Global Warming Controversy, 2
As suggested by Robert Skipper (my former colleague at StMU), our understanding of the issues depends on the facts. This is the empirical, epistemological side of the question: What are the facts? Given the elusive, global nature of the facts, and our lack of access to the relevant data (as thinking citizens), we cannot settle the empirical questions. We must focus instead on the moral implications (what we ought to do) for each of the possible scenarios that scientists can identify. Henry Halff (fellow member at Community U-U Church) suggests that this requires us to adopt a “gaming” approach—taking into account both the likely odds of each scenario, and what is at stake with each scenario.
Geoff Meade (long-time intellectual sparring partner, friend, and long-ago colleague at Goodwill) claims the data are inadequate to justify Gore's urgency. To apply the PP, we must weigh both costs and benefits of alternative courses of action (using utility theory as mentioned by Henry), and we just don't know enough yet about what these might be. However, Geoff's skepticism seems to be fully addressed in the global warming article in the latest Scientific American (8/07). We would have to show why the claims in this article are not credible before giving weight to Geoff’s objections to Gore’s "crisis stance," I think.
That brings us back to the moral dimension--what should we do? Geoff concludes that the lack of empirical data means we should invoke the PP in favor of no action. My difficulty here is that I don't see the basis for his projection that the “long term effects of whatever course of action we decide to take” might have “potentially large, but still mostly unknown, social, economic, and political, as well as environmental, consequences.” What might these be? The aggregate effect of Gore’s proposals would be to (a) reduce the already-damaging human “footprint” on the earth, (b) stimulate research & development and job creation, and (c) reduce strategic dependence on foreign oil. If this is the result of positive response to Gore's urgency, where is the cost of invoking the PP in favor of acting (rather than not acting)? It looks like a win-win situation. Why not “go for it”? If Gore is wrong, we still win. And if it turns out we cannot forestall global warming along with drastic climate change, then (as quipped on another blog), at least we’ll drown in clean water!
posted by Peter Van Dusen @ 1:52 PM
4 Comments:
My China comment on film:
http://www.atomfilms.com/film/haha_america.jsp
OK, so if Al Gore's rant about the dangers of CO2 is correct, we sh/could immediately start up a massive program to build new nuclear power plants as fast as possible, right? It would be an immediately available fix that won't contribute more CO2 to the atmosphere, and will generate enough power to enable us to close down most of our CO2 emitting coal plants. RIGHT??! Oh, but you say, "Nuclear power is dangerous and leaves us with huge amounts of radioactive waste that we have no good way to get rid of?" You will recall that what stopped the massive nuclear power development program in the US was the environmental movement in the 1970's and 1980's, which first pointed out this problem. (Only the French and Russians ignored it) Well, then we need to know if that waste is a greater environmental problem than CO2, don't we? OK, OK, no nuclear power! Well how about shifting to a "Hydrogen-based Economy," or a fuel-cell based economy? Once again, it will fix the CO2 problem but contribute lots and lots of water vapor, which coincidentally, is the most powerful of the greenhouse gases. Hhhmmmnnn! Maybe not such a good plan either. How about solar power? Should work pretty well, but the technology isn't quite ready yet, so it's prohibitively expensive at the moment. What to do, what to do? Well, we could all just drive less and use flourescent light bulbs, I suppose, but that is hardly going to make a real dent in the problem if things are as critical as Al says. In any case, it's hard to believe that Al is simply exhorting us to continue doing what we've been doing, only a little more of it, don't you think? No, folks, if we are at crisis stage already, then we are going to need, or at least we are going to GET, some kind of a big, government sponsored program. I don't think there is enough evidence to demonstrate either that, 1)there is a crisis now, or 2)(especially) that it is due to human CO2 emissions, or, 3)that it is something we humans can fix, if it does exist. The problem with doing the little things that we are all doing anyway, is that we were already doing them (light bulbs, more efficient cars, solar lawn lights, electric mowers, etc.), and most of us were already doing these things because they made economic sense for us individually. I'm still driving my beat-up 14 year-old car because it still gets 48-50 mpg.
If the crisis actually exists, it must be doing so in spite of our current efforts. Therefore, we need some significantly greater effort to fix it. (I realize this is technically a non sequitor, but it resonates with me, and seems reasonable) If we implement a system that has potentially worse consequences than our current system (for example, nuclear power plants) we have a net loss of benefit and our world gets worse for the next generations. This is exactly what happened when Reagan ditched Carter's old alternative energy initiatives (which were still in their early, inefficient stages) in favor of using foriegn oil to get the US out of its economic recession in the early 80's. He felt that the recession was a crisis and therefore needed an immediately available fix. He knew some mid-eastern folks in the oil business, so that solution could be implemented quickly with immeidate results. This is the way governments, especially ours, reacts to perceived crisis.
In view of this, it seems we need to find, and embrace, a better solution than anything yet proposed or available. Which in turn, seems to mean that we really need more research with some conclusive results before we launch into anything dramatic.
Also, we don't really need evidence about whether or not the earth is warming (everyone admits it is), in fact, we don't even really need evidence that CO2 (or some other gas) is the culprit. By and large, the public is behind the idea that we should clean up our environmental act anyway. What we need now, is research that leads to more economical means to do this. The problem is that no one, Al Gore included, is willing to reduce their standard of living, go to a lot of trouble, etc., unless it is economically beneficial. I hate to say it, but the Republicans were right; people are motivated to do what makes economic sense to them individually. Subsidize the purchase price of any car with greater than 50 mpg, and the country will flock to the dealerships that have them. Then the manufacturers will really start competing and mass procuding them. In a few years, we'll all be driving them. I'd probably have bought my electric mower a few years earlier if I'd been offered a subsidy to get one.
