Bishop Hill Don't be a denier
Aug 24, 2011 Jonathan Adler has some interesting thoughts on scepticism at everyone's favourite US law blog, the Volokh Conspiracy. His article was prompted by the decision of New Jersey governor Chris Christie to first veto some green legislation (on the grounds that it wouldn't work) but to simultaneously acknowledge that greenhouse gases affect the climate, a position that has led to much criticism from his own side.
Those attacking Christie are suggesting there is only one politically acceptable position on climate science — that one’s ideological bona fides are to be determined by one’s scientific beliefs, and not simply one’s policy preferences. This is a problem on multiple levels. Among other things, it leads conservatives to embrace an anti-scientific know-nothingism whereby scientific claims are to be evaluated not by scientific evidence but their political implications. Thus climate science must be attacked because it provides a too ready justification for government regulation. This is the same reason some conservatives attack evolution — they fear it undermines religious belief — and it is just as wrong.
Reader Comments (53)
Mac:
"I am a CAGW sceptic who believes, no - knows also that Palin is a nutter.
Anyone who puts crosshairs on political web sites and pamphlets is a nutter."
Yes, Mac, it's always someone else who's a "nutter". You on the other hand, of course, are the smartest guy in the room.
We have got to where we are today, Philip, because the uncertainty has been ignored. Unlikely worst case scenarios have been presented as near certain outcomes. The ultimate example of this is the precautionary principle that holds that anyone can come up with a really scary consequence for a particular action and until we can establish that the risk of the scary consequence is negligible, the action must be stopped. Had it been applied for the last few centuries humans would not have made the amazing progress that they have.
We have to factor uncertainty into our analyses, quantifying risk and using probability theories to determine to what extent we need to try and mitigate those risks. We do it all the time in our normal day to day life, usually informally and intuitively, from crossing the road to determining if we should take out various forms of insurance. Is earthquake or hurricane cover worth the premium in the UK? Do you buy flood insurance if you're on the 200 year flood limit?
When I look at the uncertainty as to both the extent and consequences of anthropogenic global warming and weigh that up against the costs of trying to mitigate a miniscule portion of the uncertain consequences, I am convinced that any formal risk management process, presented with all the facts and uncertainties, would conclude that expensive mitigation strategies could not be justified over adaptive strategies that have the benefit of reacting to certainty as opposed to wishfully proactively dealing with a possible problem of uncertain magnitude.
Research that is likely to be commercial in the short to medium term can be safely left to the private sector. A case can be made for more fundamental research, especially that with a societal benefit, to be funded by the taxpayer, but such research needs to compete for funds, showing that the investment is likely to be worthwhile. This has not been what has happened, one area of research, climate change, has been given vast amounts of money and people compete for this money by showing how their work is relevant to this one field. The research isn't often to reduce the uncertainties, it starts with the uncertain assumption that there is a problem and proceeds from there.
DocBud:
I noticed a couple of minor discussion points here. First, is that uncertainty should work both ways. Second, is that the greens have systematically corrupted the intended meaning of the precautionary principle, so that it has now become totally worthless (exactly as you say).
It sounds to me as if the main point of difference lies in whether the technology development can be left solely to the private sector, or whether it also needs public sector funding as well. To be honest, I'd be delighted if you were right that the private sector alone could deal with it, but I also remember reading people I respect telling me the opposite. I don't know if any of this blog's energy experts are eavesdropping and could offer any insights?