So the political year has kicked off again and already we see that the management of the risks of climate change is back centre stage of political comment.
It is dominating scientific debate as well. The unmitigated farce that was the Copenhagen summit late last year showed that the world is nowhere near at one in agreeing on either the impact, extent or best way of dealing with long term climate change. After millions of dollars spent in getting thousands of people to Copenhagen, the end result was only that it was agreed to do it all again.
The business community and the public is being let down by this process. As we see all too often politics has interfered with science and lobbyists have traded themselves off as scientific advisors and just as shamefully some scientists have traded themselves off more as lobbyists than scientists.
We have seen some very concerning evidence of the way in which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been influenced by “scientific reports” that have shown to range from inconclusive to just plain false and misleading. Two of these recent ones being the report on glacial melting and the use of data collected on the impact of land clearing on the South American rain forests. Both were used by the IPCC to conclude that dramatic impacts on glaciers and rainforests were imminent unless mega efforts were made to reduce greenhouse gas emissions immediately. It turns out the science references for such conclusions were not up to standard to say the least!
The use of science for decision making is so often predicated on the assumption, often false, that the science gives definitive results all the time. The opposite is in fact often the case, and when it comes to climate predictions it is pretty much always the case. Professionals in the climate science field state their case in probabilities and we all need to remember this. Climate is a most inexact science.
This doesn’t stop the less professional, the amateurs, the media, lobbyists, etc becoming “loose” in interpretation of the science. However, it beggars belief to see the IPCC trip up on such an important global issue. Perhaps we should not be so surprised given we all rely on scientists volunteering their time on advisory boards where, of course, the allegations of funding and decision making are going to skew our belief system. If this is such a large problem in the matter of climate change, why doesn’t the world pool its resources to pay for the best independent advice?
We should clearly be following the advice of the office of the British Chief Scientist, supported by our own Chief Scientist, in advocating among other things caution in accepting any science simply because it supported the impacts of climate change. They say there should be more open dialogue between all the science community regardless whether they are supporters or sceptics.
The tendency to demonise sceptics does not lead to transparent debate or sound decision making
So to the domestic response. With all the global chaos around the issue and the fact that very little if anything has been done to amend the third time lucky CPRS legislation we can only assume that the legislation is doomed and it’s only real purpose now is in politically leveraging. Let the election campaign begin.