How Certain Are We Of Climate Change?
When a climate change skeptic wrote: Climate models have crucial flaws making them useless, I wrote, “This idea lives on the outer banks of the remotest fringe of science.”
At the end of his explanation, he cautions me in response: It’s very important to keep an open mind.”
Nothing would make me happier than to learn that all this science supporting the AGW (anthropogenic global warming) theory is somehow wrong, and that our civilization is not facing catastrophe. I like to think I have an open mind, though I’m no more expecting news like this than I am to find that the theory of evolution or plate tectonics or germ theory is incorrect.
A couple of notes:
1) Though the abandonment of AGW is extremely unlikely, it’s very possible that any number of new technologies will overwhelm this problem: low-cost renewables and storage, advanced nuclear, even geo-engineering (though I hope it’s not the last).
2) Our current approach to energy is ruining our oceans and causing other environmental disasters.
Insofar as responsible people don’t predicate their policies on miracles, it’s incumbent on all responsible people to get behind actions that mitigate CO2 and other sources of environmental damage. Obviously, the migration away from fossil fuels is one key element of this, but so is the reduction of our civilization’s consumption of red meat.
We can be 99.44% certain that climate change is real. Even if we could be only 20% certain, the consequences would be such that even that degree of certainty would justify taking strong action.
Of course we cannot be certain of the exact magnitude of climate change or what all the effects will be. However, there are positive feedback loops that suggest that the estimated degree of global warming may be too low.
Sometimes it is necessary to make decisions even when the available information is somewhat less than certain.
Exactly right.
It intrigues me what threats people react too and which ones they ignore. I remember reading a quote. Science says climate change is here. We must act now. People do nothing. Science then says Ebola is not a threat and people panic.
Perhaps we acknowledge Ebola because we have no personal responsibility to act. Whereas with CC everyone must accept some level of personal responsibility.
We fear Isis and Ebola but rarely think how even those threats were complicated by climate.
Some people are afraid of flying because they think it is too dangerous. They read about airplane hijackings and bombs and become very frightened. Many of these same people have no fear of traveling by car even though it has been shown to be many times more dangerous.
It is common not to evaluate risks rationally.
Wow, this is excellent. Let me write something about it…..
No doubt you could write plenty about how people perceive and react to risk. Also, about how they react to death.
How people die considerably influences how they react to it. For example, far fewer people died at the World Trade Center than die annually in vehicle accidents, yet far less is done to prevent vehicle deaths than is done to enhance airport security.
Please see: http://www.2greenenergy.com/2016/03/08/why-so-little-reaction-in-response-to-climate-change/