It is one thing to notice that our state of knowledge about important issues is less than perfect - and then to say, "Aha! We are under no obligation to change our individual and collective behavior, because currently we just do not know enough and with enough certainty to decide whether or not our current way of doing business is really damaging the environment or not." I don't know that Dr. Stauder intends his audience to take such a response away from his lecture - but I know from student reports on his lecture that they made such a response.
Contrary to the conclusions drawn by the "conservative" argument — uncertainty regarding environmental claims does not necessarily mean that we can simply ignore claims regarding global warming altogether. [And it certainly does not mean that we can simply dismiss concerns about global warming as something of issue only for "environmental wackos."]
In particular, the dynamic, nonlinear character of the global environment means that our knowledge about the environment will in principle include a considerable degree of uncertainty.
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