Certainty and Global Warming

Even as world leaders are meeting in Paris to seek a difficult accord on limiting the damage being done by global warming, voices are being raised all over the world to minimize the problem. They argue that nothing is certain about the climate. I believe that those taking this line cannot possibly realize the extent of the damage that is being done to all of us. I think they need to be opposed simply and clearly.

Whoever says that we cannot have absolute certainty about the future climate of the planet is stating an obvious truth. But it is obtuse to say that a danger is not grave because it is not mathematically certain that it will happen.

If we discover a bomb that has remained buried beneath what is now a children’s playground, we do not leave it there because ‘it might not explode’. If a fire breaks out in a cellar, a reasonable person looks for a fire extinguisher, calls 999, escapes from the building. Whoever says: ‘But there is no certainty that the fire will spread, therefore let’s calmly carry on with breakfast,’ is a cretin. And yet this is precisely the attitude taken by those who argue that the problem is not serious, because we have no certainty regarding the climate.

At the risk of stating the obvious, I will attempt to summarize the situation.

It is a fact that the Earth is currently subject to an unusually accelerated degree of warming. It has become clear (as it was not just a few years ago) that global warming is being significantly increased by human activity, especially by the emission of carbon dioxide. Predicting the future of the climate is difficult. The projections indicate that if no intervention is implemented, the increase in the planet’s temperature will reach four to five degrees this century. This would lead to catastrophes in the coming decades. In the past, changes of temperature of this magnitude have caused extinction events.

For the Earth, these are small fluctuations comparable to many others; for humanity, it is set to be disastrous: it could mean the flooding of cities near the coast and on large plains, vast desertification, the collapse of agricultural production, famine, widespread hunger, hurricanes, conflict breaking out everywhere.

We are not talking about the welfare of polar bears. We are talking about the future of our children.

The emission of carbon monoxide due to human activity continues to exacerbate the problem. Coordinated action by humanity to reduce emissions could succeed in reducing warming by two degrees Celsius, thus limiting the most damaging effects, if not all of them. This is the analysis of the IPCC, the United Nations Intergovernmental Group for Climate Change. And there is universal consensus on this from every serious institution on the planet. Those who disagree are no different from those who try to argue that dinosaurs never existed, or that the Earth is flat.

This is the situation that we are in. We have no certainties. We might be wrong. But we have to take a decision. We can decide to ignore the alarm bells and continue regardless, on the basis of the fact that ‘we are not altogether sure’. This is the attitude of those who would leave the bomb beneath the playground because it might not explode. The whole world has become convinced that there is a serious risk, and those voices that generate confusion by denying the fact simply make things even more complicated for those who, with difficulty, because the problems are so complex, are trying to mitigate the danger on behalf of us all.