We should hold off acting on climate change until every single climate scientist accepts that climate change is real and that human activity is the cause.
Fact:
The fact that 99.9 percent of climate scientists accept the reality of climate change and that greenhouse gas emissions are the cause suggests that the scientific debate is now over. As for the 0.1 percent who still do not accept the scientific consensus, that is not uncommon in science. For example, after Copernicus, Darwin and Einstein published their theories, there was a lot of scientific resistance. More recently, there are still researchers who don’t accept the link between cigarettes and cancer (many of them working for tobacco companies, it should be noted). But that does not mean we should abandon efforts to discourage smoking.
Think of it in terms of aviation. If 99 engineers declared that a plane was unsafe, and one said the opposite, how many people would still make the flight? Probably none.
Another analogy relates to insurance. Statistics show that the chance of a house burning down in a particular year is about 1 in 3,000 – i.e. extremely small. Yet most people still insist on having home insurance, even though it is far from cheap. The reason is that they are unwilling to put their major asset at risk, however small that risk might be. Yet some of the very same people will take enormous risks when it comes to the security of their celestial home – the Earth. It doesn’t make sense.