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What Would You Need to Know to Worry About Climate Change?
I’m neither a climate alarmist nor a skeptic, and I’m unqualified to be either. I reckon that somewhere between Proposition A (life as we know it on Earth is coming to an end and we’re all going to boil to death) and Proposition B (an entire scientific field, along with the media, is engaged in a massive conspiracy to perpetuate a hoax, for reasons no one can explain) there’s a huge, very complicated scientific literature I haven’t read, comprising many specialist disciplines about which I know nearly nothing.
Right now, if you asked me clearly to explain to you what a Milankovitch cycle is, why pacific decadal oscillation matters, or my opinion about the influence of past ice volume change on modern sea levels — well, you just heard the totality of my opinions. If you told me to assume carbon dioxide levels will double in the coming century, that I have a month to model the effect this will have on the climate, that I have to do it unaided, and that if I fail to do it in a way that suggests passing familiarity with the state-of-the-art research, I’ll die? I’m dead.
I have no strong and defensible views on climate science, save the certainty that to arrive at strong and defensible views, I’d have to learn quite a bit. I find it impressive that many people who clearly haven’t got more reason than I do to have a strong view have one nonetheless.
With issues like this, I suspect, the position one takes is more a matter of accidental association than of any underlying or consistent ideology. There’s no special reason, for example, for American socialists to like granola. But they love the stuff, so American conservatives are instinctively suspicious of granola. In truth, the relationship between granola and any meaningful understanding of “right” and “left” is incidental.
I do have a friend, though, whose views about this are genuinely well-informed. If I wanted to outsource my opinions about this to someone else, I’d choose him. He’s a physicist I’ve known since he and I were undergraduates; he went on to have a distinguished career in sea-ice modeling. He’s current with every aspect of this debate. I know his character to be honest and modest: I just can’t imagine him claiming to know something he doesn’t, participating in a hoax, or having no clue what he’s talking about.
Recently, I sent him an e-mail asking him what he’d concluded after studying this problem for 30-odd years. How useful, I asked, are computer simulations of the Earth’s past, present, and future climate states? What really happens when you couple components of the climate system without resorting to flux adjustments?
I thought I’d share his reply. (I’ve lightly edited the exchange for his privacy and so that the chronology makes sense).
Here’s what really bothers me: reading about climate change in, say, a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece. What a predictable load of nonsense, year after year. In contrast, here’s a well-informed, closely reasoned piece of semi-technical science writing. There are no equations, but it helps to know some science (for instance, what the Coriolis effect is), and it takes some effort to keep causes and effects straight.
I’m curious: When you read this article (taking you as an examplar of a bright, well-educated, but scientifically untrained layperson), does it make sense to you? It’s a good example of a puzzling observation (expanding Antarctic sea ice) that scientists hammer away at from different directions for a decade or so, until they have a more-or-less satisfying explanation, while the big picture (dumping billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year is a bad idea) remains unchanged.
But start with the fact that Antarctic sea ice is expanding and hand it to the editors of the Wall Street Journal. You’ll get something like this: “Climate scientists would have you forget that, while Arctic sea ice area is declining, the area of Antarctic sea ice is actually increasing! And the scientists have no explanation! The models are wrong! Climate has changed in the past, it’s changing now, it’s all part of a natural cycle, and there’s nothing to worry about!”
The Wall Street Journal doesn’t indulge in exclamation points, but this is always the structure of the argument. Good luck finding in the popular media a detailed exposition of the science. I think science writers have decided that the details are simply too complicated for most people, so they try to emphasize that the core science (that which one needs to know to make rational policy decisions) is settled, while scientists are still quibbling (as they should) about the finer details.
In other words, he firmly believes the core science is, indeed, settled, basically in favor of Proposition A.
Goodness, I replied. That’s dreary. What policies seemed to him genuinely merited by the science? And whatever they were, how would he propose convincing China and India to adopt them?
His reply:
I agree that most liberals who hold strong views about climate change would have as much trouble rigorously defending their views as most conservatives. But since we can’t all be experts on all aspects of science (for instance, I’m clueless about medicine and biology), I think it’s legitimate to defer to the science consensus, where there is one. The burden of rigor should rest on those who deny what really is an overwhelming consensus.
I don’t think it’s a historical accident that liberals trust climate science and conservatives don’t. Since dealing with climate change requires some degree of international government action, it makes sense that those on the right would be less welcoming of the science. My naive hope at one time was that most people would accept the science (to the extent that there are clear and compelling reasons to believe it), and then we’d have a vigorous debate over the appropriate policy responses (taxes versus carbon markets versus top-down regulation). No such luck.
Among people I know at the lab, there’s a generational split. Nearly all the climate skeptics I know are over 60. One of my friends thinks this is because people born before about 1960 grew up with assumptions of unchecked material progress, whereas those born later find it easier to accept the idea of limits to growth (the big blue marble, the End of Nature, and all that).
Which policies would I like to see adopted? In the US, I’d like to see a carbon tax, levied at the point of entry (ports, pipelines, etc.), starting low (say, $25/ton of carbon) and increasing gradually and predictably over time. I’d refund the proceeds to everyone on a per capita basis, so that anyone who uses less than the per capita mean amount of energy comes out ahead. (This would be the majority, since median energy use is well below the mean.) In this way I’d try to build a constituency of energy-conserving right-leaning voters: “Keep your big-government hands off my carbon refund!”
I’d supplement this tax with gradually tightening efficiency standards for vehicles, home appliances, building insulation and so on. I’d avoid cap and trade.
