Global Warming Part II - The Social Science in a Nutshell
Part I
It is unfortunate that people think that Global Warming is exclusively a phenomenon of physical science. Activists tend to argue as if scientists have proven anthropogenic global warming (AGW) as an accomplished fact. By that, I mean that they believe that the outcomes predicted for 100 years from now are fully realized today. This is made odder when they insist that we do something about it - if it were already done, what point is there in "doing something about it"? It is the fact that global warming is something predicted for the future that compels us to make changes now in the hopes that we can alter that future.* However, there are two reasons why AGW is not exclusively the realm of the physical sciences:
On the one hand, all predictions of future CO2 content rely on estimations of the continuation of present patterns of energy and natural resource use. Those depend largely on social, political, and economic conditions and developments. This trend is unlikely for two reasons:
1) The first reason it is unlikely is that our energy use patterns are extremely likely to change. Going back 200 years, we depended mostly on humans, water, wind, whale oil, and wood for our energy needs. 150 years ago, we started making a transition to coal. 100 years ago, we started making a transition to oil (and the Anglo-Saxon whaling fleets collapsed). Today, our needs are met by a broad variety of coal (for electricity production, augmented with natural gas and to a lesser extent, wind), oil (for heating and transportation), natural gas (for electricity and heat), and nuclear energy, and the forests have been coming back, especially in North America. We are about due for another change, eh?
a) On one hand, there are some people that believe that we will be forced to change our energy sources by our own avarice. Citing the "irrefutable" research of M. King Hubbert, they claim that we are about to hit the peak production of oil, after which oil will become much more expensive. They may be right.
b) On the other hand, there are a number of us who think that there are other good reasons for transitioning away from fossil fuels regardless of Hubbert's predictions. Not only are those fuels ultimately physically limited in quantity, but they are inefficient in a number of other ways: they inherently cause pollution (spills, SOx, NOx, particulates, and CO2, all externalities); they are the funding source for despots and terrorists who try to gain control first of the resource and then of the markets (rent-seeking through violence and then cartelization); and they are politically unpopular and hard to find, extract, and distribute, leading to capital-intensive organizations that use unknowing political activists to gain control of markets, subsidies, and regulatory bodies (more rent-seeking via the Baptist-bootlegger method). Meanwhile, other entrepreneurs are searching for alternative energy sources and storage/distribution systems, including nuclear (both fusion and fission) and solar (including photovoltaic, thermal, wind-based, and biomass). When they succeed, they will begin pulling market share and then political influence away from the fossil fuels. Case in point: we learned just recently (NY Times article: Tech Barons Take on New Project: Energy Policy) that Solar Barons have decided to start lobbying for subsidies, displacing the Oil Barons. "The investors in recent years have poured billions of dollars into alternative energy start-ups in areas like solar and wind power or the production of fuel for cars from feedstock and crop waste. Many of these projects, they say, could stall without subsidies or government mandates for greater energy efficiency."
c) Meanwhile, other scientists are working on ways of averting forced warming, including using sulfates and other products to reflect solar energy back into space (the "smoke and mirrors" gambit) and sequestering CO2 in plants, underground, and in the ocean (plankton tend to consume CO2, so efforts to increase plankton populations may prove effective). A combination of these may be useful.
2) The other reason it is unlikely that trends will continue is that if it does in fact begin to get hotter, and the results are increasingly worse, there will definitely be a shift in the political, economic, and social structures to counteract the warming problem. These may be forced conversion to mass transit, urbanization, and so on, or it may consist of mass migration to cooler climates, wars, and so on, or possibly even mass starvation. I am obviously not endorsing these, but rather pointing out that these are possible responses that are clearly outside the domain of physical science or at least show an exchange between physical and social science.
Thus, the real question is not whether or not global warming is or is not real, but rather what the appropriate set of responses to the existing science should be. This lands the question squarely in the camp of economics, though I also think there will be questions of politics and sociology. I should note that I've previously suggested that the most promising means of dealing with CO2 concerns application of Coase via tradable permits, but this calls out two perplexing reactions: the anti-free-marketeers demand free trade in the form of Kyoto but otherwise oppose it on principle, and the free-traders who cite Coase refuse to accept the fact that a government is required to define those property rights and thus make that market work.
* Note this is different than Tyler's statement (and the claim made in the comments), "We already have wrecked our environment with global warming; the truth is, it is simply too late to do anything about it." I am turning that on its head and asking if it can be undone in the future by political means now, why do we claim that it is an accomplished fact? There can be no "before it's too late" if it is already too late.
