The climate change deniers have won

Scientists continue to warn us about global warming, but most of us have a vested interest in not wanting to think about it.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science came as close as such a respectable institution can to screaming an alarm last week. "As scientists, it is not our role to tell people what they should do," it said as it began one of those sentences that you know will build to a "but". "But human-caused climate risks abrupt, unpredictable and potentially irreversible changes."

In other words, the most distinguished scientists from the country with the world's pre-eminent educational institutions were trying to shake humanity out of its complacency. Why weren't their warnings leading the news?

In one sense, the association's appeal was not new. The Royal Society, the Royal Institution, Nasa, the US National Academy of Sciences, the US Geological Survey, the IPCC and the national science bodies of 30 or so other countries have said that man-made climate change is on the march. A survey of 2,000 peer-reviewed papers on global warming published in the last 20 years found that 97% said that humans were causing it.

When the glib talk about the "scientific debate on global warming", they either don't know or will not accept that there is no scientific debate. The suggestion first made by Eugene F Stoermer that the planet has moved from the Holocene, which began at the end of the last ice age, to the manmade Anthropocene, in which we now live, is everywhere gaining support. Man-made global warming and the man-made mass extinction of species define this hot, bloody and (let us hope) brief epoch in the world's history.

If global warming is not new, it is urgent: a subject that should never be far from our thoughts. Yet within 24 hours of the American association's warning the British government's budget confirmed that it no longer wanted to fight it.

David Cameron, who once promised that if you voted blue you would go green, now appoints Owen Paterson, a man who is not just ignorant of environmental science but proud of his ignorance, as his environment secretary. George Osborne, who once promised that his Treasury would be "at the heart of this historic fight against climate change", now gives billions in tax concessions to the oil and gas industry, cuts the funds for onshore wind farms and strips the Green Investment Bank of the ability to borrow and lend

All of which is a long way of saying that the global warming deniers have won. And please, can I have no emails from bed-wetting kidults blubbing that you can't call us "global warming deniers " because "denier" makes us sound like "Holocaust deniers", and that means you are comparing us to Nazis? The evidence for man-made global warming is as final as the evidence of Auschwitz. No other word will do.

Tempting though it is to blame cowardly politicians, the abuse comes too easily. The question remains: what turned them into cowards? Rightwing billionaires in the United States and the oil companies have spent fortunes on blocking action on climate change. A part of the answer may therefore be that conservative politicians in London, Washington and Canberra are doing their richest supporters' bidding. There's truth in the bribery hypothesis. In my own little world of journalism, I have seen rightwing hacks realise the financial potential of denial and turn from reasonable men and women into beetle-browed conspiracy theorists.

But the right is also going along with an eruption of know-nothing populism. Just as there are leftish greens, who will never accept that GM foods are safe, so an ever-growing element on the right becomes more militant as the temperature rises.

Clive Hamilton, the Australian author of Requiem for a Species, made theessential point a few years ago that climate change denial was no longer just a corporate lobbying campaign. The opponents of science would say what they said unbribed. The movement was in the grip of "cognitive dissonance", a condition first defined by Leon Festinger and his colleagues in the 1950s . They examined a cult that had attached itself to a Chicago housewife called Dorothy Martin. She convinced her followers to resign from their jobs and sell their possessions because a great flood was to engulf the earth on 21 December 1954. They would be the only survivors. Aliens in a flying saucer would swoop down and save the chosen few.

When 21 December came and went, and the Earth carried on as before, the group did not despair. Martin announced that the aliens had sent her a message saying that they had decided at the last minute not to flood the planet after all. Her followers believed her. They had given up so much for their faith that they would believe anything rather than admit their sacrifices had been pointless.

Climate change deniers are as committed. Their denial fits perfectly with their support for free market economics, opposition to state intervention and hatred of all those latte-slurping, quinoa-munching liberals, with their arrogant manners and dainty hybrid cars, who presume to tell honest men and women how to live. If they admitted they were wrong on climate change, they might have to admit that they were wrong on everything else and their whole political identity would unravel.

The politicians know too well that beyond the corporations and the cultish fanatics in their grass roots lies the great mass of people, whose influence matters most. They accept at some level that manmade climate change is happening but don't want to think about it.

I am no better than them. I could write about the environment every week. No editor would stop me. But the task feels as hopeless as arguing against growing old. Whatever you do or say, it is going to happen. How can you persuade countries to accept huge reductions in their living standards to limit (not stop) the rise in temperatures? How can you persuade the human race to put the future ahead of the present?

