Climate change has become one of the most important and divisive issues of our time. Recorded Global average temperatures have been increasing for some time and the current scientific consensus is that this is due to anthropogenic (human caused) carbon emissions.
The trouble is, scientific consensus doesn’t mean all scientists agree – it just means a majority have backed a particular argument.
So who should we believe?
Most published scientific data suggests that climate change is very real and is occurring all around us. However, some scientists claim the ‘accepted’ data is incorrect and their contradictory research is being ignored.
Many of the latter group of scientists or so-called climate change deniers insist that they have been shut out of the debate. They claim that the scientific community has closed ranks to support the theory of climate change and that any scientist who is sceptical might be blacklisted and unable to progress through the academic system.
The acceptance of scientific hypothesis and models as knowledge is not always Organic. Sometimes it can be carefully scripted into a narrative. Climate change deniers say that this has been happening for decades – some claim that oil companies want to keep prices artificially high, others claim that science has been taken over by a huge collective folly, where nobody ‘can see the wood for the trees’.
The exposure of payments made by oil companies to challenge climate change theories has certainly exposed a number of deniers as nothing more than corporate stooges, prepared to present any data to support their employers case. Butcan all denier’s opinions be dismissed as the ramblings of heretics and corporate stooges?
In some cases possibly yes, in other cases probably not. Some scientists are utterly convinced that climate change is not happening, or if is, is certainly not caused by humans and we therefore don’t need to change our behaviour.
If scientists point to data suggesting that 12 of the hottest years on record have been in the last 20 years. Deniers say this is not evidence. When images of melting polar ice caps and receding glaciers are beamed around the World, deniers say that these things have always happened.
Some point to a different set of data which they suggest that means global temperatures go in cycles, others blame solar activity or the will fo the gods. One things is for certain, the climate change debate goes round in circles!
While it is true that temperatures on Earth have fluctuated over time. Such temperature changes are over hundreds, even thousands of years. Many people feel a strong sense of anecdotal evidence that all is not well with climate.
From raging bush fires across Australia, bitterly cold British winters, disappearing lakes in Central Africa and freakish flooding in Pakistan – To many people it seems that these climatic events are all connected and a very real reminder of the climate change process.
Most global scientific opinion is that climate change is real, dangerous, and it is a massive challenge for humanity to control or if need be, to live with. It seems more likely that scientific consensus is correct than the much smaller number of scientists who deny climate change.
For us non-experts, we rely on scientists to collect and collate evidence and to present their conclusions in an impartial balanced way. It seems unlikely that there is a global scientific conspiracy to lie to us about climate change – if only because so many scientisits have put their name to articles and journals backing the case for anthropogenic climate change.
Although a healthy scepticism is important when the scientific evidence and opinion of experts is so unanimous and with what we see and feel all around us, it does indeed seem that climate change is happening.
However few things are certain in life so perhaps the climate change deniers will be proven to be right after all. Perhaps the truth is somewhere between the two extremes of opinion.