It is unfortunate that people think that Global Warming is exclusively a phenomenon of physical science. Activists tend to argue as if scientists have proven anthropogenic global warming (AGW) as an accomplished fact. By that, I mean that they believe that the outcomes predicted for 100 years from now are fully realized today. This is made odder when they insist that we do something about it - if it were already done, what point is there in "doing something about it"? It is the fact that global warming is something predicted for the future that compels us to make changes now in the hopes that we can alter that future.* However, there are two reasons why AGW is not exclusively the realm of the physical sciences:
On the one hand, all predictions of future CO2 content rely on estimations of the continuation of present patterns of energy and natural resource use. Those depend largely on social, political, and economic conditions and developments. This trend is unlikely for two reasons:
1) The first reason it is unlikely is that our energy use patterns are extremely likely to change. Going back 200 years, we depended mostly on humans, water, wind, whale oil, and wood for our energy needs. 150 years ago, we started making a transition to coal. 100 years ago, we started making a transition to oil (and the Anglo-Saxon whaling fleets collapsed). Today, our needs are met by a broad variety of coal (for electricity production, augmented with natural gas and to a lesser extent, wind), oil (for heating and transportation), natural gas (for electricity and heat), and nuclear energy, and the forests have been coming back, especially in North America. We are about due for another change, eh?
a) On one hand, there are some people that believe that we will be forced to change our energy sources by our own avarice. Citing the "irrefutable" research of M. King Hubbert, they claim that we are about to hit the peak production of oil, after which oil will become much more expensive. They may be right.
b) On the other hand, there are a number of us who think that there are other good reasons for transitioning away from fossil fuels regardless of Hubbert's predictions. Not only are those fuels ultimately physically limited in quantity, but they are inefficient in a number of other ways: they inherently cause pollution (spills, SOx, NOx, particulates, and CO2, all externalities); they are the funding source for despots and terrorists who try to gain control first of the resource and then of the markets (rent-seeking through violence and then cartelization); and they are politically unpopular and hard to find, extract, and distribute, leading to capital-intensive organizations that use unknowing political activists to gain control of markets, subsidies, and regulatory bodies (more rent-seeking via the Baptist-bootlegger method). Meanwhile, other entrepreneurs are searching for alternative energy sources and storage/distribution systems, including nuclear (both fusion and fission) and solar (including photovoltaic, thermal, wind-based, and biomass). When they succeed, they will begin pulling market share and then political influence away from the fossil fuels. Case in point: we learned just recently (NY Times article: Tech Barons Take on New Project: Energy Policy) that Solar Barons have decided to start lobbying for subsidies, displacing the Oil Barons. "The investors in recent years have poured billions of dollars into alternative energy start-ups in areas like solar and wind power or the production of fuel for cars from feedstock and crop waste. Many of these projects, they say, could stall without subsidies or government mandates for greater energy efficiency."
c) Meanwhile, other scientists are working on ways of averting forced warming, including using sulfates and other products to reflect solar energy back into space (the "smoke and mirrors" gambit) and sequestering CO2 in plants, underground, and in the ocean (plankton tend to consume CO2, so efforts to increase plankton populations may prove effective). A combination of these may be useful.
2) The other reason it is unlikely that trends will continue is that if it does in fact begin to get hotter, and the results are increasingly worse, there will definitely be a shift in the political, economic, and social structures to counteract the warming problem. These may be forced conversion to mass transit, urbanization, and so on, or it may consist of mass migration to cooler climates, wars, and so on, or possibly even mass starvation. I am obviously not endorsing these, but rather pointing out that these are possible responses that are clearly outside the domain of physical science or at least show an exchange between physical and social science.
Thus, the real question is not whether or not global warming is or is not real, but rather what the appropriate set of responses to the existing science should be. This lands the question squarely in the camp of economics, though I also think there will be questions of politics and sociology. I should note that I've previously suggested that the most promising means of dealing with CO2 concerns application of Coase via tradable permits, but this calls out two perplexing reactions: the anti-free-marketeers demand free trade in the form of Kyoto but otherwise oppose it on principle, and the free-traders who cite Coase refuse to accept the fact that a government is required to define those property rights and thus make that market work.
* Note this is different than Tyler's statement (and the claim made in the comments), "We already have wrecked our environment with global warming; the truth is, it is simply too late to do anything about it." I am turning that on its head and asking if it can be undone in the future by political means now, why do we claim that it is an accomplished fact? There can be no "before it's too late" if it is already too late.
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