“Now, what I want is, Facts!” declaims Thomas Gradgrind, industrialist of fictional Coketown, in the opening line of Charles Dickens’ Utilitarian satire Hard Times.
South African engineer Will Alexander would doubtless sympathise. “I deal in facts not beliefs,” he wrote in reply to the questionnaire which I sent to a number of climate sceptics in an attempt to elucidate where the balance of their arguments lay.
He was not the only respondent to berate me for using the word “believe” in my questionnaire.
But after spending some time looking into climate scepticism for this week’s series of articles, I am more sure than ever that “believe” is exactly the right word.
That climate change is a battle of beliefs is easily shown by the simple fact that two vastly intelligent people such as James Lovelock and Richard Lindzen can look at the same set of evidence, and one conclude that a global apocalypse is coming while the other maintains it there is little we cannot overcome with a bit of sense and planning.
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Noelle dEstries
Noelle d'Estries, an early GO employee who took on the varied roles of Community Manager, green celebrity blogger, and more. She currently runs worstcookever.com GO entered Noelle's life in February 2007 while she was burning tires in her backyard. A phone call from the green gods at GO, burnt out the fires. Now, Noelle happily wears her GO sweatshirt while eating organic veggies and asking for paper, not plastic. A regular at the local farmer's market, Noelle shuns raking leaves and lawn maintenance, while making gourmet foods constantly. When not staring at her computer screen, she spends time with her equally attractive dog, Tessa, cat, Tim and lover Paul. She currently holds all three point records at RIT and could eat avocados and drink wine for the rest of her life.
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