John Holdren has been appointed by Barack Obama as as Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
From his bio on Wikipedia
Holdren earned a bachelor’s degree from MIT in 1965 and a PhD in plasma physics[3] from Stanford University in 1970. He taught at the University of California, Berkeley for more than two decades. His work has focused on global environmental change, energy technologies and policies, nuclear proliferation, and science and technology policy[4]. Dr. Holdren served as chairman of the board of directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science from February 2007 until February 2008[5](AAAS) and is director of the Woods Hole Research Center.
Dr. Holdren is the author of some 300 articles and papers[citation needed], and he has co-authored and co-edited some 20 books and book-length reports, such as Energy (1971), Human Ecology (1973), Ecoscience (1977), Energy in Transition (1980), Earth and the Human Future (1986), Strategic Defences and the Future of the Arms Race (1987), Building Global Security Through Cooperation (1990), Conversion of Military R&D (1998), and Ending the Energy Stalemate (2004).
Last year he gave this talk about climate change (or Global Climatic Disruption as he prefers to call it) at the American Response to Climate Change Conference at The Wild Center in Tupper Lake New York – June 25 & 26, 2008.
That such a highly qualified and passionate climate aware scientist has been chosen to be the president’s science advisor gives me great hope for the presidency of Barack Obama.
I contacted The Wild Center after seeing the video to ask if they had any problem with my reproducing the talk on this site fully accredited and very graciously, they said they’d be delighted!
The copyright of the video obviously remains with The Wild Center – please do not reproduce this video without explicit permission of The Wild Center.
A related argument was made by a civil engineer friend of mine a while back: is anyone willing to sell you climate change insurance? Probably not. Why not? Because they’re scared of the risk and potential cost. If no one will sell you insurance against something, you probably ought to be seriously worried about it.
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To be sure, there were also people pointing to reports of global cooling in an attempt at actual debate. I started to respond to individual points, but in the end, I don’t think data will persuade anyone who is so strongly convinced that global warming is a hoax. After all, the history of science shows us that even the top scientists in a field can be wrong, and those who argue against the reality of global warming can always fall back on that premise.
In my talks I’ve argued that climate change provides us with a modern version of Pascal’s wager: if catastrophic global warming turns out not to happen, the steps we’d take to address it are still worthwhile. Given that there’s even a reasonable risk of disruptive climate change, any sensible person should decide to act. It’s insurance. The risk of your house burning down is small, yet you carry homeowner’s insurance; you don’t expect to total your car, but you know that the risk is there, and again, most people carry insurance; you don’t expect catastrophic illness to strike you down, but again, you invest in insurance.
We don’t need to be 100% sure that the worst fears of climate scientists are correct in order to act. All we need to think about are the consequences of being wrong.
Let’s assume for a moment that there is no human-caused climate change, or that the consequences are not dire, and we’ve made big investments to avert it. What’s the worst that happens? In order to deal with climate change:
By contrast, let’s assume that the climate skeptics are wrong. We face the displacement of millions of people, droughts, floods and other extreme weather, species loss, and economic harm that will make us long for the good old days of the current financial industry meltdown.
It really is like Pascal’s wager. On one side, the worst outcome is that we’ve built a more robust economy. On the other side, the worst outcome really is hell. In short, we do better if we believe in climate change and act on that belief, even if we turned out to be wrong.
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I don’t think global warming is a hoax, I just don’t think that scientists are rationally looking at/considering enough data.
REGARDLESS of where I stand in the global warming debate, one thing is certain: we do need to take care of the world which has been entrusted to us. Even if global warming /is/ proven to be fallacious, we are using many of our resources in so many inefficient ways, it’s sad. We choose laziness and bickering over careful thought and study and humility.
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Amen!
I am almost finished reading Thomas Friedman’s "The World is Hot,Flat, and Crowded" book, which is 400+ pages of interviews, facts, and intelligent dialogue on what he calls "global weirding."
It’s clear that the clock is ticking, especially as the world "flattens" and more countries modernize and require fuel to do so. Unfortunately, they are following in our footsteps with oil and coal dependencies. This will exponentially increase the rate of global weirding and the devastating changes and losses. We must become a model for innovation and set an example for the rest of the world.
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Tim, your argument makes sense to the extent that the 5 benefits you discuss actually come to pass, and in an economic way. I think this is not a foregone conclusion, even if those calling for the changes get everything they want. I suspect many skeptics consider the plans to deal with the consequences of global warming to be a money sink, and a risky destabilization of industries that are proven to work. So it then becomes a question of: if all these benefits don’t materialize, and we damage our economy, and global warming doesn’t happen, was it really such an easy wager?
