Posts Tagged ‘agenda’

Climate cooling – of our heads!

Monday, November 30th, 2009

Alarms are ringing in many places – we have not done enough for the climate! We also worry that concern about the impact of climate change is on the decline in many countries. The years are passing us by and the emissions are increasing more or less like they always have. It appears that the models and prognostics are not well developed, although they can tell us about high probabilities of serious warming in the years to come, with dire consequences.

There is even talk about smoothing of data, scams, hoaxes for and against. The clarity that we want is not yet there and agressive bloggers, lobbyists, activists are turning up the noise levels. The media are surely not helping us. We are in a state of confusion! Politicians are helpless in this situation.

The notion of “qualified scientist” is being put forward – scientists are busy qualifying themselves and disqualifying some others. In the background there is the noise from the media – the authority is not there, there is a growing need for the defining probability or truth. Peer-reviews, publications, consensus is a mantra that does not solve this, but maybe a proper communications strategy is?

Complexity is abundant in the world of climate: There are many places in the world and the effects may be of its own kind in your place, there are cyclical effects, short term and long term variations and unknown factors starting to play up or disappearing, there is not a ready model for this now, there may be tipping points involved. But the models are evolving and will in time be helpful.

The business world has however seen the possibilities of new products and markets and companies are gearing up for the green revolution – which is a good idea whatever the truth is. Peak oil will come – maybe later than sooner – renewable energy and energy efficiency can`t be bad.

Maybe this is what we should do – stop the squabbling and start serious work on improving our environment including developing new, cheap and sustainable energy forms. Let us change the agenda a bit – let us start making changes and let science run its course.

The global cooling we should talk about now is the cooling of our heads!