June 12, 2002
From the desk of Jane Galt:It seems like every time
It seems like every time I post anything these days, whether it be my opinion that Bush's popularity ratings are holding up better than I would have expected, or a wee bit o' number crunching on global warming, I get someone emailing to say "but that's not peer reviewed data" or "where are the studies you used to get that result?". Okay, I don't know how I gave people the impression that I sit around with my supercomputer, feeding various analyses into it and then reporting the results with a modicum of trenchant wit, but my analytical equipment consists of Excel (and I don't even know how to use most of Excel's statistical functions; I'm a Minitab gal) and whatever's on the internet. Nothing I write here is going to be published in the Journal of Galt, or what have you. For one thing, I have a job, which does not leave me the weeks and weeks I would need to construct a rigorously controlled model for every single thing I say.
So let me state, before I start, that this is my opinion.
Ted Barlow, who is always food for thought, had an interesting debate raging about global warming, and since I addressed the topic myself, I thought I'd weigh in.
He made a wonderful comment:
For example, many on the left are motivated by the wish for full racial equality. This is well and good; the civil rights movement is one of the most beautiful stories of the 20th century, and racial minorities still need vocal advocates at least as much as, say, Microsoft. But too many people on the left assume that their political opponents must, by definition, feel the opposite way about racial equality. Too many assume that "right-wing" means "racist". It's not true. It's an insulting argument that does a huge disservice to racial issues. Furthermore, it's one of the most effective ways to make conservatives stop listening to liberal arguments. If I was being called a racist, I would stop listening, too.
But then undercuts it:
Similarly, I keep coming across the assumption from bloggers on the right that "environmentalism" is just anti-capitalism by other means. People who want cars to be more fuel-efficient, or want clean air or water, or don't want the tops of mountains dumped into rivers- i.e., the large majority of Americans- aren't motivated by the wish to live longer lives with fewer environmental toxins, or by a love of nature, or by the wish to forestall disaster by delaying the exhaustion of irreplaceable natural resources. Rather, they must be motivated by a loathing of capitalism, progress, and success. What else could it be?
Et tu, Ted? People who disbelieve global warming or other environmental disaster predictions belong to that majority of Americans who do not want polluted water, ravaged landscapes, or the earth's mean temperature increased above the boiling point of water. No matter how much it may feel like it, neither side has staked out the "against" position in the "total destruction of life as we know it" debate. Everyone is for the environment, in abstract, just as everyone is for mother love and puppies. It's not a question of whether or not most Americans are against those things, but of what they are willing to pay to avoid them.
I think the biggest problem is the knowlege gap on both sides. We all like information that confirms ideas we already have; we seek it out. We underweight disconfirming information. Now, I know I may not have a ton of new readers, but anyone who did not read my piece on global warming, answer a few questions for me. Jot the answers down on a piece of paper, to avoid the temptation to fudge:
How much do you think Kyoto would cost, as a percentage of GDP?
How much do you think Kyoto would reduce global warming, in degrees (i.e. 1 degree, 2 degrees, 3.5 degrees, etc.)?
How much do you think Kyoto would reduce global warming, as a percentage of total warming? (i.e. 1%, 10%, 100%)?
Are you for or against Kyoto?
If you are for Kyoto, are you against even stronger measures than Kyoto?
How much of your personal income would you, personally, be willing to give up to stop global warming?
By what percentage do you think national income would have to be reduced to stop global warming?
You can check out the answers here. Do it before you read any further.
Funny, huh? I'll bet you that most of you who are supporters of the "Global warming is real and dangerous" side of the debate drastically underestimated the cost of reducing emissions, and overestimated how much Kyoto would do to reduce global warming. And I'll bet equally that most of you who are against the "Global warming is real and dangerous" side of the debate overestimated the costs of reducing emissions, and underestimated what Kyoto would do. C'mon, admit it. There's no one here but us chickens. A little biased, right? That's okay. We're all a little biased. The problem is that we all carry around these beliefs we've acquired and nurtured, and very seldom stop to do a quick reality check on them. It makes it a little hard to get a dialogue going.
My personal take on what is going on in the environmental argument (WARNING: NON PEER-REVIEWED OPINION BACKED UP BY NO STATISTICAL ANALYSIS) is that one side has seized on one set of costs, while the other side has seized on a different set of costs, and both are busily screaming about their set of costs while ignoring what the other side has to say.
