Climate Change Policymakers Are No Longer Asking the Most Important Question

People view artist Luke Jerram's new 'Floating Earth' Debuts In Wigan, England, on Nov. 18, 2021. Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Commentary

How urgent is climate change? This is the most important question that decision-makers in industry and government need to ask. We cannot decide what risk is worth taking unless we know what risk we are avoiding.

Yet this is one question that is seldom discussed.

Frequently we debate what is the most effective response to climate change—is it nuclear or renewables? Is it batteries or biofuels? Or, from the most radical minds, is it depopulation?

But we no longer dare to debate whether a response is really warranted and whether greenhouse gas reduction should be prioritised compared to more immediate issues.

The prevailing attitude in both industry and politics is that we must trust in a supposed scientific consensus that our greenhouse gas emissions will soon cause a catastrophic “existential” event.

The reasoning is that given the consequence is truly cataclysmic, then even if we didn’t have a hope of succeeding; we ought to try everything we can possibly do at any possible cost to prevent it.

As a result, we are hanging the most critical part of our decisions on the flimsiest part of the science. Allow me to explain...

Scientific Basis: The Greenhouse Effect

The science of climate change starts strong with the Greenhouse effect. This is operational science—it can be tested in a laboratory, and the conclusions are repeatable.

The greenhouse effect is simply the fact that some gases will absorb a portion of the radiation emitted from the Earth’s surface. As a result, instead of this radiation passing through the atmosphere and into space, some of it is re-emitted back down to the Earth’s surface.

The atmosphere is like a large blanket, helping the Earth stay warm by reflecting its own heat back at it. If it were not for the greenhouse effect, then the Earth would be approximately 30 degrees Celsius colder than it is.

The “climate change” hypothesis says that if we have more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, then, in a sense, we increase the effectiveness of that blanket. This would be like using a thicker quilt at night.

All else being equal, it would make the Earth hotter.

The Department of Water and Power (DWP) San Fernando Valley Generating Station in Sun Valley, Calif., on Dec. 8, 2008. David McNew/Getty Images

Another analogy is pouring water into a bucket with a hole. The tap pouring water into the bucket is the sun, continually heating the Earth with its radiation. The water pouring out of the hole in the bucket is the radiation that shines through the atmosphere and leaves the Earth in all directions.

The water level in the bucket will remain constant when the water pouring in and the water leaving are flowing at the same rate. But if you make the hole in the bucket smaller, all else being equal, the level in the bucket will rise. In other words, the Earth gets hotter.

But in Reality, the Environment Is Extremely Complex

So far, the science is simple and reliable, except for one very critical phrase, “all else being equal.” Because all else is not equal.

The Earth is far more complicated than a single bucket with a single hole in it.

The first problem is that the Earth is not at one single temperature—it varies all over the surface, and the amount of radiation emitted relates to that temperature.

The atmosphere also does not have a fixed composition across the Earth; it varies from location to location and with height above ground.

Water is the biggest complication. It is the most significant greenhouse gas, accounting for around 75 percent of the effect. Yet vapour levels vary rapidly from one day to another and from place to place—we call this “humidity.”

This picture taken on May 8, 2017, shows an Indonesian forest ranger admiring the sight of a waterfall in the Leuser ecosystem rainforest, located mostly within the province of Aceh on the northern tip of the island of Sumatra. Chaideer Mahyuddin/AFP/Getty Images

Temperature affects humidity, so there is a feedback loop between the outcomes of the greenhouse effect, and its inputs. In addition, water on the surface, as ice or oceans, is also reflective, which must be factored into the total balance.

Supposing that the overall bucket hypothesis is true—that an increase in certain greenhouse gases causes an increase in the Earth’s average temperature—which parts will get hotter?

If the poles heat up, then sea levels could rise, but if the increase happens elsewhere, or if one pole cools enough while the other heats to compensate, then that won’t happen.

And how hot will it get? Note from the bucket analogy that the water level won’t continue to rise when the hole is made smaller; it will increase until it reaches a new stable level.

Similarly, we wouldn’t expect the Earth to continue getting hotter but to reach a new stable temperature. However, predicting that through modelling is very difficult.

‘The Science’ Is Filled With Holes

As science gets further and further away from the simple, repeatable laboratory experiment, the conclusions become less and less reliable. So eventually, scientists ask the final question: supposing we are correct and the Earth gets hotter—how will life on the planet respond?

