'Climate sceptics are playing Russian roulette with own children' – Prince Charles

Published on Thursday 4 February 2010 21:41

THE Prince of Wales yesterday spoke out over his "dismay and alarm" at those who question the science behind climate change.

In his strongest comments yet attacking so-called climate sceptics, Charles said the evidence for manmade global warming was "utterly overwhelming".

Anyone who refused to play a part in tackling global warming were playing "Russian roulette" with their children's future. His outspoken comments come after a series of embarrassing setbacks for climate experts, including leaked e-mails that showed scientists covering up evidence not supporting global warming.

Earlier this week the head of the UN's climate change body was also forced into a U-turn over a claim that Himalayan glaciers would melt away over the next 25 years – a charge later proved to be without scientific foundation.

Charles, on a visit to Manchester, said: "I have watched with growing dismay and alarm the glee with which the sceptics have leapt upon recent news stories that question the science that (says] climate change is man-made and suggesting it is nothing more than a myth.

"Well, if it is but a myth, and the global scientific community is involved in some sort of conspiracy, why is it that around the globe sea levels are more than six inches higher than 100 years ago? This isn't an opinion – it is a fact."

He added: "And please be in no doubt that the evidence of long-term and potentially irreversible changes to our world is utterly overwhelming."

Charles said carbon dioxide levels are 40 per cent higher now than they were before the Industrial Revolution and spoke of the "alarming messages" from explorers such as Pen Hadow about the melting polar regions of Earth.

He continued: "But to those who seek to persuade us that there is no such thing as climate change, in the face of the now overwhelming peer-reviewed scientific evidence, I would ask just one question. Are you prepared to take the risk of being wrong?"

Charles said the poorest people on the planet would "suffer first and worst" if the problem was not tackled. He added: "I don't know about you, ladies and gentlemen, but I happen to mind very much about the sort of world in which my children and grandchildren – and yours – will be living.

"I believe we have a great responsibility to do the right thing by them and so I, for one, am not prepared to play some sort of Russian roulette with their futures."

His comments will comfort the vast majority of scientists who support the theory that global warming is a fact and largely a manmade phenomenon.

They have faced a series of set-backs recently, including the admission by Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that their claim the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 was not true. The IPCC issued a statement that expressed regret for the mistake, but Pachauri said a personal apology would be a "populist" step.

This followed revelations in e-mails stolen from the University of East Anglia that showed how climate scientists acted to keep research papers they did not like out of academic journals.

One, Dr Keith Briffa, wrote to a colleague to ask him for help rejecting a paper from a journal which he edited, apparently breaking the convention that the review process is independent and anonymous.

In another e-mail, top US climate scientist Professor Michael Mann suggested ostracising a journal for printing a paper attacking his work.

Enemy of the Enlightenment, herald of grey goo

FROM architecture to climate change, the heir to the throne has never been shy about offering his opinions. He is most famous for his attacks on modern architecture.

In 1985 he branded the proposed extension to London's National Gallery "a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved friend". His own model village, Poundbury, was treated with scorn by many architects.

Other subjects close to his heart include the risks of nanotechnology, which he claims could see the planet turned into "grey goo" by hordes of mini-robots in the atmosphere. Summing up his philosophy, Charles said he was "proud" to have been called an "enemy of the Enlightenment" – a branch of 18th-century philosophy which supported science and rationality against superstition.