Narratives of Global Warming
Jason Kuznicki on Feb 22nd 2007
“Look, Jason, it’s something from Cato,” said Scott the other day as he sorted through the mail.
“What are my think-tank overlords up to now?” I asked.
“They’re putting scare quotes around ‘global warming.’”
“Oh,” I said.
“People are going to look back at this stuff and wonder what on earth they were thinking,” he said.
I shrugged. Whatever libertarianism Scott might have had within him just shriveled up and died, and there I was, not even sure what to say. I could see it in his eyes: He was picturing the Cato Institute in five feet of seawater, with me standing on an office chair yelling “Hy-Brasil is not sinking!”
Or something like that.
It occurred to me only later that the way most of us decide what to think about global warming is not by examining scientific data, judging the probabilities of various scenarios, weighing the costs and benefits of various responses, or thinking critically about the potentials for external harm and unintended consequences — a problem also recently addressed by David Friedman. I tend to think that in situations like these, we tell ourselves one of several comparatively simple stories, and that these stories do much more to guide public policy than the science itself.
Now I freely admit that I don’t understand the science, either. I haven’t taken the right classes. I haven’t read the right literature. I only know what an educated person can know from reading the newspapers over the last several years — and I don’t think that this is enough for me to form an intelligent opinion on the subject one way or the other. In other words, global warming is for me a controversy where I’m going to have to remain a more or less permanent agnostic. I can’t honestly evaluate the issue myself, no matter how certain it seems to scientists.
This compares unfavorably, say, to the question of biological evolution and the origin of species, which I consider to be settled, and of which I believe I have sufficient knowledge to make a decision: I’ve read the authorities; I’ve studied evolutionary biology in a couple of college-level courses; I’ve even read Darwin. I’ve also read the skeptics, critics, ID-advocates, and creationists. And I consider that I know enough to know who’s right, namely the evolutionary biologists. They have a theory; the theory explains the data. And they believe it to be correct. I’ve studied the theory. I’ve seen quite a bit of the data, and I believe the theory to be correct.
With global warming, I doubt that I will ever have the opportunity or even the inclination to similarly inform myself. In part it’s because I don’t know much at all about climate science in the general sense, and without this knowledge I can’t readily evaluate specific claims about climate change.
There’s a name for this; it’s called rational ignorance:
Ignorance about an issue is said to be “rational” when the cost of educating oneself about the issue sufficiently to make an informed decision can outweigh any potential benefit one could reasonably expect to gain from that decision, and so it would be irrational to waste time doing so.
That about says it all.
Yes, I am aware of the so-called “hockey stick” graph. I’m aware of the Keeling Curve, a graph which shows steadily increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. I’m aware of strong correlations between temperature and CO2 over the last several thousand years. I am also aware of this skeptical site, which seems frankly doubtful to me. The following strikes me as one enormous red herring:
Does the Earth’s atmosphere primarily behave like an actual greenhouse?
No. The term “greenhouse effect” is unfortunate since it often results in a totally false impression of the activity of so-called “greenhouse gases.” An actual greenhouse works as a physical barrier to convection (the transfer of heat by currents in a fluid) while the atmosphere facilitates convection. So-called “greenhouse gases” in the Earth’s atmosphere do not act as a barrier to convection so the impression of actual greenhouse-like activity in the Earth’s atmosphere is wrong….
Supplemental, April 25: A couple of people have written challenging whether physical greenhouses function as convection barriers since they do radiate and so does the atmosphere - apparently we need to expand on this point. To begin with, a physical greenhouse is simply a contained subset of the atmosphere - it is not bounded by the near-vacuum of space as is the planet’s atmosphere and so has rather different properties. The proof that convection containment is critical to the function of physical greenhouses is that it is possible to create structures with similar radiative properties, one which allows convective activity between the structure and unconstrained atmosphere and one which does not. Only the structure constraining internal-external convection will function as an effective greenhouse. Greenhouse gases categorically do not inhibit convective activity and so are not like a physical greenhouse.
Forgetting about the unfortunate-but-commonly-used terminology for a moment, is the so-called ‘greenhouse effect’ bad?
Only if you think undesirable a habitable planet with relatively stable temperature. Our moon, lacking greenhouse effect, makes a kind of comparison even though lack of atmosphere makes it uninhabitable regardless of temperature. The moon’s mean surface temperature by day is 107 °C (225 °F) and by night drops to -153 °C (-243 °F). The Lunar temperature increases about 260 °C from just before dawn to Lunar noon. So, if you fancy such a temperature range then a greenhouse effect-free world is for you, otherwise you might want to be pleased we have it here on Earth.
How much does the so-called ‘greenhouse effect’ warm the Earth?It’s estimated that the Earth’s surface would be about -18 °C (0 °F, 255 K) with atmosphere and clouds but without the greenhouse effect and that the (we’ll call it “natural”) greenhouse effect raises the Earth’s temperature by ~33 °C (59 °F). Devoid of atmosphere it would actually be a less cold -1 °C (272 K) because the first calculation strangely includes 31% reflection of solar radiation by clouds (which could obviously not occur without an atmosphere) while clouds actually add significantly to the greenhouse effect - for simplicity, just stick with ~33 °C.
