I have been trying to persuade a politically conservative friend that taking action to reduce carbon emissions is not part of a “liberal” agenda.
In a recent e-mail, he wrote this:
I haven’t yet heard of one proposal to curb, “climate change,” that does not involve restriction of rights, and confiscation of income.
My response included the following:
Any proposal to limit carbon dioxide emissions will require changes in the way people do things, but life is always changing. It’s up to us as a society to figure out how to change for the better.
Ideally, we can create economic incentives to create “greener” technologies, investing some of today’s economy to provide a better future for all, both in terms of financial security and in terms of individual opportunity.
The cost of not changing is, in my view, much higher.
You look at the changes and see their costs today. I look at them and see their value in the future.
You see the proposals as restrictions of rights and confiscation of income. I see them as facilitating greater opportunities and wise investing of resources.
When I put it that way, I can’t understand why my view is not considered “conservative.”
“There is no such thing as globe warming. The earth has been cooling down and heating up for thousands of years.”
Okay… now, correct me if I’m misunderstanding, but if there is “no such thing as globe warming [sic]” then what do you call it when the Earth “heats up” in the cycle you mention–“defrosting” maybe?
What a lot of people don’t get is that “global warming” is a distant result; almost an after thought of the theoretical climate change process. The serious focus is “climate change;” possibly of a sudden and drastic nature. Not ALL of the globe will get hotter. The average mean temperature will increase. SOME of the globe could get darn cold. So cold it becomes like an arctic desert. Ever tried to grow plants or raise livestock in an arctic desert?
There is no such thing as globe warming. The earth has been cooling down and heating up for thousands of years. If you took a look at our world’s history, you would see that. The last warmest year was 1999 and it hasn’t been that warm ever since. Last winter for my region was the coolest it has been in years…IN YEARS! We were down in the negatives the whole winter and this summer was one of the coolest summers that this region has had in a long time too. I remember the days when it would get to 90’s and 100’s. We were luck to have it in the 70’s this year. Have you ever noticed that Al Gore never….NEVER does an interview or answers questions about global warming??…Our goverment is trying to get us to spend more money…more of our tax dollars for “global warming”. Going green is more expensive…its a scam don’t let the government fool you. If global warming even exist why does it keep getting colder then!
Thank you for this well-considered post. I hope your Conservative friends have been listening.
Sadly, the word “Conservative” has been co-opted by that segment of the political class that resists any change whatsoever and is responsible for a lot of the woes of our world. I would absolutely argue that we “Greens” can be called conservative in the best sense of the word: we are trying to preserve / conserve a livable world — not just for an unhappy / wealthy few but for the entire biosphere.
Margaret (Bern, Switzerland)
PS: I happened on your blog by chance as I was looking for the February 07 instalment of the IPCC report on Climate Change. Here’s my blog URL: http://mpj52.blogspot.com
I’m sorry if I rambled (I get a sense that you think I’ve abused the comments box with so many words). But I’m not sorry if what I said seems dangerous. I believe the same about what you’ve left unsaid, so felt compelled to fill what I perceive as a void. And I appreciate you posting my comment even though you strongly disagree with it.
Just to clarify a couple points:
I’ve been advocating the think-globally-act-locally-reduce-reuse-recycle lifestyle since the early 90’s when I first signed on to global warming. It made perfect sense to me the minute it was explained to me (thanks to priming by Carl Sagan and his Cosmos series’ look at places like Venus).
I believe that my forecast has as much merit as yours because we’re talking about the confluence of multiple complex systems for which the tipping-points are unknown, forecast horizons are unknown, and the assumptions are many.
I base my understanding of complex systems on a body of popular readings: Sync, Strogratz; At Home in the Universe, Kauffman; The Weather Makers, Flannery; Chaos, Gleick; Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk, Bernstein.
A quick Google for “define:complexity” gives the concise and ominous: “domain of emergent properties and non-linear relationships between factors; unlike chaos, which is inherently uncertain, may often create an illusion of predictability, especially where linear analysis is applied within a short-term, narrow set of assumptions”
When I apply this sort of understanding of complexity to our ability to:
A. Somehow “control” the global economy (i.e. change China and/or India’s economies to develop in a carbon neutral way)
B. Accurately predict the effects our “mitigating actions” will have on the global climate
I become less than optimistic that these are fruitful courses of action.
