Hell Has More Bang for the Buck Than Global Warming
My argumentation against legislating the problem of global warming has rightly left some with the impression that I’m willing to disregard global warming’s existence primarily as a means to prevent legislation attempting to regulate it.
If I had to fully articulate the argument it would go something like this:
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Satellite measurements of temperate increase on the globe is almost certainly true.
Its likely but much less convincing that this increase is attributable to mankind.
Computer models that predict extremely modest outcomes within the next two decades might be convincing. It depends on the motive of the investigator.
Computer models that predict further than two decades are not convincing no matter who makes the argument.
Computer models that ‘predict’ catastrophic events by mid century are laughably unconvincing.
The problem is that most of the rhetoric used to drum up political support uses points 4 and 5 (An inconvenient truth). Now I know that you all will have an aneurysm when I say this, but if we define global warming as more about points 4 and 5 then I have good reason to deny its existence. Since much of my talk about global warming comes up in the context of politics it seems acceptable to criticize global warming on points 4 and 5.
Furthermore, like it or not, this issue has been adopted by a group of people that have a noble tradition of denying the gains of capitalism because of their perceived injustice towards the environment. Their world view favors more strongly the idea that one should ‘live in harmony’ with the environment while I favor more strongly the capitalist perspective that the environment should be exploited.
These people’s wacky value system does not find mass appeal primarily because it would result in reduced standard of living for all. To get around this problem they have adopted global warming. Global warming makes their perspective more palatable because it gives credence to the idea that ‘living in harmony’ with nature is the only way mankind can survive. We must reduce our standard of living to avoid doing irreparable harm to the environment.
Capturing more political will with global warming these people aim to implement legislation more interested in punishing highly developed capitalism than actually affecting global warming. Kyoto protocol was a de facto attack on America’s economic dominance. Its impact on carbon output was negligible, but inimical to US industry. Furthermore, the treaty was not binding on two of the largest carbon produces and strong US economic rivals: China and India. You might disagree about Kyoto protocol but the democrats didn’t. It’s first failure for ratification came under Clinton’s term.
When this group of people, which to be fair consists mostly of non-scientists, uses the term global warming they mean it a sense that I would happily deny. But you see this is where the term ‘consensus’ comes into play. There are scientists who want it both ways. They want to be the arbiters of truth and also force their sentiment of environmental harmony on others. They happily sign off on dubious environmental catastrophe to drum up the political support needed to reign in ‘destructive industry’ and return the earth to a more ‘natural state’.
These scientists are problematic for science in general because they are marrying the reputation of science as a fair broker of truth to a hyper partisan group that has unhealthy view of mans relationship to the world. The only way this relationship works out is if environmental catastrophe obtains. In the almost certain outcome that environmental catastrophe or nothing even close to it occurs, these scientists will harm science’s reputation as an arbiter of truth. This will be particularly true when science uses ‘consensus’ to make other dubious claims with an obvious political agenda.
Liberal or Conservative Hypocrisy to Get Around the Libertarian Argument
One final note, I find it hypocritical for liberals to use dubious environmental catastrophe to drum up political support while they criticize conservatives for using dubious Islamic terrorism to drum up political support. A cooked earth in which millions die to flooding and starvation is just as likely as an earth where millions perished by an Al Qaeda backed caliphate. Both scenarios are used by their respective parties to gag the libertarian argument.
The liberal supports constraining free markets to protect the environment. The conservative supports constraining citizen right to protect the country. Both of them cook up preposterous future outcomes to censor the basic libertarian argument that one person should not be able to tell another person how to live their life. The liberal tells the citizen he must pay for costly reforms in production to reduce CO2 emissions. The conservative tells the citizen that he must allow the state to listen into a certain subset of phone calls to catch potential Al Qaeda machinations. Failure to obey will lead to catastrophe.
This all seems vaguely familiar to me. Where have I heard this before? Oh I remember now. As a boy sitting in church the priest would tell me how to live my life or suffer a catastrophic future. This future consisted of both extremely hot temperatures and evil entities forcing me do their will. Not only does the priest’s catastrophic future include both global warming and an Islamic caliphate he promised it will last for all of eternity! In the market place of catastrophic futures, the priest proves the most capable merchant by offering the best wares. The prudent shopper would follow Catholic commandants over liberal or conservative commandments.