All well and good. Yet hardly what we were looking for, whether or not we believed in the reality of the phenomenon at the outset. The rest of the page is much the same; it seems generally a distraction. But the stories — the narratives — there’s where the real action occurs. Consider the following:
Industrialists are Evil: By this narrative, big corporations don’t care anything about the environment, or animals, or plants, or human beings, either. They’d be perfectly content, not merely to deprive of property, but actually to kill off everyone who lived on the coasts of the world, if only it meant a few more dollars in their bank accounts. We have to shut them down immediately. Back to the Pleistocene, as the saying goes.
It’s a powerful narrative; weirdly, many people like to think that they’ve found the worldwide conspiracy that would kill us all. But on another level, this one is so moronic that I’m not even going to bother to analyze it. No corporation ever has as its strategy the death of its customers. It’s just so completely self-destructive that no large group of people could ever consistently behave this way.
Scientists are Heroes: This narrative often squares well with the previous, though they need not be found together. A bunch of heroic scientists discovered something that’s threatening worldwide destruction. We’re still threatened, but — if we act in time — we can still do something.
There’s a definite appeal to this narrative, more so than the previous one. First of all, scientists have indeed found many previous dangers to human health and well-being, and we have made great progress in eliminating them or at least in scaling them back: This includes everything from the basics like viruses and bacteria, all the way to relatively exotic threats like PCBs and CFCs. In time, the threats were recognized as real, and we did what was necessary (or possibly much more than was necessary) to eliminate them.
So who wouldn’t want to get in on saving the world? It feels so good to be able to do something like that, whether or not there’s any actual threat to be had — which, I’d venture to say, most climate-change true believers couldn’t competently assess even if they had the data right in front of them. (Neither could I, but at least I admit it.) Still, it’s hard not to find this sort of rhetoric stirring — whether or not you know it to be credible:
We are not sure how serious the danger is, but it may well be the greatest threat and greatest challenge of our generation. We may soon have to take vigorous action lest we pass a “tipping point” beyond which nothing could halt disastrous climate change. Fortunately, our civilization holds the means to meet the challenge.We need only muster the will to use powerful technologies that are already in hand. It will not be as hard as defeating Fascism or Communism, and a lot more inspiriting.
I’m not sure about the last sentence; defeating fascism and communism have been two of the greatest triumphs of the good in all of human history. But still, I can see why people go for this stuff.
Scientists are Bunglers: This one weighs pretty strongly on the minds of the anti-warming side. It’s worth remembering, this narrative says, that the skeptics have often been right, and that the experts have often been stridently, proudly, insistently wrong. What if global warming is one of those times? If so, then we’d be paying an awful lot for their mistakes.
There are also times when the experts seem to have found something remarkable — and then it takes many years to finally figure out whether they’ve actually done it or not. Remember cold fusion? Almost twenty years on, they’re still testing and arguing, leaving the rest of us with nothing more than our narratives. If, that is, we even bother to think about it anymore. Scientists are often bunglers — maybe that’s the case here, too.
Scientists are Opportunists: Maybe scientists are neither heroes nor bunglers. Maybe they’re just people like the rest of us.
Let’s suppose then that some large, rich, permanent institution started handing out sums of money to individuals in the form of grants, awards, and lifetime job appointments. It is only reasonable to expect that most ordinary people will be enticed to compete for this money: They will try to convince the large, rich, permanent institution that they are more deserving than any other potential recipient. They will attempt to alarm said institution with warnings about what bad things will happen if they are not given the money to do — well, whatever important thing it is that they want to do.
Governments, and people in government, seek power for obvious reasons. Over the past fifty years the intellectual justification for the large expansion in government power from about 1930-1970 has largely collapsed. The belief that capitalism is inherently unstable and inefficient and must be fixed with large elements of governmental intervention and central planning is no longer taken very seriously by either the general public or economists.Environmentalism in general and global warming in particular provide new arguments for expanded government power, new taxes, and the like. That does not mean, of course, that those arguments are wrong, but it does mean that there are a lot of people who have an incentive to support them whether wrong or right. That seems to me consistent with what I observe—what is probably a real problem being extensively exaggerated for political reasons.
We also see this in the war on drugs, where the dangerous effects of recreational use are routinely exaggerated, and where studies documenting little or no harm to users are invariably downplayed by those hoping to ingratiate themselves with the drug war bureaucracy. The drug war has skipped continually from one crisis to the next, driven by the hunt for ever more government money.
I tend to see a similar process at work, albeit less successfully, in the threat supposedly presented by asteroid collision with the earth: Of course it would be very, very bad for something like this to happen. But if there is any doubt whatsoever, then in what direction will the scientists be likely to exaggerate? I somehow doubt it will be in the direction of, “Oh, everything’s fine, you don’t have to give us any more money or fund any special projects.” If there is any doubt at all, then we have a catastrophe on our hands — and we must spend more money at once.
