Herman Charles Bosman was a great South African writer.

When he was young, he was sent to Pretoria Central prison to serve a sentence after being convicted of murder. He wrote a book called, Cold Stone Jug, about his experiences.

Part of the book shows how a large group of people can easily become mistaken as to the value of an opinion. Bosman writes that it became common in the prison for prisoners to demonstrate their education level by knowing trivial facts. He writes: “The craze for culture and erudition reached its height, and its spiritual fullness, over the controversy about what was the difference between a quagga and a zebra. Nobody knew who started that teaser. But in no time everybody took it very seriously. It was regarded as a mark of educational attainment to be able to recite straight out, word perfect, as it was in the dictionary, the definition of, respectively, a zebra and a quagga.”

I recently discovered that, in the matter of climate change, many people, some of whom last studied chemistry in grade 8 at school, regard, as a mark of educational attainment, an affirmation of their opinion of climate change. Thus, they throw their lot in with the general crowd and the populist movement that believes that climate change is real.

I was in a discussion the other day when the concept of Michael Mann’s ‘hockey stick’ was discussed (this is the well-known graph which Mann used to predict that climate temperatures would rise extraordinarily. This graph appeared in 1998. The consensus of the group was that Mann’s theory was correct. One argument put forward by a financial analyst was that “most scientists believe it”.

The fact of the matter is that there are many scientists who do not. I put it to the group that, as of 1993, worldwide, 520 atmospheric nuclear explosions (including eight under water) had been conducted, with a total yield of 545 Mt, while the estimated number of underground nuclear tests conducted from 1957 to 1992 was 1 352, with a total yield of 90 Mt.

A megaton is the explosive power of 1 000 000 t of TNT. Not kilos, tonnes. This is the amount of energy you get by burning 160 000 t of coal in one second. Let us not forget that the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan in World War II were about 20 000 t.

Thus, from about 1945 until now, we have released the energy equivalent to about 27 000 World War II bombs into the atmosphere and the earth. All this stopped with the nuclear proliferation treaty of 1995 (some countries are not signatories, including India, Israel and Pakistan, and Korea, although a signatory, has withdrawn).

I said, we surely cannot leave this out of our calculations – surely, if mankind is responsible for any climate alteration, then this is the cause. If so, then the whole issue can be left to itself as the bomb tests have largely stopped. The climate will come back to normal. If, on the other hand, the bomb tests are not the cause, then we need not worry – nothing else remotely resembles the energy release of the bomb tests in terms of a deviation from ‘normal’ energy releases and what they show is that a very large deviation from the norm has little effect and, thus, the climate change (if it exists and if a fraction of a degree change is accurate and can be measured) is natural and we can do nothing about it.

To say that this went over the top of the heads of those in the discussion is an understatement. The reaction I received was the same as looking at an untuned television set. Gsssssssssss. Uh. And then, astonishingly, the financial analyst just repeated that “most scientists believe it”. I then realised that it is useless. One should not cast pearls before swine that do not know they are swine. Just convince them that being able to recite the difference between a zebra and a quagga is a sign of intelligence and, if they believe you, you know exactly who you are dealing with.