Dissenters may be right but it's not worth the risk

A good friend of mine is sceptical about climate change. He sometimes asks me how I can be sure that humans are causing climate change by burning fossil fuels when a number of scientists are dissenting from this apparent consensus.
I tell him that no-one can be sure. We may not be sure for another decade, perhaps longer, perhaps never.

There is no disagreement that climate change occurs naturally due to various factors, including variability of solar radiation. Most climate scientists think that extra greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are the dominant cause of current climate change, but a few think this is a minor factor.

So while we should not dismiss dissenting scientists with labels such as ‘climate change denier’, it would be equally foolish to dismiss the views of the majority of climate scientists who are confident that human actions are causing dangerous climate change.
The trouble is that it is virtually impossible for the general public to make real sense of this debate. We simply don’t have the scientific knowledge to judge the veracity of alternative scientific viewpoints.

Unfortunately many people approach the debate from a particular political or business stance and so latch on to the views of those scientists that happen to support their position. Some even think it is all a leftwing conspiracy. This is hardly scientific.
I believe that most scientists are dedicated to finding the truth and so it is wrong to ridicule or censor scientists, although some governments and the fossil fuel industry have done this systematically for years. On the other hand, a small number of scientists will pursue fame and fortune at the expense of scientific rigour and the funding links between many dissenting scientists and the fossil fuel industry are disturbing.

The unprecedented level of consensus does provide a high level of confidence in the majority position, but science is not a popularity contest.
What if the dissenters turn out to be correct? Improving our energy efficiency and reducing our dependence on non-renewable fossil fuels are good strategies regardless of the threat of climate change. So there is little to lose and much to gain by taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

On the other hand, if we avoid taking action and the dissenters turn out to be wrong then we are in deep trouble, facing the possibility of irreversible climate change later this century. That’s a risk we can’t afford to take.

This was originally published in the Fraser Coast Chronicle on 3 July 2007.