The mere fact that the scientists are relatively quiet about killer asteroids is proof that we have virtually nothing to fear from them: Only a very small number of the experts are brazen enough to claim otherwise, while if there were even a remotely plausible threat, all of them would be screaming for money. To combat such a terrible, terrible threat, of course. In the name of, um, humanity. With no personal interest of my own, no sir.
This is not to say that all government-funded science is driven purely by personal interest, but only that there seems a definite incentive toward scientific alarmism inherent in all government-funded projects. People who recognize this tendency end up being reflexively anti-alarmist, and I think that this reflex explains most libertarians’ mistrust of global warming doomsday scenarios.
What I’d Do: It is not at all clear to me that — as George Will and Jonah Goldberg seem to think — the only way to cool the planet is to wreck the entire industrial economy and plunge all of humanity into permanent misery. Other options exist, at least, that is, if I’ve understood the science correctly. To conclude that any solution is automatically prohibitively expensive — and therefore we should do nothing — is only to examine one scenario.
Nor is there anything necessarily unethical about human beings deciding to keep the planet within a given set of temperatures for the better protection of livelihoods, capital investments, or personal safety. There remain the thorny questions of government power and collective action, but these are no different in character from their manifestations in many other areas of public policy. Already we habitually look past them. Not to say that this is a good thing, but we already do it all the time. There is nothing peculiar about any solution to global warming in this regard.
Still, I suspect, but I only suspect, that we should do nothing about it.
Keep in mind that this opinion is as feeble as my knowledge of the problem; its only virtue, if it has one, is that I’ve been trying to examine — and then to look past — the little stories that we tell ourselves in either the pro- or the anti-action camps, and to think about the problem in some other direction.
Why should we do nothing?
First, there is still some small chance that the science regarding climate change itself (as opposed to its origins) is flawed, and that recent increases in temperature are either insignificant or nonexistent. As I understand it, this chance is negligible and shrinking by the year, but it does still exist.
Second, there is considerable chance that this climate change is real, but that it isn’t man-made, and that — within the subset of real but purely natural causes — whatever is causing it will reverse itself of its own accord.
Third, there is considerable chance that even if climate change is real and irreversible (whether man-made or not), our efforts against it will be of no avail. Maybe we can’t do anything whatsoever to reverse the process. In this scenario, we would do best by preparing for global warming rather than by trying to stop it.
Fourth, there is an outside possibility that whether or not climate change is real and/or man-made, our efforts against it will backfire in some spectacularly awful fashion — creating a new ice age, or increasing the greenhouse effect through some perverse mechanism we don’t yet understand, or just spawning some tangential environmental problem we can’t even imagine. This is a remote possibility, but it should be considered.
Fifth, there is a strong likelihood that whatever we do to stop global warming will be very expensive, as Will and Goldberg believe. If global warming is real, and man-made, but relatively limited in scope — a possibility disaster partisans don’t want to acknowledge — then many of the possible solutions (Back to the Pleistocene, anyone?) are ill-fitted to the problem. Even if you do have to marvel, distantly, at the irony of a web page teaching you how to live in a thatched hut.
Sixth, the era of fossil fuels might very well end on its own. If it does, then we will have wasted whatever money and opportunity costs we poured into solving global warming. This scenario could unfold in one of two ways.
On the one hand, there might be a worldwide economic contraction as the fossil fuels dry up (see this chart especially). If this happens soon, then global warming will have been a relatively small phenomenon. A steep decline in fossil fuel supplies without a suitable alternative would mean fewer greenhouse gases but also a lot of human suffering — a terrible outcome on balance. If this decline only happens many decades from now, then we may still have severe global warming, of course.
But on the other hand, and more optimistically, the price of solar cells has plummeted over time, and if it continues to do so, then costs for solar power may soon undercut those of fossil fuels.
We may therefore be on the cusp of a significant economic breakthrough here, one would usher in a new era of expansion, full of abundant, decentralized, and environmentally friendly power. This would be a wonderful outcome, with the added bonus that the corrupt oil-rich tyrants of the world would stand the most to lose. It’s also fully within the realm of the possible:
Anil Sethi, the chief executive of the Swiss start-up company Flisom, says he looks forward to the day - not so far off - when entire cities in America and Europe generate their heating, lighting and air-conditioning needs from solar films on buildings with enough left over to feed a surplus back into the grid.
The secret? Mr Sethi lovingly cradles a piece of dark polymer foil, as thin a sheet of paper. It is 200 times lighter than the normal glass-based solar materials, which require expensive substrates and roof support. Indeed, it is so light it can be stuck to the sides of buildings.
Rather than being manufactured laboriously piece by piece, it can be mass-produced in cheap rolls like packaging - in any colour.