Instead, without despair, I advocate that we continue to think-globally-act-locally-reduce-reuse-recycle in an effort to become more independent and self sufficient. In the face of the dramatic changes life on Earth continually presents, I believe it’s important to be able to take care of the smallest unit of “us” one can identify.
Indeed, I find the “us” and “we” such as used in your original post (e.g. “Ideally, we can create economic incentives to create “greener” technologies…”) undefined and indefinable. As such, it’s difficult to get an idea of the scope of action you’re suggesting. I believe that the assumption that the group “us” is somehow unified, defined and controllable is dangerously naive. The assumption that we could predictable manipulate this group to some positive effect if it were unified, defined, and controllable is arrogant.
I totally agree with you that something should be done to “mitigate the worst consequences of our behavior”. We disagree on what that something is and the degree to which conscious effort can affect a positive change.
Brendo, what I left unsaid is the political solution. The reason I began this thread is that my conservative friend continues to resist the science. He continues to attribute the consensus to a conspiracy rather than the usual scientific process.
Still, he has told me that he would call for action as urgently as I do if he were persuaded that a problem exists. And thus I continue to refer him to information that may be persuasive to him.
Now he and I might argue over what action is appropriate, but if we could start by accepting the scientific process, we would have a basis for a discussion of alternatives. That’s where I’m hoping to move him.
The “we” in all of this is the body politic. I can only hope that there is still time for our decisions as a nation or a civilization to make a difference. Among those decisions can be policies that encourage other people to approach Earth’s resources as you do.
I have read (and reviewed) two of the books you mention. Stop by my Science Shelf site (see link below) and read what I say about Strogatz’s Sync and Flannery’s The Weather Makers. Then send me an e–mail from links on those pages to subscribe to my newsletter so you can keep up on what else I’m reviewing in a wide range of sciences.
My bottom line here is this:
• Even when things are complex and we have little hope of complete understanding, we must choose on the basis of our best understanding.
• Even if we are not sure we can change things, we must act as if our efforts can have an effect.
Despair promotes inaction, and that is simply not an option as far as I am concerned.
Fred Bortz
Science and technology books for young readers (www.fredbortz.com)
and Science book reviews (www.scienceshelf.com)
Our planet is not dying slowly. We might be, but it’s important to remember that the planet and life will be fine. Life is varied and robust enough to suffer conditions already present on the planet that rival the worst we could imagine. Whether we’re causing global warming or not, warming has happened before, causing dramatic die-offs (see documentary Crude), only to come back into balance in its own time.
That said, as a human, the anthropocentric tone of the argument is valid. We need to be concerned for ourselves and our children, our children’s children, etc. When NASA administrator Michael Griffin said was “arrogant” and unfair to treat global warming as a problem that needed to be tackled, most on the left side of the argument balked, and most on the right applauded. What none of the parties involved admitted was that he’s correct in that we’re arrogant to believe we have a choice, and that he’s neglecting to think through the impact of not having a choice.
We are warming the planet. To what degree is somewhat academic. The climate is changing and there’s very very little we can actually do about it. In all likelihood we’re already past the tipping point. We’ll be seeing more hypoxic zones in more oceans, we’ll see the deep ocean current slow as salinity decreases at the poles, we’ll see more extreme weather events. But we’ll also see an increasing demand for all of the technological, energy consuming tools humans use to insulate themselves from such extremes (i.e. there will be more ski resorts built in Dubai, more tropical beach resorts built in Germany). Above all, there will be an increasing rate of energy intensive lifestyle adoption in China and India. These are trends encompassing entire cultures and economies on a scale that “we” as individuals have very little ability to alter in any predictable way.
It’s time to face the fact of climate change, admit it, maybe even embrace it as the most formative event in human history that it will soon become. If only the discussion could see its way beyond the obvious political grumblings of its cause, to the less obvious economic and social repercussions of its effect. What goldmines will dead seas and a warmer , more violent climate reveal? There will be vast down-sides to a dramatic warming, but there will also be new niches of opportunity. This is the sort of Machiavellian perspective I’m expecting to start hearing from Gingrich an co.. And I’m none-too-happy to be compelled to agree with what will surely be an emergent mercenary strategy of survival in the face of a brutal new landscape.