But let's not even consider giving third world countries "carbon credits" for doing nothing. They will piggy-back on whatever technology we come up with anyway, so maybe we should ask them to subsidize our research! Makes as much economic sense as "carbon credits" but of course, it works in our favor and that is politically incorrect these days. In the 1970s the waiting list to get a telephone installed in your house in most of europe and the far east, was a year or longer and it was very expensive, so only the rich or connected (pun intended-I didn't want anyone to think I'd missed one so obvious)had them. Then Americans went crazy over cell phones, and BINGO! Now everyone in europe, the far east, and the rest of the world for that matter, has one. We (the industrial nations)developed it and made it economically feasible for everyone. So everyone else got on the bandwagon and everyone benefitted. The same thing will happen if we develop an efficient, cheap, solar array to power a home, or a very efficient car, or cheaper, more efficient power generation techniques. We also would avoid having the government try to force an inevitably unpopular course of action on us, and would even regain the pole position in terms of research and manufacturing of products everyone wants, which we could then sub-contract to Mexico and Bangladesh to produce, using the Walmart model. A Win-Win situation, right?
I'm being a little facetious here, but I still think there is good reason to avoid making any kind of major commitment to course of action with unknown, quite possibly negative, consequences to reduce CO2 emissions in the absence of evidnce that we have a seriou, CO2-based problem. So far all we have to go on is very short-term models which cannot be tested over long periods, absence of good correlations of atmospheric CO2 levels with global warming over the long-term, and no good method for comparing our recent, reasonably accurate, data with the planet's historical warming cycles. I have no problem with continuing to try and clean up our environment as we have been doing, nor with exhorting people to do more of this, but this is unlikely to make any difference if we are in a crisis.
Geoff, there is a heavy “nay-saying,” throw-up-our-hands feel to your posting that I find puzzling. I’ll number my responses to keep some order in the conversation:
1. Nuclear Power: Are the environmentalists’ concerns of the 70s and 80s still valid? I don’t know. But I wouldn’t assume at the git-go that nuclear power is out of the question. Research on nuclear waste disposal should go forward with all the other research. A shifting sense of priorities might make the trade-off of living with nuclear waste preferable to, say, rising sea levels.
2. Solar power? Fuel-cell technology? It’s clearly a multi-faceted problem calling for attack on all fronts. There probably is no single “magic bullet” solution. It’s true that we can’t make massive changes of the fuel-of-choice of the entire transportation sector every few years; the capital expenditures would be prohibitive, not to mention the difficulties in changing the different habits that would go along with each one (like training the public how not to blow themselves up at gas pumps). But maybe part of the solution will be to move towards a less centralized, more diversified economy?
3. If all sources of energy pose trade-off problems, then clearly (a) greater efficiency and (b) reduction of overall energy demand, are both huge parts of the solution. You mention some of the things that have been introduced along those lines, but you speak as though we’ve already maxed out what we can accomplish with them, when in fact it seems that we’ve barely begun. “Most of us are already doing these things anyway”? What gives you that impression? I don’t think so! Most of whom? “The crisis must be persisting “in spite of our current efforts”? How much would those “current” efforts weigh in on the scale of what could be and ought to be done? (Your claim here depends on empirical socio-economic research; I don’t think anecdotal “impressions” will cut it!)
4. You keep saying you don’t think there’s “enough evidence.” But you’ve either got to show how the claims made in the 8/07 Scientific American article are faulty or questionable, or how large segments of the scientific community have somehow collectively deluded themselves. Why should a thinking person take what you say on this score even a fraction as seriously as they might take the authors of the SciAm article? (It may sound as though I am committing the fallacy of “appeal to authority” here, but that’s not the case.)
5. “No one is willing to reduce their standard of living”? Creative eonomists like Paul Krugman have all kinds of ideas about how to make air, water, energy, traffic congestion (e.g. paying a fee for the right to use the expressway at rush hour, etc.) into “marketable commodities” that can then be priced in ways that affect people’s economic, self-interested calculations.
6. The “3rd World”: Getting China and India onboard will be critical. But unless the U.S. shows a willingness to think out of the box (which Detroit has been singularly and peculiarly unwilling to do), and take concrete actions to reduce our share of energy consumption, we will have no moral authority with them when it comes time to twist arms.
7. The authors of the SciAm article suggest that the climate forecasting models are improving constantly. Clearly this is one of the key areas in which research needs to move forward apace with everything else. Maybe people will act differently if they perceive that that there really is a crisis—if they don’t think it’s simply a matter of continuing to clean things up a bit (but all in good time). I can’t help the impression, Geoff, that your line of argument is just the kind of reasoning that the frog in the pot of water would take, explaining why not to jump out of the pot, since, after all, he can’t really “feel” the water heating up...
I certainly agree that a panic reaction is going to be counter-productive. But I hear almost no-one calling Uranium the solution. Of course research is called for. But, in this culture we are going to maintain the status quo for as long as it is profitable for those with the political power to establish governmental policy. That's why alternatives to fossil fuels are not being explored with anything that could be characterized as Manhatten Project zeal (e.g. Bush administration cut research on geo-thermal to ZERO).
To reiterate my theme, the problem is political. If it takes alarmist propaganda to motivate the electorate, that is a counter-balance to corporate political contributions and financing of bogus "think tanks." If that alarmist propaganda over-reaches it will lose its credibility and its effectiveness. As you have noted, that is not the case at this time.
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