The assumption is always that “everybody knows” about the negative consequences of global warming. The sea levels will rise, with disastrous consequences for low-lying coastal areas; mosquito-borne disease will move to Europe; there will be a slowdown in the movement of oceanic water and its effects on halieutic resources; there will be extreme, unpredictable weather.

The profound disagreement about all this among those who ought to know, climatologists, is rarely mentioned. But in truth there is no scientific consensus that a significant share of greenhouse gas emissions, and therefore global warming, can be blamed on human beings.

A number of researchers argue that it is far more likely to be the result of solar activity. They include, inter alia, P. Thejll and K. Lassen (specialists at the Solar-Terrestrial physics division, Danish Meteorological Institute), K.S. Carslaw (Institute for Atmospheric Science, School of the Environment, University of Leeds), R.G. Harrison (Department of Meteorology, University of Reading) and J. Kirkby (CERN, Geneva), who have published on this issue in recent years in scientific journals such as the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics. Ian Clark, professor in hydrology and paleoclimatology at the University of Ottawa (Canada), says simply: “Changes in solar activity were the essential factor of warming during the 20th century.”

The science of climate change is, in short, foggy.

There is little clarity either about putting a cost on global warming, only that it will be very high and justifies immediate action. But warming will not, for example, be experienced everywhere on earth, and even in places where the temperature is clearly rising, scientists say that there will be beneficial effects. Warming will boost agricultural productivity and reduce the incidence of sometimes deadly cold-related illnesses (flu, pneumonia, etc.).

What we know for certain is that applying the Kyoto Protocol would increase the price of all goods whose production creates greenhouse gases, a loss of well-being for entire societies which might otherwise actually benefit from global warming. Activities suspected of contributing directly or indirectly to global warming are, after all, everywhere – in heating and cooling, energy production, the manufacture of various raw materials (plastic, steel, etc.), the processing of products and powering our many electrical devices (lighting, computers, household appliances, etc.).

Measures against global warming could then have a powerful impact on our quality of life and actually undermine our capacity to resist its potential negative effects. This is almost always ignored or underestimated.

The Kyoto Protocol exposes participating countries to enormous costs – requiring a collective reduction of greenhouse gas emissions of 5.2% compared to the 1990 level – in return for dubious, and perhaps negligible, positive results.

According to forecasts by Australian geophysicist Tom M.L. Wigley, even if the greenhouse gas emission ceilings set by the Kyoto Protocol were to be extended after 2012, the temperature in 2100 would be only 0.15˚C lower than without Kyoto. This difference would correspond to a temperature 1.92˚C higher in 2100 than in 1990, a variation that would be reached six years earlier – in 2094 – if nothing were done.

In other words, the Kyoto Protocol may merely delay global warming by six years. Is such a negligible result a price worth paying for increased prices and reduced production, both in the developed and developing countries?

The debate on global warming should not be considered over. Perhaps it has not even started. Certainly we need to examine much more carefully and soberly the danger that confronts us and how best to deal with it.

Cécile Philippe is director of the Brussels-based Institut Économique Molinari and Fellow of the Centre for the New Europe.

This TRA feature has been edited in accordance with TRA’s Statement of Policy.