So, if everybody tells me it is a good exhibition, then it must be.
However, on a world scale, I am once again wondering if there are some other areas in which everybody seems to accept what they are told, but where things are not necessarily quite as clear-cut as we are led to believe. I recently watched a documentary programme, made by Channel Four, on UK television, called 'The great global warming swindle' about an alternative explanation for global warming. Nobody in their right mind can really dispute the evidence for global warming - after all it only takes some thermometers and accurate record keeping. But the cause of this phenomenon, now known as 'man-made global warming' may, apparently, not be as clear as we have all been led to believe. According to that television programme, sun spots (areas of intense activity on the sun's surface and a natural event) could actually be the cause of global warming and the evidence presented - by eminent scientists, just like those presenting the evidence for the greenhouse gas theory - was very compelling. It suggested that media hype, and environmental groups with a 'political agenda', had given the man-made greenhouse gas theory unwarranted importance that international politicians had fallen for in a big way. That it is all a great lie, but nobody dares speak against it any more. The programme pointed out that periods of temperature change - both warming and cooling - have happened throughout history, even before any industrial development; and it pointed to the documented fall in temperatures which occurred during the post-World War ll economic/industrial boom of 1940-1975. Strange. Remember the 'mini-ice age' forecast around that time? It further suggested that global warming increases CO2 levels, not the other way round. Just like the politicians, I am not qualified to comment on the science, but the vitally important question is this: What if the sun spot explanation is right? What if man is not responsible for the global warming problem - and everything else - as he likes to think? Then the developed countries will have been turning to the developing world and telling them what they can't have that the developed world has enjoyed - such as motor vehicles, electric light, gas cooking and heating and so on - for no good reason. Then the enormous costs about to be heaped on individuals and industries to meet greenhouse gas targets will have been for nothing (except tax revenues for European governments). Doesn't bear thinking about, does it? So probably nobody will.