A Companion to the Philosophy of Technology

Can We Believe the Evidence?

How sure are we about the scientific story I have just presented? It is largely based on the assessments by the world scientific community carried out through the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).⁴ I had the privilege of being chairman or co-chairman of the Panel’s scientific assessment from its beginning in 1988 to 2002. Many hundreds of scientists from many countries were involved in its work. No assessments on any other scientific topic have been so thoroughly researched and reviewed. In June 2005, the Academies of Science of the world’s eleven most important countries (the G8 plus India, China and Brazil) issued a statement endorsing the IPCC’s conclusions.⁵

Unfortunately, there are strong vested interests that have spent tens of millions of dollars on spreading misinformation about the climate change issue. They first denied the scientific evidence and more recently have argued that its impacts will not be large, that we can “wait and see,” and in any case we can always “fix” the problem if it turns out to be substantial. The scientific evidence cannot support such arguments.