Global Climate Change Argument Nullified

if you're interested in climate change and enjoy logic porn, boy howdy do i have a good one for you:



via digg

I was impressed by that. I didn't see anything majorly dodgy in the logic. Please explain if I'm wrong...

Also, calling it "logic porn" demeans it, and makes it less effective. Just saying...

hey, if it's a reasoned argument that gives my brain a boner, it's porn.

Ha! Well if that video wasnt just a giant ego boost for me, thats what I have been saying for about 2 years now I shall now retire to sit smuggly on my couch

I enjoyed his argument, but some of it bothered me.

The part I didn't like the most about this is that taking care of the environment would cause a economic global depression is listed as a possibility.

It is fairly obvious it would stimulate growth in new sectors. In fact, it already has for Germany and their Solar energy programs. The idea that by switching to alternative energy sources, stopping deforestation, cutting back on pollution of the air, water and land would create a global economic depression is ridiculous.
If we are going to do this, new industry will sprout up all over the place.
How are we to better filter/eliminate the pollutants we create?
What materials will we be using to build homes, if we can't use wood?
What kinds of cars will we drive? Who will build these new cars?

Stopping this snowball rolling down the mountain will require new ideas and new industries. Mature technologies such as solar cells and electric cars, will need more marketing and will involve new sales tactics. All of that would hardly lead to economic depression. Yes, there are some extremist environmentalists who are saying, we all need to start riding bikes right now, but it doesn't have to be that way.

The possibility of an economic depression happening because we start to change the way we do things to protect our world shouldn't be on his list, because there is absolutely no evidence to show it would occur. If anything all evidence suggests that it would be an economic shot in the arm (unless you're an oil baron).

Protecting our environment would lead to many more jobs than layoffs in the long run, also without a dependency on oil the Middle East could be left to figure out why the hate each other, alone.

Most of the governments on this planet would have to start working together, and using our tax money efficiently (no more Gaybombs or TV stations that advertise terrorism, or Halliburton contracts) If people wanted to do this correctly, it would be a global effort and that would in fact require us all to be drawn closer together.

The question of whether or not we should do something shouldn't even be on the table anymore. The question should be, how are we going to do it?

I also didn't like the argument because public policy is not the only issue in America, yes it worked in Germany but there is a huge difference. In this country businesses need to be convinced that their profit margins will not suffer dramatically because of the changes ahead. Public policy can give them tax refunds and other benefits if they meet certain regulations, but the primary motivation for stock holders and board members is cash value. Already a number of businesses exist that broker solar energy to businesses (you might have seen your grocery store has a solar panel roof), but that is hardly enough.

People need to go out there and start convincing investors that there is a great deal of money to be made by creating planet friendly products, tools, etc. A good start is the Tesla car, make no mistake if I had an extra $98k laying around, I'd have put a down payment on it already. Planet healthy alternatives getting the funding they need will require different kinds of people to work together, those in the environmental science world and those in the business world. It should be exciting, and people should be embracing it, it is a possibility that this will be the greatest challenge that humans will ever face.

Nicely done! Can we start growing hemp yet?

This is news how?

Oh, and there is in fact a flaw in that logic: what if we takes action, but it turns out to be the wrong action and makes things worse?

i think it'd take a pretty epic fuck up, given what we already know, to take a course of action that makes things worse. though that's still possible, i.e. starting to switch away from fossil fuels but getting stuck with hybrids and their worse-than-a-hummer footprint. or maybe switching to sea- and wind-powered generators and fucking up marine and avian life.

One process that's fairly consistent in nature is that any solution to any given problem will create new and unpredictable problems. That's more-or-less what drives evolution itself, in all its forms - whether biological, technological, or social.

A Cartesian gamble, like so many things...

I agree with joker_c above, in that it's an incredibly narrow view that altering climate change has to require economic depression.
To really oversimplify: necessity is the mother of innovation, and even according to free-market fundamentalists, innovations result in wealth creation. (Actually, to some, innovation is the benefit of having capitalism, but anyway...) The necessary innovations in energy-efficiency and heterogeneous fuel sources will benefit all of us in an immediate way economically. A heterogeneous fuel market will increase supply and provide consumer choice, while also forcing costs down. Who could complain about that?

Also, I worry that his discretization of the problem also misleads. It would be hard to measure exactly what would constitute 'action' and 'nonaction', given that the whole process of climate change isn't completely understood. Climate change is presumably a delayed effect of greenhouse gases, but the amount of greenhouse gases for a given temperature increase isn't clear.

Ecosystems, by definition, are a balance. Small changes can have large effects, and we aren't certain what those might be. For example, a slight change in temperature might affect a critical species, such as bees in ways we can't predict. (I'm not saying CCD is necessarily caused by climate change, just that a small change in a bee's environment has big implications for us.)

