I have long been interested by the way in which a number of individual decisions, each logical and rational in their own right, can add up to an unintended, undesirable and even catastrophic outcome. Such is the essence of tragedy. By the time that the outcome of the chosen action is revealed it is too late to return, or to cross over to a path which would avoid the tragic consequence.
Such, I fear, will be the assessment that future generations will make about actions our politicians are taking over global warming. Tinkering around the edges of the climate when the forces involved, the mechanisms of change and the consequences of interference are so little known has all the hallmarks of a tragedy in the making.
Climate change has been a feature of the earth since it first developed an atmosphere and hence climate. Our data on climate change is almost non-existent in the context of the history of the planet. We have relatively good observation for about 200 years. Before that we have deductions from ice samples. Leaving aside the issue of the accuracy of those observations, throughout all of its history the planet earth has only had one ice age. So in a very real sense we have an unfinished set of observations about an unusual period.
Maybe this is how ice ages behave. At the end of the last colder period of the ice age the temperature rose by some 4 degrees in 20 years. Maybe whatever caused that increase is happening again. Maybe the ice age has run its course and the earth is rejoining the rest of the planets as a very hot and uninhabited planet. Any model has to explain climate change since climate existed, including the origin of the ice age. Neither model is as yet anywhere near doing that.
Selecting one of the many complex variables that influence our climate as the primary if not only determinant of change is risky. And when that one is relatively small compared to the forces that shape the Universe, risky begins to seem like foolhardy.
The point is that we do not know. We have two models of climate change. One sees the current apparent warming as the latest natural development in the story of the earth. The other assigns to man the sole responsibility – climate change becomes Global Warming. In reality, either model could be correct and we have very little if any evidence to point towards one or the other. Strip out the assumptions and deductions and the few facts, heavily biased towards the recent past, support either model.
Simply repeating the mantra of carbon emissions and man-made global warming does not make it correct. To be convinced we need a proper scientific analysis of both models, recognising the very real limitations of the data and acknowledging the role of assumption and deduction in both. Only then will we be convinced that climate change is due to Global Warming brought on by mankind.
