Much needed due diligence on climate change

In short, AGW is now orthodoxy, and orthodoxy always has strong latent support. Because AGW is "science", even well-educated people think it will be too hard for them. David Henderson, a respected British economist and former Treasury official, has called the orthodoxy in climate change a case of "heightened milieu consensus", in which prime ministers and other leaders tell us that nothing could be more serious than this issue. These are not statements of fact; they are no more than conjecture. But they have become, in his phrase "widely accepted presuppositions of policy" Intellectually, AGW is what is known in politics as "a done deal".

So, finally, what should we do about it all?

As someone who has worked closely with ministers in the past, I cannot imagine that I could have advised a minister to go down the AGW path on the evidence available, given the expense involved, the burden on everyone and the possible futility of the outcome.

Some have raised the precautionary principle as an indication that we should, even in the face of the uncertainty about the science, take AGW seriously. The precautionary principle here is very similar to Pacal's wager. Pascal argued that it made good sense to believe in God: if God existed you could gain an eternity of bliss, and if he didn't exist you were no worse off. However, if you didn't believe in God and God did exist, you risked an eternity in Hell. Looking at the risks and benefits, the sensible person would believe in God. Alas, Pascal didn't allow for the possibility that God was in fact Allah, and you had opted for belief in the wrong religion, or that God was a woman with a different set of values, or that an almost infinite set of possibilities existed about the nature of the universe. I am an agnostic about the existence of God, too. The IPCC's account of things seems to me only one possibility, and the evidence for it is not very strong. For that reason, I would counsel that we accept that climate changes, and learn, as indeed human beings have learned for thousands of years, to adapt to that change as rationally and sensibly as we can.

But, because I am still agnostic, and do not dismiss the possibility that the unchecked emission of carbon dioxide may have unexpected and even adverse effects for the environment and for ourselves, I ask for a public inquiry into this matter in which scientists openly argue about the data. I would want it chaired and managed so that it represented what someone has described as "an exemplar of Archimedean science: careful reasoning, humility before nature, understatement, respect for inherent uncertainties, care with language and definitions, grounded in evidence, presentation of theoretical frameworks, respect for contestability, and so on".

The Garnaut Inquiry, set up by the State and Territory Governments on April 30, 2007 and continued by the Rudd Government, is plainly unable to do this work, because it is based on the supposition that the AGW proposition is truth. A Royal Commission has been suggested; if it followed the criteria I have set out, I would be happy with that.

We are, after all, an educated society, and these issues affect every one of us. I would also ask our government do three things:

Develop a professional approach to the preparation and publication of basic observational data about weather and climate; ensure that the funding directed to climate science research be allocated in a disinterested way (that is, without any presupposition that AGW is "settled science"); and wait until there is convincing evidence and argument before it goes ahead with what seem to me to be draconian public policies.

Finally, I would ask that all our governments, as an exercise in much-needed due diligence, look at the existence of the IPCC itself, and ask whether or not it is in Australia's interest to take special notice of its output. For ourselves, if the earth is warming, then we will learn to adapt to that, as human beings have done throughout their history. But it will be important for us to do it rationally.