Climate ‘heretics’ hit back

Free speech and scientific debate is being stifled by the "quasi-religious" treatment of evidence linking human behaviour to climate change, according to scientists and MEPs.

A conference in the European Parliament yesterday (4 July) said that the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports were not as definitive as widely believed.

"The quasi-religious status attributed to climate alarmism means that anyone who questions the received wisdom is treated as a heretic," said Roger Helmer, a UK Conservative MEP, who hosted the conference.

The latest IPCC report has been published in three parts this year. It concludes that there is "unequivocal" proof that human activities are pushing global temperatures up.

But speaking at the conference, Hans Labohm, a scientist invited to review the IPCC reports, said that he was one of many experts whose criticism of the findings had not been published. Fred Singer, a US climate physicist, said that there was plenty of evidence to suggest that global warming occurred naturally every 1,500 years or so.

Research published by UK research company Ipsos Mori on Tuesday (3 July) found that more than half of the adults polled thought that the risk of climate change was being exaggerated.

UK Independence Party MEP Graham Booth said that this showed politicians were wrong to describe people who question climate change as ‘deniers’.

"Galileo and Darwin were in their times described the same way," said Booth. "Just because the prevailing view is prevailing does not make it right."

Rudie Bourgeois of the IPCC said that all peer reviews were sent to a plenary meeting of IPCC members for discussion and a vote. "The plenary decides whether or not the reviews should be incorporated in the final reports," Bourgeois said. "I am not aware of negative comments being suppressed."

Free speech and scientific debate is being stifled by the "quasi-religious" treatment of evidence linking human behaviour to climate change, according to scientists and MEPs.