Several years ago I watched a documentary about a starving polar bear. I don’t remember the ending, but probably he or she died at the end. The cost of making the film had to be (at least) in tens of thousands of euros, money for which you could buy tons of fish, bring a veterinarian (if needed) and feed and cure the beast. Unfortunately, in that case there wouldn’t be a necessary conclusion that anthropogenic warming is to blame for the poor bear’s condition. This article is not about polar bears. It is about the profound dichotomy that exists in todays Weltanschauung (philosophy of life). On one hand, the significance of „science“ is increasing to religious levels. „Experts“ and celebrities became prophets who are not to be doubted, no matter what kind of nonsense they are proclaiming, like the idea that humans inadvertently determine climate of the whole planet. Religious component is also detectable through another aspect, namely guilt induced by sinn. More and more children have nightmares about the climate change that is supposedly going to destroy their lives and nature in distant future, and the culprit is always the same – humanity itself.
On the other hand there is increasing voyeuristic human behavioral component in which models and virtual reality are replacing the real world. Huge financial resources are devoted to computer modelling which should be able to predict practically everything and more is always the key (financial) word. It seems that we know everything and are not capable of doing anything.
International quasi-scientific (essentially political) bodies like IPCC, WMO, WHO, FAO, etc. serve more to inhibit any undesirable (regardless of how sound the argument is) scientific result than to emphasize real scientific questions. Every now and then, the truth comes out like in the case of the 2001 IPCC report: „In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”
Let’s take an example from a non-meteorological world about how false authorities and “experts” within them can delay real progress. Potatoes are world’s fourth-largest food crop. It stands to reason that all aspects of this plant and its production have been thoroughly investigated. In its paper “Agricultural drainage water management in arid and semi-arid areas” (Rome, 2002) FAO states that potatoes will not grow if the salinity is above 1.7 dS/m. The source is the result obtained by Bernstein et al (1951). It is interesting that for such an important plant the data from an experiment are more than 50 years old. Fortunately for him and a lot of people in undeveloped countries, Dutch farmer Marc van Rijsselberghe thought differently and succeeded to cultivate potatoes with up to ten times greater salinity. Who knows how many obsolete data lies in all sorts of official papers issued by different supranational organizations? As CLINTEL points out in its Declaration: ”There is no cause for panic and alarm.” Humans have proved countless times that when some real problem occurs – we do find the solution. Mankind is so successful as a species because it always intelligently adapted to a changing world. Thinking that we can change the Earth’s climate is both arrogant and naive. Instead of futile attempts to mitigate climate change consequences (whatever the cause may be), we should better adapt to it or, even better, try to benefit from it.
Klima i Energija 