International scientists and officials hailed a UN report Friday that said human activity was "very likely" the cause of global warming and that higher temperatures and rising sea levels would continue for centuries, regardless of reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
"It is critical that we look at this report … as a moment where the focus of attention will shift from whether climate change is linked to human activity, whether the science is sufficient, to what on earth are we going to do about it," said Achim Steiner, the executive director of the UN Environment Program.
"The public should not sit back and say 'There's nothing we can do,'" Steiner said. "Anyone who would continue to risk inaction on the basis of the evidence presented here will one day in the history books be considered irresponsible."
Can anybody think of any other historical occasion where so many intelligent people demanded dramatic action to resolve a problem in the certainty nothing could be done about it?
Surfing various news items and discussions on the IPCC report, one is left with the impression that saving the planet isn’t nearly as important as closing off debate. I’ve been struck by the number of discussion threads where individuals will make (to my unscientific eyes) ostensibly well-informed critical technical arguments and be answered by splenetic attacks to the effect that ‘the time for argument” is over and we must act NOW, even though no one has the slightest clue what to do and the consensus seems to be nothing would work. Scientists seems to have written science right out of this debate and have discovered the discreet charm of irrational rhetoric, such as this gem from David Suzuki, Canada’s favourite fruit loop green scientist and television environmentalist:
"Scientists have been conservative and cautious, now I think they've thrown that caution out," he said.
"I would say that we are in a state of crisis, that it's the equivalent of a hundred Pearl Harbors going off at once in the environment."
It appears we may be in for a few years of politics driven by understated mass panic and collective self-contempt. It will be strong enough to hijack the public agenda and maybe even topple governments such as Canada’s. How and when sanity will return to this debate is hard to see, but in the meantime, here is a series of ten articles on much-accomplished and formerly respected scientists who haven’t forgotten what scientific inquiry is supposed to be about and the key role actual evidence is supposed to play. You may wish to print them off now so we can pass them around as samizdata in the coming years. When the scientific establishment and the left combine to declare there is no longer any doubt about something, it is wise to have someone guarding the door before speaking too freely.
7 comments:
I usually don't pay much attention to the hysteria. When I do, like reading the series of articles you linked to, it confirms my suspicion that it is hysteria.
We are witnessing one of history's moments of popular delusion. Ironically, the harm done to the economy will be driven more by the organized efforts to combat gloval warming than by the reality of the warming, whatever is is. It will be one of the great self-inflicted wounds of history.
Stasis is not an option, adaptation is the only way to deal with the climate, whatever it decides to do.
Peter: "Calvinist Scientist" brings a new twist to the frozen chosen.
Duck: It might turn out helpful if it resurrects nuclear power from its NIMBY grave.
That kind of active suppression of dissent is generally a hallmark of a fad that's peaked.
One of the articles I read about the IPCC report, dutifully cited the included factoid that last summer was the warmest in 1,200 years.
Why that didn't lead the article's author, or the report's committee, to then strongly question the whole concept of anthropogenic global warming is a mystery indeed.
It's science, therefore it's entirely self-correcting. Nothing to worry about here, move along.
Mr. Burnett;
Yeah. I heard something on NPR this morning about a drought in Africa which had lasted for a decade or so, draining all the resevoirs. It was, of course, blamed on global warming. Coincidentally, I had read an article the previous week about a climatologists doing research in Africa who had data to show that 10-100 year droughts in central Africa have been occuring for the last 10Kyear or so (at least). But of course this drought is different.
Woops. It's only the last 1.5Kyear. This article about a really massive drough in Africa 70Kyear ago is somewhat relevant as well.
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