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Global warming
May. 12th, 2008 10:22 pmI am currently at a conference in Urbana-Champaign, and one of the talks today was a fellow who thought that global warming was due to solar activity, not greenhouse gases. To be honest, I didn't pay a lot of attention to the details of his talk, as I am feverishly trying to prepare my own talk for tomorrow (i.e. feverishly trying to get some data and good results for tomorrow's talk...talk about last minute, but anyway), so I can't say whether he made any good points. I tend to err on the side of the scientific establishment, because I trust them more than I do the opponents (megacapitalists and oil companies), but I have to concede the possibility that scientists may have a reflex action which prevents them from seriously considering any challenge to the notion that CO2 emissions from industry are causing global warming.
Still, though, so what? So what if there's a possibility that we're wrong? The political view that inevitably follows from denial is "We shouldn't do anything drastic economically until we're sure." But we do drastic things all the time, in the name of possibilities. The most obvious one: we invaded Iraq because there was a possibility that they might attack us with chemical or biological or nuclear weapons (even assuming they had them, it was only ever a possibility that Saddam would actually deploy them against us). We all take our shoes off at the airport because one time a guy attached a bomb to his shoe. How much extra money is spent on anti-terrorism measures, beefed up security, and whatnot, on the off chance that terrorists will attack us? In many of these cases, the measures are protecting us against VERY low-probability events.
Your average global warming denier is a Republican, I figure, and I also figure that the average denier is going to support most of this defensive spending, so I wonder: can't they even concede the *possibility* that global warming is caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions? And given the potential deadly/drastic consequences, doesn't it deserve some proactive spending on our part, even if it doesn't turn out to be true? I'm also not quite sure what proactive measures they're so scared of, because they never mention them. They say, "Let's not do anything drastic" but what's drastic? Invest money in research into alternative fuels? Build railways? Encourage public transportation? Regulate polluting industries? Yeah, it's that last one. To me, a really drastic measure would be "Outlaw cars, force people to live in cities and walk everywhere, make everyone eat local organic food, etc" but the government's not going to do that anytime soon. Drastic to them means "make Exxon/Mobil return some of those record-breaking profits back to the US people in the form of taxes and investment in cleaner, better energy sources." Your average person wouldn't call that drastic, which is why they don't ever go beyond the word.
Anyway, back to putting my talk together.
Still, though, so what? So what if there's a possibility that we're wrong? The political view that inevitably follows from denial is "We shouldn't do anything drastic economically until we're sure." But we do drastic things all the time, in the name of possibilities. The most obvious one: we invaded Iraq because there was a possibility that they might attack us with chemical or biological or nuclear weapons (even assuming they had them, it was only ever a possibility that Saddam would actually deploy them against us). We all take our shoes off at the airport because one time a guy attached a bomb to his shoe. How much extra money is spent on anti-terrorism measures, beefed up security, and whatnot, on the off chance that terrorists will attack us? In many of these cases, the measures are protecting us against VERY low-probability events.
Your average global warming denier is a Republican, I figure, and I also figure that the average denier is going to support most of this defensive spending, so I wonder: can't they even concede the *possibility* that global warming is caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions? And given the potential deadly/drastic consequences, doesn't it deserve some proactive spending on our part, even if it doesn't turn out to be true? I'm also not quite sure what proactive measures they're so scared of, because they never mention them. They say, "Let's not do anything drastic" but what's drastic? Invest money in research into alternative fuels? Build railways? Encourage public transportation? Regulate polluting industries? Yeah, it's that last one. To me, a really drastic measure would be "Outlaw cars, force people to live in cities and walk everywhere, make everyone eat local organic food, etc" but the government's not going to do that anytime soon. Drastic to them means "make Exxon/Mobil return some of those record-breaking profits back to the US people in the form of taxes and investment in cleaner, better energy sources." Your average person wouldn't call that drastic, which is why they don't ever go beyond the word.
Anyway, back to putting my talk together.
