Fabian Tassano spies a little opportunism:
Mike Edwards of CAFOD has written to the Telegraph to argue for a pragmatist perspective on the question of whether the establishment view on climate change is correct. In other words, we may as well assume it is correct, because the consequences of doing so are the ‘right’ ones.
The longer I work on climate change, the less important I think it is whether or not the warmists or the sceptics are right. […] Imagine a world where we had listened to the climate scientists and started to change our resource-consuming behaviour and address the inequities of the global economic system. Although the warming still didn’t materialise, we would have addressed a host of environmental issues and be living a largely pollution-free existence. We may even be saying thank you to the climate scientists who, although they got it wrong, provided us the opportunity to create a cleaner, brighter and fairer world.
Unfortunately, it is easy to imagine that Dr Edwards is not unusual in believing that the preferred effects of particular research conclusions should influence those conclusions. The vast majority of ‘researchers’ seem to share a leftist ideological outlook these days, and also seem to share the belief that this perspective is indubitably the morally correct one, providing them with a spurious legitimacy for actions which would be considered questionable in other contexts. In some cases, this ideological bias – wanting research to support the creation of a ‘fairer’ world – may have effects only at the margin. For example, when a result is ambiguous, the choice of how to present it is made in the direction that is most supportive of the preferred belief system. Though individually small in effect, an accumulation of such minor biases at the margin can easily add up to something significant. In other cases, the bias is more blatant. Research results can often be guessed in advance, and those which would undermine the consensus can be avoided by the simple method of withholding financial support.
“The longer I work on climate change, the less important I think it is whether or not the warmists or the sceptics are right.”
I just wanted to hear that again.
There’s another reason it is wrong.
“thank you to the climate scientists who, although they got it wrong, provided us the opportunity to create a cleaner, brighter and fairer world.”
This is an assumption that needs to be tested.
There is evidence that some environmental solutions are more destructive to the environment. For examples:
Ethenol: It’s quite clear now that even the current modest switch to ethenol has caused trees to be cut down to create space and driven up the price of food.
Sustainable Power: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16550-why-sustainable-power-is-unsustainable.html
Dumping tonnes of iron sulphate into the ocean to stop global warming: http://www.climateark.org/shared/alerts/send.aspx?id=ocean_geo-engineering
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/28/germany-to-try-dumping-ir_n_161544.html
Carbon capture: increases the amount of fuel that needs to be burnt by 30%-50%, in turn increasing non captured pollution.
More generally the focus on CO2 emissions is diverting attention from real/urgent problems: http://www.climate-skeptic.com/2008/09/sucking-the-oxy.html
In particular China is pumping chemicals into the atmosphere that we stopped years ago.
Bottom line is that the rich west accepts that a portion of its wealth be diverted into creating or preserving a better environment. There is no doubt that it is our wealth that allows us to do this. Poorer countries suffer worse standards.
It seems not unreasonable to suppose that an 80% reduction in carbon dioxide output would make us poorer. It’s not clear why impoverishing the west would not result in levels of pollution that we previously could afford to clean up.
Golly, what a glorious future! Remember the glorious future we got after the fall of communism? Yeah, it’ll be just like that, but even better!
And they call that “pragmatism”. Riiight.
It’s rather like how a certain type of English graduate will argue, badly, that the notion of intelligence as a personal attribute is “aping capital” and “a source of social ills” and therefore “should be abandoned” in favour of a more egalitarian, but dishonest, formulation:
https://thompsonblog.co.uk/2008/10/unnatural-taboo.html
I marvel at how an ostensibly clever person will argue that his cleverness is not his own, based on political beliefs that are enormously tendentious and not at all convincing. I also marvel at the readiness to confuse reality with political preference. But maybe that’s just me.
I see you are interested in the logic of what he says
In that case W Briggs has a relevant post:
http://wmbriggs.com/blog/2009/02/23/what-appeal-to-authority-means-and-what-it-doesnt/
For me I think the argument above is a non sequitur. He starts from the idea that consumption (ie wealth) is bad and therefore any argument is a justification. If it wasn’t global warming it would be affluenza.
