It is happening and we are causing it; everything else is noise

Is climate change real? And are we causing it? Not according to some people. So how can we judge?

Climate change threatens our civilisation.The last period of glaciation of Earth ended around 10 000 years ago. Since then, human civilisation has been built up on two pillars.

The first has been an unusually stable and relatively warm climate, which has allowed communities to settle and farm, and ultimately to develop into complex societies.

Two thousand years ago, there were around 200 million people; today there are almost 7 000 million.

This mushrooming of the population has been facilitated by the second pillar – the availability of cheap energy from the fossil fuels coal, oil and gas. World annual energy consumption has rocketed from around four exajoules 2 000 years ago to almost 500 exajoules today, with 90% coming from fossil fuels.

But now, all our achievements are under threat. Our planet is warming. This may seem like good news if you live in places such as Finland or Tierra del Fuego, but not if you live in parts of the planet that are already hot.

While the planet itself will no doubt survive, mankind is vulnerable in many ways.

Sea-level rise and increased storm intensities will impact particularly in low-lying, high-density population areas such as the Netherlands, Bangladesh, Louisiana and Florida.

Changes in rainfall patterns and glacier melting will impact on the water supply to over 15% of the world’s population in areas of India and China.

What is causing climate change?

While there are natural forces at play, global warming is being exacerbated by our burning of fossil fuels and the resulting greenhouse gas emissions. Global warming then leads to changes in climate, which differ from region to region.

Should we be worried? Indeed, we should. Since the potential consequences of climate change are so horrific, the world needs to change its behaviour.

While we will only finally run out of fossil fuels in the next few decades, we need to start using alternative energy sources such as wind, nuclear and solar now, before the effects of climate change overwhelm us.

The role of science in understanding climate change

We live in a complex and highly specialised world, one that has been made possible by the achievements of science and technology. Because of this complexity, we have to rely on our experts – people who have dedicated years and decades to understanding issues in their disciplines, be they brain surgeons, geologists or climate scientists.

The foundational ethic of scientific work is the use of journals, conferences and peer reviews, so that claims can be reported clearly and subjected to the rigorous scrutiny of other experts.

What counts as knowledge are the ideas and claims that are then accepted by them.

If a claim is rejected, the honest scientist is expected to accept that judgement, and move onto other things.

Climate change experts

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the world’s leading authority on climate change and the impacts thereof. Its exceptionally intensive and inclusive process involves thousands of scientific experts. Its most recent Assessment Report was published in 2007; this is the main source of information on the causes and effects of climate change.

The countries of the G8 (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, United Kingdom, United States) and the Outreach 5 (Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa) together are responsible for over 70% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, excluding deforestation.

In May 2009, the heads of the National Academies of Science of these countries issued a collective statement, in which they stated that climate change and sustainable energy supply are crucial challenges for the future of humanity. They referred to the conclusions of the IPCC 2007 Assessment Report, and stated that the need for urgent action to address climate change is now indisputable.

What is the significance of climate change denialism?

Climate change denialism has its origins in the efforts of the tobacco industry in the 1970s to cast doubt on the links between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. Many of the tactics used were subsequently adopted by US companies with vested interests, to try to discredit the link between greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. One of these tactics was to fund various institutes to create the impression that doubt about climate change was widespread.

For those who do not understand that scientific findings cannot be trusted if they have not appeared in peer-reviewed journals, the names of these institutes helped to suggest that serious researchers are challenging the consensus.

A study published in the US Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in April 2010 noted that the American public was expressing substantial doubt about both the cause and the level of scientific agreement underpinning human-caused climate change.

The study showed, however, that 97% to 98% of 1 372 climate researchers most actively publishing in the field supported the tenets outlined by the IPCC, and that the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the 2% to 3% unconvinced researchers were substantially below that of the convinced researchers.

Compared to the US, South Africa’s denialists are lightweight – a few smart individuals who generally limit themselves to writing indignant letters to Business Day, writing in the columns of Engineering News or speaking at the odd conference. None is expert in the field of climate science.

We have allowed ourselves to be fooled by the assumption that a smart person is smart about everything.

We are accustomed to giving space to people with dissenting viewpoints; we think it is only fair, and often we enjoy the debate. Audiences who are then presented with two opposing viewpoints assume both have validity.

What they do not realise, is that the dissenting viewpoint may have been considered and rejected by the expert peer group; the dissident then turns to the media and public opinion for attention. This is the case with South African denialists.

If the scientific community has judged a matter, then it makes sense to take the results of their investigations very seriously. It does not make sense to dismiss them because some person does not agree.

As Naomi Oreskes said in her recent book, Merchants of Doubt: “It especially does not make sense to dismiss the consensus of experts if the dissenter is superannuated, disgruntled, a habitual contrarian, or in the pay of a group with an obvious ideological agenda or vested political or economic interest or, in some cases, all of the above.”

Reaching the current state of knowledge of climate science has taken years and decades of painstaking peer-reviewed research by thousands of experts; spreading the nonsense of climate denialism via letters, comment and articles is the work of minutes and hours by a handful of non-experts.

The realities and conclusions of science have at best become uncertainties in the minds of some audiences, and at worst have been drowned by noise.

South Africa’s climate scientists have (perhaps understandably) withdrawn in frustration from responding to these continual outbursts and ramblings, but nevertheless they have not excelled in their role to educate the general public and to correct these misrepresentations.

The dangers of denialism

If we ignore the conclusions of our designated experts, who can we then turn to for views on the important issues regarding the natural world that face us?

To quote Macbeth, “We are left with nothing but confused clamour. Life is reduced to a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Of course, foolish faith in authority is the enemy of truth. But so is foolish cynicism.

The danger is that political and business leaders, when confronted with conflicting views of the causes of climate change, will be tempted to do nothing “until the situation is clear”.

But on climate change, the situation is clear: it is happening and we are causing it; everything else is noise.

The way forward

We can expect the denialists to respond with cries for free speech, accusations that the IPCC is corrupt and/or discredited, dark mutterings about conspiracies, and various factoids and red herrings.

But we are now at a crossroads, when we need to make some serious changes to the way we have been exploiting our planet, using it as a source of seemingly endless resources and as a bottomless repository for our waste.

While all scientific work is likely to be upset or modified by advancing knowledge, that does not confer on us a freedom to ignore the knowledge we already have and to postpone the action that it demands.

We need to use less fossil fuel, less energy, and less water. We need to try very hard to fix our growing climate problem.

That is why some of South Africa’s leading companies are putting effort into reducing their energy and water consumption and their emissions.

Unsurprisingly, such efforts are often resulting in costs savings.

The Financial Mail put it well recently: “A generation from now, there will be astonishment that we took so long to realise this – but now there’s no excuse.”

Dave Collins

Collins consults on climate change response and energy strategies to several JSE top 100 companies, the South African coal industry and to various industry organisations.

He is a council member of the Fossil Fuel Foundation of Africa and an adviser to the Exxaro Chair in Business & Climate Change.

Collins has a master’s degree in Chemical Engineering from Cambridge University (1970).

He has worked as a process design engineer, research director, business consultant and as managing director of various companies in Zambia, South Africa, the Netherlands, Germany and Australia.

Collins gives regular talks at conferences and gatherings on the subject of the looming crisis of civilisation as driven by climate change, the end of cheap fossil fuels and population growth.

He can be contacted at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or 083 659 1712.