Yoghurt and hot air: It’s time we took some heat out of the climate change debate
As net zero bites ever harder and amid exhortations to smear yoghurt on our windows, there may be a growing appetite for more debate about climate change and energy policy
The end is nigh, again. It always seems to be the time of year when it is too hot, too cold, too wet, dry or windy to presage anything other than impending apocalypse caused by human-induced climate breakdown. Exactly how long we have left varies from seer to seer, and the prophesies of many, including Greta Thunberg, have already been subject to upward revisions.
We can, however, be certain of at least two things: we are definitely in the last chance saloon; but if we all pull together immediately, and do all the right things, hope may not be completely lost.
The Doomsday Clock – which ostensibly measures threats to human existence such as climate change and nuclear war – has now ticked its way to just 89 seconds to midnight. Whatever this means, it doesn’t sound good. And the last time anyone read the clock was January. The current time could be one second to midnight. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
‘New normal’ threat to ‘British way of life’
It seems like ages ago now, but a few days back we had some hot weather, which sometimes happens in summer. The Met Office said extreme weather is the “new normal” for the UK, while Energy Secretary Ed Miliband warned climate change threatens Britain’s “way of life”.
Impervious to unhelpful claims that a more obvious threat to the British way of life might be unaffordable energy, Miliband said: “Whether it is extreme heat, droughts, flooding, we can see it actually with our own eyes, that it’s already happening, and we need to act.”
Warmer summers might lead us to follow the example of other developed nations with hotter climates than ours that benefit from widespread air conditioning. But climate experts warn against a positive feedback loop of greater energy use caused by an increase in air conditioning units that would cause further emissions of carbon dioxide and thereby cause global temperatures to rise even more.
Thankfully, the BBC was on hand to highlight a green solution. Scientists at Loughborough University have found that simply applying yoghurt to the outside of a building’s windows can lower the temperature inside by up to 3.5C. Not only that, but the smell reportedly fades away once the yoghurt has dried.
It may seem eccentric, but perhaps smearing yoghurt on our windows, like eco-inspired dirty protesters, is indeed more in line with the quirky British way of life than the more prosaic solution of installing air conditioning.
Inevitably, the more that people are told or encouraged to adopt measures such as these, or to make significant changes to how they eat, travel and generally live their lives, the more likely they are to ask questions.
Remind me: Why are doing this?
As the economic pain grows from deindustrialisation and the pursuit of net zero, people will increasingly ask: “Remind me, why are we doing this again?” Exasperated climate alarmists respond: “Because the world is on fire and we are all about to die, and it will all be your fault for failing to appreciate the nature of this imminent existential threat. How dare you!”
For these people, those who do not subscribe to the beliefs they hold so dear fall into various categories. There are the stupid, those who are simply incapable of seeing what is surely so obvious to people of normal intelligence.
Then there are the malign, who probably can see but pretend not to. The most obvious explanation for this must be that they are, overtly or covertly, somehow in the pay of big fossil fuel companies.
And then there are those wretched souls who are in denial, unable to confront even within themselves the true horror that is entailed by a small increase in average global temperatures over the past 200 years or so.
In reality, of course, most people who disagree with the climate alarmists, including plenty of perfectly respectable scientists, are not stupid, malign or in denial. They simply take a different view, which, at the time of writing, remains legal in this country.
Few, if any, would deny there has been a small increase in global temperatures since “pre-industrial times” drew to an end around 1850. Nor would they argue that carbon dioxide is not a greenhouse gas. But they may well have valid questions.
Fewer winter deaths and global greening
Why, for example, do we never talk about a fall in excess deaths caused by cold weather when discussing excess deaths from hot weather, when we know the former is responsible for significantly more deaths than the latter, even in hot countries such as India?
A recent study in the Lancet shows that heat kills nearly half a million people a year, but that cold temperatures are more than nine times deadlier, killing more than 4.5 million. This might be to do with the fact that humans evolved in the tropics.
Logically, milder winters mean fewer deaths caused by extreme temperatures – something most of us would surely welcome.
Most people would also welcome the global greening that has taken place in recent decades. The planet has been literally changing colour since the 1980s or earlier. According to Nasa, the Earth increased its green leaf area by 5 per cent in the 20 years to 2019 – equivalent to the size of the Amazon rainforest – and the rate of greening is accelerating.
Obviously this is very good news for previously arid or semi-arid areas prone to famine, and for plant life and crop production globally. But many people may be unaware of this extraordinary phenomenon, caused by a slight increase in carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere from what was a precipitously low level for plant life.
As net zero bites ever harder, perhaps there is a growing appetite for more debate on these and other aspects of climate change and energy policy – instead of exhortations to smear yoghurt on windows.
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