Op-ed by nuclear physicist on climate change: questions for "skeptics"
John P. Holdren, an MIT and Stanford-trained nuclear physicist who is professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and director of Harvard’s Woods Hole Research Center, former President and Chairman of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and consultant for the past 35 years at the Magnetic Fusion Energy Division of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory [yes, this is an appeal to authority] had a short but interesting op-ed in the August 4 Boston Globe.
I think he’s trying to be sensitive, but Holdren may come off a bit arrogant; he’s certainly insensitive to those who are concerned that government may bungle any climate “solution”. Given his technical knowledge and experience, I hope readers will understand where he’s coming from and encourage them to read the whole thing – which really isn’t too long.
But since I have you here, allow me to quote liberally:
skeptics about [climate change] tend to move, over time, through three stages. First, they tell you you’re wrong and they can prove it. (In this case, “Climate isn’t changing in unusual ways or, if it is, human activities are not the cause.”)
Then they tell you you’re right but it doesn’t matter. (“OK, it’s changing and humans are playing a role, but it won’t do much harm.”) Finally, they tell you it matters but it’s too late to do anything about it. (“Yes, climate disruption is going to do some real damage, but it’s too late, too difficult, or too costly to avoid that, so we’ll just have to hunker down and suffer.”) …
The few with credentials in climate-change science have nearly all shifted in the past few years from the first category to the second, however, and jumps from the second to the third are becoming more frequent.
Their arguments, such as they are, suffer from two huge deficiencies.
First, they have not come up with any plausible alternative culprit for the disruption of global climate that is being observed, for example, a culprit other than the greenhouse-gas buildups in the atmosphere that have been measured and tied beyond doubt to human activities. (The argument that variations in the sun’s output might be responsible fails a number of elementary scientific tests.)
Second, having not succeeded in finding an alternative, they haven’t even tried to do what would be logically necessary if they had one, which is to explain how it can be that everything modern science tells us about the interactions of greenhouse gases with energy flow in the atmosphere is wrong.
Members of the public who are tempted to be swayed by the denier fringe should ask themselves how it is possible, if human-caused climate change is just a hoax, that:
US polls indicate that most of the amateur skeptics are Republicans. These Republican skeptics should wonder how presidential candidate John McCain could have been taken in. He has castigated the Bush administration for wasting eight years in inaction on climate change, and the policies he says he would implement as president include early and deep cuts in US greenhouse-gas emissions. …
The extent of unfounded skepticism about the disruption of global climate by human-produced greenhouse gases is not just regrettable, it is dangerous. It has delayed – and continues to delay – the development of the political consensus that will be needed if society is to embrace remedies commensurate with the challenge. The science of climate change is telling us that we need to get going. Those who still think this is all a mistake or a hoax need to think again.
(emphasis added)
Holdren is focussed on arguments regarding science, and so fails to address questions as to the efficacy of proposed solutions involving government action, which questions are of course important.
Although Austrian and libertarian observers may have very useful things to add to the policy discussion, it seems fair to say that, except for a few such as Jonathan Adler, Gene Callahan, Edwin Dolan, Sheldon Richman and Bruce Yandle, many have preferred not to discuss policy but to focus either on climate science or on the motives of those self-deluded religious, fascist creeps who think that there may be a problem.
While concerns about science and motives are perfectly legitimate, let me add a few points that Austrian “skeptics” ought to consider:
– Austrians tend to view “environmental” problems not as harms to a disembodied “environment”, but as real problems involving conflicts in individual/firm plan formation that arise because of a lack or clear or enforceable property rights in particular resources or large information, transaction or enforcement costs that make contracting difficult.
– Are there clear or enforceable property rights with respect to emissions of GHGs, or the atmosphere or climate more generally?
– Is private contracting a practical way for individuals and firms with differing preferences as to climate or GHG emissions to meaningfully express such preferences?
– What lessons does history teach us about the exploitation of open-access resources that are not protected by accepted rules among the relevant community of users? If there are problems with such resources, how have such problems been addressed in the past, with what degree of efficacy?
xSFx, thanks for your comments.
1. The point that “skeptics” have not offered any other plausible explanations for observable warming is NOT the same as the argument “if not God, then who made the world?” It`s the other way around. Scientists offer an explanation and the skeptic response is “it`s natural” without an explanation of any mechanism.
Here is a place to start for reasons that the argument that “variations in the sun’s output might be responsible fails a number of elementary scientific tests”: http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm
You might also like this look by Pat Michaels and Chip Knappenberger as to what they think is in store: http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2008/01/30/what-the-future-holds-in-store/#more-304. Money quote?
” But the targets won’t come close to being met as a bits-and-pieces solution will not achieve the goal of halving current global CO2 emissions by the year 2100—much less any year before then. In fact, more than likely, these legislative efforts will not, to any noticeable degree, even begin to separate the blue and the red curves for a long time to come—far too long to avoid elevating global temperature 2 degrees above “natural” levels.
That’s what the future holds in store. Get used to it.”
>> The burden of proof is on the believer, not on the skeptic.
>>
The “skeptics” now rarely bother to address the arguments of the “believers”. The above commenter is a perfect example. He says there is no consensus, because there are papers in arXiv. That’s a non-sequitur. Science doesn’t work by consensus, but decision making often does. Everyone knows that virtually every climate science organisation, and many other general scientific organisations, which have advanced a position on climate change have emphasized its reality, its seriousness, and the need to act.
He is also dismissing the very convincing counterarguments to the theory that the sun has been responsible for current global warming, and failing to even appreciate, let alone falsify, a real theory for how carbon dioxide acts in the atmosphere, which can be shown to account to current warming. The components in that theory has been carefully constructed over time using science. Both real and fake skeptics continously question those components: but real skepticism has led to their strengthening. Fake skeptics squack about the laws of thermodynamics, or, often amateurishly, invent (or promote) models of the atmosphere (that often just so happen to be improbably insensitive to C02 increases), without bothering to show why they are better than current models, or why those current models should be dismissed. There is nothing wrong with all of this — it is good to question established theory, and you often have to start somewhere. But you cannot seriously dismiss established theory when alternatives are uncredible, especially when established theory would indicate that responsible people ought to take action.
The post by Toyko Tom illustrates how real skeptics operate, and have been operating for years. It has been skepticism that has led to a fairly advanced understanding of earth’s atmosphere: enough to make very convincing predictions and observations about climate change.
>> First, they have not come up with any plausible
>> alternative culprit for the disruption of global
>> climate that is being observed, for example, a culprit
>> other than the greenhouse-gas buildups in the
>> atmosphere that have been measured and tied beyond
>> doubt to human activities.
This is just like the argument “if not God, then who made the world?”.
The burden of proof is on the believer, not on the skeptic.
>> (The argument that variations in the sun’s output
>> might be responsible fails a number of elementary
>> scientific tests.)
Such as?
>> how it can be that everything modern science tells us
>> about the interactions of greenhouse gases with energy
>> flow in the atmosphere is wrong.
The science is not wrong, just take a look on arXiv. The myth of the “scientific consensus” is just a myth.
That’s what bothers me about Austrians (and I have in mind Bob Murphy):
They blame the problem on lack of property rights, but then oppose ANY plan to establish property rights in them, just because some plans would permit too much bloat, and then say they don’t think a free market would even assign rights in the atmosphere. And then one of them has the audacity to point and laugh at someone who says the government should define the rights and then step out of the way!
If it’s not deliberate deception, it’s a good imitation.