Richard Palmer
UK Daily Express
February 7, 2010
PRINCE Charles rejected mounting evidence that climate change is a myth and insisted there is overwhelming proof of global warming today.
In his first riposte to the furore over claims that scientists have covered up research casting doubt on the greenhouse effect, Prince Charles voiced his dismay and alarm at those who question the science behind climate change.
The heir to the throne raised the controversy in a speech in Manchester, where he launched a new initiative, called Start, to provide the public with advice on how to lead more environmentally sustainable lives.
Charles, who has campaigned on global warming for more than 20 years, said: “I have watched with growing dismay and alarm the glee with which the sceptics have leapt upon the recent news stories that question the science that 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 then that around the globe sea levels are more than six inches higher than they were 100 years ago?
“This isn’t an opinion - it is a fact.”
He added: “And, ladies and gentlemen please be in no doubt that the evidence of long-term and potentially irreversible changes to our world is utterly overwhelming.”
Charles spoke after arriving in Manchester by Royal Train pulled by a coal-fired steam locomotive, named the Tornado, which was rebuilt from a 1948 design.
He toured the city’s Museum of Science and Industry to see an exhibition of steam engines used by trains and in cotton mills in and around Manchester, which he called the cradle of the Industrial Revolution.
“But I trust we do all know that these wonderful innovations carried with them a long-term cost that nobody at the time could possibly have foreseen,” he said.
Charles said it was “also a fact” that 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.
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?”
