A Deeply Disappointing Response

Mr Weldon comments: ‘I feel Mr Hitchens is rather stubborn, if not to say obtuse, on the issue. Would he like to venture a serious and sober response to the recent UN report? Or even if he remains unconvinced on the 'man-made' arguments, is he still maintaining nothing is happening? And nothing needs to be done?’.

 

This is typical of the zealots. They pay no attention to what their opponents actually say. Take, for instance ‘is he (me) still maintaining nothing is happening? ‘

 

And then look at what I wrote: ‘Nobody denies that the climate changes. It’s a proven fact that it has done many times. The question is whether it is changing as dramatically as the zealots predict, and whether this is caused by human activity.’

 

Had he read the article, he would know the answer to the question he asks. In what way am I being 'stubborn' or 'obtuse'? Am I refusing to accept or act on demonstrable facts, or changing the subject to avoid engaging with it? Absolutely not. That is the whole point of the discussion.

 

I’d add that there is nothing unserious or unsober about my response to all these many reports, which are distinguished more for quantity than for quality, and substitute noisy assertion and alarmist predictions for careful testable science. I insist on proof from those who make such claims, and I do not find it . When, or rather if,  I do, then I shall change my view, as one must. But I, and an increasing number of others, will not be bullied into changing our minds by electronic mob rule. An ounce, nay a grain, of testable, objective proof is worth a thousand tons (and who knows how many decibels) of assertions that ‘the majority is against you’.

 

The majority has been against me over and over again. The majority jeered at me in the 1970s when I took up bicycling as a means of transport. Now I can hardly move on the streets of London for the thousands of cyclists. The majority jeered at me when I favoured railways over roads and said the Beeching report was a mistake. Now everyone recognises that it was. Almost everyone I knew told me I was wrong to oppose railway privatisation. Now hardly any informed person defends it.  My whole milieu was against nuclear deterrence and NATO in the days when the USSR was an evil empire – I was for them. After we won the Cold WAr, my view became conventional wisdom. Everyone told me that Anthony Blair was wonderful, I disagreed. Now look at him. The majority favoured the Iraq, Afghan and Libyan interventions. I was against them. Now they're all against them. People who now complain about the release of alleged IRA bombers angrily derided me for opposing the agreement which led to this. I was similarly derided for opposing the Euro by people who now act as if they never favoured it, and for saying that the Tory Party had betrayed its supporters, was finished and could not win the 2010 election.  Well?

On the other hand I unreservedly admit that I was wholly wrong during the many years when I accepted the arguments of the Marxist, atheist left, and I regret and apologise for the many wicked things I did and said under the influence of those opinions.

I could go on. But I won’t. I have learned that it is never morally or intellectually safe to swim with the stream, and try not to do so unless I have found good reasons of my own for being on that side. Doing something only because everyone else does it is always a foolish thing to do.

 

As to whether anything ‘needs to be done’ about any changes in the climate, Lord Lawson is quite eloquent on this, and says that practical measures to deal with the effects are more rational than doomed attempts to prevent it from happening, which may be based on serious misreadings anyway. I’m inclined to agree with him. Nobody opposes rational measures to deal with measurable threats.  But Mr Weldon somehow manages to suggest that I do this.

 

If this is his attitude to evidence, I am not surprised that he is on the other side. It was to try to lift the discussion above this dismal level that I wrote my article. It is dispiriting to receive such a lame, ungenerous and unresponsive response.