In his foreword to the 1989 book
The Greenhouse Effect Bellamy wrote:
"The profligate demands of humankind are causing far reaching changes to the atmosphere of planet Earth, of this there is no doubt. Earth's temperature is showing an upward swing, the so-called greenhouse effect, now a subject of international concern. The greenhouse effect may melt the glaciers and ice caps of the world causing the sea to rise and flood many of our great cities and much of our best farmland."
Bellamy's later statements on global warming indicate that he subsequently changed his views completely. In 2004, he wrote an article in the
Daily Mail in which he described the theory of man-made global warming as "poppycock". A letter he published on 16 April 2005 in New Scientist asserted that a large percentage (555 of 625) of the glaciers being observed by the World Glacier Monitoring Service were advancing, not retreating. George Monbiot of
The Guardian tracked down Bellamy's original source for this information and found that it was Fred Singer's website. Singer claimed to have obtained these figures from a 1989 article in the journal
Science, but no such article exists. Bellamy has since stated that his figures on glaciers were wrong, and announced in a letter to The Sunday Times in 2005 that he had "decided to draw back from the debate on global warming".
His opinions have changed the way in which some organisations view Bellamy. In 2005 a spokesperson for the charity Plantlife, of which Bellamy had been president for 15 years, stated that "it would be wrong to ask him to continue [as president]". The Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts stated in 2005 "We are not happy with his line on climate change", and Bellamy was succeeded as president of the Wildlife Trusts by Aubrey Manning in November 2005.
In October 2006 the
New Zealand Herald reported that Bellamy had joined the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, a group trying to refute what they believe are unfounded claims about man-made global warming In May 2007 Bellamy and Jack Barrett jointly authored a paper in the refereed Civil Engineering journal of the Institution of Civil Engineers entitled 'Climate stability: an inconvenient proof'. In this report they argue that the widely prophesied doubling of carbon dioxide levels from natural, pre-industrial levels was not only unlikely but would also amount to less than 1 degree C of global warming.
In June 2007, The New Zealand Centre for Policy Research (founded by Muriel Newman formerly an MP in the neo-liberal ACT Party) published an opinion piece by Bellamy stating amongst other things that "There are no facts linking the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide with imminent catastrophic global warming".
Bellamy complained in November 2008 that his dissent from global warming has resulted in rejection for his BBC TV programme ideas. However,
The Guardian newspaper has pointed out that Bellamy stopped making television programmes in 1994, some ten years before his first public statement showed scepticism about climate change.