The “tipping point” will arrive when the capital cost of solar power falls below $1 (51p) per watt, roughly the cost of carbon power. We are not there yet. The best options today vary from $3 to $4 per watt - down from $100 in the late 1970s.
Mr Sethi believes his product will cut the cost to 80 cents per watt within five years, and 50 cents in a decade.
Stuff like this makes a technophile like me practically weep for joy:
Mike Splinter, chief executive of the US semiconductor group Applied Materials, told me his company is two years away from a solar product that reaches the magic level of $1 a watt.
Cell conversion efficiency and economies of scale are galloping ahead so fast that the cost will be down to 70 US cents by 2010, with a target of 30 or 40 cents in a decade.
“We think solar power can provide 20% of all the incremental energy needed worldwide by 2040,” he said.
“This is a very powerful technology and we’re seeing dramatic improvements all the time. It can be used across the entire range from small houses to big buildings and power plants,” he said.
“The beauty of this is that you can use it in rural areas of India without having to lay down power lines or truck in fuel.”
Villages across Asia and Africa that have never seen electricity may soon leapfrog directly into the solar age, replicating the jump to mobile phones seen in countries that never had a network of fixed lines. As a by-product, India’s rural poor will stop blanketing the subcontinent with soot from tens of millions of open stoves.
But back down to earth: Whether the fossil fuel era ends with an economic bang or an economic whimper, any end at all will mean that global warming is a non-problem. To the extent that these are feasible scenarios, global warming becomes less of a concern.
I offer all of this very, very lightly. I’m aware, after all, that “government should do nothing” is suspiciously congruent with my preexisting political beliefs. I’m also aware of the following flaw in my reasoning: I can’t point to any one set of plausible facts, or to any plausible trigger condition, that would incline me away from doing nothing and toward doing something. Still, I do think there are solid arguments for simply waiting the problem out, even if I can’t point to the limits of those arguments’ forces. I offer my opinion as lightly as possible, because I realize, after all of this, that I am not an expert, and because everything above may be wrong, beside the point, or both.
So what do you think?
Filed in The Biosphere
For some who don’t trust the government, the EPA isn’t considered a reliable source; but I think you can find basic information on how greenhouse gases work and the science. There are many more greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide and methane is considered to be most cupable. There are many uncertainties as to how to reduce methane, because many of the sources are natural. Actually, I think the climate scientist are not presenting the causes of global warning as fact, but are giving the largest probabilities of the causes. I think most of the world would tend to go with them. Some are not sure that the increase in temperature is a permanent trend. Of course you have some scientist who believe in their theory absolutly and our politicos choose sides with them. So we have a non scientific debate by pundits, psuedoscientist and hacks, with the general populace siding with them. It now has be come an emotional issue, which reduces the chance that if our world was in danger, nothing would ever be done. It is also unfortunate, that some think if we get into climate crisis, that technology will be able to solve the problem in an instant.
Illuminating, gives a nice swath of the larger perspective on what is going on out there with this debate, I liked it. I have my doubts about man’s role in causing global warming, and feel we should focus more on adapting to a warming planet rather than trying to mitigate that warming. This discussion certainly isn’t helped when the UN releases only a Summary for Policy Makers (SPM), created in secret by gov’t officials who just might, as Friedman alluded to, “have an incentive to support” more gov’t power. Further since the SPM represents a consensus of gov’t officials, and not scientists, there is certainly a tendency to dismiss uncertainty. This is further so because (same link above), regarding the ‘01 SPM, “The confidence in those numbers was probably not that good, and they probably never should have been used in the way in which they were used.” Oh, so all that doom and gloom, wasn’t really a strong case for that? Thank Gaia it only took 4 years for the press to report this to us, buried at the end of an article as it is.
The whole point with the new ‘07 IPCC report is that this uncertainty has lessened/confidence has increased, but it would certainly help to release the scientific reports first so that this specific point can be discussed (since it is the central point) rather than an SPM tailored by gov’t officials, in secret, which dismisses the uncertainties in the science.
The science isn’t too difficult to understand, but of course maybe it is and I’m misunderstanding — as I see it, from the ‘01 IPCC report, the only thing that supports man-made global warming are the incomplete computer models simulating the climate. Because these models can’t account for the warming over the past 100 years, the logic is it must be man.
“The warming over the past 100 years is very unlikely to be due to internal variability alone, as estimated by current models.”
“If internal variability is correct in these models, the recent warming is likely not due to variability produced within the climate system alone.”
There are some interesting points contained within the ‘01 IPCC report (the science, not the SPM) which lend credence to the idea that the internal variability in these models is not correct. To quote Kevin Trenberth, director of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, again, regarding the ‘01 IPCC report, “The confidence in those numbers was probably not that good, and they probably never should have been used in the way in which they were used.”
Lets focus on adaptation over mitigation, while the science improves. Am definitely a fan of moving off fossil fuels and towards a cheaper, cleaner, renewable source of energy.
