However, the wheelchair-bound Cambridge University physicist who has
a
crippling muscle disease said this would require spaceships using
technology similar to the "warp drives" of TV science fiction show
"Star Trek".
The Ice Cream Man Cometh
Tuesday 4 December 2007 11:00-11:30 (Radio 4 FM)
A Danish Global Warming sceptic speaking on this
programme claimed that while many would die from drought, famine and
overheating, fewer people would die of cold; so we should live with
global warming and stick with economic growth as the vital priority.
This is hogwash.
- Global warming brings problems of local and
global consequence to the poles as well as to the tropics.
- Nobody dies of cold at the moment unless
they are living in an environment to which they are not suited,
biologically or economically. If that is the case, they should not be
there in the first place and the attrition rate is acceptable.
- What we are seeking to avoid is a climate
change which would force millions or billions of people to move, as our
modern politically structured world is not ready to cope with unlimited
migration. This is because of the numbers involved.
- Climate changes in the past, which drove
evolution, involved global numbers a fraction of the population of a
single small country of today's world, where we have a problem just
coping with legal, economic migrants and asylum seekers.
In the past, Nature was in charge. Now, we are
consciously responsible. That is the scientific fact and the religious
truth as well. The absurd misunderstanding of the parable of the Garden
of Eden (not to mention the entire New Testament), by scientists and
theologians alike, has really got to be put to bed. It is getting
beyond a joke. On the other hand, climate change is hard to control
unless we can stop global population growth. If we do not, Nature will
do it for us. The Universe is perfectly self-designing.