Are the Dangers of Climate Change Exaggerated?
Frequent commenter and all-around good guy Tim Kingston just sent me this wonderful article in Wired Magazine defending the oft-heard concept that modern society has greatly exaggerated the dangers of rising population, diminishing resources, climate change, etc. Obviously, I hope the author is correct. But I notice that most of his argument goes essentially like this: “All the people who predicted disaster in the past were wrong; therefore those who currently predict disaster will be wrong as well.” That reasoning, of course, is specious.
Even George Will, the ultra-conservative journalist and climate change denier from hell, got it right when he told an audience at this year’s class reunion at Trinity College, “The future always looks like the past — right up to the point that it looks different.”
It’s impossible to know for certain whether the dangers of climate change are exaggerated. It’s also impossible to know for certain whether the dangers of climate change are understated. Either could be true. I’d rather err on the side that results in the least risk to civilization.
It’s far more probable that the dangers are under-estimated by the actual models and the scientific community. The scientific community is extremely conservative (in the actual sense, not the BS political propaganda sense), and will not take chances on saying anything that isn’t near certain… so they hedge and are careful with their projections.
The 2007 IPCC report estimated that the arctic ice cap might melt away entirely by 2100. Now it looks probable that we’ll see an ice-free arctic for a couple of days in the summer by 2020. If we’re making policy, it’s probably better to assume understatement rather than overstatement.