Is it time to apply some common sense to the Climate Change debate?

IS THERE A COMMON SENSE APPROACH?

The United Nations says that while world wide actions to reduce the causes of climate change are working, but remain inadequate to stave off potential disasters.  Climate change deniers scoff at these views and say that there have always been natural changes in climate and always will be.

I'm not a scientist. You probably aren't either. Even if you are, you probably aren't someone with the expertise and experience needed to make some sense of the vast array of data available on the subject of climate change and then derive sensible conclusions.  There aren't many such people in the world.  And they are far from unanimous in their interpretations of the possible causes or outcomes.  A large majority continue to say that the risks are real, the potential consequences enormous and devastating for the human race.  But others say this is nonsense and the earth's atmosphere is perfectly capable of taking care of itself.

Of course there is a wide continuum of views available, with extremes at either end of the spectrum.  An intriguing aspect of this is the ways in which a scientific subject has found itself reflected in political extremes as well.

By and large the left of politics want to take action to prevent further global warming, whilst the right think that will harm economies. For the far right, such as ukip here and the Tea Party in the US, the latter position has become a matter of faith and they seem to have become fully immunised against any facts or new information which might make them rethink their views.

This is a crazy way to approach a subject where millions of lives are at stake, one where the science matters far far more than politics. Shortsightedness could prove disastrous.

At one extreme are those who fear that climate change is largely man made and will have cataclysmic consequences in this century. They are advocating that humanity greatly reduces it's reliance on fossil fuels and develops alternative energy sources as soon as possible. Other thoughts are to reduce our meat consumption and move more towards a vegetable and cereal based diet which is far more energy efficient.

On the opposite side the extremists say alternative power sources, such as wind, are bad for the economy, waste resources and ruin the countryside. Their first priority is the short term goal of economic prosperity.

I don't know who's right. My instinct says the answers are somewhere between the two, but how far along that continuum, and in which direction, I have no idea.

But applying some common sense to the discussion it's hard to avoid one conclusion.

If the climate change deniers turn out to be correct, but we've invested vast resources in new energy technologies, and other green policies, nothing disastrous will happen. We might be a bit poorer in the short term, but most of what we do will not be wasted. One certainty is that fossil fuels will eventually run out and we have to replace them at some point. In the long term energy renewables make more sense than nuclear from which the dangers can never be fully eliminated.

But if the fears of those who say climate change will dramatically increase sea levels and make vast swathes of the earth uninhabitable could come even remotely true, yet we've done nothing to stave off the outcome, the results would be the greatest disaster ever to face mankind.

Looked at from that perspective, isn't the obvious conclusion to do everything we can to implement those Green ideas?  Not to do so is to play Risk on a grand scale with the lives of future generations.