Are climate skeptics anti-science?
No is the short answer. Many highly regarded scientists are skeptics – from Stephen Koonin to Freeman Dyson to Richard Lindzen. The myth that no serious scientists are skeptics is simply false. This does not mean skeptics are right.
Many other serious scientists express serious dismay at the inability to have a serious conversation about climate change because it has become so politicized.
What should every citizen know about climate change? Some thoughts follow.
It is important to remember that disagreement over the odds of climate catastrophe does not preclude agreement on what is to be done about it. Whether you think the odds are 50% or 30%, or 10% you still might think it is a very good idea to investment heavily in nuclear energy as well as alternative energy just in case. You might also be equally passionate in your support of a carbon tax.
Also, even if the consensus is correct, the question of the relative urgency of climate change relative to other global challenges is not a given. Many of the world’s leading economists think global warming ranks rather low on the list of most important and urgent problems facing humanity.
A further fact worth remembering is that while the IPCC headlines of the last decade have become increasingly alarmist, in the footnotes the IPCC has lowered its sensitivity assumptions as the actual warming has fallen short of prior forecasts.
An important paradox to remember is that our current reliance on fossil fuel is in no small measure the result of the over-reaction of the environmental movement to the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979..
The term “climate change” is a rhetorical trick. It is utterly unfalsifiable. The climate has always and will always change. It is interesting that 20 years ago the term “global warming” was much more in use. The new term “climate change” was the result of less severe warming than expected. The real test of the scientific nature of a theory is its falsifiability.
The long term (100 MMs of years) climate trend is cooling driven by platetectonic factors. The medium term trend (1000s of years) is cooling driven by Milankovich cycles. The shorter term Cycles (10s of years) are driven by solar cycles (eg. sun spots) and deep oceanic current cycles (eg. Pacific duodecal oscillations). These can overwhelm the effects of human CO2 emissions. Historically, relatively warm periods have been Good for humanity and relatively cool periods bad. The greatest short term climate risk is volcanic eruption (a cooling event). A full accounting of the positive and negative impacts of the fossil fuel industry on human well being nets a tremendous positive – bringing warmth where there was cold, light where dark. Human resourcefulness should not be underestimated. A thousand years ago the Dutch with picks, shovels, and a few windmills turned an arm of the Atlantic ocean into some of the most fertile land on earth.