Posted: Tuesday 8 December 2009
Copenhagen
Climate change should obviously be a concern to all right-minded people. What concerns me most at the moment is the apparently rapidly developing polarisation of people into those who 'accept' and those who 'deny' that there is global warming going on, and that it is caused by human activity. Surely it is not that simple?
The difficulty perhaps lies with the fact that the arguments (on both sides) are largely scientific, and science can rarely provide an unequivocal truth. This is particularly true when the biggest experiment of all - the earth - is under scrutiny.
The history of the development of thinking about how the earth works is full of examples of polarised opinion within the scientific community. In each case opposing camps were established which set out their views with passion, and rubbished their opponent's views equally passionately. In the late 18th century, the 'Neptunists' believed that all ancient igneous rocks - such as basalt lavas - were formed by chemical precipitation from water, whereas the 'Vulcanists' pointed to the creation of lavas by present volcanos and inferred that this same process had operated in the past. The fact that the disagreement persisted for so long is probably due to the fact that both sides were able to find 'convincing' explanations for the apparent inconsistencies pointed out by the other side, plus the fact that the battle lines were so rigorously drawn. In the middle part of the 20th century a similar schism occurred between geologists who believed in 'continental drift' and those who didn't. It was only when symmetric magnetic 'stripes' were found on both sides of present-day mid-ocean ridges that the scientific community began to agree - and even then many geologists were worried about the driving mechanism for the new science of Plate Tectonics for many decades.
My point is that it is unlikely that we are going to see a single, coherent picture of climate change science emerging for some time yet. The subject is so vast and multi-dimensional that it is very difficult to distil it down to something manageable and easy for the layman to understand. It also has that most difficult and dangerous parameter 'time' firmly embedded in it - as does pretty much any aspect of science which involves the earth. Be very sceptical of any scientific theory concerning the earth which doesn't look further back than a human lifespan.
In the meantime I think we have to try very hard to resist the debate becoming polarised. History tells us that this tends to impede the development of a consensus, rather than hurry it along. When asked, I don't think any of us need to have a view about climate change - we just need to understand some of the arguments on both sides and be committed to further research taking place. It makes sense to look ahead at the likely consequences of a global rise in temperature and take steps to limit carbon emissions while that hypothesis seems to have quite a lot going for it. But it doesn't mean we should think that the debate (or the science) has ended.
I suspect there is plenty of time for any of our aspiring scientists still at school here to reach S6, leave and go to university, do a doctorate and then still be in time to make a meaningful contribution to the debate. In that regard it is pleasing to note that more of this year's S6 leavers have applied to read a pure science degree next year.