The Global Warming Controversy
The majority of public opinion appears to agree with Al Gore's thesis that (a) global warming is occurring, (b) human beings are contributing heavily to it, and (c) if we do not take major steps to reverse CO2 emissions, we will accelerate undesirable climate change. (I will use "Al Gore" as short-hand for everyone who agrees with him on global warming.)
If he is correct, human civilization--particularly in the industrialized nations--faces an unprecedented moral challenge. But his thesis is contested by an audible minority of climate scientists, and right-wing conservatives are using this to debunk and discredit Gore.
What does a thinking person and concerned citizen do? The Precautionary Principle (PP) suggests we act on Gore's recommendations: If he's wrong, we still move towards greater energy efficiency and away from oil and coal dependence--both highly desirable under any circumstances. There appears to be no downside. But in State of Fear, Michael Crichton pooh-poohs the PP, claiming that it makes no sense in this context. (This puzzles me greatly; I was so impressed by Jeremy Rifkin's discussion of the EU's take on the PP in The European Dream.)
Why this Blog: I would like to find the conceptual "pivot point" for getting the best grasp on this issue--the tools to effectively sort through the scientific and political controversies. Archimedes wanted only a place to stand in order to move the earth. I would like a place to stand in order to "move" our understanding of global warming!
posted by Peter Van Dusen @ 6:26 PM
10 Comments:
Well, it's a factual issue, right? Either global warming (as an unprecedented event) is occurring or not. If it is occurring, either it is caused in part by human activity or human activity has no effect at all. So there's not much we without access to the data can contribute to settling those questions. What we can do is consider the consequences--moral and practical--of all possible verdicts on the facts, whatever they may turn out to be.
An interesting article appeared in the latest Scientific American, that took for granted the increased hurricane and cyclone activity of 2004 and 2005 but sought mostly to explain away the "normal" level of such weather in 2006. The author stated up front that global warming was a fact and that its cause was now established to be human activities. I'm not sure what kind of peer review submissions to SciAm get these days.
Crichton's reservations are based on the fact that weather science is built on modeling, rather than experimentation. He's right that we should be careful. Models only give back what you put into them. But still, a model that predicts better than any other model is the best candidate going.
Scattered thought. Not leading anywhere. Just out there.
The search for a pivot point is well motivated. The situation can be viewed in what game theorists call a game against nature. That is, nature may take any of several courses, and which course it takes is unknown to us. In particular we don't know exactly how much global warning to expect or how it will be manifest. The outcome for us depends not only on what is true in nature but how we respond to it. This is why we call it a game against nature.
One simplistic approach is that suggested byy skipper. Take your best shot at what you think nature is up to and then act on that supposition. Most rational people would call this approach crazy because, as the original post points out, the consequences of being wrong could be disastrous. That is, the problem with this approach is that it takes into account the odds but not the stakes.
An approach popular among theorists is called the minimax strategy because it calls for minimizing the maximum loss. In the case of global warming it is the warming scenario itself that causes maximum loss, so our approach should be to act in such a way as to minimize the effects of global warming. In contrast to the skipper approach, this strategy takes into account the stakes but not the odds.
A more balanced approach would be based on utility theory. One would evaluate the expected utility of each of our options, taking into account both the odds and the stakes, and then choose the option with the highest expected utility. Unfortunately, I don't have time at this point to elaborate on the notion. And this, after all is only a comment on someone else's post.
I think the fundamental problem with the PP is that there must be enough data available in the first place, to estimate both the costs and the benefits of any course of action taken. It also seems to focus on a 2-viewpoint scenario, although it is certainly adaptable to multi-viewpoints (but now you are probably looking at multivariate statistics which thoroughly muddy the waters). There is also a presupposition, it seems to me, that a choice/action must be made, other than simply to wait and obtain more data. It appears to me that the primary thing Al Gore et. al. have done with this issue is to focus public attention on the issue again, but this time as a crisis. After all, we have been talking about, and acting on, cleaning up our environment, for decades now. What is different after Al Gore's entry to the field is the sense of urgency, even of crisis. This is primarily what propels us towards considering the PP to be a cogent argument, the feeling that we must do something NOW. However, while I don't know of anyone who thinks the earth is NOT in a warming phase (an inter-glacial)there is clearly a great dearth of unequivocal information about 1)How much the human contribution is, 2) Exactly what the human contribution is (is it only, or even primarily, a carbon dioxide issue, for example), 3) How rapidly the warming is occurring (for example, if it is no faster now, than at a similar time period in the last inter-glacial, it would be very difficult to make the case for either human causality or crisis stage), 4)What could we do about it (if anything, after all, if it is a solar driven cycle, as many paleo-climatologists think, there is little liklihood that changing our input to the geo-physical systems involved would make a significant difference), and perhaps, 5)What would be the long term effects of whatever course of action we decide to take. The last issue has potentially large, but still mostly unknown, social, economic, and political, as well as environmental, consequences. There is simply not enough data available to answer several of these questions. Thus, if we invoke the PP now, it seems to me, we must inevitably decide that the safest approach would be to continue as we are, while gathering more data. But this doesn't seem to satisfy the PP, which, at least on the face of it, seems to call for some more direct action. Yet direct action, before we can predict the consequences of it, seems more dangerous than inaction. At present we have many conflicting models of how the geo-physical systems involved work, and we have no one model that predicts everything adequately. This would appear to mean that all the current models are deficient in some way. While I'm certainly not opposed to continuing to clean up the environment, I shudder to think what the government would do with the kind of "War on Carbon Dioxide" that is likely to result from a widespread belief that we earthlings are now in an ecological crisis stae, caused by CO2. We do not even have unequivocal data correlating past atmospheric CO2 levels with warm periods in our long-term history, let alone evidence that current warming trends are in excess of those occurring in previous inter-glacials. Frankly, I question if it is even possible for us, with our current ability to measure past temperatures, CO2 levels, etc., to develop an accurate method to compare current, short term temperature levels, to similarly short term periods in past inter-glacials. Without such a comparison, and I'm talking about comparing periods in the range of 50-150 year increments here, how could we possibly know that our current warming trends are significantly different from those that occurred in similar periods in past inter-glacials? Without knowing this, I find it very difficult to support the human causality hypothesis or the idea that we are now in a crisis that demands very rapid intervention of some sort.
