reasons as absurd as petrochemical lobbying, or as mundane as
not wanting to give up half-term skiing, the deniers demand to know why we’re ignoring the one per
cent.
Science agrees broadly about a lot of theories – like gravity, black holes, or an expanding universe –
but we never hear serial byelection deposit-loser Richard Tice demanding we challenge the Big Bang.
This is because Britain’s media and political landscape are so ruined that pedalling untruths
advances, rather than sinks, your career.
How else to make sense of Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson, for whom words are a second
language, who this week claimed that sunshine is being ‘weaponised’? While she clearly recognises
that hackneyed hysteria is all that stands between her current career and a livelihood scavenging
compost heaps, the fact that a temperature rise of two degrees will push 3 billion people into
‘chronic water scarcity’ is beyond her grasp.
While smug, lying, Atlantic islands refuse to use their global influence to effect urgent change, low
lying Pacific ones stand to lose everything. When that happens there’ll be a terrible reckoning for
the people who not only refused to do anything to prevent it but also rejected the case that there
was anything to do.
Unless of course, we aren’t being sceptical enough. Perhaps the ice sheets will melt, and the water
will just fall off the edge of the earth instead.