The climate controversy [i] will only be resolved by time. And a lot of time, centuries, because validating a model or confirming a theory can only be done with the aid of experimental data, and we only have one single and slow laboratory in which only one unique experiment is running: the Earth [ii].

Positions are hardly reconcilable: on one hand there are the anthropowarmists, and on the other hand the climatosceptics. While there is no doubt about the reality of a warming over the last century and a half, what distinguishes these two groups is to attribute its cause either to CO₂ emissions, or to other natural or artificial phenomena that remain poorly elucidated. Neither the ones nor the others know if an even stronger warming would have harmful or beneficial consequences for human life on earth; the firsts think in terms of catastrophe; the others know that they don’t know.

For the firsts, the cause of climate change – burning the fossil fuels coal, oil, and gas – must immediately and drastically be reduced in order to delay and limit warming before the imminent disaster will intervene (which they foresee if and when 2 °C will be exceeded, and we are now at 1 °C). Ultimately, we should not consume fossil fuels at all.

For the others, and whatever their basic arguments [iii], curbing the use of fossil fuels is a strategy that cannot be crowned with any success; it is unjustified by the lack of evidence on the causes of warming, or even by the evidence that CO₂ did play no role in previous changes and may have a very minor one in the present case.

In fact, there are two bets, based not on knowledge but on own preferences.

The first is the alarmist’s kind of a Pascalian wager [iv]: let’s curb CO₂ emissions and if warming is stopped or slowed significantly this will have been beneficial; otherwise no harmful consequences would result (and we will have contributed to a so-called sustainable development).

The bet of the pragmatics is a complementary antonym of Pascal’s wager: we have time, wait and see, taking adaptive measures where it would be necessary (e.g. dams for flood control, as was done in the Netherlands). If nothing happens you will not have sacrificed the people’s freedom as well as enormous resources to fight a false cause for a futile purpose at the expense of other more important and urgent development. And if the warming continues you will have to abide by it. If you lose, you will have time and means to adapt; if you win you will have avoided making big and foolish things.

These two positions are irreconcilable, for many generations to come. The anthropowarmist credo is opposed to the doubt of the sceptics. And this is certainly no scientific debate because science is unable to be settled within this magma of clues and uncertainties [v]. Indeed it’s about anyone’s ideological position, a deliberate choice he or she makes.

In this situation of opposition, each considers the other one as irresponsible: one accuses the other of sacrificing the planet in the name of unbridled exploitation of natural resources; and the other accuses the one to sacrifice the so much needed social and economic development of populations in the name of a hypothetical future disaster that should be avoided by a new collectivist dirigisme. There is no possible common morality or consensus in this matter because the choices are diametrically opposed.

Nevertheless the sceptic cannot content with staying in limbo, in the indecision, because, first, the activist bustles continuously and, second, to stay outside of the game on the pretext of uncertainty has never allowed progress. He has to take a stand in spite of his awareness of his lack of knowledge.

For my part, and the reader will have understood it in the tone of my writing, I follow resolutely a heretical road: yes to science and knowledge, no to the dogmatic, monomaniac and reducing anthropowarmism.

______________________________

[i]      To deny that there is a controversy by claiming an alleged “scientific consensus” is a sham.

[ii]     It is doubtful that any general climate theory will ever be confirmed in non-linear, chaotic systems such as the Earth’s climate and the interactions with the sun.
It cannot be achieved in human medicine despite the availability of many samples of a large number of more or less healthy or more or less sick people. For example, it is doubtful that the billion euro which is now put into the European “Human Brain Project” for 112 research institutions in 24 countries would result in a general simulation of all neural functions of the mouse, and then of Homo sapiens sapiens.

[iii]    Denialist arguments:

• Primary: no warming is taking place (a bit too foolish, given the evidences of the contrary).
• Secondary: CO₂ has no effect on climate (categorical, and probably contrary to the laws of physics).

Sceptical arguments, or of heretics or lukewarmists:

• The climate conditions have changed over the course of history, without knowing why and without the intervention of CO₂.
• The temperature and sea level rise, and glaciers are melting since before the beginning of the industrial era.
• We do not know if it is a significant and lasting climate change.
• The share attributable to CO₂ in this climate variation is unknown. It can be between almost nothing and small.
• There are other unexplained and more determining causes.
• Future warming is unpredictable, even in the medium term.
• It is not known whether adverse or beneficial consequences result from future warming.
• Reducing CO₂ emissions will change so little that it would be a futile exercise, but a very [too] expensive one.

Anthropowarmist arguments:

• The climate is changing.
• This is primarily or exclusively due to so-called greenhouse gases, among which CO2 plays the dominant role.
• The atmospheric CO₂ concentration has never been as high since there is humanity on Earth. It is due to the combustion of fossil fuels.
• Model calculations based on future scenarios indicate that this leads to a global catastrophe.
• Only a drastic and immediate reduction of CO₂ emissions can correct this climate change.

[iv]    Pascal’s wager, “Estimate these two cases: if you win, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Do bet that it is, without hesitation.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 1670.

From his grave, Pascal could not give us the result. But if he had been educated in a cannibal society, had he eaten his enemies on the pretext of his bet?

[v]     Although in my opinion, and in view of the “obvious uncertainties”, the sceptical position is more reasonable (in the sense of using reason and logic rather than sentiments) than the categorical assertions of alarmists.

Merci de compartir cet article