Why to buy into global warming
Tim O'Reilly makes the most cogent argument I've yet seen on why we should believe in global warming and act accordingly, even if we don't fully buy into the hype: The downside to belief is quite small. The upside is quite big.
In other words, it's a near-perfect application of Pascal's Wager, as Tim points out:
In my talks, I've argued that climate change provides us with a modern version of Pascal's wager: if catastrophic global warming turns out not to happen, the steps we'd take to address it are still worthwhile.
Given that there's even a reasonable risk of disruptive climate change, any sensible person should decide to act. It's insurance.
The risk of your house burning down is small, yet you carry homeowner's insurance...We don't need to be 100 percent sure that the worst fears of climate scientists are correct in order to act. All we need to think about are the consequences of being wrong.
I've tended to fall on the side of the skeptics, though a recent Foreign Policy article has me nearly persuaded. I haven't resisted because I know that global warming is a hoax, but rather because I haven't been fully convinced by the evidence. (Well, really, it's because I just like to be contrarian, but don't tell anyone.)
But I buy Tim's rationale. The downsides to a better environment, more fuel-efficient cars, etc., are not downsides at all. They're things I'd like regardless of whether the world is burning up or not. So why not?
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
As to the polar ice caps melting.... might be totally freaking normal for this planet to not have any... we haven't been alive long enough or known about the ice caps long enough to have any evidence yea or nay, but the little bit of evidence that we DO have says...... that they are impermanent things, judging from carbon dating of ice drilled from the ice caps.
Relative to Tim's article and Matt's comparison to house insurance. I think this is a good analogy. The problem is, we do know that houses sometimes get robbed and do burned down. This is rare and as a result the insurance is very inexpensive. The economic costs of tackling the possibility of man causing global warming are massive. With zero evidence that we are causing it, and also zero evidence that we could have any impact on the warming effects, personally, I have been thing to spend my money on.
You only just came across this argument? The debate is, what, 30 years old at least and frankly most people have had time to figure this much out for themselves. Now I'm so disappointed by your intellect I probably won't take anything else you write seriously.
But given the dire press coverage on all size, it's hardly a surprise that most people don't know that the debate the Exxonites are always calling for already happened at length and in great detail and they still can't accept that they lost. Then, even people who think they understand man-made global warming often don't and the debate devolves into a slanging match because the people who do believe in it have that one problem, they've taken it on faith, they don't actually know what the evidence is.
Can you, for example, say what experiments, tests or measurements have been conducted which prove that carbon dioxide traps heat both in the laboratory and in the atmosphere? Can you say why the melting of the ice-caps is weakening the Gulf stream (bouyancy plays a part)? Can you say which cycle Milankovitch missed, or why the measurement of solar radiation at 65 degrees north longitude is a reliable indicator of global temperature (and why this indicator is saying the average temperature should be falling)?
See, I don't believe this global warming is man made, I know it with sharp certainty.
Read what he typed here:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10149435-38.html?tag=commProfileMain;profileBot
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http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10084345-56.html
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The only thing I usually take away from a public policy paper is the shock that people really can be that stupid. Misallocation of resources is always bad economics as the current crisis should tell you since that is it's root cause. I'm amazed that anyone running a company is not aware of this.
Building "green" energy devices which actually never produce a net carbon reduction would be yet another one of the problems with your argument.
If you haven't read it, I recommend it. There was a good interview article in Reason awhile back, and I think it may be available online.
:::
I also find it strange on how the blinders are put on to claim it is not a significant sacrifice to make changes to prevent Global warming...Carbon credits are a huge form of taxation and socialism. Moreover, are you willing to get into a trade war with the likes of China who gives their companies and people an unfair advantage...pollution standards are so weak in China - e.g. cars and factories.
2. Perhaps we should clean up our own act before we worry about others. Once we do the rest of the world will be more likely to back us up.
From about 1912 until the late 1920s, it was the "menace of the feebleminded," and what the NY Times called the "wonderful new science" of eugenics. Jews from Eastern Europe and Catholics from Southern Europe, along with the native-born poor, were thought to carry genes, closely linked to a desire for large families, that made them unfit for democratic life. Chief promoters of the idea were liberals, progressives, and the Ivy League academia. The best known opponent was G. K. Chesterton, a Catholic 'reactionary' and the author of Eugenics and Other Evils. That's why global warming skeptic Michael Crichton recommends Chesterton's book in his last novel, Next.
