Anne Minard
for National Geographic News
24September , 2007

Whether or not people are heating up the planet, the best course of action is to do something about global warming, some experts are arguing. However, others think that is  moving too fast.

Peter Tsigaris, a statistician at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, Canada, is one of many scientists who favors taking immediate action against global warming.
Tsigaris has made waves in Canada by asserting that doing nothing about climate change is more damaging to the economy than acting on it.

He points to a 2006 report published by England's Government Economic Service.
The report says if people do not act to curb global warming, the impacts of climate change will drain at least 5 percent—and up to 20 percent—of the global gross domestic product each year. 

By contrast, the cost of action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and avoid the worst impacts of climate change could be limited to around one percent of the annual global GDP, the report states.

But some experts argue that human-caused global warming is still an assumption, and that not enough is known to act.

Unconfirmed Assumptions?
George Koch, a climate change researcher at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, agrees with Tsigaris' argument.

"We donot ignore a [person's] rising fever because we donot know the cause," Koch said. "There are ways to reduce the fever and help the patient, even if those ways are not completely or directly related to the cause—known or not."

Other experts are more cautious about taking action before proving that humans are to blame.

Timothy Ball chairs the Scientific Advisory Committee for the Natural Resources Stewardship Project, a federally incorporated nonprofit in Canada.
He says his skepticism is based on assumptions about global warming that have never been confirmed.

"In this case it is assumed carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that will trap heat in the atmosphere, that the levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide will increase because of human industrial activity and specifically the burning of fossil fuels, and that atmospheric carbon dioxide will double," he said.

Ball said that this hypothesis became fact before the research had begun, "because it fit a political agenda and the views of the environmentalists."

He contends that humans have already spent inordinate amounts of money to research and fight global warming, including billions of dollars in Canada alone.

If no action occurs, "nothing untoward will happen to the climate. Climate will continue to change as it always has and always will. It is good if we do nothing," he added.

Abdullah Casper