Sunday, 8 February 2009

The Collapse of Climate Policy and the Sustainability of Climate Science...


...We are witnessing the end of an era. An era in which some politicians have attempted to use and distort science to achieve their political goals.Churchill had an inkling of an unholy alliance between science and politics when he warned of "... a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science..." Here, Roger Pielke Jnr. addresses the beginning of the end for the marriage of climate science and politics...

...The political consensus surrounding climate policy is collapsing. If you are not aware of this fact you will be very soon. The collapse is not due to the cold winter in places you may live or see on the news. It is not due to years without an increase in global temperature. It is not due to the overturning of the scientific consensus on the role of human activity in the global climate system.

It is due to the fact that policy makers and their political advisors (some trained as scientists) can no longer avoid the reality that targets for stabilization such as 450 ppm (or even less realistic targets) are simply not achievable with the approach to climate change that has been at the focus of policy for over a decade. Policies that are obviously fictional and fantasy are frequently subject to a rapid collapse...

Climate politics is collapsing because of political realities, and not real or perceived changes in how people see the science. As I have often argued, in the ongoing battle between climate scientists and skeptics there will be disproportionate carnage, because the climate scientists have so much more to lose, and not just as individuals, but also for the broader field, which includes many people simply on the sidelines....More from Prometheus here...


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