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Tim,
I’m not here to tell you or anyone else that global warming, cooling, or climate change occurs. In fact I categorically state here that climate change does occur as it has for MILLIONS of years.
The feedback you get from others is the false notion that climate change is caused by man.
Is man responsible as stewards and conservationists of the earth? Absolutely. However no man should have the right to impose the absurdity of MAN-made global warming on another man so as to generate profits, taxes, and oppressive restrictions due to a hoax.
Carbon offsets is a prime example. What is it offsetting? The pollution has already occured. No man can stop it. Al Gore talks and talks but the walk he does is with his private jets, his ENORMOUS carbon footprint. His carbon offsets will do nothing to eliminate the pollution he’s already spewed into the air.
Climate change? Yes as has always been for millions of years.
Man-made global warming – No as has always been for millions of years.
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I wish investments were always so harmless. Consider this story from very recent history:
1. There is huge pressure to invest in renewable energy sources that avoid fossil carbon emissions.
2. Many U.S. states legislate a minimum ethanol content in gasoline.
3. The U.S. government implements subsidies and trade protection to encourage domestic ethanol production.
4. Farmers switch from human food crops to corn for ethanol, increasing the monoculture tendencies of U.S. agriculture.
5. World food prices shoot up, causing serious hunger and food riots in developing countries.
6. When the first studies come in, they show that producing and distributing ethanol in the U.S. actually puts more carbon (from fossil sources) into the atmosphere than simply burning fossil fuels in their place (that doesn’t apply to ethanol from Brazil, but then there’s that trade-barrier thing).
Fortunately, food prices have died down a bit with the recession, but here’s a real, recent example where well-intentioned environmental investments actually made things much, much worse in every sense. There are other similar examples, such as hybrid cars or refillable bottles, which sometimes cause more environmental damage than they prevent.
There is no such thing as a risk-free investment anywhere, even in the environment. And by the way, Pascal was wrong about his wager: what if there is a god, but he chose to believe in the wrong one?
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I’ve made this argument before on various forums, and unsurprisingly it never seems to sway climate change skeptics. I’ve come to the conclusion that, especially on the internet where every nutball has the ability to kick up a lot of dust, it’s not worth trying to convince them with any kind of logic. It’s like the people who insist that Obama was not born in the United States despite the fact that
- he posted his copy of the certificate of live birth on the his web site, and Factcheck.org went to his campaign office and verified it has all the characteristics of an authentic document.,
- the secretrary of vital statics in Hawaii verified they had the original birth certificate and that it was authentic.
- A newspaper clipping announcing his birth in a local hospital was found, ironically by someone who was trying to prove his foreign birth.
The standard of reasonable proof has been met and exceeded, and yet it’s not too difficult to find people that are willing to believe the most outlandish theories to discount the proof. (Obama’s grandparents knew he might want to run for president so they bought the birth announcement in a local hawaii paper)
If you can’t convince people of validity of a well documented birth, how are we ever going to convince them of something as complex as global climate change?
I take comfort in the fact that the majority of the people are not so unreasonable, and it is not necessary to convince everyone.
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I agree and would add:
- improves our trade balance by reducing oil imports
- provides a more decentralized power generation system that is less prone to problems, failures or tampering
- spurs innovation likely resulting in long term energy cost reductions (costs go up in the short term)
- results in more small businesses, which are the drivers of employment and economic growth
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Finally, someone who makes sense of how or should I say what a response to global warming on how it would affect the proverbial Main St.
What your post says makes a perfect win-win situation. We must reduce our dependence on foreign and domestic oil. There is only a finite supply of oil and we are getting closer and closer to the end of that supply, whether it is in 10,20 or 50 years, it is coming.
The stimulus package is going to include environmental/energy proposals that will help to decrease this dependence.
This is something that the next administration plans to do anyway, so if it helps our environment it only helps us. But if we do nothing and keep doing what we are doing, even if we are wrong about global warming, our Country will be facing even worse economic and social woes.
So go for the win-win solution, it won’t cost us anymore than what we are doing today.
Haorld
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Tim, excellent post.
I’ve found it most valuable in recent years to stop talking about global warming or climate change, and instead talk about the other, more direct and observable impacts of our carbon economy.
Our transportation, agriculture, and material consumption (plastics) are utterly dependent on sucking oil out of the ground, processing it, and burning it. That oil is finite, increasingly scarce, and also increasingly in demand. Domestically, we have a relatively small amount of it (optimistically, enough to meet our needs for 10 years or so) buried below our coastlines, so going after that is like spending all your emergency savings. Even turning on those drills would barely dent our $300B+ annual transfer to foreign countries (some of which sponsor terrorism or neo-communism) for their oil.