Technology is the one thing that could save (some of ) us from the most violent repercussions of the phase-change class of climate change being predicted. Technology offers a similar tipping-point that could offset the difficulties of climate change for a fortunate few. But it’s a race, and there’s no telling which party is leading. It is arrogant (at our present level of development) for people to think of consciously driving global climate. It’s not arrogant for people to strive to develop and combine innovative ways to survive in the big bad beautiful world. She is as beautiful and dangerous as she is warm and dynamic. We’re just now learning how to live here. It’s just about to become a little more difficult. Deal with it.
In a long and rambling post, Brendo elaborates on this one idea:
“What none of the parties involved admitted was that he’s correct in that we’re arrogant to believe we have a choice…”
In An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore warns about people who go directly from denial to despair without stopping at action.
I don’t know if Brendo was ever a denialist, but I think his/her attitude that we can’t do anything to mitigate the extent of anthropogenic impact on the climate is far more dangerous than my conservative friend Mike’s persistent denial. At least Mike has told me that he would advocate for urgent action if he were persuaded of the problem.
It’s true that we may have passed through some serious “tipping points” (See my review of The Weather Makers), but we don’t know for sure where the next ones are. As long as it is possible to mitigate the worst consequences of our behavior, the we need to examine that behavior and act to change it.
Fred Bortz
Science and technology books for young readers (www.fredbortz.com)
and Science book reviews (www.scienceshelf.com)
Absolutely Fred. The cost of not doing anything is much higher. Our planet is dying slowly and since we are completely selfish we don’t want to do anything that can affect us in the short term. We are like little kids that can’t see 20 years in advance.
A. Matthews
LA Online Magazine
Yes, Mark. You have captured much of the political issue here.
My friend and I have very different perspectives on how we think governments need to operate. Our differences emerge when choices may be reasonable for individuals in the short or intermediate term (their lifetime) but are very unreasonable for future of the group.
But that is a political disagreement. In principle, we should be able to agree on what the science is telling us and then debate the political alternatives.
The sad thing is that politicians are attacking the scientific findings by attacking the scientists themselves. My friend is so persuaded by those attacks that I can’t get him to accept mainstream results, such as those reported in Science News and New Scientist. He views the IPCC as a liberal conspiracy because he doesn’t trust the UN. And because New Scientist is published in the UK, it is obviously (to him) an organ of the European Union, which he also views with some disdain.
I agree with you, Mark. The problem is indeed one of persuading people and then getting them to change their behaviors. Sometimes it is necessary to create policies that provide incentives for individuals to act in society’s best interest.
As for me, I will continue to blog from the middle, presenting the science as honestly as I can and making clear the separation between my political statements nd my scientific ones.
Fred Bortz
Science and technology books for young readers (www.fredbortz.com)
and Science book reviews (www.scienceshelf.com)
Interestingly many of the observations I have read in this thread are correct even though they are opposing. I myself have watched the growing swell of the concern over global warming and have also found interest in watching the parties involved, those for and against the observations. Additionally I have watch how socioties relate and interact amoungst themselves and each other in the light of conflicts, social concerns, economic considerations and matters of beleif.
To some extent I can see that if our human activities are effecting the global climate to result in a warming then and if this is to be stemed then a change in what we do and how we do it can only be the way.
However as a person who works in management changing what a person, a person amoungst a group or a group of people do can be very difficult. And strangly at times an action maybe undertaken to improve things that by it’s very nature of being actioned on causes an unexpected outcome. This is especially true with groups of people.
So is there an answer, well on the face of it of course there is, after all there is always an answer just whether the answer was the one you wanted or expected is not always the case. Today we are asked to drive the car less, put more insulation in our houses, buy less consumable products and so on, all in the name of climate change. Taking it that we were to implement all of these things, inherently our lives would change. However in doing this most of us would not really see an immediate or short term outcome which we could recognise as being an achievement of our actions’ goals and thus our actions lack the feedback to afford us the knowledge to justify our actions.
Consider the last paragraph from another perspective. If I walk to work rather than taking the car I gain exercise, meet people in my community whom I would normally drive past, i create a presence in the environment which serves to uphold the beliefs that I subscribe to, experience a changing/interesting environment where I begin to take a greater vested interest, because I meet more people in that environment I learn that my views are more invited, and so on… With the effectual outcome of attaining a greater sense of wellbeing for myself whilst reducing my usage of the car. Oh I have also saved on spending money on fuel, which is always pleasing.