This is true only in a scenario where the warming mechanisms stop instantly with the switchover to a non-fossil-fuel global economy. It’s possible that waiting that x number of years for that flipover to occur “naturally” allows the warming trend to continue, past the tipping point where it is in fact irreversible. It won’t do Floridians much good to line their roofs with solar foil if Miami is already underwater, after all.
In general, I find myself in your shoes — I know the issues well enough to comment vaguely, but not well enough to make a rational decision about the best way to address the problem. My personal “story” approach, though, is that hoping the worst won’t happen is a generally poor approach to disaster mitigation. If we’re headed towards carbon reduction or elimination anyway, surely there are reasonable policies that can be put in place to encourage the growth, to enable that tipping point to arrive as fast as possible without crippling the very structures we’re trying to save.
I suspect my American can-do narrative blinders are influencing me here, but I don’t have a lot of sympathy for people like Will and Goldberg who throw up their hands and surrender before even trying anything. There’s always a solution, and there are a lot of people rolling up their sleeves right now, trying come up with a way to fix it. If Messieurs Will and Goldberg don’t have the will to try, they’re welcome to sit this one out and make way for those who do. After all, if we’re willing to invade any country that has a 1% chance of nuking us, surely it’s worth at least a little effort to try and mitigate a disaster with a much, much higher likelihood and larger cost.
This happens every time I start to self identify as a libertarian, or at least libertarian leaning: I run across a post like this one, from a libertarian blogger I generally respect and admire, that just comes across very ostrich-like. Your rational ignorance reads a bit like ideologically convenient ignorance. I had a similar reaction to Radley Balko’s post about a bad reef experiment from the 1970s, which he used as justification (warning, exageration ahead) for placing research by Phillip Morris on par with AMA. I think I have the same problem with pretty much the entire ecological/conservation arena when it comes to libertarianism. Your post is pretty long, but I would like to address a couple of points, and do so primarily from a “how you (personally and libertarians in general) come across” perspective:
- Scott is right. Putting global warming in scare quotes significantly reduces their credibility. And I like Cato. Not even anthopormorphic global warming, but global warming in its entirety? Really? Heck, even Gregg Easterbrook admits global warming is a reality.
- With regard your “Industrialists are evil” narrative: Outside the far left, I really don’t know anyone who thinks of it in such stark, simplisitic terms. Your narrative is just a strawman. How about: Corporations, made up as they are by a large number of people, no single one of which is held morally responsible for the actions of the corp as a whole, and beholden as it is to stock owners, is naturally going to behave in a manner which places profit above possibly relativisitic moral standards, and this creates a situation in which corporations can do evil things if not properly watchdogged or regulated. Your point regarding no corporation could have the death of its customers as a strategy is also a giant strawman. What critics do say, relevant to libertarian theory, is that short term high probability profit incentives can and often do trump long term, less certain market health considerations. Meaning, in simple terms, that a large corporation might very well damage its own long term market through poor planning and overly aggressive exploitation of resources. See: our environment.
- Regarding “scientists are bunglers”: I just love the careful anecdotal selection of the most aggregious examples of scientific bungling that libertarians site in cases like this. If a creationsist did this, you would be up in arms, and rightfully so. Of course scientists make errors, and then other scientists check on them, and the process corrects. How long did it take the cold fusion hoax to be revealed? While I readily admit that global warming, particularly anthropormorphic global warming, is not nearly as well settled as evolution, what we do have is the overwhelming majority of qualified climatologists telling us it is reality, unless they are paid for by the AEI and other like minded groups. This is NOT to say that we must dismiss research by corporations (I am hardly ready to dismiss the wonderful advances made by Big Pharma), but if pretty much the only climate research that contradicts the majority of qualfied climatoligists, and best selling novelists don’t meet the criteria for that, is coming from the oil industry, then you might want to consider the source, it is relevant.
OK, my two cent.
There’s a lot here, and I’m not sure I can reply to it all fairly.
A good place to start is with Radley Balko and the tires. Misanthrope, if I’m reading you correctly, you cite this as an example you can’t really give much authority, because, hey, scientists screw up once in a while — how could anyone else have known?
But on this one I’ve got to say I’m with Balko. It’s healthy to mistrust the experts, especially when they recommend something that seems in retrospect so obviously absurd. Picture a scientist telling us that, to improve the environment, we should scatter spare tires on land, in threatened forest areas. Would this make any sense whatsoever? No, it would be an idiotic idea. And, in retrospect, so is doing the same to the ocean. This was an obvious blunder, one encouraged and nourished by the scientist-as-hero narrative.
This is not to say, though, that I subscribe to the narrative that scientists are bunglers as regards global warming. My own view is that scientists are people, and that they are subject to the same influences and biases as anyone else. I also think that they’ve found a very significant, and almost certainly man-made alteration taking place in our environment.
Meanwhile, they still have every incentive to inflate the problem into something far larger than it actually is. That’s what people do, when they’re offered large sums of money, and when all they need to do to claim it is to argue that their own work is very, very important. This is why I don’t object to putting global warming in scare quotes — so long as it mostly designates a whole lot of hysteria, let it remain that way. I dispense with them here because I believe that I am treating it in a more realistic fashion than the alarmists have.