Additionally, our energy production is highly dependent on coal, a highly abundant mineral whose processing takes an enormous environmental toll. (See the recent coal ash spill in Tennessee, or mountaintop removal in WV.)
Regardless of whether you think carbon emissions are enabling or expediting climate change, we should all agree that moving beyond hydrocarbons will benefit us in the long run. What we spend "on the books" should be more than offset by savings from less pollution and less borrowing.
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Stephen Fry makes a similar argument.
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It will probably come as no surprise that those who oppose action on the matter of Global Climate Change, seem to have no problem with billions spent on wars or weapons, or the fact that funded opposition to the facts of Global Climate Change comes from industries who don’t want to clean up their act in order to preserve their not-so-modest profits.
And yet, it’s ironic when they utter "global warming is a hoax spread by socialists and those who profit from it." If anything, the hoax being spread by the naysayers is meant to preserve the outrageous profits that are being enjoyed by industries that are raping the Earth of its resources.
It shouldn’t be hard to see that working to prevent or stall Global Climate Change, does not profit individuals (monetarily), in the same way the defense or oil industries profit from damaging the ecosystem. While some industries will have to burden a higher cost in order to keep our environment live-able, that only seems fair, as they inflict the biggest negative impact on the environment. And of course, the biggest windfall of working to halt Climate Change is increased employment, which is a good thing, unless our conservative and naysaying friend would rather have employment be a privilege reserved for the very rich – after all, if everyone had a job, it must be socialism, no?
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There are other things happen. For example :
Developed countries will reduce CO2 emission at great cost, destroying their economy, while industry is forced to re-locate to China and India where efficiency is lower. The net result is an increase in CO2 emissions. Unless all nations, and particularly the high population nations – India and China – work to the same standards, there will be no progress.
The real damage risk for the future is exponential population growth.
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Tim, your theory may be more convincing
if it were to avoid the broken window
fallacy (of assuming that "investment"
mandated by statute comes without the
opportunity cost of that capital spent
voluntarily elsewhere).
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Frank Ch. Eigler -
I’m not sure I see your "investment mandated by statute" in play here, or at least not more than:
* gas taxes mandated to pay for roads, thus creating a hidden subsidy for the automobile vs mass transit like railroads
* deductibility of home mortgages subsidizing the building industry
* low capital gains taxes on passive investments favoring the financial economy over the hands-on economy
* virtually free oil and gas leases subsidizing oil companies, helping to make a non-renewable resource appear nearly "free" to those consuming it.
etc. We’re already making distortive subsidies. The question is whether we can do better.
FWIW, there’s an awful lot of voluntary capital going towards cleantech. But there are some major areas where govt investment (or taxes that reflect the true costs of the existing energy system) can make a difference in usage patterns.
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Tim: I agree with you on a lot of those subsidies — more examples of how dangerous it is for governments to use investments for social engineering.
As far as capital gains are concerned, however, you do have to consider double taxation — the companies get taxed on their earnings first, indirectly taxing the shareholders who own it, then the shareholders get taxed directly a second time if those retained earnings increase the value of the company. It’s only fair that the capital gains tax rate be a bit lower, to compensate.
As for "passive economy" vs "hands-on economy", you know yourself that many people (often the majority) at a software company don’t actually make anything at all — think management, support staff, sales, marketing, accounting, etc. — while any developer at Reuters or Bloomberg would take huge offense at being called "passive", with the kinds of mind-boggling systems they build and manage. "Passive" or "hands-on" is a function of the job, not the industry.
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Tim, this is the best reason I’ve seen for believing in global warming. I wouldn’t say that I’m a skeptic but I do get nervous anytime I see everyone jumping onto the same bus. It either means that it’s almost certainly right…or wrong.
But you’re right: the downside is that we have fuel-efficient cars, better mass transit, etc. Not much of a downside.
However, the downside to the argument is that there are many, many things that fit this Pascal’s Wager argument. I’m Christian, but perhaps at the risk of ‘burning in hell’ I should convert to Judaism? Not much downside there, either.
In short, I think it’s a good argument and I buy your rationale. But I think that same rationale can be widely applied, and probably not for causes or in ways that you’d recommend.
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It’s an argument I have seen before. "What’s wrong with a little hyperbole, as long as the outcome is positive"? A believe a Canadian official recently said the same thing. It’s the same kind of thinking that Bush used when he pitched the Iraq war. "Freeing" the Iraqi people was a positive ambition and all he had to do was massage the truth a bit.
