IT鈥橲 time for heretical thinking on climate change. After two decades in which science has told us more and more about global warming, climate modellers may have to recognise that we have learned most of what we can from their number-crunching.
Some of the detailed forecasts about exactly what the climate will be like in Albuquerque or Basingstoke in 2050 or 2080 are little more than statistical noise, as physicist Lenny Smith underlines this week (see 鈥淏ad climate science鈥�). Even the global picture may depend more than we like to admit on feedbacks and tipping points produced by a system that is inherently chaotic. We need to beware of the known unknowns and 鈥� whisper it 鈥� the unknown unknowns.
Some politicians still demand certainty from climate scientists and are sitting on their hands until they get it. But certainty may be no more available here than in that other troublesome discipline, economics. This is not a counsel for inaction, but for grown-up government: for doing what we know is needed in the face of uncertainty, and for taking actions like those called for this week by the British government鈥檚 , from decarbonising electricity generation to culling carbon-spewing vehicles and aircraft.
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Here鈥檚 another heresy. Perhaps the endless negotiations to frame a successor to the Kyoto protocol 鈥� currently in mid-grind in 鈥� are becoming an impediment to action. The protocol鈥檚 various market devices, like cap-and-trade and the clean development mechanism, could now be holding up the technologies we know will do the job. Invented by the Clinton/Gore administration, should they now be jettisoned by Barack Obama? Michael Le Page believes so (see 鈥淭ime for change on climate: an open letter to Barack Obama鈥�) and argues that taxing carbon would be a better plan. It would be a bold move. But just as past economic certainties are failing, maybe it is time to think the unthinkable here too.