Fortunately our forefathers had the presence of mind to separate the church from the state. I only wish the scientist had the presence of mind to separate science from politics before he consent.
November 30th, 2007 at 1:09 pm
I can never once remember you telling me what exactly is unconvincing about global warming data. You have always focused on the motives of the investigators, even under some circumstances where you have no idea what their motive might be. Until you actually make a scientific argument, your point remains relatively useless. By your logic, the data is unconvincing simply because you don’t like the idea of global warming. Give me a reason why the data are unconvincing.
Science and polticis mixed for the manhatten project. Where do you think you would have stood on that had you lived during that time?
November 30th, 2007 at 1:18 pm
My arguments are aimed more towards non-existence data. That is to say the future. The farther science attempts to predict the future the less compelling that becomes. Combined that with the prediction of catastrophic events and it borders on absurdity.
I don’t remember the Manhattan project leading to large sweeping legislation that affected the economy.
November 30th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
The effects of the manhattan project are debatable. I mean, it’s not a huge stretch to call it one of the critical events for the nuclear age with certainly had many effects on legislation and economy.
Again, you make an argument that scientific attempts to predict future climate conditions are less compelling the further they try to predict. What leads you to believe in this? What would you consider to be an accurate time-table for prediction? Is economic forecasting similarly flawed? Why? What about epidimiological forecasting? Scrap it? Meaningless?
November 30th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
Its one thing to say that an already established scientific fact leads to policy change while an entirely different thing to have scientific conjecture lead to policy change.
As I already stated, in terms of global warming, a climatologists that is making claims twenty years from now, but I know to be impartial I’m likely to trust. Anything past that point that is not sufficiently broad enough I will distrust. My distrust grows when such predictions associated with a group of people whose world view I do not share.
This holds true for all things including epidemiological and economic forecasting. As already stated, when these kinds of forecasts are explicitly attached to political views I don’t hold, and to certain extent one’s that I do hold, I will always regard their future claims as dubious. An epidemiologist’s proclamations that most of mankind will be wiped out by some kind of disease 76 years from now is not compelling. It’s impossible for him to know what things could happen in the intervening years. For all we know an alien race could provide the antidote.
Countless prophets have declared the end of the world. Some are no doubt experts with the sacred texts from which they divine their dooms day predictions. Some of these expert doom day sayers are likely to agree with each other about when the end of times will come. Now we have knowledgeable experts all in a consensus with when the end of the world begins. How compelling would you find these predictions?
November 30th, 2007 at 6:32 pm
I’m disappointed. I thought this post was going to be about hell…
November 30th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
And what do you call a world in which conservatives or liberal always get their way.
December 5th, 2007 at 11:04 pm
So… you expect non-libertarians to trust the economics experts to make dire predictions about reducing our dependence on fossil fuels causing tremendous damage to the American economy, more than they trust the climatology experts to make dire predictions about the alternative?
Moreover, by your argument, if astronomers determined tomorrow that a minor planet were on a collision course with earth, there must be no basis for taking potentially expensive action to redirect its course, because science has no business determining policy based on things that haven’t been experimentally observed, -especially- if they are making extremely dire predictions. Honestly, I think you should stick to arguing that the science behind global warming is bad science, rather than that scientists shouldn’t ever be trusted with this sort of thing. The former is a much more defensible position.
Also, try to avoid making an appeal to consequences. That’s just poor argumentation.
December 6th, 2007 at 1:48 am
I would not advocate for massive regulation of the global economy to deflect a potentially catastrophic comet predicted to hit our earth some fifty years from now. The question im my head is why the fuck would you?
But even in that example its much easier for me to grant that scientist are much more capable of predicting the simple movements of a chunk of rock in space then the massive amount of calculations needed to predict the impact of climate change fifty years from now.
