Description
The iconography of climate disaster has now acquired
an almost religious inflexibility. Just as the image of the Crucifixion
is inseparable from Christian devotions, the contemplation of planetary
ruin is invariably attended by a set of familiar visual clichés. You’ll
get glaciers slumping into the sea, polar bears looking glum, chimney
stacks belching smoke, and a passenger jet shimmying into the sky
through a quiver of exhaust fumes. All were present, at one time or
another, in Earth: the Climate Wars, which you might take as a marker of
its confessional orthodoxy. But it began with a dummy punch that seemed
to suggest quite the opposite.
Episode 2 – Fightback
Dr Iain Stewart investigates the counter attack that
was launched by the global warming sceptics in the 1990s. At the start
of the 1990s it seemed the world was united. At the Rio Earth summit the
world signed up to a programme of action to start tackling climate
change. Even George Bush was there. But the consensus didn’t last.Iain
examines the scientific arguments that developed as the global warming
sceptics took on the climate change consensus. The sceptics attacked
almost everything that scientists held to be true. They argued that the
planet wasn’t warming up, that even if it was it was nothing unusual,
and certainly whatever was happening to the climate was nothing to do
with human emissions of greenhouse gases.Iain interviews some of the key
global warming sceptics, and discovers how their positions have changed
over time.
Tags
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