Before you jump on me and say that the downside of the Iraq war was death and radically altering the lifestyles of millions. I too say the potential results of this is the death of thousands and radically changing the lives of millions of people.
By encouraging areas of the world (and regions of certain countries) to not engage in industry is to deny them the ability to survive when (not if) disaster strikes. History has shown that the poorest countries/areas suffer the largest amount of casualties when weather conditions change (and they still will .. no matter how much less carbon we expel). When we start paying poor governments (local, state, national) to trade their share of "carbon allotment" you are essentially discouraging them to grow and build. We’ve seen the debilitating effects of welfare (both personal and corporate) and what it does to the motivation of human beings and this will be no different.
You pretend as if America has not made significant strides in enviromental protection, recycling and alternative fuels in the past 3 decades. All of that went on without this bogeyman that Hansen and Gore have created.
Just because someone is not convinced that we have enough understanding of the planets climate to determine if a small window of 50 years indicates a definite "trend". Just because someone bristles at people that tell you "There is no other side" or that we have "4 years left to do something". Doesn’t mean they are an enemy of science or the environment. In fact, I would say those are the people you should pay closer attention to.
Those are the kind of people that could have prevented us from going to war in Iraq or handing 700 billion dollars over to banks in the course of 4 days.
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This is the problem with Pascal’s wager: not only are the climate "skeptics" dead wrong about the greenhouse gas effect and global warming (the science of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere serving as a greenhouse gas was well established by Svante Arrhenius in 1896, so there is no valid argument that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does not cause global warming), but:
"We underestimated the risks … we underestimated the damage associated with temperature increases … and we underestimated the probabilities of temperature increases." — Sir Nicholas Stern, author of "The Stern Report," April 17, 2008
In other words, the wager is being mispercieved as an argument between global warming yes or no, instead of how sensative the climate is to elevated greenhouse gas levels. If a person with the resources of Sir Stern underestimated the risks, how can we expect politicians to understand how dire the situation really is?
"Few seem to realise that the present IPCC models predict almost unanimously that by 2040 the average summer in Europe will be as hot as the summer of 2003 when over 30,000 died from heat. By then we may cool ourselves with air conditioning and learn to live in a climate no worse than that of Baghdad now. But without extensive irrigation the plants will die and both farming and natural ecosystems will be replaced by scrub and desert. What will there be to eat? The same dire changes will affect the rest of the world and I can envisage Americans migrating into Canada and the Chinese into Siberia but there may be little food for any of them." –Dr James Lovelock’s lecture to the Royal Society, 29 Oct. ‘07
"Ultimately, responding to global warming is a political issue." –Lorrie Goldstein, Sun, 16 March 2008
"What I learned in the past few years is that politicians often adopt convenient policies that can be shown to be inconsistent with long-term success, given readily available scientific data and empirical information on policy impacts." –Dr Jim Hansen, NASA
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Suppose we buy into the Pascal’s wager argument and decide to take steps to minimize the risk of catastrophic global warming. My question is how can you take steps to avoid WHAT WE HAVE ALREADY DONE?
Here is what Climate Code Red says:
–Human emissions have so far produced a global average temperature increase of 0.8 degree C.
–There is another 0.6 degree C. to come due to "thermal inertia", or lags in the system, taking the total long-term global warming induced by human emissions so far to 1.4 degree C.
–If human total emissions continue as they are to 2030 (and don’t increase 60% as projected) this would likely add more than 0.4 degrees C. to the system in the next two decades, taking the long-term effect by 2030 to at least 1.7 degrees C. (A 0.3 degree C. increase is predicted for the period 2004-2014 alone by Smith, Cusack et al, 2007).
–Then add the 0.3 degree C. albedo flip effect from the now imminent loss of the Arctic sea ice, and the rise in the system by 2030 is at least 2 degree. C, assuming very optimistically that emissions don’t increase at all above their present annual rate! When we consider the potential permafrost releases and the effect of carbon sinks losing capacity, we are on the road to a hellish future, not for what we will do, but WHAT WE HAVE ALREADY DONE.
