I wish ...

I wish I could be a climate change sceptic. It sounds like the thing I'd be right into and pretty bloody good at too. It ticks all the boxes for the kind of stuff I normally despise: quasi religious fervour of adherents, involvement of drippy gullible types, figurehead like The Amazingly Lifelike Al Gore.

God, I wish I could bring myself to think that climate change is a big scam. But it isn't.

There are of course lots of scammers out there making big bucks off it. In this regard, its much like The Millenium Bug, or Y2K, albeit that climate change is 'realerer' than that. Some of the hyperbole around climate change is patently designed to seperate fools from their money.

Global Adaptation Solutions salesman: Did you know when sea levels rise by 1000 feet next year because of CLIMATE CHANGE, your whole business will be wiped out and your 16 year old daughter forced to become a hooker in order to feed the family?

Gullible businessman: Oh noes!1!!. Whatever can I do to avoid this awful outcome? Tell me, O seer, O Great Sage.

GAS salesman: The only way to escape this is to sign up all your staff to our bespoke Surviving The Coming Climate Catastrophe: How Your Business Can Prosper In The Apocalypse training sessions. Only £795.95 per staff member per session. Each module contains 17 sessions. It is recommended that all staff complete at least 5 modules. Or otherwise middle management types on business trips will be bending your lovely daughter over a Holiday Inn breakfast table at £70 a turn.

Laugh as you may, but effectively this is what many in the climate change industry are doing.

The problem is climate change is real. It is happening. But not in the ways that are easily digestible into soundbites or sales pitches. Global temperatures are rising, but not uniformly. Some parts of the world, in North America and Europe, may actually be getting colder, while the south eastern corner of Australia is apparentley now locked in perpetual drought.

If temperatures in Melbourne rise by 4 degrees above average and those in Chicago drop by 1, then that is still a rise of three degrees from the average. (I think, maths never being my strong suit, but you get the idea.)

People in some parts of the world will not be too adversely affected by climate change probably for many decades to come. Some are feeling it already. As always, the poor will feel it most and first. Even in rich Melbourne, the suburbs that burned were those on the fringe of the city where people on low incomes have been forced because of indecent property price surges.

It is an old truism but we are very much like the frogs in the pot of water, with the temperature rising and us not feeling it untril it is too late.