The result of the eugenic hysteria (what O'Reilly would call the insignificant downside) were immigration restriction laws that left millions of Jews trapped inside Nazi-occupied Europe and forced sterilization laws affirmed by the Supreme Court that left tens of thousands of women unable to become mothers. Long-term results included generous foundation funding for eugenists who, in the 1950s began to call themselves population controllers. One of their number, Alan Guttmacher, the former VP of the American Eugenics Association, was President of Planned Parenthood-World Population in the 1960s and perhaps the nation's premier champion of legalized abortion.
The next big hysteria came with the Great Depression. Democratic capitalism, they told us, was doomed and the future lay in state-directed command economies like those in the USSR and Nazi Germany. The number of adoring pilgrimages to Stalin's murderous totalitarian state by Ivy League professors and the like is recounted in Paul Hollander's Political Pilgrims. The NY Times is still refusing to give up a Pulitzer it won for covering up a famine that killed millions in the Soviet Ukraine during the early 1930s. Faith in command economies was so strong that no contrary evidence could be published--much like today's global warming hysteria.
The next big wave of hysteria was that over an alleged "population explosion" in the 1960s. As mentioned earlier, it was actually an echo of the early eugenics hysteria. The chief driving force behind abortion legalization was the high birthrates of the black underclass after the postwar white suburban birthrate plummeted with the arrival of the birth control pill in 1960. The first paragraph of Roe v. Wade hints at this in a reference to "racial overtones" in the debate over abortion legalization.
That was followed by some hysterias that never quite caught on, including one over global cooling (a "new Ice Age") in the late 1970s, along with one over the rapid depletion of mineral resources. The fact that there's been no emotionally satisfying hysteria for those so inclined since the 1970s, over three decades ago, is why so many have so much emotional investment in this one.
Perhaps the best explanation for this phenomena is G. K. Chesterton's remark that people who quit believing in God don't believe in nothing, they believe in anything. Lacking Someone Out There guiding the world, they become fearful and turn to a form of science that both creates and calms their fears, typically by putting a technological elite in charge of the world as a substitute for God.
H. G. Wells, a close personal friend of Chesterton's, spent the last 50 years of his life doing just that. Over and over again, he looked for ways to put a few experts in charge of a World State. Today's clinging to the UN, despite its obvious incompetence, is an lingering echo of Wells' once popular faith, as is the desire for international treaties to deal with this latest manufactured crisis.
--Michael W. Perry, Seattle
I also fail to see why logic and reason should be described as a substitute for God.
Because most atheists claim that they are, as a basis of their individual moral code.
The problem with logic and reason as a sole source for inspiration and ethics is that they are prone to modification, just as easily as religion is. Despots often use logic and reason to justify their actions, even though the reasons are often false and the logic is twisted to make those reasons fit.
The problem isn't with God or reason, the problem is with humanity itself, as we are imperfect, emotional, and prone to bad data, general faults and moral failures. This is true no matter if you pray, to whom, or not at all.
The doctor says you have a new disease in your right leg and if he doesn't amputate in the next minute you are going to die. All the doctor's friends say he is a great doctor. Other people think he is a nut case. He has been saying this to patients for quite a while, none have died yet. Other doctors say yes it could happen, but none of them have looked into the details. Who are you going to call?
The inept analogy doesn't wash either. It's less of an amputation and more of a change in diet an lifestyle. In the long run we'll be better off.
And the only person I've seen who believes in AGW but is also willing to discuss the costs of it is Bjorn Lomberg. His most accessible book, Cool It, goes into that in detail.
I suppose if you're going to talk about Pascal's Wager (having to do with belief in the existence of God), it's appropriate to talk about "belief" and things that are a matter of faith. But why should "Global Warming" or "Climate Change" or "Climate Disruption" (terms all used by Mr. O'Reilly) be a matter of faith and belief? I think you're on dangerous ground when you conflate environmental matters, which should inherently belong to science, with religion.
Mr. O'Reilly is a smart guy, to be sure. I like his books and own several. But Mr. O'Reilly is no scientist or Engineer. His educational background is in Classical Literature. His work experience is in editing and publishing computer technical manuals (for the most part). Neither of his core competencies have a substantial connection with the material world, and it shows up in his confused writing on Global <Whatever>.
One problem I've noticed with non-technical people when discussing technical issues is their weakness in quantitative matters. Mr. Lomborg, a statistician and an inveterate quantifier, is labelled as a "Critic" and his cost conclusions dismissed as being equivalent to the costs "incurred by record companies in the switch to digital music distribution, or the costs to newspapers implicit in the rise of the web." Where did that come from? Why are they equivalent? What are those costs, anyway?