By the way, (according to the IPCC) the average temperature has been increasing at the rate of 0.2 C/decade for the last two decades:
‘Leemans and Eickhout (2004) found that adaptive capacity decreases rapidly with an increasing rate of climate change. Their study finds that five percent of all ecosystems cannot adapt more quickly than 0.1 C per decade over time. Forests will be among the ecosystems to experience problems first because their ability to migrate to stay within the climate zone they are adapted to is limited. If the rate is 0.3 C per decade, 15 percent of ecosystems will not be able to adapt. If the rate should exceed 0.4 C per decade, all ecosystems will be quickly destroyed, opportunistic species will dominate, and the breakdown of biological material will lead to even greater emissions of CO2. This will in turn increase the rate of warming’ –Leemans and Eickhout (2004), ‘Another reason for concern: regional and global impacts on ecosystems for different levels of climate change,’ Global Environmental Change 14, 219–228
‘There is no linear predictability in terms of how ecosystems respond. The phenomena of collapse is one that we have under-appreciated, partly because of the feed-back mechanisms that we are still trying to understand.’ –Achim Steiner, head of the UN Environment Programme, Oct. ‘07
"The alternative (to geoengineering) is the acceptance of a massive natural cull of humanity and a return to an Earth that freely regulates itself but in the hot state." –Dr James Lovelock, August 2008
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@R James: With oil prices and cost of power so high in India, we’ve evolved to be stingy on their use, relatively speaking. Also, middle class consumption in India doesn’t scale as much as it does in the US with economic growth.
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Sundar – what about population growth? We’ll never get on top of emissions while population keeps increasing.
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Tim: excellent post. The essence of weather and climate "intelligence."
Assuming the hundreds (thousands?) of researchers and millions of $ spent over the past 30+ years were working in good faith (and not part of some "warmist" cabal)it makes logical sense to develop strategies and policies that are in alignment with the predictions.
All forecasts are built on a foundation of uncertainty. Future plans that are based on predictions need to be probability/scenario-based knowing there is always a risk the predictions may be completely wrong.
Your point is spot on: what is the greater risk, taking affirmative action to reduce the carbon footprint and being wrong on climate change; or, doing nothing and being right.
Best,
Paul Walsh
G2 Weather Intelligence
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yesterday, i watched the 12 Angry Men; it really is interesting how it echoes with facing the choice of believing or not in global climate change.
also: reading things such as "global warming is a hoax spread by socialists and those who profit from it." could provoke incredible laughs if it wasn’t that sad…
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There’s a vast global mindset not to fall for the sky is falling theory.
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@ Matt Asay [01.19.09 08:36 PM]
But you’re right: the downside is that we have fuel-efficient cars, better mass transit, etc. Not much of a downside.
But that’s not the downside. The downside is the dislocation of capital from where it would otherwise go. All that "green investment" has to come from greater taxes and control over all sorts of things. Now, it may still make sense to do some of it (especially if it can be unrolled quickly if the AGW theory crumbles), but one can’t pretend it’s pain-free.
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First, the qualification of a modern version of Pascal’s Wager is a rabbit in the hat. I trust that means you are heading off to mass today. Pascal’s Wager is insurance for the soul. But what is the economic insurance package for climate change? Any sane person would agree that reducing our negative impact on the planet is an awesome thing. Yesterday I used two paper towels to dry my hands. Then since they were still wet in rubbed them against my shirt. Ok I made a difference. Then when I finished a box of cereal, I felt terribly guilty b/c the pkg’ing was over-sized so I broke it down inside my recycling bin. I felt a little better. Then I loaded my kids bikes in the back of my non-hybrid SUV to ride down at the beach. So I felt guilty again. Every day when I get in the shower, I actually jump while the water is still cold so I don’t waste it b/c I know it’ll warm up soon enough and the shock will do me good. I try to stay in the nice/relaxing hot shower for only a few min’s b/c I don’t deserve any of it (and Barack says we shouldn’t take our hot showers for granted — I don’t). All of these really means that — that I agree with Tim. Pascal’s Wager says whereever we stand (whether climate change is man-made or not), we need to try to mitigate our impact. We’ll never be a closed ecosystem, but it doesn’t mean we don’t try. Today with the inauguration is a great example that we have to never stop trying to improve in our family, locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally. That’s the hope.
Jebb Dykstra
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Tim said…
anyone who is so strongly convinced that global warming is a hoax
The debate is about whether global warming is man-made or not and not about if global warming is taking place.
I have read quite a number of peer review papers in climate numerical modeling (since numerical computing is my domain) from various journals and from what I see, is that it is premature for the UN IPCC to jump into conclusion that man is the culprit. There is increasing number of papers that are being published in the climate science literatures which points out that real observations are inconsistent (by much) with the computer model projections from the IPCC report. In other words, the computer models (ie, its claims) are dodgy.
There are lot of tech people out there that jump the bandwagon of saving the earth by developing green technologies. In fact there are suckers everywhere who endorse green technologies.
