Climate Warming Scepticism Unsupported
October 30, 2011 at 12:03PM An SF Gate article begins with, "A prominent physicist and skeptic of global warming spent two years trying to find out if mainstream climate scientists were wrong. In the end, he determined they were right: Temperatures really are rising rapidly."
Although the scientific method triumphs, the dialogue is still based on a misunderstanding of the implications and use of science for public policy decisions. The notion that global warming must be "proved" to some irrefutable level of all-consuming consensus, or that it matters whether the source is natural or human-made, or that it is "too expensive" to do something about are all points that do not have a scientific answer, but a political, policy-based answer, the best of which would reflect humanity's highest intelligence and wisdom, and on probabilities and consequences.
Hopefully, this progress on the science of global warming will help the world's citizens focus on defining the smart response. When many intelligent people examine the issue deeply, one of the conclusions is that the costs of reversal mitigation now are small and inconsequential to the costs of doing nothing and being wrong (earth/human systems collapse).
Many also find that the reversal mitigation path may even be the best path for economic development and international security for not only a warming world, but for an increasingly flat and crowded one as well (see the powerful synthesis by Thomas Friedman, Hot, Flat, and Crowded).
A deeper dive into this arena leads one to the power and potential of creating regenerative economic prosperity by mimicking the economic and engineering design principles of the earth's living systems that have evolved over 3.5+ billion years of evolution. In fact, that was the insight 20 years ago of some of the smartest businesses, communities, and people on the planet, from Dupont, Coca Cola, Interface Corporation, IKEA, Nike, and others to The Natural Step, Paul Hawken, and a variety of regional and municipal ecological initiatives. Inspiring innovations in this emerging integrative arena of strategic sustainability have been expanding since. The Rocky Mountain Institute's recent Reinventing Fire Initiative represents a current culmination of this thinking in a voluntary program that will move the U.S. off fossil fuel by 2050 because it is now cheaper and the best competitive business move.
The real tragedy over the climate denier agenda is not the healthy scepticism upon which science should be based, but the exploitation of society's confusion over the legitimate basis for public policy decisions in light of science, which will always have some element of uncertainty in it. Precious time was diverted from clarifying the legitimate basis for public policy action in this case and identifying the smart response. When the probabilities for devastating consequences are high, but perceived as low, and the costs are relatively inconsequential, and the response is a better business model and would likely be ultimately required in the future anyway, what is the rationale for denial and procrastination? Particularly when the actual probabilities of devastating consequences are extremely high and avoiding them requires instant mass mobilization. What is the down side? To whom? And why are we letting them drive the public response? What exactly is the legitimating basis for that approach to public policy? It certainly is not free-market economics producing maximum social welfare in an world full of imperfect price information, particularly for the information that would be the game-changer in the markets!
It's time to get smart and get going. The data is in. The choices are clear. It can be constructed as a win-win, and any other option is a lose-lose.
