Scepticism is essential for good science but the time for debate has long been over. Scientists (notably climatologists) reached consensus that global warming is happening but it took decades for the problem to penetrate public discourse.
If scientists are wrong about climate change, the worst that can happen is that we will have a cleaner world- Anne Zammit
Indications that human activity is having an effect on the climate are nothing new:
In 1896, Swedish Nobel laureate Svante Arrhenius presented his findings that human activities releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere could change the earth’s climate.
Scientists Charles Keeling and Roger Revelle demonstrated in the 1950s that a large part of the carbon dioxide released from the burning of coal, oil and gas was remaining in the atmosphere because the oceans couldn’t absorb it fast enough.
A scientific advisory panel warned US President Lyndon Johnson of the dangers of adding greenhouses gases to the atmosphere back in 1965.
By 2007 there were no credible scientific sceptics left to challenge the broad projections and underlying scientific theory of climate change.
Two years later the National Academies of Science of the world’s major industrialised nations issued an unprecedented joint statement on the reality of climate change and the need for immediate action.
Despite overwhelming evidence, a cell of climate change deniers showed up for a debate last month in Valletta, organised by the Euro Media forum, a discussion platform which “celebrates freedom of expression while respecting diversity in society”.
The event lured a staunch denialist audience to view the 2007 film The Great Global Warming Swindle, followed by a critique from the panel exposing the film as dubious and containing a number of inaccuracies. Fierce exchanges ensued.
Disappointingly, debate over human activity being the cause of global warming still rages on in some circles even as devastation to major ecosystems now seems inevitable.
To prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system the Copenhagen Accord recognises that the increase in global temperature should be kept below two degrees Celsius.
Existing targets to reduce emission of carbon into the atmosphere are not being met. It has recently been forecast that with current carbon emission trends, the world is on track for a rise in global temperature of around four degrees Celsius.
According to Australian climate scientist David Karoly, four degees warming is “a lot worse than two degrees”.
At a conference held in Melbourne last July, scientists explored what a warming of four degrees or more could mean.
In terms of human survival, from a global population of nine billion in 2050, a warming of four to six degrees might see half-a-billion people surviving if they moved to the right place and had the right resources.
Half the world would be uninhabitable. Ocean ecosystems and food chains could be expected to collapse.
David Spratt, co-author of Climate Code Red, puts it bluntly: “The world would be warmer than during any period in which modern humans evolved and the rate of climate change would be faster than any experienced by humans.”
Yet people are generally insufficiently engaged to respond adequately to climate change.
Chief EU climate change negotiator Artur Runge-Metzger asked American and Japanese officials at a meeting in Brussels last month how they intended to prepare industries and households for the forecast changes.
The Japanese government opted to drop out of curbing greenhouse gas emissions under the Kyoto Protocol, which comes up for renewal this year.
The US climate attaché in Brussels admitted there is a significant amount of opposition to work on climate policy in the US, with elements in Congress creating obstacles.
Psychological barriers spring from emotions of helplessness, fear and guilt. Denial is a defence mechanism that people use when faced with facts too uncomfortable to accept. Climate change denial has been associated with free market think-tanks and the fossil fuel lobby. Followers resort to rhetoric, imitating legitimate scientific debate minus some basic principles.
Climate change denialists bitterly defend their right to challenge accepted theory. The phenomenon has been well defined in the book Climate Change Denial: Sources, Actors, and Strategies, 2011:
“Climate change denial is a set of organised attempts to downplay, deny or dismiss the scientific consensus on the extent of global warming, its significance, and its connection to human behaviour, especially for commercial or ideological reasons.”
Industry-funded denial campaigns fostering scepticism have been compared to early efforts by the tobacco industry to undermine what is now widely accepted scientific evidence relating to the dangers of second-hand smoke.
Even as the evidence is mounting, non-believers are closing ranks. Opposition to climate change predictions and refusal to accept that our behaviour may need to change to slow down global warming has become a characteristic of some neo-conservative groups.
The infamous Heartland Institute, a ‘libertarian’ think-tank based in Chicago, recently proposed that climate change should be included in school curriculums and presented as a scientific controversy.
If scientists are wrong about climate change, the worst that can happen is that we will have a cleaner world. If they are right, but we fail to act, it will go down as the most fateful decision in all of human history.
www.realclimate.org
www.ossfoundation.us
razammit@hotmail.com