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I too am concerned that the "Pascal’s Wager" meme is a little too close to "The ends justifies the means". It is not a forgone conclusion that the development of alternative energy technologies will result in a net benefit. We’ve already seen what a bad choice corn ethanol was in this regard. I also think that this is also in danger of becoming a secular religion – with a hot climate mapping to the Christian hell as a big stick to enforce desired behavior. This isn’t the first time alternative energies have been promoted to support some desired outcome, averting global warming being the latest. We should be well aware that even if we were to generate all our energy from the sun, just the more efficient trapping of energy and converting it to heat via useful work, our atmosphere would heat up if our economic expansion continued on its exponential growth. Alternative energies thus give us a breathing space to plan a "sustainable" economic path.
Having said that, I have always been hugely tickled by the cleverness of Ray Bradbury’s "The Toynbee Convector". In that story, a time traveler makes one journey into the future and reports that the future is bright, that the earth’s environmental problems have been solved. As the news media gather to witness his arrival at the appointed time, the traveler admits the his journey was faked. He did it so that people would have hope and as a result the world did make the very bright future they were living in.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Toynbee_Convector
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Lots of non-alarming graphs are here:
http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/search/label/graphs
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OK, is the climate warming? I don’t know and having seen the results from the climate models neither does anyone else.
Should we manage and regulate green house emissions, yes we should.
My problem with the current dialog is most people turn into screaming fanatics and ignore thoughtful discussion of any ideas that are different from their own. This is on BOTH sides of the argument.
What worries me is that Cap and Trade/Carbon Credits and going to put a terrible burden on most the the worlds population and allow a few "rich" people to pay a few bucks and keep polluting at the level they always have.
And then there are the people that have arranged these schemes so they and their friends can get rich.
So control the emissions, make a system where everyone suffers equally and no one can "offset" their polluting ways and pretend they care. A system that is fair to all is the only system that will actually work.
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I have to agree with those who have cited the perverse consequences of subsidies to biofuels. For more information, see the in-depth reports (which can be freely downloaded) from the Global Subsidies Initiative:
http://www.globalsubsidies.org/en/research/biofuel-subsidies
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steps we’d take to address it are still worthwhile.
Not if the costs to businesses drive more jobs overseas.
Not if the costs of it prevent Americans from saving for college and retirement.
Not if the costs of it are going to solutions that don’t solve it (ie, windmills and solar panels).
Check the global warming tags on the Orange Punch blog. (Just google for the site link).
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muckdog -
Those are awfully big "ifs" with little or no data to support them.
* Raising fuel taxes by a huge amount would still leave us one of the countries with the lowest transportation fuel costs in the world
* If Americans wanted to save for retirement, we might well have thought about that before encouraging them to consume, consume, consume.
* Wind is becoming extremely competitive; solar is getting there.
etc.
I didn’t see anything but hot air on the Orange Punch blog. Not a lot of substantial data to support your assertions.
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Ronaldo -
Virtually everyone I know in energy thinks that corn-based ethanol was totally a disaster. Cellulosic ethanol from waste makes more sense, if we can get it to work.
The key point is that the government seems to have made a quick recovery from that mistake.
From conversations I’ve had with transition staffers, the Obama administration is pretty clear that biofuels is not the way forward.
In any event, debating specific approaches isn’t the point. The point is to stop distortive subsidies for carbon-based technologies, which make them appear cheaper than they actually are. Then let the marketplace decide what to replace them with, when they are showing their true costs.
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Tim, This type of argument is often called minimizing regret.
For example, in scenario planning as described in this SALT talk by RAND’s James Dewar (scroll down to Feb 02004).
And in the report "Climate Adaptation: Risk, Uncertainty and Decision-making" (pdf) from the UK Climate Impacts Program.
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The key point is that the government seems to have made a quick recovery from that mistake.
Huh? come again? In December 2007 Congress (including Obama, I believe) voted to substantially increase the so-called Renewable Fuels Standard, doubling by 2015 (to 15 billion gallons a year) the previous mandated maximum level of corn ethanol. And the mandate calls for that level to continue through at least 2022. That does not sound to me like the government "making a quick recovery from that mistake."
Currently, the corn-ethanol industry, facing the double squeeze of low gasoline prices and high corn prices, is bleeding red ink. It has asked for a $1 billion in short-term assistance from the federal government, and $50 billion in loan guarantees, so that it can keep on expanding. Judging from the performance of the Senate over the last 30 years (recall that at least 38 preside over corn-growing states), we can expect that the special pleading of the ethnol industry will be heard by sympathetic ears.