The American historians of science Naomi Oreskes and Eril M Conwayquoted a researcher, who was asked in the 1970s what his country's leaders said when he warned them that C02 levels would double in 50 years. "They tell me to come back in 49 years," he replied.

Most of the rest of us think like the Washington politicians of the Carter era. And most of us have no right to sneer at Dorothy Martin and her cult either. We cannot admit it, but like them, we need a miracle to save us from the floods.

Red squirrels under threat from humans and their pets, experts warn

Traffic accidents, attacks by pets and a cat-related disease account for three in five deaths over the past 10 years.Share

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Red squirrels are under growing threat from the human population and its pets in the mammals' few remaining British strongholds, wildlifeexperts have warned.

Road traffic accidents, attacks by domestic dogs and cats and a cat-related parasitic disease account for three in five deaths examined in postmortems over 10 years. On the Isle of Wight, a sixth of all fatalities can be blamed on the toxoplasma parasite.

Rat traps, rat bait poisoning and electrocution are among other human-related causes reported in a provisional paper in the open access BMC Veterinary Research. It also describes previously unrecognised diseases, including four cancers, in red squirrels, which have been under increasing pressure from greys, introduced from America in the 19th century, and squirrelpox, a virus greys can carry without symptoms.

Authors involved in the study have previously suggested that some squirrels have died from infection from the Staphylococcus aureusbacteria from the hands and skin of people leaving food out for them with the best of intentions. But there is some good news in the new study involving postmortems on 126 red squirrels from the Isle of Wight, one of the few areas with no greys, 32 from Scotland, three from Anglesey and two from Cumbria. No cases of squirrelpox were seen, although most carcasses came from areas believed free of the disease.

Vic Simpson, a co-author of the paper, who has been a vet for more than over 40 years and runs the private Wildlife Veterinary Centre in Cornwall, said: "If we keep on saying 'OK, we need more housing for more people', that means more cats, that means reduced habitat (for squirrels). There will come a point where it will just not carry red squirrels."

The toxoplasma parasite, which can also cause serious disease in humans and other species, inhabits the intestines of cats and is passed through their faeces. Squirrels are infected by foraging in infected areas such as gardens.

Helen Butler, of the Wight Squirrel Project, another author, said: "Red squirrels benefit from supplementary feeding and many people enjoy watching them in their gardens. However, care is needed in positioning feeders to reduce the risk of attack by cats and dogs and in the deployment of rat traps and rat poison."

She said the island could support about 3,000 squirrels, but last year's poor weather had helped bring about a drop in numbers.

Against 'carbon tax'.

Protesters hold placards during a rally in Sydney against 'carbon tax'. The Australian government is being criticised for taking a lax attitude towards developing a climate policy. Photograph: Greg Wood/AFP/Getty

Australia has become an "anti-climate" influence on international efforts to slow global warming after dropping close to the bottom of a ranking of the world's largest greenhouse gas emitters.

Australia's ranking on the climate change performance index fell from 51 to 57 out of 61, as the United Kingdom became the second highest ranked country behind Denmark.

The index, developed by thinktank Germanwatch and Climate Action Network Europe, was released on Monday at the start of the second week of the United Nations climate change negotiations in Warsaw, Poland.

The ranking combines five different areas covering the types and levels of emissions, renewable energy supply, trends in energy efficiency and climate policy.

The UK moved to second highest after emissions fell 15% and improvements were made in energy efficiency. Denmark led the ranking thanks to low levels of emissions and "exceptional" policies to keep emissions down.

Launching the report, Wendel Trio, director of CAN Europe, said: "We have now an Australian government that is more looking at the anti-climate policy development than in furthering the climate policy development of the previous government."

He cited Australia's attempts to repeal carbon price legislation and the change of government as the reason for its falling status.

"There are many signs where the Australian government shows it's not very keen on developing climate policy. I think it is evident at these talks. They are not sending any ministers so they're not giving it any importance."

He said Australia now had "no intention … to be in any way constructive" in Warsaw, and doubted the country would want to sign a new legally binding agreement which it is hoped will be developed in time for a key UN meeting in Paris in 2015.

Christoph Bals, policy director at Greenwatch, said between 2002 and 2011, the world's largest emitter China had been responsible for 80% of the rise in global annual emissions. But he said growth in renewable energy in China was currently outstripping growth in coal.

He said there was a possibility that sometime in the next decade, global emissions could plateau, but only if the world's countries could agree a "meaningful outcome" from climate change negotiations.