Carsons Post

what would cause me to change my mind. No matter what your position on this issue, I think everyone can agree that people who are unwilling to change their mind, no matter what, are irrational. It is for that reason that from now on, anyone who wishes to challenge the scientific consensus on climate change here on this blog MUST clearly state:

1. Why they don’t accept the conclusions arrived at by the overwhelming majority of scientists.
2. Why they think the vast majority of scientists are wrong.
3. What would change their mind and make them accept anthropogenic global warming and why they chose those criteria.

It seems only fair that I also answer these questions.

I think this is an astute observation, and I have also decided to show that my ideas are not rigid, and I could be swayed to re-evaluate my position on climate change. If we all do this, maybe it will be easier to find consensus.

I'm not a scientist, nor do I have any business dabbling in science. I know enough about climate to know that as systems go it is insanely complex. So complex that decades of intense study by very, very smart people, and weather forecasts are still often incorrect. That is how complex the matter is. We can't even predict if it will rain today and get it right 99% of the time.

Anything this sophisticated has to be handled with caution. There has to be wide risk tolerances that if things go wrong we can recover. So if there is a chance that we might be messing with the climate and causing some adverse affects, we need to think about how this can be mitigated. That is risk management. This would be important if there was an outside chance that climate change is real.

However, there is more than an outside chance that climate change is real. If your doctor said you had cancer, you'd go for a second opinion. If you went to 100 doctors and ninety-nine of them said you had cancer, then you're going to have to go with the prognosis. That is risk management. If 99 engineers in 100 tell you not to cross the bridge, risk management says: "don't cross the bridge".

However, I am not inflexible. My mind might be changed. If someone could convince me that our world wasn't actually real, and that it was a manifestation of ideas, as in the philosophical school of idealism, then I might be more playful with the importance of the state of this risk. After all, it is a deferred risk, and presumably my idealised children's futures are not at stake here anymore. If fact the notion of climate change then becomes an arbitrary concept to explore within the realm of ideas. However, as yet I don't believe this to be true, and doubt that it will be Vaclav Klaus, Fred Perry or the brain trust behind Fox News who are going to provide this revelation.