What has science got to do with it?

It’s minus two degrees centrigrade and the windchill gets into your bones, severally cutting your ability to walk the streets. One could do with some global warming here. As the biggest talking shop in the world begins its 12-day conference in Copenhagen, one is left wondering whether the scientists have got it right this time. We are talking of a change of less than a tenth of a degree every year and some two degree change over a century.

Your yearly difference in temperature is dozens of degrees. Would two degrees make a catastrophic difference, even if it were true. Ultimately, science will have to solve that issue, but many of the thousands of delegates, non-governmental organisations, politicians and scientists gathered in this town are all looking for a free lunch. Let the West pay for the party which all the countries can enjoy. You owe it to us, because we are poor and you are polluters.

And your pollution is going to make the seas rise several metres and inundate all of us. Never mind the sceptics who say that much of your science is based on computer modeling, and that in the past ten years, the Earth has actually not warmed. We will ignore them because too much money is at stake. Unprecedented amounts. We are talking about hundreds of billions of dollars with ease. After all, did you not rescue your companies when they were going under? Why not do the same for the poor of the world?

The crux of the issue is whether human beings are responsible for the change. If not, then there’s not much we can do. What should tell us about that issue is science. But science does not appear to be the standard here, as politicians and activists have taken over the debate. Scientists, even those who are generally friendly towards the climate change rhetoric are ignored, when they come up with facts which do not support the human link to global warming. I am talking about Richard Armstrong, a glaciologist with Colorado University who studied 3,500 glaciers in Nepal and came to the conclusion that no glaciers above the zero degree isotherm line were melting. None. He said he did not know of any scientific study that supported a complete vanishing of glaciers in the Himalayas within this century.

But the intergovernmental panel on climate change said that if the Earth keeps on heating at the current rate, glaciers in Himalayas would vanish by 1935. Armstrong is not a climate sceptic. In fact, he is a strong supporter of Al Gore, for whom he had done studies on glaciers. But the World Bank which financed Armstrong’s study sought to distance itself from it, calling it one of many studies into glaciers.

In Copenhagen, the Nepalese minister of environment said the glaciers in Nepal were vanishing and that that would affect the life of millions of poor citizens of his country, unless the West steps in with money. What has science got to do with that? Or with the UN climate change conference? There’s 12 days to go and we would hopefully get to know.