Rebuttal of Nigel Lawson's Case

At a recent session of the All-Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group, the speaker, Lester Brown, author of Plan B: 3.0, Mobilising to Save Civilisation, had a key message - that scientific findings have not found their way into political thinking. The truth of this could not be more sharply revealed than by Nigel Lawson's book An Appeal to Reason. In this book, he single-handedly, and inconsistently, tries to debunk a growing, international scientific body of evidence about the existence, and likely impacts of climate change.

A non-scientist and politician, Lawson asserts with great confidence that: "There is, indeed, a real question about the extent to which modern global warming science is genuine science at all", page 6.

Scientists have responded to this insult quite coolly. For example, Peter Stott, from the Met Office Hadley Centre in a letter to The Guardian, Tuesday, 6th May 2008, wrote in response to Lawson: "One simple result stands out from the data. Readings taken from land stations, the decks of ships and records of sea surface temperatures all show a long-term warming trend. Other observations, such as the retreating Arctic ice, demonstrate the effects of this human-induced warming. The message the data is telling us is very clear."

Even the shadow spokesperson for the Conservative Party, Peter Ainsworth, has distanced himself and the party from Lawson's commentary.

As to mitigating against the risks of catastrophic climate change, or adaptation to it, Lawson draws heavily on the prevailing economic view that future generations will be richer than we are. As a result, he claims, we should leave any potential costly adjustments to them because they will be better able to afford them... If they still have a choice of course. The gathering evidence on climate feedback loops for example is indicating, with ever-increasing certainty, that beyond certain tipping points, no amount of cash thrown at the problem will have any effect at all.

This book should be taken seriously by scientists and others for the fact that a lot of people are likely to read it and may give it credence, even though it is ill-argued and subjective (on the heat wave in Europe in 2003, during which thousands of people died from heat stress, Lawson notes: "As it happens, I spent the summer of 2003 in south-west France myself, and found it perfectly tolerable", page 34). People are afraid of climate change, but they are also afraid of what it will mean for their lives if we are to take serious action to avoid the worst effects. This populist book will serve to allay these fears and gather support for a business-as-usual approach. Those serious about protecting our civilisation and life on earth, scientists especially, cannot allow Lawson to go unchallenged.