“Global Warming” Is A Political Issue
June 1, 2011 8 Comments
It seems obvious and redundant to state that such a hot-button issue as “global warming” is a political issue, but it’s worth reminding oneself how few people actually take that fact to heart. If you listen to one side of the debate, “global warming” is purely a scientific question. By this reckoning, once you get all The Scientists to state their Consensus on the subject, you’re done, there’s nothing left to discuss. The other side, flummoxed, is then left scrambling to dispute or cast doubt on or debunk The Scientists, tacitly conceding the (incorrect) notion that this is purely a scientific issue. But political issues are not purely scientific issues.
And make no mistake, “global warming” – meaning, the theory that human greenhouse gas emissions will make the Earth measurably warmer, and that something needs to be collectively done about that – is a political issue.
Here for reference is my framework for thinking about “global warming”. Spurred by an email exchange with a friend, I feel the urge to expand on Question 4 of that post: Will this future [=our future climate, if we don't consciously address GW] weather be bad?
Whether the earth has gotten warmer? That’s a scientific question – which is to say, it is in principle answerable by scientific means (it doesn’t mean we necessarily know that answer).
Whether it will continue to get warmer if X, Y, and Z aren’t or are done? That’s a scientific question.
What the tangible effects of getting warmer will be on this, that, and the other thing? Scientific questions.
Whether those effects, overall, would be “bad”: not a scientific question.
What is “bad” for some is not as bad, or even good, for others. More deeply, “bad” implies values. Values can conflict. And value conflicts are not resolvable by science.
A person in Minnesota, for example, might not mind a little global warming. They might reckon it wouldn’t be as bad for them, and they’re probably right about that. You might think they’re wrong, or being short-sighted, or whatever, but they not you are best positioned to determine what they value, and on what time horizon. Notice that such a value judgment is not answerable by scientific means. That is, no Scientists can, using Science, prove the Minnesotan “wrong” to place little value preventing GW. It’s just not that kind of issue. Instead, the way we resolve such issues is via politics, and at the ballot box.
Thus, when voters go to the polls and vote against anti-GW policies or politicians who espouse them, they are expressing a perfectly valid value judgment, and their opinions ought to be weighted equally with those who favor anti-GW policies. There is no “scientific” basis for calling them wrong, or dumb. Because this is a political issue not a scientific one.
But, the GW believer retorts, New Orleans will be underwater in like 200 years! That’s terrible! And indeed it would be. But it would be more terrible for 2211 New Orleanians than for 2011 Minnesotans. How much should 2011 Minnesotans be forced to pay to possibly prevent this contingency that future New Orleanians, we presume on the assumption that New Orleans is still there at that time, would not like? Whatever the answer is, it is (a) not infinite and (b) not a Scientific answer. Science can inform the answer but ultimately must remain silent on the political issue.
One might say “but we can count the cost and show that even to the Minnesotan the cost of GW is X, whereas the cost of prevention is only Y”. Such methods admirably attempt to convert this sort of question into something answerable by Science (or at least Economics). However, any reckoning of the “cost” to this or that person of something like Global Warming inevitably involves assigning weights, costs, penalties, or other sorts of scores to different climate outcomes, at different times, using different discount factors. Some of the “costs” one might count – the cost of rebuilding a building, say – could conceivably be boiled down to something more or less objective. But not all of them can be, in any complete sense, so ultimately you have to make up some point values to create your “cost function”. And once you’ve done that, your “cost function” inevitably embodies a set of value judgments, if only implicitly. Such methods don’t turn political questions into scientific ones – how could they? All they do is hide the political component inside mathematical formulas.
When used by ideologues to quash debate, such appeals to Science represent attempts to deny that “global warming” is a political issue. “Science” becomes merely a tool invoked to deny that honest, genuine, informed disagreement on the subject can possibly exist. This sort of intellectual bullying has no place in a free, democratic society.
To see this however requires appreciating – truly understanding – that “global warming” is a political issue. If you understood the above, then you understand that very few people do.
All well and good and methodically explained but unfortunately there’s a typo!
>When used by ideologues to quash debate
I think you mean squish debate.
Debates are usually squished these days, whereas once they were quashed or squashed.
Of course, some maintain it depends on the usage (conjugation?) so it’s quashed when set A does it to set B and squished when B does it to A.
It’s important to spell these things correctly if you want your arguments to be taken seriously.
Good point and duly noted. Maeya colpah.
From Gretchen Morgenson’s book Reckless Endangerment quoted on Steve Sailer’s blog:
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2011/06/reckless-endangerment.html
One bank lobbyist was interested in hiring academics to write papers that might take a different point of view on housing issues. But most of the experts in the area had been co-opted by Fannie Mae. “I tried to find academics that would do research on these issues and Fannie had bought off all the academics in housing,” the lobbyist said. “I had people say to me are you going to give me stipends for the next 20 years like Fannie will?”
The answer was no. The discussion was over.
Don’t worry: the same principle doesn’t apply to research into climate change.
I know you were making the different point that engineering climate is inherently political in that it will make some people better off and others worse off while some other people pay the costs (some of which benefit and some of which are harmed) but I think it’s quite relevant to note that all scientific institutions are completely corrupt when it comes to what studies can be done and what conclusions can be reached and that the only important source of corruption is government and politically connected businesses. After all, if the oil companies commissioned a study that proved climate absolutely could not be caused by human activity, who would fund the next study whereas if you find that there’s a problem that will require a giant bureaucracy to manage you get lifetime employment through grants from that bureaucracy.
The two points go together, of course. Fields are far more likely to be corrupted in this way when their output relates to a political issue. I doubt there is such a climate of orthodoxy involved in getting government grants to write papers on, say, algebraic topology or microchip etching. (Though who knows, I may be opening the door to pure mathematicians and chemical engineers to tell me how very wrong I am!
)
But the charge that climate science is corrupted by its funding is a relatively well-known one (whether one disagrees with that charge or not). And the pro-GW faction always has the fallback of saying, ‘Well, the science is right anyway‘. Moreover, the idea that the entire field is uniformly corrupt, in forming its Consensus, sounds a bit strong and unlikely – conspiracy theory-ish – to the average person. And rightly so, I believe. One scientist? A handful? Sure. All of them..?
So my focus here was to point out that in a very real sense it doesn’t matter whether The Science Is Right in the first place. The Science could be 100% ‘right’ in the consensus predictions but this in no way ‘proves’, nor can it prove even in principle, that my hypothetical Minnesotan should be taxed more, pay more for gasoline, drive less, live in a smaller place, or whatever it is. He can (and should) certainly be informed by The Science, but it’s still up to him to weigh the costs and benefits, and decide what he values, just like everyone else.
This is hard to see though if one thinks of GW as purely a Scientific Issue, because that seems to leave no dimension for values and competing interests to enter the picture. best,
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