I hope you are write and that "the Obama administration is pretty clear that biofuels is not the way forward." That would be very surprising indeed, given his Cabinet appointments, many of which have been enthusiastic ethanol boosters.
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Cellulosic ethanol makes more sense if we can get it to work
Well, we’ve been working on it for several decades. And, even now, it is struggling to get started, despite government grants and loan guarantees for the construction of new plants, the prospect of a $1.01 per gallon federal tax credit on the ethanol it produces (not to mention mandates, and various state-level subsidies), and a $0.54 per gallon import tariff to protect it from cheaper Brazilian ethanol.
But will there be the biomass there to feed all those bright, shiny cellulosic ethanol plants? Some analysts think there has been some double-counting, with both the biomass-electricity industry and the budding wood-fueled cellulosic ethanol industry laying claim to the same feedstocks. See the the recent report by RISI:
http://www.risiinfo.com/pages/abo/news/2008/2008-10-16.jsp
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December 2007 is an era away…
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"the history of science shows us that even the top scientists in a field can be wrong, and those who argue against the reality of global warming can always fall back on that premise."
Sure, but that in no way helps their argument. That a large group of disparate people are *capable* of being wrong is obvious. But it, of course, doesn’t follow that they *are* wrong, let alone that certain opponents of theirs are right.
And to the deniers that argue it’s not human caused: so what? Asteroid impacts aren’t typically human caused either, but they’re still a huge potential threat.
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December 2007 is an era away…
Ah, come on, Tim. That’s a cop-out line. You claim that Congress — which is the body that matters — has turned its back on (corn) ethanol. Having made that claim, you have to provide some evidence … something more than a "feeling". Otherwise, 30 years of Congressional support for ethanol trumps any hunch you might have.
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Hi Muck, from a euro perspective:
Not if the costs to businesses drive more jobs overseas.
- Because business is doing real well at the moment? The jobs will be going overseas – to countries that are ahead of the US on the energy efficiency.
Not if the costs of it prevent Americans from saving for college and retirement. Retire to what?
Not if the costs of it are going to solutions that don’t solve it (ie, windmills and solar panels).
Some EU countries can already produce 30% of their energy needs from renewables.
Keep buying that A-rab oil and eating you burgers now, y’all hear?
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"The debate is about whether global warming is man-made or not and not about if global warming is taking place."
Forgive me for asking but why so? Why is it not a problem if the climate change is a natural phenomena? Surely climate change will be no less devastating if it occurs naturally.
So, is the argument that the carbon emissions have no impact on climate change and reducing it will not help? Or is it the case that climate change skeptics don’t agree that there is any change that is a threat man-made or otherwise?
Should we not frame the discussion whether or not there is a threat and if there is one, what we can do about it, rather than arguing about who’s to blame. What am I missing?
Also, what is the climate change skeptics argument to minimize the dependency on oil, which is clearly a problem independent of climate change argument. Is the oil dependency argument not enough even by itself to invest in alternative energy sources (as stated by many)?
Green investment has several independent benefit tracks. If there is an argument against it, the argument also needs to address each of these tracks (what the alternative is). I can find arguments against each of the tracks individually but cannot find a more unified alternative policy/philosophy to "going green". What is the alternative? Any pointers would be much appreciated.
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@R James: That’s a valid point. But, do you imply that the rate of population growth will increase in India and China, if we take the measures advocated by Tim? If not, isn’t that besides the point? And, I think there’s significant deceleration in population growth rate in India. I believe you’d appreciate the fact that population growth rate shouldn’t come down drastically lest it will cause an increase in dependency ration ( See http://www.euphix.org/object_document/o5117n27112.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition )
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Berkay said…
So, is the argument that the carbon emissions have no impact on climate change and reducing it will not help.
Reducing carbon emissions will help reduce the dirty air in our atmosphere, however if global warming is natural and not man-made (where the published scientific evidence of this in recent time is mounting), man can’t do a damn thing to stop the warming and the pending disasters. We might as well get prepared for the disasters that we will face in the future according to the dire projections made by the IPCC in its report.
My point is, we should concentrate of how we can adapt to that dire predictions of global warming in the future, because those scenarios are going to happen with or without any restrictions of our current CO2 emissions.
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Pascal’s Wager isn’t a convincing argument. There are plenty of worthwhile actions we could take that have an unsure primary benefit and sure secondary benefits. But those actions still don’t necessarily offer better value than the alternatives.
