Carbon-Pros Analyst BlogLast stand of the “deniers?"
I was surprised about the recent increase in the number of “climate skeptic” editorials. OpEds seem to be appearing daily in the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, and others. Then it dawned on me. The US cap-and-trade bill passed through the House and is on its way to the Senate. This means the US is on the brink of making a strategic change designed to reduce our national addiction to fossil fuels. Change always scares the status-quo. The “denier” media campaign will last as long as there is any chance of defeating the bill in the Senate. From what I've read of the new op-eds, most of the arguments have been made before and thoroughly discredited by science. It was reported last week in the UK that Exxon has continued their funding of climate skeptic “research institutes” despite saying they would stop. Another tactic makes the argument that former many “believers “ (political and scientific) are changing their minds about climate change. (see “Climate Change Climate Change”). I had not heard this one, so I asked a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research if the the article was accurate in saying that there was a groundswell of support for rethinking the causes of climate change. This is what he had to say:
“There is not, as far as I am aware, any shift in scientific opinion. If anything, recent surveys indicate a growing acceptance among climate scientists that a substantial portion of climate change is anthropogenic. As a scientific community, in general I would say that we are past the question of IF and have moved on to working on the problem of HOW MUCH (in a probabilistic sense), where the biggest impacts will be, and whether or not less understood aspects could amplify or mitigate climate change as the Earth responds to the changing climate. For example, how will the global carbon cycle and therefore the atmospheric CO2 burden change? And specifically in my research, how will the vast amounts of carbon stored in permafrost respond as permafrost thaws?” --Dr. David Lawrence, Project Scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research
Unfortunately, some people will not accept the best scientific evidence available. It's true that we can't know for certain that climate science is 100% accurate. But that's always the case when predicting the future. Most business executives base their business decisions on the best data available, not on the minority view. From what I can tell, what's actually happening around the world is that we've reached the point where difficult political decisions are being made. And this has forced a few politicians (and their science advisers) to back away from their previous commitments to GHG reduction. In the coming months, we can expect the deniers to fight with everything they have to make sure we don't change the status quo. This is politics not science.
“There is not, as far as I am aware, any shift in scientific opinion. If anything, recent surveys indicate a growing acceptance among climate scientists that a substantial portion of climate change is anthropogenic. As a scientific community, in general I would say that we are past the question of IF and have moved on to working on the problem of HOW MUCH (in a probabilistic sense), where the biggest impacts will be, and whether or not less understood aspects could amplify or mitigate climate change as the Earth responds to the changing climate. For example, how will the global carbon cycle and therefore the atmospheric CO2 burden change? And specifically in my research, how will the vast amounts of carbon stored in permafrost respond as permafrost thaws?” --Dr. David Lawrence, Project Scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research
Unfortunately, some people will not accept the best scientific evidence available. It's true that we can't know for certain that climate science is 100% accurate. But that's always the case when predicting the future. Most business executives base their business decisions on the best data available, not on the minority view. From what I can tell, what's actually happening around the world is that we've reached the point where difficult political decisions are being made. And this has forced a few politicians (and their science advisers) to back away from their previous commitments to GHG reduction. In the coming months, we can expect the deniers to fight with everything they have to make sure we don't change the status quo. This is politics not science.