Industry Accepts Climate Change, As Man-Made Climate Change Looks Less Certain

An article in today's Charleston Gazette - Mail pointed out an interesting paradox - industry leaders saying that, regardless of what the science shows, we have to be ready for climate change legislation. (I'm paraphrasing here, because the Daily Mail and Gazette websites aren't loading for some reason.) Evidently, the electric power industry believes that it will have to address climate change, even though the science doesn't support the conclusion that significant warming is being caused by greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. So climate change may not be occurring, but people in power believe it is, so it has to be addressed, even if there's nothing to address.

I have spent some time looking at this, and have noticed that climate change skeptics seem to be making headway in their assault on the reigning scientific orthodoxy of anthropogenic global warming (AGW), the belief that mankind is significantly affecting climate through carbon dioxide emissions, at the same time that governments and the media largely view AGW as a settled matter. If you review the various climate change websites, the AGW skeptics (see Climate Audit or Climate Skeptic are generally science-driven, while the pro-AGW forces tend to retreat to statements like "the science is settled" and refer to positions that have been discredited even within their own ranks, such as the denial of a Medieval Warm Period. While both sides have their share of name-callers, the number of persons who are energized and who comment intelligently on the internet seems to be growing in favor of AGW skeptics.

And yet . . . the overwhelming tide is clearly to Do Something About Global Warming, even if there is nothing to do. There are many people in positions of power who are committed to the belief that climate change is inevitable unless greenhouse gases are reduced. Lots of businesses have developed marketing plans that are premised on climate change, and lots of scientific research is funded with the understanding that AGW cannot be denied.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. The leaked emails from East Anglia University show that AGW advocates have not always been entirely forthright in defense of their position, and new data casts doubt on whether climate change is occurring, or even that a rise in CO2 or in temperature is a bad thing. As people actually start to incur costs and changes in lifestyle to accomplish GHG reductions, there may be more of an inquiry into the need for the reductions. Here's hoping that, even if there is no real scientific basis for catastrophic AGW, we'll see some beneficial results, such as reforestation efforts and development of alternative energy, that originate from a mistaken belief.