Back to the Middle Ages

Back in the first Millennium, it was Islamic scholars who set the pace for scientific discovery. They made huge advances in mathematics, astronomy and chemistry, to say nothing of their beautiful poetry. Far from burning books, as IS do, the Caliphs sent emissaries to Europe to collect ancient Greek scientific writing. It is down to them this knowledge was not lost centuries ago. Their influence continues today: many stars have Arabic names, Altair, Aldebaran and so on, while their language is preserved in names such as alcohol, algebra and algorrhythm. They came up with the concept of zero, making it possible to write huge numbers easily. The Romans couldn’t really imagine vast numbers, because it was too much of a fag to write them down.

Today, building on the terrific impetus the Islamic scholars gave us, we should be constantly striving to better understand our world and the universe in which it floats. But today I hear the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) in the US is removing all reference to climate change on its website. Perhaps they should make it all simpler and call it the EDA: Environmental Destruction Agency.

In a recent edition of Weather, the journal of the Royal Meteorological Society published a series of photos of glaciers, one set taken about 40 years ago and the the other taken in 2014 from the same position. In every one you can see how the glaciers have receded, sometimes by many miles. Some glaciers, standing tall in front of the camera 40 years ago are now hardly visible on the horizon.

But is human activity contributing? You are entitled to ask. In 1982 summer in Britain and much of Europe was almost cancelled due to the effect of a Mexican volcano called El Chicon. It pumped many cubic miles of dust and ash into the atmosphere, which cooled the northern hemisphere significantly. But carbon dioxide doesn’t cool the planet, it warms it. Today human activity is pumping 40 billion tones of CO2 into the atmosphere each year, equivalent to a fair-sized volcanic eruption, going on all the time. And you doubt that’s having an effect on the climate? When temperatures having been rising faster in the last 20 years than at any time in the last million years? It’s science, baby, and you can’t fight it, even if you don’t like what it’s telling you. Unless you’re Donald Trump, that is. Then you can just say, oh all that stuff’s just fake news, a hoax.

Burn the books when you don’t like what they say, right Donald?