Global Warming Part III - The Case for Continuing Skepticism in a Nutshell
Part I - The Physical Science in a Nutshell
Part II - The Social Science in a Nutshell
So, if I think there is something to global warming, how can I still consider myself to be a skeptic?
First, my skepticism has always fallen on the alarmist tone taken by the true believers.
When John Christy's satellite measurements failed to align with the theory, the true believers were ready to dismiss the data. In one online debate I had with a global warming enthusiast, he responded by condemning John Christy as incompetent and by bizarrely declaiming the importance of satellite and balloon data because what was of primary concern were ground temperatures, not atmospheric temperatures. Now that the data have been corrected and are closer to the other predictions (though they are still lower than other data sets), they claim that this is as it should be. It's easy to gloat when the data get realigned to your preconceived view of the world, but what happens when they don't? In other words, what made them convinced of their rightness long before the data problems worked out?
Consider the example of the Premature Ice Age alarmism of the 1970s. Activists are quick to point out that the claims never showed up in scientific journals despite the 1971 Schneider and Rasool article, "Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Aerosols: Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate" (Science 173, 138–141) in which they claimed, "our calculations suggest a decrease in global temperature by as much as 3.5 °C. Such a large decrease in the average temperature of Earth, sustained over a period of few years, is believed to be sufficient to trigger an ice age." True, the Premature Ice Age scare was more of a popularization by news magazines, but that didn't prevent it from drawing policy makers into its orbit, did it? And now that everyone has agreed that was an unlikely outcome, the same alarmists that espoused it are dismissing it as irrelevant - not because they were wrong, but because the science was not published in scientific journals. Yet, they believed it and wanted immediate action, the same as they did with other manufactured scares. History is replete with such scares (opium, marijuana, Germans in the WWI era, Commies in the 1950s, there will be mass starvation and England won't exist by 2000, the saccharin cancer scare in the 1980s, the silicon implants scare in the 1990s, Y2K disaster, nucular (r) meltdown), but very few repenters.
More recently, people blamed the 2005 hurricane season on AGW and predicted more of the same. It escaped their attention that the problem was not the strength of Katrina (it was degraded from Category 5 to Cat 3), it was the fact that it hit a large population area with two unique characteristics: it was below sea level, and it was poorly protected by a set of water projects whose funding had been diverted by years of bipartisan corruption and ineptitude. Many seized on that opportunity to hype the idea that AGW means more severe hurricanes, but few if any publicly apologized when 2006 failed to yield even a single landfall hurricane; in fact, people still mistakenly use the Katrina/NOLA fiasco to support such statements as, "Extremes are non-linear in their effects." The dearth of hurricane landfalls in 2006 alone doesn't disprove AGW any more than 2005 proved it, but there should be little doubt as to which side gets the most press. They trumpet loudly when the data fits their theory, but fail to sound retreat when they don't.
Second, my skepticism extends not only to the abuse of the science models, whose expected outcome keeps becoming less in line with the extremists and alarmists each time they are updated, but to the supposed implications. Those include the assumption that if global warming is a fact, that (1) man must be responsible, (2) it must be reversed, and (3) only central planning can reverse it. I am unsure about the first of those claims, but I think it is probably true. Still, it concerns me that there have been drastic variations in the past that cannot be explained with human behavior.
The second is worth some examination. The idea that the warming must be stopped or reversed is predicated on two assumptions: that the ideal temperature is that which existed in the past, and that stopping or reversing is going to be less costly than adapting. There are lots of reasons to question which climate is best.
I have no more faith in the government solving this problem than in solving poverty. The free market (or what there was of it) was arguably doing a better job of the latter prior to Johnson's Great Society (both income disparity and income-based poverty rates were falling until around 1968, and have been flat or increasing since then), and if anyone is going to find viable alternatives to carbon-based energy, it is going to be lots of scientists acting independently, i.e. not the government. If there is one thing the government can do, it's to stop supporting the existing paradigm through subsidy and regulation.
In fact, that is the lesson that we should be taking: the government is a contributor to the current situation, and there is bipartisan guilt, so why should we trust the government to remain neutral in the "new" era? Reducing our contribution to CO2 buildup is going to require changes in technology and product mix on the supply side, customer values on the demand side, and changes in social, political, and economic structures. There is no "right" answer to this, and planning arguably only works well when an answer is already known when all that remains is getting there from here. Here, Hayek is correct.
Part II - The Social Science in a Nutshell
So, if I think there is something to global warming, how can I still consider myself to be a skeptic?
First, my skepticism has always fallen on the alarmist tone taken by the true believers.
When John Christy's satellite measurements failed to align with the theory, the true believers were ready to dismiss the data. In one online debate I had with a global warming enthusiast, he responded by condemning John Christy as incompetent and by bizarrely declaiming the importance of satellite and balloon data because what was of primary concern were ground temperatures, not atmospheric temperatures. Now that the data have been corrected and are closer to the other predictions (though they are still lower than other data sets), they claim that this is as it should be. It's easy to gloat when the data get realigned to your preconceived view of the world, but what happens when they don't? In other words, what made them convinced of their rightness long before the data problems worked out?
