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| The Guardian view on the unchanging message from climate scientists | The Guardian view on the unchanging message from climate scientists |
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| Climate scientists have just established what did not make a vast chunk of Antarctic ice shelf break off 12 years ago and start floating northwards. They report in the journal Science that they can rule out instability in the bedrock on which the Larsen-B sheet was grounded. That leaves “surface warming” as the most likely explanation: in other words, it could have been climate change as a consequence of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide that made the 3,250 square kilometres of ice up to 200 metres thick break off from the rest of Antarctica. | Climate scientists have just established what did not make a vast chunk of Antarctic ice shelf break off 12 years ago and start floating northwards. They report in the journal Science that they can rule out instability in the bedrock on which the Larsen-B sheet was grounded. That leaves “surface warming” as the most likely explanation: in other words, it could have been climate change as a consequence of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide that made the 3,250 square kilometres of ice up to 200 metres thick break off from the rest of Antarctica. |
| This was pretty much the conclusion that many people jumped to at the time, but scientists needed to explore other possible causes, and this cautious confirmation of climate change tells the world something about scientific rigour: only once the sea floor was exposed could researchers, in a series of cruises, make seismic measurements and take samples of the mud below. Scientists have to make certain, and while they take time to make certain, politicians may take time to decide how to react, and then how much to react. Had the case of the Larsen-B ice shelf been an isolated indicator, then perhaps energy secretaries and climate ministers would have been justified in moving at the same glacial pace. But in the 12 years before the dramatic collapse of the ice shelf, and in the 12 years since, researchers on all the world’s continents have performed similar rigorous and repeated checks on many thousands of observations of manmade climate change, and the answers all point in just one direction. | This was pretty much the conclusion that many people jumped to at the time, but scientists needed to explore other possible causes, and this cautious confirmation of climate change tells the world something about scientific rigour: only once the sea floor was exposed could researchers, in a series of cruises, make seismic measurements and take samples of the mud below. Scientists have to make certain, and while they take time to make certain, politicians may take time to decide how to react, and then how much to react. Had the case of the Larsen-B ice shelf been an isolated indicator, then perhaps energy secretaries and climate ministers would have been justified in moving at the same glacial pace. But in the 12 years before the dramatic collapse of the ice shelf, and in the 12 years since, researchers on all the world’s continents have performed similar rigorous and repeated checks on many thousands of observations of manmade climate change, and the answers all point in just one direction. |
| Climate change is on the way, with attendant extremes of heat and windstorm, drought and flood, and of course threats to global food security. There may be a legitimate argument about the economic price of concerted political action: there is no longer much argument about the far greater price of global inaction. A UN summit in New York on 23 September is being hailed as the best chance so far to achieve real political movement on an international scale. It is a fair bet that whatever agreements are reached, these will not be enough to halt or even significantly slow the rise in the planetary temperatures. | |
| Perhaps this is too pessimistic. But it is a concern based on experience rather than fatalism. The latest episode in the long-running drama of London’s airport expansion plans indicates how seriously Britain takes the carbon dioxide crisis: politicians and their advisers debated alternatives for Heathrow, Gatwick and the mayor of London’s preferred estuary complex, but none of them pointed out that to save energy and cut emissions the world must reduce air travel, and go on reducing it. The message from climate science has not changed in the last 25 years. Every week, new research adds to the urgency. The science is rigorous, the political response must be vigorous. | Perhaps this is too pessimistic. But it is a concern based on experience rather than fatalism. The latest episode in the long-running drama of London’s airport expansion plans indicates how seriously Britain takes the carbon dioxide crisis: politicians and their advisers debated alternatives for Heathrow, Gatwick and the mayor of London’s preferred estuary complex, but none of them pointed out that to save energy and cut emissions the world must reduce air travel, and go on reducing it. The message from climate science has not changed in the last 25 years. Every week, new research adds to the urgency. The science is rigorous, the political response must be vigorous. |
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