The Copenhagen summit on climate change is taking place. There is a lot of discussion about climate change, with a strong message coming out of the summit that there is a consensus that climate change is real (even though, like many assertions of religions it cannot be directly, unambiguously experienced) and that it is caused by man's activities. The conclusion is then drawn that governments will have to take drastic, and very expensive, action to decrease the use of fossil fuels.
My concern is scientists are portrayed as some kind of homogeneous group, a 'community', like believers in Islam or Wiccan. Apart from a belief that an experiment can falsify a theory, I don't think that scientists really have any shared beliefs. I studied science at university for six years, and worked in a research establishment after leaving university, but I cannot come to any conclusions about the reality of politically important scientific questions which are any more informed than the average voter.
Since scientists agree that CO2
temperatures might rise by around 2 degrees C, and that this is due to increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the world's governments must immediately take steps to stop the man-made activity that is causing this.
Politicians sometimes have to take decisions that depend on understanding science. This is very worrying, since the rigour of the physical scientist would seem to call from a quite different character to that which is needed by the politician. Climate change is an area where this is needed. It is important that politicians take the right decision, but they seem worryingly fixated on whether or not scientists agree on whether or not climate change is even real, or certainly caused by the burning of fossil fuels. This would not matter so much except that the decision seems to be to spend an incredible amount of money, both in actual money and, much more importantly in the opportunity cost of lost growth, reducing the effects of burning fossil fuels.
A lot of the justification for this seems to hinge on the assertion that a majority of scientists agree with the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. Leaving aside the evidence that the people running this unit are not exactly the dispassionate searchers after truth that we imagine scientists to be, the idea that correctness in scientific theory is dependent on a kind of vote taken amongst the scientific community is, surely, very wrong. When Einstein published his theory of General Relativity, nobody asked botanists for their opinion on the correctness of the theory.
Whenever so much money is involved in policy, as it now is in Climate Change, lots of very strong incentives are created for people to capture some of it, without regard for the future of the planet, or the economic well-being of its inhabitants. Politicians who are hungry for power hijack the scientists work for their own ends (remember Cameron posing with huskies in Greenland a few years back?). Policy gets a momentum of its own, which can result in ruinous policies down the line, always supported by 'independent' reports of experts who happen to produce the kind of recommendations that the government ministers require.
Of course, as the defenestration of Andrew Nutt shows, when politicians find it expedient to ignore science they will always do so.
Obviously, I'm an old cynic. Maybe this time the momentum and the green movement will turn out to have no unintended consequences, will cost much less than initially envisaged, will not divert resources from other less photogenic causes, and really have the effect of increasing productivity and growth and wealth. But I'm not going to hold my breath.
Update: 56 papers are printing an identical editorial. I think that, on the whole, that makes me more inclined to disbelieve its message.
