Prince Charles hits back at global warming sceptics after 'Climategate' scandal
By David Derbyshire
Last updated at 7:50 AM on 05th February 2010
Dismayed: Prince Charles
Prince Charles dismissed critics of climate change science yesterday.
He said evidence of long-term and potentially-irreversible effects was utterly overwhelming, adding: 'This isn't an opinion - it is a fact.'
In a bullish speech, the prince joined the row over whether false claims by some experts compromise the case for global warming.
He said: 'I have watched with growing dismay and alarm the glee with which the sceptics have leapt upon the recent news stories that question the science that climate change is man-made and suggesting it is nothing more than a myth.
'Well, if it is but a myth, and the global scientific community is involved in some sort of conspiracy, why is it then that around the globe sea levels are more than six inches higher than they were 100 years ago?
'It is also a fact that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are 40 per cent higher now than they were before the industrial revolution.'
Prince Charles made the comments on a visit to Manchester's Museum of Science and Industry where he was launching a campaign to help people lead more environmentally sustainable lives.
He said: 'To those who seek to persuade us that there is no such thing as climate change, in the face of the now overwhelming peer-reviewed scientific evidence, I would ask just one question - are you prepared to take the risk of being wrong?'
Charles said the planet's poorest would suffer 'first and worst' if the problem was not tackled.
He added: 'I don't know about you, ladies and gentlemen, but I happen to mind very much about the sort of world in which my children and grandchildren - and yours - will be living.
'For all of them, I believe we have a great responsibility to do the right thing by them and so I, for one, am not prepared to play some sort of Russian roulette with their futures.'
According to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2007 report, sea levels have risen by around seven inches since the end of the 19th century.
The figure, which first appeared in a 1997 study, is the average of 23 tidal gauges from around the world.
The same UN report says the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air has gone up from 270 parts per million in 1850 to around 380 ppm today - a rise of around 40 per cent.
However, several claims made by the IPCC have come under attack in recent weeks.
Two weeks ago, the chairman of the body, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, was forced to make a humiliating apology after wrongly claiming in an influential 2007 report that the Himalayan glaciers could vanish within 25 years.
The same report used a student's essay and an article from a climbing magazine to make claims about reductions in ice on mountains.
And to add to its embarrassment, the IPCC has also been found to have used data that had nothing to do with global warming to warn of looming catastrophe in the Amazon.
Charles travelled to Manchester from Preston, and back to Crewe, on a royal train pulled by the Tornado - a steam engine built two years ago from a 1948 design.
The engine generates around 90 times more carbon dioxide per mile than a typical family car.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1248513/Prince-Charles-hits-climate-change-sceptics-scientist-calls-critics-provide-evidence-views.html##ixzz0ef1y3e6i
No comments:
Post a Comment