APOCALYPTIC SCIENCE

Sermon on the Mount a global scare too far (George Kerevan, The Scotsman, March 17th, 2005)

Spring arrived this week with gentle hope and lots of daffodils. As I skipped along the road to The Scotsman, I felt euphoric at the turn of the seasons and the bounty of Mother Nature. Then I got to the local paper shop.

Emblazoned on the front pages were pictures of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, minus its iconic halo of pristine snow. The headlines screamed that these dramatic photos were a grim warning of the end of the world through human-induced global warming. The leaders of the G8 countries, about to meet in Scotland, were enjoined to put action on climate change at the top of their agenda before more naked Kilimanjaros appeared.

The apocalyptic tone was set for the rest of the week. The BBC ran hours on the notion that a giant volcano under Yellowstone Park in America was about to destroy the human race: "This is a true story; it just hasn’t happened yet."

Why is my enjoyment of spring being interrupted with lurid tales of the end of the world?

The story begins back in 1980. Before then, science was dominated by something called uniformitarianism, meaning the evolution of the Earth and its biosphere was a long, slow process in which change was microscopic yet relentless. Then, in 1980, an American scientist called Luis Alvarez came up with the theory that the dinosaurs might have been wiped out in one fell swoop by a gigantic asteroid. Alvarez spawned a new generation of young scientists who, eager for research grants, quickly dumped uniformitarianism in favour of catastrophism.

This is the notion that the Earth has been subject to repeated, instantaneous makeovers courtesy of falling rocks, Hollywood-sized volcanoes, or - in its latest incarnation - the perfidious, climate-wrecking activities of multinational capitalism led by George Bush. Catastrophism is the new scientific consensus, and reject it at your reputational peril.

Of course, humans like a dramatic narrative and it’s more fun to think that TRex was killed off in an afternoon than pooped as a species by old age. Besides, those graphic photographs of Mount Kilimanjaro are definitely a smoking gun as regards global warming, aren’t they?

Well, actually, no. Kilimanjaro is five times higher than Ben Nevis. At an altitude of nearly three miles, it is always below zero in temperature. The snow is disappearing on Kilimanjaro, but not primarily because of so-called global warming, and very few reputable scientists have ever claimed otherwise. In other words, the Guardian front page on Monday was a complete distortion of the truth.

Thus Kilamanjaro and Yellowstone join The Great Barrier Reef, The Maldives and The Arctic as prime targets of Mother Nature’s vengeful and selective campaign to punish global capitalism by wiping out exotic Western tourist destinations. You are hereby formally warned to give DisneyWorld a pass until further notice.