The Climate Controversy

The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.
- Bertrand Russell

This quotation captures the essence in the climate-change debate. On the one side are the climate change supporters with a scientific consensus to back their position who advocate punitive taxes and societal change from our high-carbon emitting condition to a future world free of carbon emissions. On the other side are climate-change sceptics who deny that carbon emission, primarily from burning fossil fuels, are responsible and that if there is climate change any human contribution is swamped by natural variation.

Scepticism is good in all things cerebral, by the way, especially where science is concerned. It is unreasonable for scientists take a dogmatic position because this is contrary to the scientific method which demands an open-minded approach to investigation and discovery. The problem with the climate debate is that one side seems to be pushing an extreme position with inadequate data and uncertain modelling - certainly nothing of the kind sustained by physicists and engineers - and the other side is similarly empty handed, lacking any hard evidence for their position of maintaining the status quo.

The problem I have with this state of affairs personally is that at this point the debate breaks down completely instead of reasoning and rationality taking over. It is okay for the man-made climate change advocates to have their opinion and equally valid for the sceptics to have their opposing view because it is important the scientific debate continue until it is resolved. What's more important is that policy is shaped by rational thinking instead of emotional decision making.

Risk management is an exercise we all undertake in our daily lives; directors and managers of companies for their members, shareholders and other stakeholders; politicians for all of us. There are serious trade-offs to be made between fossil fuel, renewable or nuclear power; cap-and-trade versus carbon tax; subsidise change or feed the starving; grain, meat or bio-fuel; temperature rise versus deaths due to cold; and so on.

Policy making must be properly informed for effective decision making by our political leaders. The problem for the climate-change advocates is the longer the status quo stays the stronger is the position of the sceptics and outright deniers that significant climate change is occurring at all. If there isn't any climate change or it is of natural rather than human origin then doing nothing will have the same outcome as doing anything at all.