His view seems to be, as best I can understand it, that there may be many possible reasons for climate change, so we’d be foolish to assume we’ve identified the real culprit and should therefore just accept and adapt to whatever comes to pass. When I reminded him in correspondence that to act effectively to avert global warming we know we must act before there is certainty, because of the time lags in the climate system, he said that my argument for the insurance policy view would only apply if the climate scientists are certainly correct. I don’t pretend to understand the logic of these statements.
Professor Aitkin considers global warming to be a distraction from more immediate crises, such as water and peak oil. However sensible action would mitigate all three crises, and others besides, including declining soils, rivers, forests, fisheries and coral reefs, and pervasive chemical pollution. These are all symptoms of our over-exploitation of the Earth, which we must reduce anyway, regardless of global warming. It is not widely appreciated how relatively easy it is to reduce our wasteful use of energy and other resources. Much wastage can be eliminated at a profit, and much more for modest cost and with multiple spin-off benefits.
The signs of global warming have recently accelerated. Most notably, melting of Arctic sea ice has dramatically accelerated since 2005, and there are sensible reasons to fear that it could be the first big domino - in a chain reaction of tipping dominos - that could shift us irreversibly into a much more hostile climate, which would certainly threaten the viability of our global industrial civilisation. (The signs of accelerated warming and the low costs of mitigation are discussed more fully in the full version of this article (PDF 44KB).)
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With the signs ever more threatening, with other compelling reasons for action, and with the cost of action modest, there is no reason at all to delay action on global warming.
This is an edited version of a longer article, the full version of which is available here (PDF 44KB).
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