By Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Claus Leggewie and Renate Schubert
When individuals and societies are confronted with the realization that a gulf yawns between the desirability of an important goal and the feasibility of achieving it, they rarely respond by making greater efforts towards closing the perceived gap. Two other responses are more typical: First, they call into question whether this seemingly unachievable goal is a reasonable one – rather like a rebuffed suitor downplaying the beauty of the object of his affections. Second, they discredit those who steadfastly insist on the necessity of achieving the goal – a variation on the theme of shooting the messenger.
Even an armchair psychologist could spot both types of response in the way the climate change issue is currently being debated. Some, for example, place a question mark over the political question of whether or not “prevention” – in other words, mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions – is the right remedy for climate change. Rather than helping to limit the climate change they have helped to cause, surely each industrialized country could simply focus on dealing with their own climate impacts – in other words, find clever ways to treat the symptoms while filing their endeavours under the pleasant-sounding catchword “adaptation”. This thoroughly popular idea is as old as the climate debate itself, but it has been given a new lease of life since Copenhagen.
In other quarters it appears to have suddenly dawned on people that the researchers working with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are not of the übermensch variety, in possession of absolute certainty, and that isolated errors can indeed occur in reports that weigh in at several kilos. After inventing various other slips and errors, open season has been declared on these Cassandra figures: they may now be publicly shamed and executed. With a recent article bearing the suggestive heading Die Wolkenschieber (“The Cloud Movers”) and additionally published online in English under the heading “Climate Catastrophe – A Superstorm for Global Warming Research” the German weekly magazine DER SPIEGEL has proven itself particularly adept at this latest fashionable sport. Clearly intended to give the climate researchers a good rap on their grubby knuckles, the article itself positively oozes with errors (see below). Its coldly voyeuristic description of the mental and physical ordeal undergone by British Professor Phil Jones – whom large sections of the media summarily condemned as a forger after the theft of his private emails – is surely one of the all-time low points of German “science journalism”.
A sober analysis of the climate debate would doubtless be less entertaining and would fill quite a few pages – space that scientists never have at their disposal when engaging in dialogue with the public. This is why we prefer to concentrate here on two crucial weaknesses in this debate, namely intellectual double standards and a lack of understanding of risk management.
To begin, then, it is right – and indeed desirable – that climate change research and the resulting IPCC reports should be subjected regularly to all the latest tests and checks: When dealing with a major issue that affects the future of humanity, factual errors must be kept to an absolute minimum, as far as current science allows. The fact is, though, that the 3,000-odd pages of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report comes very close to this minimum – the errors in it can be counted on the fingers of one hand – and a reform commission convened at the Inter Academy Council will be drawing up proposals for still better quality assurance over the coming months. Still, this does not stop certain sections of the media – sent into a state of high agitation by the climate sceptic scene – from accusing “established climate researchers” of making false statements of fact. One textbook example of this campaign is the SPIEGEL article mentioned above. Among other things, it attempts to fob off trusting information seekers with one of the flimsiest non-starters in the blame business, namely the “refutation” of the so-called hockey stick curve of historical global warming. In similar theatrical fashion the IPCC is accused of having (knowingly?) given out a false warning about increases in tropical storms in a warmer world. Both statements are utter nonsense – the hockey stick curve has stood the test of every review to date, and the IPCC, in full alignment with the latest research results, predicted an increase not in the frequency but in the destructive force of tropical storms see the online article by Stefan Rahmstorf, a member of the German Advisory Council on Global Change – WBGU, published at Real Climate “Climate scientist bashing”, 7 April 2010, www.realclimate.org). This is precisely what we mean by intellectual double standards: making oneself out to be the keeper of the holy grail of objective, factually accurate science while at the same time not giving a tinker’s cuss about the facts. Or would it have been too much bother to do a bit of conscientious research?
Interestingly enough, the opponents of climate protection have only very recently grasped the fact that – for all their hockey stick bashing – they had neglected to attack the heart of international efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions, namely the 2 degree goal mentioned before. While this climate policy benchmark can be backed up scientifically in a number of ways, it cannot, of course, be “proven” mathematically or indeed in any other way. Various experts have made it clear that during the entire developmental history of Homo sapiens there have demonstrably never been temperatures higher than the “pre-industrial level plus 2°C”. Sceptics counter this by arguing that “humanity” has already survived greater fluctuations in the Earth’s temperature, albeit in a downward direction – such as the 5°C cooling of the Earth during the last Ice Age. This objection is irrelevant in practical terms, however, as isolated tribes of prehistoric hunters and gatherers were able to move flexibly in response to the climatic changes in a virtually empty natural environment. The transition to a sedentary lifestyle during the Neolithic revolution and the later maturing of high cultures was indeed most likely possible only because in the last 10,000 years the global mean temperature has remained more or less constant. Today, nearly seven billion people are firmly dug in on the Earth – in agricultural, urban and infrastructural terms – including the coastal zones, where sea-level rises of the order of several metres cannot simply be countered by shifting civilization backwards into some hinterland.
