How will the story of climate change end?

I took the kids to a brilliant exhibition about climate change yesterday: "Climate Change: The Threat to Life and a New Energy Future" at the American Museum of Natural History.

The history, intricate inter-dependencies and potential consequences of climate change are presented thoughtfully and dramatically. It felt like walking around inside a huge, 3D information graphic making sense of an enormous amount of complex information with simple, colorful displays.

There's an intense, emotional editorial edge to the exhibition that I found especially powerful. Some might argue (the New York Times, for instance) that science shouldn't be in the business of such story-telling. I think this misses the point.

Yes, facts should be rigorously researched and fairly presented - that's a given. Frankly, anyone who thinks this isn't the case with climate change is splitting hairs. For instance, the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report was written by about 600 scientists from 40 countries, and reviewed by more than 620 experts plus governments. Before being finalised, every single line of the report summary was reviewed by representatives from 113 governments.

The scientific evidence is so over-whelming, that to give a handful of skeptical books or websites equal op-ed space is grossly misleading. And anyway, even if humans aren't causing the huge CO2 build-up that's causing climate change (which we clearly are), we still need to reduce the gasses we do produce to avoid disaster, so what exactly are we arguing about?

Climate Change isn't some abstract theoretical debate, it's the story of our civilization that's being written right now, by all of us, every day. There's a beginning and a middle, but the end - and this is the hopeful point the exhibition ultimately makes - is still in our hands.

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