GW believer groups have some science to back up the conclusion that there is anthropogenic global warming. They hurt their scientific credibility, however, because they seem to believe every single report put out by a climatologist, no matter how tenuous its conclusions.
GW non-believer groups have considerable data to back up the conclusion that halting anthropogenic global warming would be disastrously costly. They hurt their scientific credibility, however, by resisting comparison with the costs of global warming.
GW believers ignore or minimize the costs associated with reducing global warming, displaying a monolithic ignorance of economics or engineering. They either assume that it will be possible to maintain something close to our standard of living while drastically cutting our energy usage, or they are a member of the small minority who thinks it would be fun to re-enact Little House on the Prairie, for real. (But we won't deal with the latter group here, they're not the majority, and most of them get over it when the buzz wears off). The assumption that we can cut our energy use but maintain our economy is either based on ignorance of the engineering involved, or ignorance of the economics. The latter group doesn't understand that the largest part of GDP is composed of energy-intensive products, and that the products that are most vital, such as air conditioning, heating, food production, and transportation of goods, are also the most energy intensive. Most of the scientists pushing for radical changes fall into this group; they imagine running an industrial economy is only slightly more complicated than running the Physics department.
The former group doesn't understand the physical limitations on conservation. They either think that renewables are viable, because they don't realize the physical requirements of renewables (where are you going to put the solar panels for New York?), the storage issues (you can't produce base-load electricity with a variable power source, such as wind or solar), the transmission issues (electricity doesn't travel well), or the chemical properties (fuel cells take more energy to produce the hydrogen for the fuel cells than they give off in your car or house). Or they do not understand the limits to efficiency presented by the physical properties of heat engines. They think, for example, that auto fuel efficiency is going to increase on a trendline, like this:
(Note: I have no idea what actual average efficiency looks like. This is a made up graph. For illustration purposes only.)
Which is not true. Engine efficiency has physical limits, set by the laws of thermodynamics and the properties of the metal, of about 30% for an internal combustion engine. Easier, bigger efficiency increases are made earlier. So efficiency increases asymptotically to the theoretical limits, like this:
Now, when GW believers say things that the engineering or economics savvy know aren't true, like "minor increases in engine efficiency can take care of a large part of our emissions problem", those who are cost-aware get hopping mad and decide that the people on the other side are idiots. Since they, being cost aware, would already like very much for GW to go away, they seek out information that confirms their beliefs, and discount information that doesn't. So when a lone study appears to cast doubt on the weight of global warming evidence, they believe the study. They make arguments about the magnitude of anthropogenic v. non-anthropogenic warming that they would never dare to make in a budget meeting. Saying that the largest part of the earth's temperature comes from the sun, and therefore we shouldn't do something about the 5% that won't, no matter how costly that 5% might be, is like arguing that since you can't do anything about 95% of your fixed costs, there's no reason to bother lowering the 5% that's within your control. Or they simply choose to disbelieve the science, even though they have little ability to evaluate it on scientific terms.
When GW believers hear non-believers make these sorts of arguments, they decide that everyone on the other side is an irrational idiot. They therefore dismiss everything the other side says about the potential costs as so much carping from People Who Don't Care About Our Planet and Our Future, even though they almost never have the ability to evaluate the arguments on economic or engineering terms. Since they are already predisposed to believe in global warming, they don't examine disconfirming evidence from their own side, while ignoring the weight of economic evidence from the other side in favor of lone, non-peer reviewed studies that don't pass even elementary common sense tests. (Study shows that environmental regulations actually increase GDP because of all the new jobs created in environmental cleanup industries!)
This, of course, makes the other side hopping mad, and the entire cycle begins anew. Is it any wonder that the two sides are talking past eachother?
Not that closing the information gap means we'll all agree on exactly what we should do. Part of this is a value judgement: do you value pristine streams a couple thousand miles away more highly than your own creature comforts? But it's certainly a start. And it starts with looking at the good evidence from both sides. If you're single sourcing your data from either Pro- or Anti- GW people, you're getting a skewed picture. And reading a single article in National Review which you hurl across the room because it's author is so obviously wrong about GW does not count as broadening your knowlege.
A value gap we can deal with -- we hammer out such compromises all the time. But the information gap is fatal to a sensible solution.
Posted by Jane Galt at June 12, 2002 06:29 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links