If you read Dave Walker’s Cartoon Blog you may have seen that he picked up on my report of this weeks lent lecture with an appropriate cartoon. What is also interesting is that if you look at the comments on his posting, he’s also attracted attention from a North American group who maintain that there isn’t any climate change, going for a bit of free publicity.

I had a read through their site, which was really quite interesting, particularly in the context of some of the things that Professor James said on Wednesday night.

As I’m not a climate specialist, I’m not going to try and either back Professor James, or try and debunk the science put forward by this group. If you are at all concerned I’d suggest that you run the names of the people in the group listed on this page through Google, and see what you find.

What I will say is that the one thought that strikes me over the whole thing, is a comparison of what would happen if we believed one group over the other and subsequently discovered that they were wrong.

Say we believed Professor James and the ‘Climate Change is happening’ group, and they turn out to be wrong, true you wouldn’t be able to get strawberries at Christmas, but ultimately we’d all be living in a less polluted environment. The effects would primarily seem to be economic.

However, look at it the other way. What if we believe the ‘There is no Climate Change’ lobby, and they are wrong. Say they are wrong and the levels of pollution that are being produced are sending us towards a climate change catastrophe. Take a look at the heat wave that occurred in France a couple of years ago was cited as the cause for thousands of deaths. Consider that on a global scale. If we mess up this planet, there is nowhere else that we can go – certainly no other planets in the solar system that could sustain life. This is it, if we mess this planet up, we’re all dead. I guess it depends how much of a gambler you are, but to be honest I’m not a gambler, and I don’t see that there is much of a choice.