This week's meeting of the IPCC (Intergovernmental panel on climate change) to agree the summary of AR5, the fifth climate change report, reminds me of the problem with the story of the Emperor's New Clothes. I often felt like the little boy and wondered why few others could see the naked emperor. Then I realised that the Hans Christian Anderson story is a fairy tale and fairy tales always have happy endings, unlike real life.
In the story the emperor loved fancy clothes. A pair of chancers exploited this weakness by selling the emperor clothes spun form the lightest, most delicate fabric available - so fine only the most sophisticated people could see it. The emperor and his advisors did not want to be thought of as uncouth so they all 'saw' the clothes. The story of these wonderful new clothes that the emperor was having made went out through the empire. The chancers continues to 'spin' the fabric and 'weave' the clothes and were very well paid for their clothes. On the day the emperor paraded in his new clothes everyone cheered at this fantastic new clothes. Except for one little boy at the back who had been away when the story of the new clothes was going out in the land. He could not understand why the emperor was buck naked and everyone was cheering his new clothes. He said the emperor is naked and then everyone saw it.
This is the fairy tale part. In real life he would definitely be told by everyone he was unsophisticated and uncouth for not seeing the marvellous clothes. If he persisted he would be ostracised. In a violent country place he might even be lynched.
But the part of the story about the great and powerful seeing invisible clothes, that is not incredible. We only have to look at the global warming crisis, aka climate change, and its associated 'new clothes' like windmills, electric cars, bio fuels, carbon capture, even huge mirrors in space. Many chancers are selling a lot of invisible clothes. And anyone who questions the need to spend money on these 'new clothes' is pilloried and compared with holocaust deniers or others.
David Bellamy is a good example of what can happen to someone who points out the transparency of the issues. For many years David was a prominent nature correspondent on BBC and popular with viewers. But in 2004 he dared to question the climate change crisis. He lost all his work with the BBC and other organisations and was pilloried in pejorative terms by politicians and media. I remember having a discussion with a former classmate a few years later who criticised a radio programme host for interviewing Bellamy as if he were some sort of pariah who had no right to be heard. I scoffed and stated that climate change was BS and expected my classmate, also an engineer to have a similar view. But he asked me what my religion was - was I someone who believed that the Earth was a constant giver! I was shocked that an engineer would respond to the issue in religious terms, but he is employed as a lecturer in a technical college and is involved in Engineering society politics. These areas are ones where belief in this issue is more important.
The number of little boys questioning climate change is growing and many in the media are now questioning. But the emperor and advisors - world governments and EU commissioners still see the fine fabric. They are meeting in Stockholm this week to hammer out the AR5 summary for policymakers without mentioning the fact that temperatures have not risen as predicted by models. This fact undermines the whole thesis that we have to worry about CO2 emissions, that we have to accept windmills on the landscape, that we have to subsidise electric cars, that we have to burn food instead of feeding it to the hungry, that we have to come up with fantastic machines to trap CO2 or radiate sunlight into space.
The emperor will soon look very naked and the advisors very stupid. It is no wonder they are fighting hard to produce a document to perpetuate the story when it is becoming obvious to all that climate change and CO2 emissions are nothing to worry about. But maybe sometime there will be a happy ending.
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