I should also stress that while I believe (with my feeble knowledge of the science) that global warming is real and anthropogenic, I don’t subscribe to the narrative that corporations are doing this out of evil or indifference. They, too, are following incentives, and the incentives right now are such that the fossil fuels will continue to burn. This is why I am hopeful for a solar solution: It’s got all of the right elements for re-ordering industrialists’ incentives, and it may happen within the decade. I trust that few other solutions could do so well so quickly.
Is the Industrialists-are-Evil narrative a strawman? You clearly didn’t go to the same universities I did. Plenty of people who were literate enough to have learned otherwise most certainly did subscribe to this view. If my writing is colored by a few too many late-night bull sessions with these people (and while I was reading Ayn Rand, no less), well… I’m sorry my view of public opinion doesn’t correspond with yours. But it is a real worldview, and many people do sincerely believe it.
Your view of corporations, Misanthrope, is actually a fairly decent one for explaining nearly all of corporations’ bad behavior. Given that it has only recently been established with any degree of certainty that global warming is real and is anthropogenic, I can’t exactly say that this is an example of their exploiting of incentives to the detriment of others. It wasn’t even known that carbon dioxide was a harm, until long after the entire industrial infrastructure was well in place.
Lastly, a quick note on ignorance. I am bemused that my ignorance in particular has become an issue here, rather than the ignorance of the general public (of which I happen to be just one member).
I mean, here I am saying, “I am ignorant and unsure; many difficulties and uncertainties remain. Therefore I suggest doing nothing.” Meanwhile, many people say, in effect, “I am ignorant and uncertain, therefore I recommend spending hundreds of billions of dollars, throwing a large percentage of the workforce out of their jobs, restructuring our entire industrial base, and altering our environment — all with effects that I can’t even begin to predict. Don’t ask me exactly how it’s going to be done; the fellows in the lab coats will figure it all out, somehow. And we need to do it all right away!”
And for this — for this — who loses credibility? I do.
Truly, the narrative of the scientist-hero is a powerful one.
One flaw in this analysis — and it’s a very, shall we say, libertarianish flaw — is to approach the matter entirely in terms of the characteristics of individuals: are individual scientists heroes, or bunglers, or whatever? And of course the answer there is: some are heroes, and some are bunglers, and some are whatever. But the relevant unit of analysis here is not the scientists one by one, but as a _community_. As a community, it bungles much less often than its individual members do, because it has excellent procedures & incentives for rooting out the bungles (and the bunglers). These same procedures & incentives also apply to motivate any number of scientists to point out whatever flaws there may be in the reasoning & evidence put forward by those who may be driven by the particular set of opportunistic motives that you describe. One need not, and should not, take the scientists in the first half of that sentence to be heroically motivated; science wouldn’t work if it required such. Rather, it can count on scientists being _multiply_ opportunistic, and if some scientists yield too much to the opportunities of hyping the problem, they will thereby have only created an opportunity for other scientists to expose their mistakes. The well-constructed set of institutions and incentives is what makes science work on the whole, and they are also why you should be more willing to trust the scientific community on the whole than you currently seem willing to do.
Philosopher –
I should make it clear, once again, that I do not subscribe to the scientists-are-bunglers narrative. I included it for the sake of completeness, just as I did for the narrative that industrialists are evil. As for scientists seeing themselves as heroes, and for individuals readily agreeing, I’ve already provided examples. It’s often true, as any good technophile will note. But it’s also a potentially misleading story.
Jason,
First, thanks for not specifically pointing out, and rubbing in my face, my highly embarrassing error re anthropomorphic vs anthropogenic. You are kinder in this discussion than I would have been. I am sitting here imagining some sort of global warming monster with human characteristics. Sad.
Re Radley and the tire reefs: I’m not entirely sure I read your interpretation of my comment correctly. The point I attempted to make: Pointing out an anecdotal error made by scientists allows us to say “scientists are human and err”, but it is not justification for saying “all scientific organizations are pretty much equal in their biases and subjectivity,” towards which it seemed that Radley Balko was leaning. (And I say this as one heavily influenced by Mr Balko.) Thus my Phillip Morris is equal to the AMA on the dangers of smoking comment. It appears to me that libertarian bloggers too easily accept as equal industry research vs the combined results of NGO and federal research in areas that the industry has a clear financial interest in producing results that lean towards a specific answer. I take your point that state sponsored research appears biased toward more state power, but I think this is often a matter of peoples’ natural (and unfortunate) default towards having the government fix everything. “There oughta be a law” syndrome. Of course we must maintain skepticism towards scientific discoveries and recommendations, and the ones who are most skeptical are other scientists. It goes to the heart of the scientific method and the concept of reproducible results. A final point on the reef tires: I don’t think the idea was nearly as ludicrous as you make it out to be. We have the full benefit of hindsight. Your analogy about dumping tires all over the forest is a bit off: If scientists recommended dropping concrete blocks all over the forest we would say pollution, but this is pretty much how we successful create reefs in the ocean. It was the specific material, which proves largely impervious to coral growth, combined with their mobility, that was the primary problem.
