Science, Climate, and Skepticism, Ctd

Readers tackle a recent post:

I am a combustion researcher so I have the training to understand what the climate researchers have written. I have to say that I was a bit miffed by your statement, “I favor maximal skepticism toward scientific theories that might prompt us to change our lives.” Of course you should be skeptical! It goes without saying. That’s the scientific method! So many deniers say, “Scientists disagree.” Of course we do! It’s our job! We are always challenging each other; it’s a service we provide to each other, as a way to keep us from slipping up. Knowing that my community will be skeptical, that they will challenge me as soon as I open my mouth at a conference, forces me to be as accurate and careful as possible.

But there are also a lot of things we do not disagree about. We all accept Newtonian mechanics as a means to describe dynamics in the physical world. That “theory” is used all the time: to design the suspension on your car, to keep the office you sit in from plummeting to the ground, and so on. The Navier Stokes equations of fluid mechanics are used to design better airplanes. We all fly around in planes and trust the Navier Stokes equations to describe lift and drag. Anybody who visits a doctor is accepting scientific knowledge.

What we disagree about are the smaller things at the very leading edge. No computer is powerful enough to predict climate, so researchers are forced to make simplifying assumptions. They argue about that – which assumptions are least inaccurate and so on. The fundamentals are not in question; it’s the details.

You wrote, “And of course there’s always a chance that we’ll stumble upon some new evidence or theory that would throw this entire edifice into doubt (it happens).” Umm, no. Not like that. The basics are too solid. You also wrote, “I simply cannot see why any sane person would not wish to try and mitigate that change or prepare for such an eventuality. And conservatives, properly understood, attend to such contingent problems prudently.” Thank you for helping. To be honest; I view this as the absolute biggest issue facing us, and it is really disheartening to listen to Congress and pundits. This is not the time for such behavior.

Another reader mulls the origins of that behavior, contrasting it with an environmental victory in the ’80s that had broad support:

In previous decades, scientists discovered the damage to our ozone layer caused by CFCs.

The public and policymakers were skeptical at first, but as the data continued to pour in supporting the case, politicians built an international coalition to address it, ban CFCs, and repair the ozone layer. But not so with global warming. I’ve been wondering why that is, and, like you, I didn’t get it.

A few weeks ago, I met a man who is strongly skeptical of global warming. When I mentioned that over 90 percent of the scientific community believed it was happening, he replied that may be the case, but that he just could not agree with anything Al Gore said as a matter of principle. When Gore decided to champion the cause of global warming, he made it a political issue instead of a scientific one. And that’s why anyone looking rationally at the evidence concludes that the conservative position is “absolutely bonkers.” It’s not driven by science but by politics and by the deeply held belief among so many right-wingers that Democratic politicians are using whatever nefarious means they can to drive a stealth socialist/communist agenda. When looked at through that lens, global warming is just another excuse for bigger government.

I think if An Inconvenient Truth had been presented by a nonpolitical figure (David Attenborough? Neil deGrasse Tyson?), things might have turned out much differently.

Another reader, who just wrapped up a class on climate change as part of a master’s program in international science policy, offers his perspective:

I wrote my term paper on the prospects of innovation induced by environmental policy to actually grow the economy. The choice that Republicans seem to be offering here is this: Should we risk catastrophic climate change in order to grow the economy slowly, or mitigate that risk in order to grow the economy more quickly?

There is clearly no logic to their position. It is infuriating. Krauthammer used to be in favor of a carbon tax, although given his recent comments it would be rather odd for him to continue that support. The sad thing is that a carbon tax is easily the best mechanism (in combination with a few others, e.g., basic research and subsidies for battery technology) for producing the win-win situation above.

A carbon tax would also, if applied correctly, account for much of the emissions growth in China – who does he think is buying all of the shit that China has been producing for the past 10 to 20 years? Likewise, Boehner is going around saying this will cost jobs, but the OECD has released figures on the job sectors that contribute the most emissions, and they are all at the bottom end of the employment spectrum. But rather than pull from a great deal of economic research and data, these buffoons now rely on baldly nonsensical arguments to attack science and progress.

These people make a mockery of thought. They are 21st-century Luddites motivated by stupidity and greed.

Another turns the conversation toward conservative climate solutions:

Yes, the radical intellectual closure shown by George Will and Charles Krauthammer is deeply distressing. If there’s any issue that everyone left, right, and center should be fighting to address, it’s climate change, and the tagging of the science as a liberal plot by such undoubtedly intelligent men is far too tragic to be even darkly funny.

As it happens, though, just this week George Shultz agreed to join the advisory board for the Citizens Climate Lobby (CCL), thus throwing his support behind the establishment of a national carbon fee-and-dividend program. Fee-and-dividend is rooted in conservative principles, since it involves no new subsidies, relies entirely on the market to determine our future energy blend, and is 100-percent revenue-neutral (and thus doesn’t increase the size of government). As Schultz’s endorsement suggests, it’s precisely the kind of program that conservatives should be able to rally behind: no winners picked and no government growth, just a price on carbon that reflects the true costs of its retrieval and combustion.

I’d encourage you to check out CCL’s Legislative Proposal. I think you’ll find it in line with both your concerns and your desires for a broadly conservative, non-disruptive solution to the climate crisis.