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/2891/
In a different age he would be preaching eternal damnation unless we repent our sins. There’s still time!!!
TDK,
Thanks for those. I was rather struck by Edwards’ apparent willingness to accept gross distortion (if that’s what it should prove to be) in the cause of some ostensible greater good. I find it interesting that some people will blur the distinction between how reality is and how they feel it ought to be, or ought to be perceived, and do so quite openly. Again, it reminds me of the anti-intellectual theatrics of Professor Maureen Stanton and her associates when faced with lines of enquiry they found ideologically “offensive”:
https://thompsonblog.co.uk/2007/09/diversity.html
Ah Larry!
Here’s another person “articulating an appalling point of view”. Disgraceful!
http://motls.blogspot.com/2009/02/la-griffe-du-lion-universal-math-sex.html
TDK,
Again, thanks. I’m sure this kind of unrealism spans all parts of the political landscape, but it’s hard not to register a concentration of it among parts of the academic left. I suppose this is to some extent a consequence of efforts to politicise everything in sight, often tendentiously. Details and enquiry become charged and rather precious, in the pejorative sense.
Luboš Motl is an interesting anomaly, or he would be were he in the UK or US. This is an admirer of Vaclav Klaus and http://motls.blogspot.com/2009/02/vaclav-klaus-unbearable-inability-to.html
and Milton Friedman http://motls.blogspot.com/2009/02/milton-friedmans-f-twist.html
I hope he’s not so unusual in Eastern Europe
The longer I work on climate change, the less important I think it is whether or not the warmists (sic) or the sceptics are right
Only insofar (according to climate science guru Wallace Broecker) as if we did EVERYTHING that our leaders have proposed, it would only cut our emissions by a third of how much we need to cut them. But most of the proposals and targets are themselves unachievable. For example, to meet Broon’s absurd targets for wind power, we should have to ramp up manufacture of turbines to ridiculous levels. Assume the unachievability factors our targets down by 50%. Add to that our lack of any serious resolve to do anything until disaster stares us in the face, and you see that IF the sceptics are right, we are wasting our time, and if Broecker and James Lovelock are right, then the catastrophe will happen anyway.
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-980700582829425063&q=lovelock+Climate+change+on+the+living+Earth&total=1&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0
Seeing as the sceptics are a rag-tag bunch of opinionated journalists, political activists and quack scientists, I lean to the second scenario, in which case you can put your head between your legs and kiss any hope of a fairer world goodbye. We are truly fucked. Forget windmills, buy some land (more than 10 meters above sea level) a few Uzis and plenty of ammo, grow your own food and protect it from all comers.
Pebble-bed reactors and nuclear reprocessing are the best thing to do, yet Greens refuse to see it. These morons drove us away from clean power, and now whine at us for coal plants. They infuriate me.
Makes me wonder how common Edwards attitude is.
Leading non-scientist global warming pimps such as Al Gore are heavily invested in “Green Technology” companies. The question is not whether CO2 is a real problem. It is not whether windmills and solar can really meet our energy needs. The question is, whether Al’s stock portfolio has a winning rate of return or not.
http://soundpolitics.com/public/2008/05/al_gores_green_megamillions.html
http://www.matternetwork.com/2008/5/al-gore-lands-another-683.cfm
http://samuelatgilgal.wordpress.com/2008/08/18/are-pelosis-green-investments-a-conflict-of-interest/
Note also that these sorts generally have enormous carbon footprints. Do as I say, not as I do.
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/NussbaumOnDesign/archives/2007/02/gores_carbon_fo.html
Yes, Al Gore and Yassir Arafat, both proud winners of the Nobel Peace Prize.
