Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Since that time in 2010-11 or thereabouts, there has been no comfortable way for
the scientific community to raise the spectre of serious uncertainty about the forecasts of
climatic disaster. It can no longer use the environmental movement as a scapegoat if it
should turn out that the threat of global warming has no real substance. It can no longer
escapeprimeresponsibilityifitshouldturnoutintheendthatdoingsomethinginthename
of mitigation of global warming is the costliest scientific mistake ever visited on humanity.
The current re-direction of global funds in the name of climate change is of the order of a
billiondollarsaday.Andinthefuture,toquoteUSSenatorEverettDirksen,'abillionhere
and a billion there, and pretty soon we'll be talking about real money.'
At the same time, the average man in the street, a sensible chap who these days can
smell the signs of an oversold environmental campaign from miles away, is beginning to
suspect that it is politics rather than science which is driving the issue.
Scientists—most scientists anyway—may be a bit naïve, but they are not generally
wicked, idiotic, or easily suborned either by money or by the politically correct. So
whatever might be the enjoyment factor associated with supporting officially accepted
wisdom, and whatever might be the constraints applied by the scientific powers-that-be,
it is still surprising that the latest IPCC report has been tabled with almost no murmur of
discontent from the lower levels of the research establishment. What has happened to the
scepticism that is supposedly the lifeblood of scientific enquiry?
The answer probably gets back to the uncertainty of it all. The chances of
proving—provinginthehardscientificsense—thatchangeofclimateoverthenextcentury
will be large enough to be disastrous are virtually nil. The same uncertainty ensures that
the chances of a climate sceptic, or anyone else for that matter, proving the disaster theory
to be oversold are also virtually nil. To that extent there is a level playing field for the two
sides of the argument. The problem is that climate research necessarily involves enormous
resources, and is a game for institutions and organisations. Scepticism is an occupation
for individuals. Things being as they are in the climate change arena, scepticism by an
individual within the system can be fairly career limiting. In any event, most individual
scientists have a conscience, and are reluctant to put their head above the public parapet in
order to propound a view of things that is highly uncertain and may indeed be inherently
unprovable.
There is a broader context to this issue of uncertainty.
To the extent that there is such a thing as normal science, it relies upon accurate
observations to verify its theories. 'Accurate' is the operative word here. Climate research
has to rely on spectacularly inaccurate data for information on Earth's past climate. Even
thoughtherearevastamountsofatmosphericandoceanographicdatatoplaywith,together
with lots of proxy information from tree rings and ice cores and corals and so on,
abstracting a coherent story from it all is something of a statistical nightmare. It gives a