Consider the example of the Premature Ice Age alarmism of the 1970s. Activists are quick to point out that the claims never showed up in scientific journals despite the 1971 Schneider and Rasool article, "Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Aerosols: Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate" (Science 173, 138–141) in which they claimed, "our calculations suggest a decrease in global temperature by as much as 3.5 °C. Such a large decrease in the average temperature of Earth, sustained over a period of few years, is believed to be sufficient to trigger an ice age." True, the Premature Ice Age scare was more of a popularization by news magazines, but that didn't prevent it from drawing policy makers into its orbit, did it? And now that everyone has agreed that was an unlikely outcome, the same alarmists that espoused it are dismissing it as irrelevant - not because they were wrong, but because the science was not published in scientific journals. Yet, they believed it and wanted immediate action, the same as they did with other manufactured scares. History is replete with such scares (opium, marijuana, Germans in the WWI era, Commies in the 1950s, there will be mass starvation and England won't exist by 2000, the saccharin cancer scare in the 1980s, the silicon implants scare in the 1990s, Y2K disaster, nucular (r) meltdown), but very few repenters.
More recently, people blamed the 2005 hurricane season on AGW and predicted more of the same. It escaped their attention that the problem was not the strength of Katrina (it was degraded from Category 5 to Cat 3), it was the fact that it hit a large population area with two unique characteristics: it was below sea level, and it was poorly protected by a set of water projects whose funding had been diverted by years of bipartisan corruption and ineptitude. Many seized on that opportunity to hype the idea that AGW means more severe hurricanes, but few if any publicly apologized when 2006 failed to yield even a single landfall hurricane; in fact, people still mistakenly use the Katrina/NOLA fiasco to support such statements as, "Extremes are non-linear in their effects." The dearth of hurricane landfalls in 2006 alone doesn't disprove AGW any more than 2005 proved it, but there should be little doubt as to which side gets the most press. They trumpet loudly when the data fits their theory, but fail to sound retreat when they don't.
Second, my skepticism extends not only to the abuse of the science models, whose expected outcome keeps becoming less in line with the extremists and alarmists each time they are updated, but to the supposed implications. Those include the assumption that if global warming is a fact, that (1) man must be responsible, (2) it must be reversed, and (3) only central planning can reverse it. I am unsure about the first of those claims, but I think it is probably true. Still, it concerns me that there have been drastic variations in the past that cannot be explained with human behavior.
The second is worth some examination. The idea that the warming must be stopped or reversed is predicated on two assumptions: that the ideal temperature is that which existed in the past, and that stopping or reversing is going to be less costly than adapting. There are lots of reasons to question which climate is best.
- More people die due to extreme weather events in the winter than in the summer.
- The recent Stern Review notes that crops will do better under a mildly warmer climate, though much worse under a substantially warmer climate. That suggests that the best climate may be slightly warmer.
- Plants grow larger in CO2-rich environments. Because the amount of nitrogen does not increase, all things remaining equal, they are no more nutritious (in fact, pound for pound they are less nutritious), but all things do not remain equal. Those plants require less water because of decreased transpiration, and since it is frequently water rather than fertilizer that is a limiting factor, this means crop yields may go up in the future. I note, for example, that dry-land cotton crops yield about 300-500 pounds/acre, whereas the same plants yield 500-800 pounds/acre when irrigated.
- As noted in Part I (linked at the top), CO2-driven warming means specifically warmer nights and winters. That means longer growing seasons with fewer crop freezes in the spring and fall. It also opens up more viable cropland to the North and at higher elevations. In fact, Greenland is seeing increased agriculture and decreased reliance on hunting, and Germany is seeing later eiswein harvests while other grapes are moving farther north and uphill, resulting in the increased consumption of red wines grown locally; that strikes me as a neutral to positive change, not a change for the worse.
- The climate has - all by itself, without human intervention - fallen into an Ice Age in the past and will likely do so in the future. Crop yield will definitely plummet when that happens. Should we do something to forestall it?
I have no more faith in the government solving this problem than in solving poverty. The free market (or what there was of it) was arguably doing a better job of the latter prior to Johnson's Great Society (both income disparity and income-based poverty rates were falling until around 1968, and have been flat or increasing since then), and if anyone is going to find viable alternatives to carbon-based energy, it is going to be lots of scientists acting independently, i.e. not the government. If there is one thing the government can do, it's to stop supporting the existing paradigm through subsidy and regulation.
In fact, that is the lesson that we should be taking: the government is a contributor to the current situation, and there is bipartisan guilt, so why should we trust the government to remain neutral in the "new" era? Reducing our contribution to CO2 buildup is going to require changes in technology and product mix on the supply side, customer values on the demand side, and changes in social, political, and economic structures. There is no "right" answer to this, and planning arguably only works well when an answer is already known when all that remains is getting there from here. Here, Hayek is correct.
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