I’m out of my depth when it comes to diplomacy. But I suppose that for India and China, I’d try to make broad deals like the agreement announced a few weeks ago. Also, the carbon tax would apply to imports from any country that didn’t have an equivalent internal tax, so there wouldn’t be a free ride for countries that lack adopt similar policies.
Overall, I think of myself as a raging moderate.
There we go. I don’t know enough to have my own opinion, but when I outsource the question to the most qualified and trustworthy person I know, that’s what I get.
So, my questions for everyone here would be:
1) What kind of scientific evidence would persuade you, personally, that the alarmists are basically correct?
2) If you don’t think you could hope to master the relevant literature to the degree required to assess that evidence, would you be willing to outsource your opinion about it to someone else? If so, who? And why?
3) Assuming the alarmists’ most extreme predictions are correct, what policies do you think would have any hope of mitigating the damage? (I don’t have an informed view of the science, but I do have an informed view of diplomacy, and I agree with my friend that he’s out of his depth. The Paris climate accord is no more enforceable than the Kellogg-Briand Pact. It won’t work.)
Assuming his views about the science are correct, can anyone here imagine a policy strategy that might save the planet?
Published in General, Science & Technology
Good Lord. “They won’t be happy til I’m eating bugs.”
Once bugs become a staple food the Vegans will campaign against eating them. They won’t be happy till we are all reduced to eating grass.
If any of those fools had to live a peasants life for a week they would be begging for modernity. PJ O’Rourke said for anyone who denigrated modern society and had a nostalgia for “the good old days” he had one comment, Modern Dentistry.
Game, set, and thread to Dan Hanson. Wow.
The Deepwater Horizon spill has been contained and apart from the Obama Administration shaking down BP what other lasting harm was caused?
Mine Safety can be advocated without having to convert the planet to Nuclear. However, given Turkey’s safety record with regard to coal mining, do you seriously advocate having them run nuclear power plants?
Yes, because all the plants they’ve planned would be built and largely operated by people who know what they’re doing. The Akkuyu plant was to be built by Rosatom, although that project is up in the air now that Turkey and Russia are in a low-level war. The Sinop plant will be built by a Franco-Japanese consortium; the Igneada plant will be built by China using US technology.
The IAEA looks at these plans a lot more closely than anyone looks at Turkish coal mines: They did a very thorough review to assess Turkey’s readiness. They were positive, although they recommended strengthening the regulatory body and creating a better plan for human resource development. I’m confident that unlike all the recommendations that the EU makes about workplace safety, the IAEA’s recommendations will followed: Truth is, no one outside Turkey genuinely cares all that much about Turkish coal miners. But they care a lot about not having another Chernobyl on their border.
Turkey absolutely does have a highly competent and educated professional class who would be as capable of safely running a nuclear plant as we are. They don’t work in coal mines, for obvious reasons. But many do have experience of working in German nuclear power plants — and they’d also be working, at least initially, with experienced foreign teams. I have no concerns about their ability safely to run a nuclear plant.
(I suspect, btw, that Germany will reverse the nuclear phase-out within a few years: It’s beginning slowly to dawn on German householders that they’re paying way more for electricity than the French — and what’s more, their air is dirty and they’re being blackmailed by Russia.)
Like they could do anything about it any way. Perhaps send a harshly worded note if not?
The only global warming graph you will ever need to see, from an excellent Powerline article.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/10/the-only-global-warming-chart-you-need-from-now-on.1php
I admit to having a tough time in my Probability and Statistic class many years ago, but even I know that it is deeply misleading to present data in a format that does not include zero in the axis.
So, yes –there is a giant consensus that we are pumping CO2 into the atmosphere –but what has been the effect? Certainly not catastrophe.
The alarmist models are broken.
“A difference is a difference only if it makes a difference.” This statement appeared in Darrell Huff’s wonderful little book, How To Lie With Statistics, which as you can guess was actually about how to catch others lying by manipulating numbers.
The ‘zero’ on a temperature axis is scale-dependent for non-absolute scales like Fahrenheit, so this isn’t a good way of judging whether a plot conveys information accurately or not. The important question is does the vertical axis accurately display meaningful difference? The earth-atmosphere-ocean system would likely be profoundly altered by a, say, 5˚F change in global mean temperature. Given that, the Power Line graph above is misleading, because it would make that crucial difference appear fairly irrelevant.
On the other hand, if the same 5˚F change is the minimum needed to make a difference, a scale that emphasizes far smaller variations would also also deceptive. “Get it right, or let it alone. The conclusion you jump to may be your own,” said James Thurber.
Besides, if you want a zero-based scale you should use degrees Kelvin.
It is interesting, isn’t it. I probably did not describe the graphs well. If you look at the text, it wasn’t so much that the axes includes “zero”, it’s that they included the lower range of the what appears to be the outer limits of the “naturally” variable scale, which includes remarks well below zero, in this case.
In any event, it is misleading to show a scale that ranges from, e.g., 324 to 337, and then squawk about an enormous increase if the matter measured increases from 325 to 334 in a “short” period of time.
Hi Everybody,
I hope it’s ok to resurrect an old thread, but I just started reading a blog on climate change that Ross Douthat tweeted back in July, and I came here to see if there was any interaction with the contents. I found a couple of older short quotes about the blog, and the author, Warren Meyer, but not anything interacting with the science in this:
http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2016/03/denying-the-climate-catastrophe-1-introduction.html
I thought this would be the best place to put it, and ask, if there is anyone watching and more versed in the science than me, what they think of his descriptions and assessments? Thanks.
I’m a Coyote Blog reader and think Warren’s series is the best layman’s summary I’ve seen. I agree with his overall assessment though I think some on this thread would take issue with parts of his analysis.