Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Kolbert, speaking at Bates College recently, asserted that people are playing “a dangerous game” by “heating up the planet.” That is probably untrue but, regardless, is not relevant.
All competent climate scientists know that humans contribute to climate change through land-use change (e.g., urbanization) and pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. But there has never been a poll asking experts the only question that matters from a policy perspective: do the relevant scientists agree that greenhouse gas emissions will cause dangerous climate change? Only if it is likely to be dangerous should this be a public policy concern.
The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change reports list thousands of peer-reviewed references in leading science journals that shed doubt on the science underlying the climate scare. The NIPCC demonstrates that today’s climate and weather are not extraordinary; there is no convincing evidence that human activity is causing climate problems.
As a result of the unjustified belief that we know the future of climate and, even more outrageously, that humanity controls it, relatively little money is available to help the poor adapt to climate change today. Of the roughly $1 billion spent every day across the world on climate finance, only six percent is devoted to helping vulnerable societies adapt to climate change. The rest is spent trying to stop climatic events that might someday happen.
That is the real climate crisis.
Tom Harris, executive director, International Climate Science Coalition, Ottawa, Ontario
Send questions/comments to the editors.
