3. Should we do something about Climate Change?

I'm indebted to.....
the author of http://www.wonderingmind42.com/ for this analysis which he demonstrated on white boards in his lab with a video camera running. 'CD' is climate destabilisation - he uses this term and I also tend to use it rather than 'CC' as it conveys a future picture of unpredictable results, rather than everywhere just getting a degree or two warmer but otherwise everything carrying on as normal.

The slide, when it isn't a picture on a blog, is animated and the smiley faces come in afterwards. I will therefore have to fill in the few words you can't read.

The basic argument....
goes as follows. Is mankind confronted with a looming climatic disaster of its own making or not?
The orthodox approach is to ascertain scientifically whether we are the authors of our own climate change problem or whether it is caused by Nature. Having done that we can then decide whether there is any point in changing how we are conducting ourselves right now. He says that there will always be debate about that, because science can never be 100% sure about anything and therefore we will never decide whether to act or not.

He therefore suggests looking at it from the other end of the telescope, as it were. Let's look at the possible outcomes based upon the best advice available around at the moment and perhaps that will help us decide what the best way to act would be. Hence the use of the matrix on the slide - the choices down the left hand side represent the two possible answers to the first question is CD man-made or not? The two choices across the top represent the two ways to act - do something, or do nothing.

1. Top left: We act, only to find that CD is not man-made. We've therefore wasted a lot of money and caused a lot of economic upheaval achieving nothing more than nature would have resolved - bad news.



2. Bottom left: We act, and it turns out to be a good job we did, as the problem was caused by human beings. So we did what we had to do and bequeathed a sustainable planet to our children, which is great news although it did cause a lot of economic hardship along the way.



3. Top right: Now, we decide not to act and because CD is not do with our effect on the planet we save a lot of money and the problem goes away - the perfect scenario - everyone happy, the planet safe.



4. Bottom right: We ignore the doom mongers, decide not to act and find out we're wrong. CD kicks in and we have continual climatic disasters, inundation by the sea, potable water supplies polluted causing epidemics, mass deprivation, economic turmoil etc etc.

Now imagine you were running the world....
and needed to make a decision about what to do. How would you decide? Wondering Mind42's argument follows basic risk management. How can we avoid the 'red risk' in the bottom right hand corner? There are two ways: one is a bet against unknown odds, and the other is a near certainty.

• the former is to put your faith in the judgement of some of the scientists and do nothing.



• the latter is to decide to take action and thereby keep out of the right hand column. Yes it will be painful but avoids the ultimate pain. of the bottom right corner.

Most people....
I've spoken to would act - wouldn't you? Wondering Mind42 then goes on to cite recent opinion from eminent scientific bodies which is tending to the view that CD is man-made. So the odds of being caught out by taking the right hand column are increasing. If anything the political debate, thanks to Al Gore and others, is virtually won. Wondering Mind42 then expresses considerable optimism that Mankind's creativity will find a solution, but he does not give any. Herein lies the next problem area - deciding what to do. The framework, which I keep referring to has helped several of us come to an appreciation of some approaches that are likely to be most efficacious, and certainly some current practices which when scrutinised carefully seem worse than useless. I mean that seriously - to make people feel good, that they are making a real difference to the environment / CC by throwing and smashing perfectly good glass bottles into a bottlebank is worse than useless. There will be a post on the waste hierachy in due course. However there are a few steps I'd like to take with you before building up the framework.

Look out for the next post which describes the current big picture.........