Viewed in
this light, the 2 degree guard rail is still too optimistic,
particularly if we
consider the spectacular speed of
anticipated climate change. This assessment is supported by a large
number of
more recent studies which address above all the “non-linear” (that is,
disproportionate) growth of harmful climate impacts brought on by
advancing
global warming. These serious attempts to give politicians a compass by
which
to set climate protection measures on track have been countered since
Copenhagen with the naked assertion that it really isn’t so difficult to
adapt
to runaway climate change. Yet the search for arguments that hold water –
relevant
studies, say, in peer reviewed scientific journals – draws a blank.
Using
impressive intellectual double standards, the anecdotal bluster of a
minority
of alternative thinkers in the research community is accepted as a basis
on
which to send all of humanity on a journey into the climatic unknown.
Which brings us to the issue of risk management. Anyone who throws the precautionary principle overboard because they find there is no absolute certainty in relation to the problem at hand is either foolish or irresponsible. Perhaps the opponents of preventative climate protection would like to answer the following questions: 1. At what level of definite risk probability does practical action become an urgent necessity? 2. When exactly will researchers be in a position to specify this threshold precisely? 3. How sure can we be that the train carrying our civilization along the tracks has not already sped over the crucial points by the time this moment of enlightenment is achieved? The complicated geo-biophysical machinery of the Earth System is teeming with dead times, in other words, delayed – but largely irreversible – responses to perturbations to natural systems. It is likely that a number of these unpleasant surprises lie concealed beyond the 2 degree guard rail.
The three questions posed above have so far – to our knowledge – not been answered satisfactorily by anyone, although in view of the multifarious scientific references to the risks of advancing global warming, the burden of proof now clearly lies with the anti- greenhouse gas reduction propagandists! Sadly they have little to offer apart from some dark grey literature. And yet many decision-makers today are toying with the idea of giving up on the rational dual strategy of prevention and adaptation – “avoid the unmanageable and manage the unavoidable” – in favour of pursuing the one-sided response of a mere policy of repair. The main argument is that national adaptation measures generate national benefits, while national emissions limits merely benefit free riders in the newly industrialized and developing countries. Apart from the fact that economic analysis of public goods (such as the Earth’s atmosphere) has long since outgrown such simplistic trains of thought, what kind of future do the stooges actually foresee? Do they truly believe that, in a world so inextricably interconnected socio-economically, it is possible to erect national citadels of climate security and defend them against the less fortunate environmental refugees from the developing countries? Or perhaps that in an “adaptation race” it is feasible to force newly industrializing countries such as China, India and Brazil – the world powers of tomorrow – to their knees in terms of emissions?
Those who
choose to embrace such illusions are playing a dangerous and
simultaneously
immoral game: If every country, regardless of its historic
responsibility with
regard to atmospheric pollution, thinks only of itself, then dangerous
tensions
of unmanageable proportions are sure to build up and eventually erupt.
Every
one of us would be the losers – especially, though, young people and
those not
yet born, who are in danger of seeing a future worth living slip away
from
them.
Good risk management, incidentally, also involves recognizing the opportunities associated with fencing in risks. And that rapid decarbonization of the global society is a win-win-win situation is plain to see: moving away from dependence on depleting fossil fuels by mid-century would, first, make a strong contribution towards climate stabilization, second, effect the inevitable transition towards a highly efficient and sustainable energy supply from the sun, the wind and the waves and, third, enable many developing countries to leapfrog the “dirty” phases of industrialization entirely – making them attractive partners and markets for highly industrialized countries in particular in the 21st century. So the climate protection avantgarde has a real opportunity to both act in a responsible way – maintaining the integrity of creation can certainly serve as a guideline here – and to increase its own prosperity over the long term. Not bad prospects for pioneers …
The authors:
Hans Joachim Schellnhuber is chair of the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU), a scientific advisory body to the Federal Government of Germany and director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
Claus Leggewie is a member of the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU) and director of the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities, Essen, Institute for Advanced Study of the University Alliance Metropolis Ruhr
Renate Schubert is a member of the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU) and professor for economics at the Swiss Federal Institute for Technology and director of the Institute for Environmental Decisions, ETH Zurich
A shorter version of this article has been published in the leading German weekly DIE ZEIT (“2 Grad und nicht mehr”, 15. April 2010, Nr. 16).
References:
DER SPIEGEL, Nr. 13, 29.3.2010: Die Wolkenschieber
SPIEGEL online, 04/06/2010: Climate Catastrophe – A Superstorm for Global Warming Research, http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,687259,00.html
Translation:
Christopher Hay
