It is not simply that climate science itself is an extremely complex and indeed uncertain business – and anyone who doubts that need only reflect for a moment on the reliability of weather forecasting. It is also because science is only part of the story. Even if the climate scientists could tell us what is happening and why – and, in fact, they are by no means agreed on this, although there is (inevitably) a majority view at the present time – they cannot tell us what governments should be doing about it.

For that we also need an understanding of the economics, both in the sense of what is likely to be the economic cost of any projected rise in temperatures worldwide, and – critically – insofar as there is a problem, what is the most cost-effective way of tackling it. And we also need an understanding of the politics; of what measures are politically realistic – a particularly tricky issue, given
the inescapably global nature of the problem.

That is one reason why, although not a scientist myself, I have not felt inhibited from speaking out on this issue. But let me, here and now, give a solemn undertaking. If everyone else who is not a scientist, from Al Gore to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, from Nicholas Stern to David Cameron, agrees to shut up about the issue, then I will take a vow of silence, too.

Until then, I will feel free to speak out. Not that it is all that easy to get a hearing. It is clear that the prevailing orthodoxy on global warming – or climate change, as its adherents misleadingly like to call it – has almost achieved the status of a new religion, with reasoned questioning of its mantras regarded as little short of sacrilege. However convenient this may be to our political leaders, by enabling them to pose as the saviours of the planet and thus divert attention from what some might consider their shortcomings in dealing with more mundane matters, I cannot believe that I am alone in regarding this as a thoroughly unhealthy state of affairs.

The reason I take a dim view of the attractively alliterative weasel words "climate change" is that they deliberately obscure and obfuscate the real issue. They can all too easily lead the unwary to suppose that any unusual or adverse weather event, from last year's severe flooding in Yorkshire to hurricane Katrina which, in 2005, devastated New Orleans, must be evidence of man-made global warming caused by the carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels – coal, oil, and gas. But this is not so, for two main reasons.

The first is that very few if any of these events are unprecedented. The Great Miami hurricane of 1926 was fiercer than Katrina, and Yorkshire has in the past experienced rainfall at least as heavy as that of 2007. What confuses the issue is that, as populations grow and property multiplies, the same adverse weather event can inevitably be expected to cause increased damage. This is exacerbated in the case of flooding as urbanisation and "concretisation" impedes water run-off.

The second reason why talk of "climate change" can be so misleading is that, even if the climate is changing, it may well not be doing so as a result of any rise in temperature, whether or not that is human-induced: there are many other factors that affect the climate. It is worth noting (although it seldom is noted) that, after a rise of about 0.5C in average global temperatures in the second half of the 20th century, there has, in fact, so far this century been no further recorded warming at all. Needless to say, none of the hugely complex and very expensive computer models on which the so-called experts rely for their confident projections of what is likely to happen to the earth's temperature over the next hundred or two hundred years predicted this standstill.

The plain fact is that it is the most extraordinary arrogance to suppose that man can determine the temperature of the planet, even if we wished to do so. And to attempt to do so, by embarking on the near-total decarbonisation of our economy, as all three of our political parties, Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat alike, are ostensibly committed, would in economic terms be extremely damaging.

Which, of course, is why the major developing countries like China and India have made it clear that, for their part, there is no way they are going to impede their economic development and thus the emancipation of the mass of their people from poverty, malnutrition, disease and premature death, by forsaking what is by far the cheapest form of energy, carbon-based energy. Which in turn alone makes the current policy of seeking a binding global agreement to cut back drastically on carbon emissions futile.

If and when – and it is "if" just as much as "when" – global warming resumes, then the right course is to do what mankind has always done throughout the ages, and indeed does here and now, across a world in which temperatures differ hugely from one region to another, and that is to adapt.

Moreover, since warming brings advantages as well as disadvantages (many fewer cold-related deaths, for example), adaptation enables us to pocket the benefits while reducing the costs. And indeed, with the development of modern technology, mankind has never been better able to adapt. Moreover, the richer countries can help the poorer countries to do so at a small fraction of the cost that decarbonisation would inflict on us.

Let me leave the last word with the 19th century philosopher, Schopenhauer, who aptly observed that "there is no opinion, however absurd, which men will not readily embrace as soon as they can be brought to the conviction that it is generally adopted".

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Lord Lawson of Blaby served in the Thatcher administration between 1979 and 1989 as Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Secretary of State for Energy, and, from 1983, Chancellor of the Exchequer. He is the author of An Appeal to Reason.