ONE of the Europe's leading agricultural scientists and a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has rejected farmer scepticism and criticism that climate change is not real or not a result of human activity.
Danish-based Jorgen Olesen, from the Faculty of Rural Sciences at the University of Aarhus, says farmers who question the existence of climate change have often not bothered to read the IPCC report on climate change, and rarely took part in the review process.
Speaking to Rural Press from the Copenhagen climate change negotiations, Professor Olesen said the IPCC had the "most open review process" of literature that he'd been involved in.
He said the IPCC was not about generating new science but review, and making an overview assessment of existing knowledge on climate change, its impacts, and how we adapt to and mitigate its effects.
Professor Olesen was one of the lead authors of the European chapter on climate change in the IPCC report.
He said all the comments that came in regarding the review of literature for the IPCC report had to be addressed, and anybody could comment.
"The thing that bothers me about climate sceptics is they don't interact with this process. They can read the drafts, they can comment, but mostly they don’t," he said.
"They don't interact with the process, they just come out afterwards and say this is total bull, it's natural variability, or whatever.
"I feel that is a bit dishonest, because if you really wanted to influence what the IPCC is saying then you would go into the reviewing process and argue with the assessment reports.
"We look at all the evidence and it is not all in one direction.
"There are various issues, there's a lot about climate systems we don't know fully.
"If we look at the warming that we've had for the past 30 years we cannot find evidence on natural causes on that warming.
"We don't exclude them; there might be something we don't know yet.
"But all the suggested processes cannot explain that warming being anything other than human-related.
"In fact there's recently been a reduction in solar activity which should cause a cooling, and that might be the cause of the fact that we've not seen a global increase for the past 10 years or so.
"But if warming had been due to natural causes, we should have had a cooling but we instead have a standstill."
Professor Oleson said he could understand why scepticism existed because climate change meant a change in lifestyle and practices.
"People are intrinsically resistant to change," he said.
"We all want to lead our lives as we have them right now.
"But so do the people that are suffering already … and they are not the people who are creating all the emissions.
"Those people in developed countries – in cities and suburbs especially – are the ones responsible for most of this.
"I think in my opinion we are talking about this issue in the wrong way.
"We are all talking about the need to do reductions.
"The word reduction also means this is bad, it means I can't live my life the way I used to and it will get used.
"Instead we should be talking about how we can develop a sustainable way for humans on this earth that will also carry a good life."
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