There are proposed closed cycle nuclear breeder reactor schemes, where reactor fuel is reprocessed on-site into fuel containing all of all of the radioisotopes produced, not just the plutonium. The radioactive waste would no longer be waste, but rather fuel, all consumed to produce power. Ultimately, the scheme could consume 95% of natural uranium, rather than the 0.7% that is U235. A few pallets of low-enriched uranium fuel (3% U235) could be brought onto the site to start the reactor operation, and that would be it — the remaining 97% of U238 would be consumed over the life of the reactor, with almost no high-level waste remaining.
http://www.nationalcenter.org/NuclearFastReactorsSA1205.pdf
A fairly reasonable investment in green energy could be petroleum from algae. Oil is running out and this could actually make economic sense.
http://www.nrel.gov/biomass/pdfs/benemann.pdf
“Climate change experts” ain’t what they used to be.
http://www.slideshare.net/cafodbigdeal/liveit-2008-mike-edwards-on-climate-change
Possibly related.
New Jungles Prompt a Debate on Rain Forests
CHILIBRE, Panama — The land where Marta Ortega de Wing raised hundreds of pigs until 10 years ago is being overtaken by galloping jungle — palms, lizards and ants.
Instead of farming, she now shops at the supermarket and her grown children and grandchildren live in places like Panama City and New York.
Here, and in other tropical countries around the world, small holdings like Ms. Ortega de Wing’s — and much larger swaths of farmland — are reverting to nature, as people abandon their land and move to the cities in search of better livings.
These new “secondary” forests are emerging in Latin America, Asia and other tropical regions at such a fast pace that the trend has set off a serious debate about whether saving primeval rain forest — an iconic environmental cause — may be less urgent than once thought. By one estimate, for every acre of rain forest cut down each year, more than 50 acres of new forest are growing in the tropics on land that was once farmed, logged or ravaged by natural disaster.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/30/science/earth/30forest.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
One hypothesis:
Jobs = moving to cities.
Moving to cities = abandoned subsistence farmland.
Abandoned farmland = rainforest regrowth.
Carbon caps = fewer jobs.
Gaffee,
“‘Climate change experts’ ain’t what they used to be.”
In fairness, that slideshow is aimed at children. But, yes, it’s interesting how cosily the infantilism and religiosity sits with the broader issue. “Live simply, sustainably and in solidarity” because “individualistic materialism” is very, very bad. He seems very keen to tell us what a “proper life” is. The fact Dr Mike doesn’t stand out like a sore thumb is itself rather curious. Though to his credit, he does play the didgeridoo.
http://www.progressio.org.uk/livesimply/AssociatesInternal/95534/meet_the_speakers/
It is all part of a strategy to get your ideas made a part of the culture. You say the same things over and over again, and eventually it gets pocked up, and if it becomes fashionable, voila, you are in. I heard the head of the “Universal Voluntary national Service” organization say exactly this, the other day on NPR. She said that the “voluntary” part was correct, but they hoped that eventually the idea of “National Service” would become so embedded in the culture that no one would think of not performing it. It is the first time I have ever heard anyone explicitly describe this tactic, which arises from Gramsci, but I think it is the basis for the environmental movement. And it leads to the sort of quotes that Dr. Edwards made.
What I worry about is what happens when their ideal moreal world doesn’t quite work the way they think it should – people who are driven by their own visions of morality are not known for their tolerance of people who do not make the world work the way they want it, and they have a propensity to impose more and more controls to get people to behve the way they “should”.
A bit late to the party, but here’s a link to Fabius Maxius’ compilation of one recent, prominent tussle between the AGW consensualists and the AGW skeptics.
“An opportunity for you to judge for yourself the adequacy of the work in climate science,” 2 March 2009.
http://fabiusmaximus.wordpress.com/2009/03/02/judge-2/
This concerns the January 2009 publication by EJ Steig et al of “Warming of the Antarctic ice-sheet surface since the 1957 International Geophysical Year” in Nature.
The skeptics’ position is that the data and computer programs on which this paper are based should be made publically available. Their reasons: (1) It’s how good science is done; (2) Vetting and replication are only possible if the material is made public in a usable form; (3) Journals’ policies require such releases; and (4) This is publically-funded research.
The consensualists’ positions are… well, about what you might imagine.
Worth reading.