Therefore, it is possible that his case of Action=true AND GCC=true will still result in the consequence seen in Action=false AND GCC=true. We just don't know.

In other words, don't forget that action is really a continuous/real value, and it's misleading to think we can fit exactly in one category or another. (Forgive me if he mentioned this already, I skipped around).

i love that he's wearing a Sports Racer shirt.

true, but that describes making things iteratively better, not worse.

i don't think that part of the grid requires depression -- depression is just the worst case for that square. i don't have time to watch the whole thing again at work, so i'll just say that if he did in fact say that depression is a certainty for that choice, then yeah, shenanigans on that.

I always wonder why "doing the same but using less energy to do it" is A Bad Thing when people are talking about not doing stuff to save energy.

But I did like his approach, most people can understand a 4 box diagram.

Yes. Just to clarify, that was my point.

Although, now I think of it, maybe it shouldn't have been. Upon close examination, after all, the word "better" becomes basically meaningless, and entropy always wins in the end, anyway.

Nevertheless, though, I very strongly feel that no cynicism absolves us of the moral responsibility to attempt to make things better.

don't worry, the Cosmic AC has us covered.

Yes, he is right, you can use any possibilities, because his argument is about risk management similar to the reasoning a person would use when deciding whether or not to get health insurance.

I just wanted to point out that I didn't like that he used that particular extreme possibility, because that extreme possibility doesn't seem to fit in the grid. The other possibilities have evidence of some kind or another to validate them. Global economic depression because we are wrong? How?

If we are to look at "reality" for a moment and perhaps use Germany as an example of a country that is trying to help the environment with massive solar panel usage, the extreme possibility would be a whole new industry is created and it sprouts economic growth. Whether they are wrong or not, large numbers of new jobs have been created.

His argument then becomes column A is the only worthwhile option, even if we're wrong we develop new jobs.


I have been around many people who will see that and think:

"fucked either way, now which of those ways requires the least work for me to continue making profit."

There are people who will think that if they can at least horde their cash and keep making it quickly, they can survive and even avoid complete catastrophe.

I understand that what he is attempting is a magic bullet argument, that appeals to everyone and is effectively showing that "global economic depression" is nothing compared to "complete utter global chaos".
Perhaps a good test would be to present this argument to a person who believes that scientists are wrong and see how they feel afterwards.

So, I just made a grid.

Science is wrong:

We do something:
We create many, many new jobs and industries. We become more energy efficient on a global scale. The world economy booms, because of all the new development.

We do nothing:
The global economy remains tied to oil, nothing really changes.


Science is right:

We do something:
We create many, many new jobs and industries. We become more energy efficient on a global scale. The world economy booms, because of all the new development. We possibly avoid global catastrophe or at the very least mitigate how terrible it might have been.

We do nothing:
Welcome to hell.


So, with that done:

column a:

We do something:
We create many, many new jobs and industries. We become more energy efficient on a global scale. The world economy booms, because of all the new development.

We do something:
We create many, many new jobs and industries. We become more energy efficient on a global scale. The world economy booms, because of all the new development. We possibly avoid global catastrophe or at the very least mitigate how terrible it might have been.

column b:


We do nothing:
The global economy remains tied to oil, nothing really changes.

We do nothing:
Welcome to hell.


Yes, his possibilities in his grid are equally valid when looked at purely as possibilities. My grid sweetens the deal is all

Like bean said, he was deliberately putting the "out there" option out there, just to see if the argument would fly.

I mean, my first thought was "That's too extreme", then I realised he was explicitly an openly choosing extremes for both "wrong" outcomes. (The "on-diagonal" outcomes.)

Yeah, you're both right.

I STILL like my worst case scenario better. More jobs, a better global economy, less reliance on oil.

Oh, I forgot...

There are consequences to doing nothing and science being wrong.

We only have a finite amount of fossil fuel.

It is a rather lucky coincidence that working towards less pollution leads to less reliance on fossil fuels.

While his argument seems basically sound I think it is a bit too basic. Even though he allows for " plug in your own details or steps in between if you want" it does seem over simplified nearly to the point of false dichotomy, with a sugar coating of gambler's fallacy and sprinkles of Correlation does not imply causation.

I think the possibility does exist, however remote, that we could be totally mistaken and the extreme version of the flip side possible, where we take action and it causes dramatically negative effects in the long run, equivelent to the bottom right in his little graph.
So, we take huge action to counteract warming ? It turns out it was a natural fluke with the Sun, or that it was us, but a natural mechanism existed to compensate that we were unaware of. Now it flips, it's cooling again, but we've taken action. It aggravates it. Now it accelerates. What would have been a moderate compensatory cooling is now out of control. We all freeze to death and the polar bears take over, for ever and ever. The ENd.