As a scientist, I am always trying to use the most reliable sources of information for my work. So that means papers in peer-reviewed journals, and the very best scientists. I first got into the topic of climate change through my association with Sir John Houghton. Although I trained as a plant scientist and still research in that area, about 25 years ago, I started to add the public communication of climate change to my portfolio.
I first heard Sir John speak in 1998, but it was at the famous 2002 conference in Oxford that the seriousness of the issue really hit me. In 2008, Sir John and I collaborated on the science talk for the “Hope for Planet Earth” tours, and I gave that talk over 100 times in 2008 and 2009. After that, I was galvanised and started giving climate change talks in many different contexts. I gradually changed the content, and now have a whole range of talks for different audiences. I keep my talks up-to-date, and often include material I have gathered in the last week from reliable scientific sources. But the snag is that every time I start to prepare one of these talks, the data on climate change looks worse. It is quite depressing, to be honest. But like Sir John, I try to tell it how it is, and not to embellish it or make it look worse than it actually is. As another of my heroes, Michael Mann, the American climate scientist, often says, “The truth is bad enough.”
I am always on the lookout for new ways of presenting the data and new things to talk about, so when the opportunity to see the National Emergency Briefing film arose, I was keen to attend. The film packed a lot into 50 minutes, from the science to policy, to the very real possibility that climate change could cause food shortages and societal breakdown. You might imagine that such ideas would be espoused by a member of Extinction Rebellion, but you would be wrong. Lt General Richard Nugee CB CVO CBE is a former senior British Army officer and leading voice on climate and national security. He said, “We are facing the potential of an ungovernable state unless government takes this seriously.” His video in the link is a MUST-watch! The film ends with more hopeful sections on the rise of renewable energy. It is well worth seeing.
Just how much that film is needed was well illustrated recently by a blog post by Ian Paul, the Anglican theologian and writer. Ian’s commentary on Revelation is excellent, and I have often used it. He also writes some really good blogs, taking the lectionary passages for the week and explaining them in language that even a scientist like me can understand. But, as often happens when a person strays away from their field, they show little understanding of even the basics. Such is the case with the blog, “Should the Church be saving the planet, or saving people?”
From the blog, it might seem that the number of people attending Church of England churches has a higher priority than the health of the Planet! This caused a lot of discussion on Facebook and beneath the blog itself, covering a vast range of issues. After much thought, I decided to stick to the area I know best, the science. What annoys me most about the blog is its muddying of the waters on climate change.
So, a brief summary of the science. Since the Industrial Revolution, the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has increased from about 280 ppm to over 425 ppm today. Added to increases in other greenhouse gases, this has caused the global temperature to rise by about 1.4 °C. That is roughly what was predicted by the early climate models of 50 years ago. What was not predicted was the extreme impacts of that rise in temperature. They are worse than scientists expected: heatwaves, droughts, floods, wildfires, extreme weather events, sea level rise, impacts on biodiversity and human health. And it is getting even worse. The last three years have been the hottest on the instrumental record, and with the record El Niño on the way in the Pacific Ocean, this year and next could be dire. By the end of this century, we could easily reach 3-4 °C above pre-industrial levels, which would be catastrophic for humanity. It would also be disastrous for much of the world’s biodiversity. And then there is the real possibility that we could hit a tipping point like the shutting down of the Gulf Stream….. Maybe you can see why we scientists get a bit depressed. If Ian Paul could understand all this, would he still write the blog that he did?
Over ten years ago now, my wife, Margot, and I published a Grove booklet, “The Ethics of Climatic Scepticism”, and it makes interesting reading today. In our booklet, we attempted a classification of climate scepticism. Essentially, scepticism started with, “it’s not happening”, moved on to, “it’s happening, but it is not our fault”, and then on to, “it’s too expensive to do anything about it”. In addition, there was a category we termed “religious climate sceptics”, whose theological ideas led them to take sceptical positions. We also spent considerable time investigating where this scepticism was coming from, and concluded that most of it originated with funding from the fossil fuel industry. In the 12 years since we wrote our booklet, it has become increasingly obvious that climate change really is happening, and that humans are almost entirely responsible. So now most of the battles are fought over economics, and whether it is just too difficult and expensive to do anything about climate change. Ian Paul largely falls into the economic sceptic category, but also has theological views that lead to inaction on climate change (in his case, the priority of evangelism in isolation from other concerns). He is vehemently opposed to Net Zero, and to attempts to cut carbon emissions. As far as I can tell, the main sources for his ideas are GB News and the Daily Telegraph. We should ask, who funds the sceptical material in these media outlets, and why?
As the National Emergency Briefing film pointed out towards the end, renewable technologies do offer us a bit of a “get out of jail free” card. It is too late to prevent serious impacts from climate change, but we can and must do our best to reduce them as much as possible. Recently, at the JRI book club, we looked at Bill McKibben’s Here Comes the Sun, reviewed here by James Watterson. It is a great book for countering all the negative anti-renewables misinformation that is out there at the moment. I find it ironic that I am writing this in the second UK heatwave of the summer of 2026, almost certainly another record-breaker. However, Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, has just announced that the UK has invested £100bn in green energy in this parliament, creating thousands of jobs. If there is anything positive in this whole situation, then the very rapid deployment of renewables around the world has to be it.
Dr. Martin J. Hodson
Principal Tutor of Christian Rural and Environmental Studies (CRES)