Furthermore, lets say that the scientist concerned about this rock ally themselves with a group of people interested in regulating capitalism because of the so-called damage it does to the environment. Seeing that scientists are proposing massive economic regulation they jump on board over stating the probability the rock will hit and what kind of damage the impact will have. Upon hearing this I have no doubt you will eagerly jump on board for massive economic regulation.
Out of curiosity, If scientists offered evidence suggesting that having sex with trees would in 543 years magically transform the world into heaven would you fuck a tree?
Finally:
Are you an idiot? My whole post was about others making this mistake.
December 6th, 2007 at 11:53 am
“If scientists offered evidence suggesting that having sex with trees would in 543 years magically transform the world into heaven would you fuck a tree?”
If I found the evidence compelling (and was reasonably confident that I wasn’t under the influence of some mind-altering substance or otherwise compromised when I made that determination), and someone could explain to me how I could even accomplish such a feat, yes. So again, we go back to my original suggestion - that you need to evaluate the evidence on a case-by-case basis rather than making such broad, un-nuanced statements.
“Are you an idiot?”
No, but just to help you not put your foot in your mouth again in this regard…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_consequences
I was attempting to warn you away from the argument of “if global warming is true, severe economic policies might be implicated. Therefore, global warming is false”.
To be charitable to you, perhaps you are merely confusing appeal to consequence with the opposite fallacy - appeal to the stick. If that’s really what you are arguing against, I see this as a bit of a strawman position, because both a mechanism and observational data have been presented by the scientists arguing for global warming: ultimately the question at issue is whether global warming advocates are making a summary judgment prematurely and/or drawing inductions that are too broad, given the data they have access to.
Even if they are, this puts you in the rather awkward position of trying to explain why it is good for you to make summary judgments with policy implications and bad for people who actually have training and background in the field to do so.
“Computer models that predict further than two decades are not convincing no matter who makes the argument.”
Why not? Long-term trends are often easier to predict than short-term trends simply because the effect of noise is reduced.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/Moore_Law_diagram_%282004%29.png
From a year-to-year basis, there is a fairly erratic pattern that is based on extremely complicated and nearly unforeseeable factors. However, over time scales greater than 20 years, predictions of exponential increase made as early as 1965 have proven to be remarkably robust.
December 6th, 2007 at 1:41 pm
[…] asked whether he would have sex with a tree Dan responded with: […]
December 6th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
The point of the post is to say the global warming that can generate the political will needed to bring about severe economic regulation does not exist (these would be points 4 and 5).
Most of the
Is likely true. I stated this is the post found in points 1 and 2.
Can you read?
To bad they want to predict the noise 20 years from now.
From the same entry:
Its hard to see how wanting global warming will make us create catastrophic environmental conditions which is something we should actively regulate now, but whatever.
December 6th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
“Why not? Long-term trends are often easier to predict than short-term trends simply because the effect of noise is reduced.
To bad they want to predict the noise 20 years from now.”
What are you talking about? In this case noise means “A disturbance, especially a random and persistent disturbance, that obscures or reduces the clarity of a signal.” By the metaphor I employed, ’signal’ is the overall long-term temperature trend, and ‘noise’ is the year-to-year variation about that trend.
Also I’m not clear as to how the question of whether moore’s law is a self-fulfilling prophecy is consequential to my point that it can be more effectively used to predict processing power changes over 20 years than over shorter timescales (for example, it would break down if you were trying to compare the pentium 3 to the pentium 4, according to the graph). If anything the observation you make strengthens my point, because the phenomenon you are reporting would tend to make the model comparatively more effective over the shorter timeframes between generations of processors - in other words, it would reduce noise dramatically while only having a moderate effect on signal.
I think that the more extreme global warming advocates are making premature summary judgments, which is potentially problematic. I’m surprised at the thought of you taking such a position, however. And don’t try to say that your summary judgments wouldn’t have implications that have impacts on lots of people, because invading Iran certainly would, as would prohibiting safe injection centers or any of a number of other positions you have argued. Moreover, your rationales often amount to summary judgments, just like those the more extreme form of global warming relies upon.