At this point, it appears that scientists tacitly assume that the Earth will not be able to cope with getting hotter as quickly as they predict it will happen. This is even though, according to the same science, we have already heated up by 1 degree Celsius, and so far, there are no catastrophic consequences attributable to the change.

That is to say, weather-related catastrophes of various kinds still occur—bushfires, heat waves, cold snaps, hurricanes, and floods—but all such disasters always have occurred.

Even changes to the “global average” have occurred—or what is an “ice age”? The planet is good at handling such things, and human civilisations are increasingly better at surviving them. Nothing “existential” has yet occurred.

It is here, a long way downstream from the operational science of laboratories, we find ourselves in the hands of predictive science and “modelling.”

Though both are often just called “the science,” predictive science is very, very different from operational science.

The laboratory allows operational science to test theories, whereas the only way to test predictive scientific theories is to wait.

Just like Thomas Edison with his lightbulbs, operational scientists spend most of their time proving themselves wrong, not right.

Likewise, predictive science is almost always wrong; it just has to wait longer to find out. (Consider the various modelling of the spread of COVID-19, particularly from Imperial College, which was invariably wrong.)

That doesn’t mean that predictive science is a waste of time. It can help to test how specific variables relate to other specific variables. It can help explain patterns. It can even inform decision-making, but it does best when applied with a generous dose of scepticism and a preference for evidence over prediction. However, it cannot predict the future and never has.

Climate change scientists know this. They know that there are enough “known unknowns” to invalidate their modelled predictions and that there will certainly be “unknown unknowns” they will discover tomorrow.

So why are they so sure that the Earth will be unable to cope with climate change?

It Lies in Worldview

Whenever there are any gaps in science, we fill them with assumptions that we base on our worldview. But, unfortunately, the answer is not really to be found in the science.

Climate catastrophists do not believe the world can cope with change. The common worldview of scientists today is that life on Earth is an accident and that it takes millions of years to adapt to change. The idea that the world could adapt to changes within months, years or decades is inconceivable to them.

However, I don’t share that pessimism because I don’t share that worldview. I don’t believe our world is an accident, and I don’t believe it is fragile.

I don’t believe that the life that already covers every different climate of Earth’s surface, thriving in the heat of the desert, the humidity of the forest, the darkness of the sea-bed, the rarefied air of the mountain peaks, and the white cold of the ice caps, will not be able to accommodate change.

I don’t believe it is an accident that we found fossil fuels when we did and that we have been able to use them to feed our population when it grew so rapidly, making the previous pessimistic predictions of Rev Thomas Malthus’ also wrong.

I think about Lake Eyre. In central Australia, Lake Eyre is usually a salt lake—a deserted flat surface perfect for trying to set land speed records.

Yet once every 50 years or so, water will reach Lake Eyre and fill it up. Colonies of pelicans, that never previously knew Lake Eyre existed will fly in from the coast and breed there. As a result, the lake becomes its own diverse and thriving ecosystem.

A supplied undated image obtained March 21, 2012, of the colours that emerge when salt and fresh water interact in Lake Eyre in central Australia. AAP Image/Richard Kingsford

If the animals of Australia know what to do when a desert becomes an oasis, why would they not be able to handle a change in the planet’s average temperature?

I don’t really have faith directly in the life on this planet. Instead, I have faith in its maker and the foresight encapsulated in its design.

You may not share that faith—but perhaps you can see that it is more worldview, rather than science, that shapes opinions this far outside the laboratory.

How Much Will We Lose From Climate Change Politics?

Even accepting the science, it appears to me that the issue of climate change is being given higher priority than would be warranted. It is notable that whenever deadlines are set, governments keep moving them closer and closer.

For instance, various jurisdictions around the world appear to be competing for who can set the nearest date for converting to all electric cars. “Net-zero 2050” has become common vernacular, though it was unheard of five years ago.

Unfortunately, the costs of climate response will be high—do not be deceived by lobbyists and activists who claim that it is easy.

In all our efforts to decarbonise, we have only managed to barely dent the electricity sector, and not without cost; we haven’t touched the rest of the energy industry, and with the exclusion of the much maligned agricultural sector, we scarcely even mention non-energy industries that also emit greenhouse gases, such as cement production, smelting, fertiliser production and more.

As scientist Vaclav Smil correctly states in his book “How the world really works,” “Complete decarbonisation of the global economy by 2050 is now conceivable only at the cost of unthinkable global economic retreat, or as a result of extraordinarily rapid transformations relying on near-miraculous technical advances.”

It is high time we had a mature debate about what cost we are really willing to pay.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.