Consider whole vs. term life insurance. I’ve heard people say that regardless of whether they obtain the primary benefit of "winning the bet" (i.e., dying!), whole-life’s secondary benefit of accumulating equity through the forced investment of premium payments makes it preferable. But that’s only presuming that you couldn’t get a better investment return by paying term insurance and investing the cost savings yourself…
Or consider the LHC. Does the fact that nobody can know for sure, ahead of time, what the experiments will do, make it a case of Pascal’s Wager? (I know that most experts don’t predict drastic consequences. I’m trying to show examples of the Wager being flawed.)
I trust the scientific community’s consensus conclusions on climate change. And I think taking action to halt and reverse it should be based on that…in which case there’s no question of probability involved and no need to talk of a wager.
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Man-made Global Warming is a hoax that threatens our future and the future of our children. Václav Klaus, who just assumed the presidency of the European Union, is right when he states that “environmentalism is the new communism and climate change is a dangerous myth.â€
In agreement with Klaus, more than 650 international scientists dissent over the man-made global warming claims. They are more than 12 times the number of UN scientists (52) who authored the media-hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers.
Additionally, more than 31,000 American scientists have signed onto a petition that states, “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate…†http://www.pr-inside.com/the-petition-contains-the-signatures-of-r613239.htm
“Progressive†(communist) politicians like Obama seem determined to force us to swallow the man-made global warming scam. We need to defend ourselves from the UN and these politicians, who threaten our future and the future of our children. Based on a lie, they have already wasted millions and plan to increase taxes, limit development, and enslave us.
If not stopped, the global warming scam will enrich the scammers (Gore and Obama’ Wall Street friends), increase the power of the U.N. and communists like Obama, and multiply poverty and servitude for the rest of us.
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Antonio -
I don’t want to get into a debate, since your mind is made up. But I can’t help but be amused by the fact that the very article you cited in your comments says:
"Michael Nobel, executive director for Fresh Energy, a St. Paul-based policy think tank that focuses on energy solutions and also chairman of the Nobel Charitable Trust, said the petition holds little merit to those who study global warming.
"It’s a sad and odd little voice shouting that there is no global warming," he said of the institute. "Many people have apparently fallen for it."
Nobel said among those who study global warming, most agree that it is a human-driven phenomenon.
"It’s a curious little cultural artifact," he said of the petition. "It’s like people talk about Sasquatch or alien abductions."
The whole thing about "31,000 scientists, 9,000 of them with PhDs" should tip you off to the non-seriousness of this petition. Anyone who ever took a science class, in other words. Versus people who actually study climate as their profession.
I could put together a petition of 31,000 "scientists" by that definition, who believe in absolutely anything.
There is pretty clear scientific consensus that global warming is human caused. That consensus could be wrong, but the consequences of it being right are extremely high. Hence my invocation of Pascal’s Wager (though as someone noted in a comment on another post, "the principle of least regret" may be a better term.)
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I’m coming around to the belief that solar magnetic activity (as well as the interactions of the sun’s magnetic fields with that of Jupiter) may actually play a fairly significant part in determining weather patterns. If that theory is correct (and the recent hard-cold winter’s tie-in with the unusually long solar-cycle minimum this year is suggestive) then it’s possible that we may be entering into a time (for about the next seventy years or so) of cooler than normal temperatures, at least at temperate climes.
Even if that’s the case (and its a theory only), I think that anthropogenic warming is a very real phenomenon, though one that should be seen in the light of larger forces. My suspicion is that anthropogenic warming will likely disguise the generally cooling trend – we’ll have a period of slightly colder winters and summer temperatures may get a little warmer, rather than dramatically cooler winters and moderately cooler summers. However, when that cycle shifts back (in 2080 or so) to a broader global warming pattern, then the temperatures will likely jump dramatically – 3 to 4 degrees C over the course of a decade – as forces that had been cancelling one another out shift to reinforcing one another … and the stresses involved on the biosphere when that happens are likely to be devastating.
Unfortunately, I think the weather moderation will give the naysayers considerable ammunition in the short term. This is one of the reasons that I’ve begun questioning whether in fact trying to make the case for global warming is that wise a strategy. Reducing air pollution and carbon dependency by itself has obvious benefits, especially in light of likely nearer term shocks due to oil price instability.
Moreover, the Earth’s climate system is extremely complex, and like most such complex systems, can undergo local (and even global) phase transitions that can make passionate speakers on both sides of the argument look like fools.
Reducing our carbon footprint makes sense by itself, from a national security standpoint, from an ecological standpoint, from an economic standpoint. However, invoking the spectre of Global Warming may serve to politically undo many of these more rational reasons on the basis of two or three seriously cold winters.
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