White Coat Syndrome

At some point in the last century we in the West replaced religion with science as the dominating force in our lives.

It was hardly surprising that the White Coat would replace the casssock as the symbol of knowledge and wisdom. The pace of technological change in the last 100 years has been vigorous and immediate whilst the church has remained rooted in the middle ages. Vicars could offer to pray for your sick relative, whilst scientists would set to and heal them, rejuvinate them and send them to Disneyland by supersonic jet. There really was no contest.

But then I believe we started taking our adoration of scientists too far and let our trust take the lead untempered by common sense.

CJD was a classic case when the entire Nation quaked in their boots at the nightly prognostications of "Goverment Scientists" predicting decimation of the populace from mysterious Prions, and we've since had Bird Flu, Swine Flu, Ebola Virus, MMR Autism .... and so on. Our belief in the cool logic of science is so strong that we fall for it every time.

The most recent Scientific consensus is the biggest of them all. Global Waming, Climate Change and Carbon Feet. In fact it has made such an impact on us that anybody putting their hand up to query the thinking behind it is immediately placed in the same category as flat-earthers or holocaust deniers.

Well, I would just like to make a few simple observations.

1. The only certainty about the future is that it cannot be forecast and is, er, uncertain.

2. The entire World ecosystem can be typefied in chaos theory and "the butterfly effect" which makes it impossible to predict even the weather beyond a few days in advance.

3. Global warming theory, however complex, is fundamentally taking measurements and extrapolating them for decades in advance.

4. The fact that man is screwing up the World we live in by squandering finite resources is worthy of a grant from the J. Cleese University of the Bleeding Obvious.

5. The World is desperate for cleaner, greener sources of energy which don't involve producing a long term Nuclear inheritance for our great great grand children.

My point, if any readers have managed to stay this far, is that there is obviously an urgent and massive problem of resource mismanagement but nobody should pretend to be categorical about where it is all leading. The fact that the green movement have taken the "Global Warming" banner to run with makes something of a hostage to fortune, as if it turns out that emissions are actually blocking solar warming from the atmosphere the entire campaign will be thrown out with the bathwater and the oil companies will all set their PR machines to "I told you so" mode.

Let's push for international cooperation on the conservation and use of finite fuels and resources, let's invest strongly in green "renewable" technology, let's cut into the massive areas of waste in our decadent Western Society. Let's also be aware that it would be kinder to campaign for World population growth reduction rather than sit and wait for inevitable conflicts to do that job.

But please, let's drop the steadfast clinging to one particular "Warming" scenario and just get on with the things that obviously require to be done.