Mr. O'Reilly cites a parade of horribles, "We face the displacement of millions of people, droughts, floods and other extreme weather, species loss, and economic harm that will make us long for the good old days of the current financial industry meltdown." But there is little or no support for these scenarios among even Global <Whatever> scientists. Maybe that's where faith and belief comes in, or maybe Mr. O'Reilly's been watching too much TV.
Really, Pascal's wager is inapposite because it's quantitation is evident. It's all or nothing. When it comes to the economics of Global <Whatever> Mr. O'Reilly asks "What's the worst that happens?" Well, that requires serious cost/benefit analyses, like the ones Mr. Lomborg has undertaken and which Mr. O'Reilly is ill equiped to deal with and is willing to dismiss, apparently because of his beliefs.
Thanks,
--Tim
Global Warming has become a religion - now I no longer doubt it, considering that rather insightful link you made to Pascal's Wager.
You are incorrect about one thing, that is, the outcome of being wrong may be uglier than you advertise. Yes, converting to cleaner energy is a good thing. However, we now see scientists seriously talking about geo-engineering, establishing a "carbon credit" market, and policy makers proposing economic damages beyond measure, all in the name of taking drastic measures to stop what we cannot even comprehend.
For the past two years, NOAA has said that global temperatures have been dropping. Yes, they are dropping, not rising, as was once predicted. So where does this leave the global warming evangelists? Many are trying to blame other factors, others are trying to say it is temporary, and still others are trying to claim that dropping temperatures are evidence of global warming. It has reached the point where the public does not know who to believe.
If temperatures continue dropping as many predict, then how does this figure into the whole global warming religion?
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2008/
Summary: The Southern Oscillation and increasing GHGs continue to be, respectively, the dominant factors affecting interannual and decadal temperature change. Solar irradiance has a non-negligible effect on global temperature [see, e.g., ref. 7, which empirically estimates a somewhat larger solar cycle effect than that estimated by others who have teased a solar effect out of data with different methods]. Given our expectation of the next El Niņo beginning in 2009 or 2010, it still seems likely that a new global temperature record will be set within the next 1-2 years, despite the moderate negative effect of the reduced solar irradiance.
The oceans are a massive heat sink. Year-to-year changes mean absolutely nothing. It's the long term trend that matters.
We already spend billions if not trillions on controls ostensibly to address this issue - everything from changing the ingredients in your hair spray to enforced pollution control laws causing cars to be junked which would otherwise keep running, to the development of new and comparatively cost-inefficient energy technologies like electric cars and solar power. If the cost is say, millions of people losing their jobs in first world countries, and in third world countries, failing to industrialize and therefore millions of people lacking food, medicine, and clean water, can we really be so dismissive about what's worth it?
I strongly suggest that people read The Skeptical Environmentalist, and the open letter by John Coleman (founder of the Weather Channel) on the subject of global warming scare tactics, along with the materials he links to. If you read this stuff with an open mind, and really consider the depth and size of the cost we are expending trying to combat this alleged problem, you may feel differently than you do today.
People buy insurance only when the cost compares favorably with the risk - when you treat the costs dismissively and weigh the expected value of the risk as infinite (i.e., proceeding on the basis that ANY cost is worth even the tiniest and completely unknown risk of a catastrophic outcome), you are really basing your decisions on your assumptions and not on logic or science.
Electric motors are much more efficient than internal combustion.
I feel bad for you if you really believe all this garbage.
You seem to love to pick and chose what to believe so don't be lecturing me on what I need to learn. I am quite capable of weeding out poor arguments and false logic. Perhaps you should cut back on your own Kool-Aid consumption and look a little deeper.
The problem with electric cars is not the motors, it is the energy storage (battery technology). After my experience with the life span of laptop batteries, I would not buy a car which runs on batteries.
In the name of curing global warming, let's ban cars and trucks and go back to using only bicycles! Given that choice, I'd bet most people would vote to let the GW chips fall where they may.
- by galeso January 22, 2009 12:47 AM PST
- The United Nations' top scientists say that man probably caused global warming.
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- by inscitekjeff January 23, 2009 12:31 PM PST
- Which is exactly the point.....you can't fix something if you don't know why it is broke.
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(35 Comments)They could not identify the source with any certainty. Since, the data shows the increase happening during the wintertime, it is likely that cause is not CO2 which is here year round, but some other cause like asphalt or heat escaping from houses.