Henry:
Thanks for labeling my thoughts as simplistic and crazy. I have no idea how you got "take your best shot at what you think nature is up to and then act on that supposition," out of "consider the consequences--moral and practical--of all possible verdicts on the facts." Since your first alternative is clearly NOT what I said, let's not call it the "skipper appproach," ok? Maybe "the best-guess approach would be more accurate.
But, after all, I was not pretending to come up with some sort of governmental or universal policy. I was suggesting the steps that participants in this blog could take to make some philosophical sense out of the issue. As Peter was requesting.
Robert, I didn't think you were being either crazy or simplistic, but I think that there is a good deal of evidence that even those with access to "the data" have lots of conflicting information. Thus, they may not be able to settle the questions satisfactorily either. My biggest concern is that public pressure to "settle the problem" quickly, will result in governments going off half-cocked and forcing the immediate implementation of very flawed policies. I think the misapplication of the PP will tend to lead towards this reaction. When we push so hard for immediate solutions, we get policies that were implemented because they were "the best thing available in the time available." In this case I think we need to be sure what the "time available" really is. The Precautionary Principle, if it is applied here, should take note of this.
I notice that the SciAm article commented on the fact that our predictions are more accurate in the next century than in the longer term. I wonder why they think that? Perhaps because they find that their models "predict" better over short terms (5 years?) than long, because they are based upon data gleaned over the short term? Or could it be that, in the very short term, even a gross approximation of what is actually going on will yield accurate predictions, because the system's stability is only visible over very long terms? If a doctor takes your temperature when you have a fever, it is reasonably certain that you will still have a fever if he takes it again in an hour, but if he waits a week, the odds are that you will either be dead or back to normal. I find myself wondering just how useful the model is when it is created based on recent, short term data, and then successfully predicts a short term change in the immediate future. Obviously the model can't be empirically tested for veracity or usefulness in long-term predictions until it is too late. However, if they attempt to "predict" backwards and then say, "Sure enough, the data fits a longer period going back a hundred years or so, too" they seem to me to be in experimental design quicksand. I'm not sure if this has been done yet, but I'd be willing to bet someone will do it soon, and the press will pick it up with no thought to the design flaws in such a study.
I also noticed that the SciAm article correctly noted that the most powerful greenhouse gas is water vapor. I'm waiting for someone to point out that the by-product of going to a largely hydrogen fueled economy (one of the "answers" being touted), is a tremendous increase in atmospheric water vapor, as it is the primary emission, along with heat, of burning hydrogen. Hmmmnnnn! What a conundrum!
Geoff:
I know you didn't say anything about my post. My comment was intended for Henry.
Your observations are all well taken. The ignorance level of the experts is pretty high. I get my information from news reporters, who oversimplify and get things wrong anyway. So my level of ignorance is pretty darned high. Peter, I am guessing, is in the same boat. And we're all thinking--well gee, ignorance has never stopped us before. We can still apply critical reasoning and all these wonderful philosophical and logical tools at our disposal.
But I am leery of trying to come up with a policy. I want to first try to get some understanding. And I'm not in the least intimidated by "crisis talk." If it truly is a crisis, then it is understanding, not blind action, that is most urgently needed.
I am in the same boat, Robert, and the "envelope" I'm trying to push here is this: Just what CAN we accomplish with our tools of critical thinking and philosophical analysis, given the limited amount of understanding layman have about the relevant empirical data.
China
Rather than PP it seems to me the analysis is Type I vs Type II error. Errors are unavoidably so you choose the error that is least costly. Doing nothing, it appears to me is the more costly error. Treating global warming as something over which we can assert some control produces net benefits that are independent of the accuracy of that assumption. I.e., developing alternates to fossil fuel has geo-politcal benefits; developing less energy consumptive technoligies has economic benefits. I'm sure that each of you could add to that list. Ultimately it doesn't matter if Gore and company is right or wrong if their message sets the country on a path that produces a net benefit.
May I add that I was first sinsatized to this topic while listening to Christian Radio driving through Northwest Texas. The evangilists were touting the Republican Party/Oil Industry mantra on the subject. I was struck. What on Earth has this to do with Christian Evangelism? I then realized that the evangelicals were spouting the talking points of Karl Rove. The extent of the neo-con coalition control over message became clear to me. I then researched the articles on the topic. Not trusting to news sources, I went to synopses of peer-reviewed publications. The "no problem" stuff was mostly coming from bought-and-paid-for groups like The Heritage Foundation. The evidence was over-whelmingly supportive of the C02 - warming Earth correlation.
Christian Radio was still stuck in phase one of the mis-information campaign (that there was no global warming) but the mainstream counter-intel-pro had given that up and shifted to Phase II, an acceptance of the warming but a denial of the linkage to fossil fuels.
It all fell into place for me. The issue is politicized because those who have the most to gain by maintaining the status quo own the Republican Party.
It remains to be seen whether they will purchase the Democratic party and perfect their monoploy.
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