Let me see if I read you right on putting global warming in scare quotes: You believe, mostly, that global warming is occurring, and that it is most likely man made. But, you see the general public’s understanding of the phrase “global warming” as inappropriately and automatically defaulting towards the most alarmist predictions, and even worse, as automatically accepting the need for major regulatory intervention to address it. OK, I understand, but still don’t agree with it, mainly because I think most people who are using scare quotes are in actual denial about global warming as a whole, or man made GW at least, and do not have your nuanced view of it. Either that or they do have you view and are perfectly willing to deny GW as a whole if it serves the greater goal of preventing government intervention. Massive spin, I guess. When the evangelical Christian right does something like that, I call it Lying for Jesus. I digress.
Industrialists as evil: I think you are right about our subjective experiences. In my discussions with peers I find that I may have been a bit sheltered in this area. BUT: you gave four sample narratives: Two of which generally support some form of global warming denial, and two of which support global warming acceptance. Which ones did you spend most of the allotted space debunking or dismissing out of hand? The scientists are heroes and industrialists are evil narrative. There are legitimate points to make against the other narratives as well.
Lastly: No, you don’t lose credibility if you put it the way you did in the last paragraph. You lose credibility when you appear as an apologist for global warming denial as a whole, and your original post had several elements of this. There is a huge difference between saying: “Item A is probably bad” and “Item A is bad therefore we must have government intervention, laws, regulation and spending to address it.” If you fear and oppose the latter, say so, but don’t attempt to prevent state intervention by denying the existence of the issue, which is the way my admittedly limited reading of libertarians has them appear on environmental and some other public health issues.
Thanks for replying to my earlier post. I enjoy the elements of this blog that I am able to understand. That pretty much leaves me out of your Mises posts, by the way.
Jason, your response to my post doesn’t seem to be responding to what I wrote. I didn’t say anything remotely like that you were claiming scientists were generally bunglers. My point, again, is that the relevant question isn’t of the form “Are individual scientists X?” (where values for X include hero, bungler, opportunist, etx.) The relevant question is more like “Is the consensus of the scientific community particularly reliably correct, when there is such consensus?” And I was suggesting that the answer to that question is decidedly affirmative, pretty much no matter what answers one gives to the individual-scientist questions — and in particular, without requiring that all scientists are heroes. (I think you mis-read my point in my first post about them not needing to be all heroes; I certainly didn’t mean to deny that some people think of them that way, nor for that matter that at least some of them really are.)
[...] There’s a vigorous discussion on global warming going on in the comments below, and I will take this opportunity to note that in today’s Washington Post, Mark Sanford, the Republican governor of South Carolina, calls for “conservative” solutions to the problem — without mentioning a single specific proposal. Such is the quality of the debate, it seems. [...]
Misanthrope,
You write,
You believe, mostly, that global warming is occurring, and that it is most likely man made. But, you see the general public’s understanding of the phrase “global warming” as inappropriately and automatically defaulting towards the most alarmist predictions, and even worse, as automatically accepting the need for major regulatory intervention to address it. OK, I understand, but still don’t agree with it, mainly because I think most people who are using scare quotes are in actual denial about global warming as a whole
You’ve got my position correct; this is indeed what I believe. But your reasons for disagreeing strike me as bizarre: You say, in essence, that you disagree with me because some other people may happen to believe some things that I do not believe and would not accept. This is a very strange reason to disagree with me.
Philosopher,
You write,
that the relevant question isn’t of the form “Are individual scientists X?” (where values for X include hero, bungler, opportunist, etc.) The relevant question is more like “Is the consensus of the scientific community particularly reliably correct, when there is such consensus?” And I was suggesting that the answer to that question is decidedly affirmative
I think you make valid points for most of this: The stories that people tend to tell do not include or even consider social factors like peer review and consensus. However, even peer review and consensus may not be enough to withstand the opportunism of trying to convince the government that some danger is far worse than it is. After all, the entire discipline stands to benefit from this determination, not just the researcher who discovers it — meaning that the discoverer’s peers will likely go along with him, even to the far reaches of alarmism.
As a thought exercise on how to actually deal with global warming real or not, imagine that it is not anthropogenic. That no individual human being or collection of individual human beings can actually be held directly responsible for global warming, and a court would be unable to say, “You there! You stop doing that! You will cease and desist from this activity which violates this property!” I’ll ask you to imagine instead that global warming is in fact a natural phenomenon like clouds, volcanoes, and tides.
Exactly how would global warming be dealt with then? Would massive violent, interventionist, coercive government action be the only possible response to a natural phenomenon? Or would people learn to take control over their own environments? Would privately owned property be more conducive to human happiness still, or would people suddenly find that the tragedy of the commons has evaporated?
