When should you stop doubting? For a magazine like Prospect, one tempting answer is “never.” Our purpose is to get behind the crude simplifications and shrill certainties of the headlines. The same curiosity that compels thoughtful minds to interrogate what exactly they’re sure of is a great spur in driving forward the frontiers of knowledge. But scepticism shorn of method can unravel into the sort of paranoia and delusion on display on websites devoted to Holocaust denial or the anti-vax cause.
In the run-up to COP26, the world’s great Glasgow get-together to tackle what most scientists call a climate emergency, I’ll admit to some nerves about getting into the question of what’s truly certain about global warming. What if airing a scintilla of sincere but ultimately misplaced doubt encourages the world to continue in dangerous denial? Against that, any sense that there are uncertainties too dangerous to share with the public will itself do tremendous harm: recall the mostly unjustified hoo-hah a few years ago when hacked emails between University of East Anglia climate researchers found them privately conversing in terms that they wouldn’t have used in open forums. American know-nothings like Sarah Palin were soon penning op-eds claiming that the hack had peeled away a veneer of certainty and proved there was no consensus.
In the end, there’s no sustainable alternative to letting the light in on the research, doubts and all, because it’s not only scientists but all of us who are going to have to make changes—some of them difficult—because of their findings. Theoretical physicist Lawrence M Krauss sifts the certain from the uncertain in climatology. Doubt inevitably abounds at the cutting edge, with big margins of error on paleoclimatic analysis of how cold the last Ice Age was, and material uncertainty in the modelling about when fateful feedback mechanisms will kick in. As politicians are required to make painful judgments about, for example, shutting down fossil fuel extraction, it would no doubt be nice for them to have more precision than is available.
And yet they really do, Krauss explains, know enough to see both the right direction of travel and the need for speed. It is not cutting-edge modelling but replicable, simple and 150-year-old lab experiments with bulbs of gas that establish that carbon dioxide traps heat. The contemporary growth of this gas in the atmosphere does not require tricky analysis of ancient rock, but is another readily measurable certainty. And you don’t need any science as such, merely basic arithmetic, to appreciate that the longer we take to arrest that growth the harder we will eventually have to slam on the brake. The best way to avoid a juddering halt—that could come too late—is for Glasgow to succeed.
So what are the odds? September brought some encouraging signs, with Washington writing developing countries an overdue cheque for climate adjustment, and Beijing agreeing to stop financing coal power stations overseas. But much more is needed: that cheque will need to get bigger, and China will also need to put a stop on building belching power stations within its own borders. And that is still only the start. Having covered 14 of the last 16 COP climate summits, Fiona Harvey suggests that the key to unlocking a grand climate bargain is often, and to a remarkable extent, in the hands of the host nation’s leader. Which means Boris Johnson.
“The best way to avoid a dangerous, juddering halt is a Glasgow deal”
Despite some denialist columns a few years ago, he now appears to be converted to the climate cause, and has the sort of charisma that should help to charm and cajole. The trouble is, says Harvey, that other Johnsonian traits—disregard for facts, disdain for detail, and above all a sense of exemption from rules that apply to everyone else—could sap his ability to play the honest broker. His preparation for the summit has been characteristically—and dangerously—last-minute; recent UK decisions on everything from aid to North Sea exploration will undermine Britain’s standing. All this makes Harvey nervous, and yet when Glasgow comes she’ll be hoping that Johnson can pull it off. So should the rest of us—and there can be no doubt about that.
