Kevin's Watch

Saying the world's best environmental scientists and mathematical modellers were pulled together into the ultimate 'SORT IT OUT' conference and given the brief of coming up with as definitive an answer as possible in respect of the climate change debate, what are the key questions that they would need to adress and provide either their best estimates of the answers to, or conceed that we cannot provide answers with any reasonable degree of certainty at this stage.

This may be a simplistic notion, but given the potential import of getting at least some kind of consensus on this question in terms of how we plan future energy policy nationally and internationally, and how we live our lives individually, it would seem to be long overdue time for science and industry to put there collective heads together and start trying to clear away the clouds of ambiguity and uncertainty that shroud this issue. For whatever political or economic vested interests tend to pull the debate in either this or that direction, or sit on this or that side of the fence, behind it all lies the bedrock of data - and science is good at nothing if not interpretation of data. I know we have a variety of shades of belief here on the relative dangers posed by climate change, but if possible I'd like to put these aside and concentrate on the questions that science, industry and math would need to adress and come to a consensus on (at our fantasy conference) in order to provide an unambiguous road-map of a responsible way forward that all governments and individuals could both understand and adhere to.

(I intended to start with the most basic question of them all as a kick-off point, but have decided to leave it in the hope that someone else will take up the mantle. )

Well, without claiming to embody the minds of participants in such a quasi-Rawlsian session, I would say, if technology got us into this mess, it'll have to get us out of it, too. And I mean, hey, entropy would get us anyway unless we developed tech to deal with it in the long run, and that same tech would be enough to "negate" possible climate change---but what I really am talking about is the idea of the Kardashev scale of civilizations, where planetwide weather-control is indicated as a benchmark for early civilizational progress (where "early" is understood in terms of a future galactic society, not our parochial suborbital history). Now I am confident enough that nanotechnology up to or including nanorobots is going to be part of the way to go on this score, but if we ever got the little things up and running like in the more fanciful stories, wouldn't we be able to direct them to "dismantle" greenhouse gases, for instance? (To say nothing of reorganizing the atmosphere in total simpliciter, for our own ends!)

So that would be 'a' question - Can we continue unabated with the use of fossil fuels (until we harness fusion) safe in the reliance that science will at need develop the tech necessary to bring the world's weather under our control? (Or at least remove the problem causing agents from the atmosphere.)

I think the first question to answer would have to be 'Does the scientifically collected data confirm within reasonable limits of confidence, that significant levels of climate change are occuring such as will impact significantly and detrimentally on the future well-being of humanity' (badly put, but you get the gist).

Subject to the positive confirmation of this, the corollary would be to ask 'Can we say what degree of this change is attributable to anthropogenic causes?

Why is the scientific community sending out such mixed messages on these questions? Is it politics? Is it big business exerting it's 'dastardly' influence? This might....might.....be the biggest existential challenge humanity has ever faced, affecting the lives of our children, grandchildren to degrees that can only make us blanche with anguish and yet the very institution that could be providing a lead with clear unambiguous statements is instead divided and contradictory in the message it is putting across!

peter wrote:Subject to the positive confirmation of this, the corollary would be to ask 'Can we say what degree of this change is attributable to anthropogenic causes?

Why is the scientific community sending out such mixed messages on these questions? Is it politics? Is it big business exerting it's 'dastardly' influence?

I suspect both.

Two very smart people on the Watch, whose views I massively respect on any subject have completely opposite views on this issue - and both holding their position to be unassailable and prepared to back it up with links. This is not the normal way that science proceeds (take the evolutionary arguments as a comparison): normally there is a place for doubt built in to the process ....... it's called 'probability', 'confidence limits' or whatever. Here it seems to have been jettisoned. I believe that it would be a good thing for the scientific community on both sides of the debate to ask themselves the hard question "How much damage am I doing if I am wrong?" before expounding their views with a degree of certainty that the actual data does not justify. A bit more humility and cooperation and the scientific method will do its work: these questions are not beyond being answered!