“After all, the entire discipline stands to benefit from this determination, not just the researcher who discovers it meaning that the discoverers peers will likely go along with him, even to the far reaches of alarmism.” Maybe… but I would suggest that if we tried to work out how this process would have to operate in any detail at all, then we’d see that it’s pretty unlikely. For example, being good ‘for the discipline’ is only an incentive for individual researchers if those benefits come around to him or her, and indeed do so in a matter roughly such that his or her comparative standing in the profession is not badly damaged. If (i) I get a bit more research moola, but (ii) many others get a lot more, and (iii) I care a lot about my comparative standing in my field (as scientists typically do), then this may not be a situation that I have an incentive to maintain.
Also, the funding will largely be for more research. If anthropogenic global warming isn’t true, then as funding goes up, more and more evidence of its falsity will be generated. So, over time, this dynamic can only be maintained if scientists on the whole are not merely somewhat opportunistic, but downright corrupt.
In general, the scientfic community lacks the kind of control structures necessary to maintain the kind of ‘evidential cartel’ that you’re hypothesizing. Its own institutions & practices lead it to lack the ability to punish defectors in the requisite way.
Philosopher,
I have to say I am skeptical about the notion that the scientific consensus is always free of these kinds of institutional biases.
While you dismissed my example of cold fusion, I don’t think you understood it correctly. I did not mean to reference it as an example of junk science that everyone believed — this was the case only for a few weeks, if at all. What I meant to reference is that a debate actually continues on what exactly was happening there. It’s clear that some effect took place that scientists can’t yet explain. What it was, no one quite knows yet.
Meanwhile, you did not answer the one example I did give of a strongly biased scientific consensus: The science behind the war on drugs, which has been distorted, misrepresented, inflated, and twisted in all sorts of different ways — but almost always to make recreational drugs seem far worse than they actually are. And why? Because that’s what keeps the government money flowing. I don’t think it ridiculous, then, to suspect that many claims about global warming are similarly exaggerated.
I haven’t said anything at all like “scientists are unbiased” (which I would take to be a claim somewhere in the neighborhood of “scientists are heroes”; some are, and some aren’t, and it doesn’t really matter). The point is that scientists are subject to a number of different & competing biases, and the different biases & incentives on different scientists ultimately yield a community whose truth-tracking powers far outstrip those of any individual scientist.
I didn’t dismiss the cold fusion example; I have simply ignored it, as it doesn’t seem particularly relevant to my line of argument. But I’m open to being told why it is relevant.
And I think you have a mistaken impression about the drug war stuff. You’re certainly right that the _media_ overwhelmingly tend to report only anti-drug results. But spend a little time with PubMed or google scholar, and you’ll see that the relevant scientific journals demonstrate pretty much the pattern of developing-consensus-amid-healthy-diversity-of-results that my model would suggest. (E.g., one can easily find studies on both sides of the ‘marijuana as gateway drug’ question.)
Oops, the first part of my response about scientific consensus being free of biases doesn’t accurately address what you said. The second part of it (about competing biases) does, though. And keep in mind that the standard here isn’t that the consensus is _always_ right, but just that it is right much, much, much more often than not.
Tips to scientists.
If you are a researcher today in a natural science, then a good step to take is to add the word “global warming” to your research paper and in your academic thesis. It will make sure you get your paper published in peer review publication. You can advance in your academic career, get a higher salery and attend more conferences at exotic locations.
I saw an interview with Henrik Svensmark, the guy who came up with the idea that cosmic ray can affect cloud cover and change earth’s climate.
He told that when he presented his theory about 10 years ago at a conference it created a very strong emotional reaction from climatologists and that the head of IPCC even told him that the work he was doing was irresponsible.
[...] There is nothing irrational about taking the following approach, which the blog’s author condemns, but which is a fair summary of my own thoughts on the issue: At first, doubts were cast about whether the earth was warming. Now that there is general agreement on that fact, doubts are raised about whether this warming is man-made. The consensus on this point continues to grow, so doubts are now raised about whether a warmer planet is cause for concern, or whether anything we try will succeed, or, get this, whether we’ll screw things up even worse (the presumption being that we’ve screwed things up already). [...]
[...] I’d like to make a top-level reply to one of the most interesting comments we’ve gotten in weeks. Before we begin, readers should know that I’ve already laid my cards on the table in the global warming game: Several months ago I wrote that 1) global warming is apparently both real and manmade and 2) even so, the best option may still be to do nothing about it. [...]
[...] I’d like to make a top-level reply to one of the most interesting comments we’ve gotten in weeks. Before we begin, readers should know that I’ve already laid my cards on the table in the global warming game: Several months ago I wrote that 1) global warming is apparently both real and manmade and 2) even so, the best option may still be to do nothing about it. [...]
[...] majority of voters and policymakers don’t either. Instead, as I’ve noted in the past, we tell each other stories. This is a natural human tendency, though not necessarily a helpful [...]