The current attitude generally regarding the climate and if human activity is affecting it, has gone beyond debate and has become a religion.

Religious belief is just that ---- a belief. The Oxford dictionary defines this as ‘a feeling that something exists or is true, especially one without proof’, the attitude of climate activists and our government.

Debate is defined as ‘a formal discussion in a public meeting or law-making body in which opposing arguments are presented’, which climate activists and our government clearly refuse to engage in simply saying ‘the science is settled’.

I do not accept that the science is settled on global warming for the simple reason that the science on anything is never settled, as Einstein, Karl Popper and many other minds far greater than mine, or the activists, or our MHKs, have recognised for centuries.

Even the most widely accepted scientific theory is never beyond being questioned and being challenged, and that is the nature of science as opposed to religion, dogma or ideology.

And the theory of anthropogenic global warming is just that ----- a theory.

Indeed, it was Albert Einstein who said: ‘The truth of a theory can never be proven, for one never knows if future experience will contradict its conclusion.’

And as for the idea of consensus, it was Karl Popper who said that ‘the growth of knowledge depends entirely upon disagreement’. He also said that the only way to test a hypothesis is to look for all the information that disagrees with it.

When science can no longer be questioned, it loses all credibility and becomes little different from a religion. As a matter of fact, question and doubt have probably done more to advance science that dogmatic religion.

Via social media we are now able to view major weather events worldwide that almost always are blamed on ‘human caused climate change’. The populous, bombarded with this ‘unscientific narrative’, laps it up like Pavlov’s dogs, ignoring the actual ‘scientific trends’.

Weather reports should describe what is happening, with moderate and prudent guesses about what might be about to happen, without polemics, while news stories should describe the present, reference the past, while leaving future history to future historians, horoscopes and tea-leaf readers.

Proper debate must happen here on the Isle of Man regarding all the recent government proposals on our energy needs and supply before we are inflicted with serious future economic, financial and security perils. It needs to be public debate, not the sham of internet consultation, and as the consequences could be manifest, such major decisions should be subject to an island referendum.

Remember, laws can be enacted, but laws can also be repealed.

Eddie Perkins

Port St Mary

This letter was first published in the Manx Independent of June 9.

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