Admittedly not everyone’s lives are presently such that they can take the exact action above, for example a person may live further away than walking distance from their work place. However they can still enjoy changes in their individual approach to various parts of their day which have a very beneficial effect for themselves whilst having a consequentially positive effect in environmental considerations. Example being if you drive some distance to work to you go with the rush our psychology of race race race, if so your burning fuel at a greater rate than necessary. Additionally if your in the race race race your likely to be experiencing more stress and losing an oppertunity to experience some relaxed between time. Missing out of this oppertunity would generally mean that you arrive at work in a more hightened state of feeling and subsequently may experience a more stressful day, to which you might think why am I doing this.
So for the “friend” is observations on the concept of global warming may actually be justified, relative to him, however by approach things from a different perspective it is possible to achieve a goal without setting out as it being the primary objective.
Any how enough from me, apologies for this comment being long however, if it is of interest I do not expect anyone to subscribe to this point of view, because well the most important consideration of all is that of choice. This observation is made in respect of the concept of “rights”, this is the reason I offer no expectancy, just your right to make your own choice.
ENjoy your day.
Mark
We disagree, but it’s important for you to speak for yourself.
You and I have gone as far as we can go with this because, given your worldview, anything I try to say will be interpreted as political, not scientific. You dismiss every source I suggest as either biased or deluded.
As a scientist, I have been watching the consensus develop for many years, and I have seen how politicians have managed to muddy it for intelligent nonscientists like you.
Still, I can’t understand why you continue to insist that this is all part of a vast liberal conspiracy, organized internationally by the United Nations.
I know how scientists work, and I can assure you that they are skeptical about everything. A consensus arises from persuasive evidence and, in this case, from numerous models (not just Mann’s “hockey stick” that has become a favorite target for the segment of conservatives who still deny the consensus) that compare present climate change to what it would be like without the roughly 70 parts per million increase in CO2 that is currently attributable to human activities.
Believe me, if the evidence didn’t hold up, the consensus would fall apart faster than you could say “Newt Gingrich.” :)
On my Science Shelf website, I have a series of reviews of climate books going back about a decade. You can read my reviews by following the links at http://www.scienceshelf.com/climatelinks.htm What I find most persuasive, and concerning, about the evolving consensus is that what the older books describe as worst case scenarios are now coming to pass. There is a steady shift of the debate from denial of climate change to acceptance of climate change but denial of human causation to acceptance of human causation but disagreement over how much.
Your present position is where the center of the debate was ten years ago, and the only justification left for that position is that the scientists are either conspiring or are dupes of political forces.
And although I think you are sadly misguided, I am glad you shared your views for all to see.
Fred Bortz
Science and technology books for young readers (www.fredbortz.com)
and Science book reviews (www.scienceshelf.com)
First of all let me say how nice it is to be called a moron. This response fits nicely with the email that I sent to you today Fred. It has to do with the name calling that people who don’t agree with the IPCC “consensus,” undergo on a regular basis. God forbid we actually address the numerous inconsistencies, inaccuracies, and double standards that plague not only the, “science,” used to support the anthropogenic theory, but the messengers as well.
Fred, I apologize for taking so long in responding to your last email, I had work to do…someone has to earn the money to pay for the next social experiment down the horizon. (no doubt, belg4mit is counting on me)
I think you are too dismissive of my skepticism. Contrary to the belief of the IPCC and Al Gore (one of the largest personal producers of Carbon in the country by the way…not an opinion, a fact) there exists NO WORLD CONSENSUS regarding the anthropogenic theory of global warming. Simply stated, the “science,” has been so muddied with politics that I cannot (nor should anyone) trust anyone who claims, “the debate is over.” The IPCC is a political body of some 2,000 scientists. Forget the fact that I personally feel that the scandals that plague the UN (the IPCC’s master) render their, “consensus,” untrustworthy at best. What about the 19,000 plus scientists that have publicly signed on to the opinion that, “there is no scientific evidence of the anthropogenic theory.” If you look back at my emails you will see that I don’t argue that the anthropogenic theory is false, ONLY THAT THERE IS NO CONSENSUS WITHIN THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY AS A WHOLE, AND THAT POLITICS HAS MADE ITS STATUS INDETERMINABLE.
When I hear statements like, “the greater good,” this makes me wonder if, “the means justifies the end,” is still acceptable to some.
As Doctor Johnny Fever of WKRP in Cincinnati said, “it ain’t paranoia if they are really trying to get you.”
By the way, thanks for standing up for me with the person who called me a, “moron (belg4mit).”
Take care!
Mike