Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Warming Up to It?
Now that I've said a few dozen words about critical thinking, I'd like to apply them to a current hot topic. No pun intended, because I mean the "global warming" or "climate change" thing.
I posted about the topic once before, but only to say that I thought that the downside of thinking it was a problem and being wrong about that is a lot less than the downside of thinking it isn't a problem and being wrong.
The thing is, the planet has been getting warmer for several hundred years, on average. The truth is that I heard about that fact in the late sixties. The opponents of the idea would stand a better chance of convincing me that the threat is overrated if they hadn't started their argument with a two-year or more tirade about how it wasn't happening. That is simply not true. This planet is getting warmer, on average. And, as it warms, some unpleasant (seemingly) things will happen.
For instance, the ocean levels will rise. In fact, the ocean is deeper than it was fifty years ago, by maybe a foot (I think, but don't quote me on the exact amount.) In any event, this is bad for places like Venice, where they now have portable inflatable items to walk over during the ever more frequent floods. If the average temperature continues to rise, then all of the places Al Gore says will be under water will, in fact, be under water. That is all simple facts.
Now, the hyperbole comes in. The warmth of the planet is tied up with something called the carbon cycle. That is true. The carbon cycle involves carbon being locked up by plants, stored at times deep in the earth in the form of fossil fuel, and also liberated by almost all living things in the form of carbon dioxide gas, which then is used by plants to build more plants, thus locking it up again. We're still on true ground here.
Also true is the fact that we have discovered how to remove the stored carbon from the ground and liberate it as carbon dioxide in a hurry. A motorcar turns a lot of locked-up carbon into carbon dioxide all at once. The fact that more and more people all over the world are using more and more motorcars is not just driving up the cost of locked-up carbon (oil, that is,) it's also producing a lot of extra carbon dioxide. This is true to the extent that present carbon levels in the atmosphere are many times what they have been in the past several million years at least. That's still a fact, Jack.
Here's the uncritical part. In an emotional and Oscar-winning appeal, the movie "An Inconvenient Truth" puts forth the proposition that humans have so much skewed the carbon cycle that we are pretty much screwed, temperature wise. This may be true. As I wrote before, pretending that it is will generate a lot of new jobs and new sources of income as new industries develop to deal with the ramifications. But, in fact, are we screwed because of what we've done to the planet? The critical reading of the situation is, and this is from a scientist, friends, "there is insufficient data to answer that question." Or so a computer in an old, bad Sci-Fi movie might say. We really can't say for sure. That's the truth.
Now, on the other side I read about the "trillions of dollars in cost" taken from "fixed resources" that we don't have in order to basically destroy our civilization and save us from this climate change problem that either doesn't exist or that "we can't do anything about, anyway." There's more emotional baggage in that argument than in Al Gore's movie.
Money is not a "limited resource." Anyone who says it is, is selling something. Money is an abstraction of good will and nothing more. It is always possible to generate more good will. You do a favor for somebody and you generate more good will. That's why economists say that money must keep moving to be effective. Money stuffed in a mattress doesn't pass good will along. In fact, since inflation is a constant companion of any currency, the good will you stuff in the mattress will eventually, so to speak, leak out and disappear. I'm not saying not to save for emergencies, but I am saying that spending money is what keeps the good feelings circulating. That's what FDR meant by his famous line about having to fear nothing but "fear itself." He meant the fear that keeps you locked up at home and not spending money, because that fear stops the economy dead in its tracks.
So, since we can generate more money simply by doing productive things, there is no reason to fear for the "trillions" of dollars it will cost to, as the common phrase has it, "go green." The Federal budget for 2009 is about $2.6 billion US. That's trillions of dollars right there, and that's what they spend. Since even the harshest tax critic will admit that we get to keep more of our money than we give to the IRS, which means that individually Americans spend trillions of dollars a year outside of taxes! So the emotional tirade about all that money is nothing but a smoke screen for somebody who, for whatever reason, resists the idea that we could or should do something about climate change.
As for not being able to do anything about it, that's nothing. Literally. We can't do anything about the weather at all, but we manage to eliminate the worst effects. I live in a place where summers can be brutal, with daytime temperatures as high as 120 degrees Fahrenheit. But I am rarely uncomfortably hot. Nor am I cold during the unexpectedly chilly winters here in Southern Nevada, where it frosts almost every night for a couple of months. If you accept that the negative effects are going to happen whatever we do, then you must also accept the necessity of doing what we can to get along with the worst of the effects. Since the main thing required to overcome the negative effects of climate change are to get to work and build things, it simply requires more good will, which we have in unlimited supply. Not much of a problem.
I used this issue deliberately because of the amount of hyperbole coming from both sides. Both sides are probably wrong at least in some respects. Which doesn't matter, because we have the resources, brains and will to do whatever needs doing no matter what the climate throws at us. That's the great thing about being human. We can adapt, or adapt to, just about anything. And that's the critical truth.
I posted about the topic once before, but only to say that I thought that the downside of thinking it was a problem and being wrong about that is a lot less than the downside of thinking it isn't a problem and being wrong.
The thing is, the planet has been getting warmer for several hundred years, on average. The truth is that I heard about that fact in the late sixties. The opponents of the idea would stand a better chance of convincing me that the threat is overrated if they hadn't started their argument with a two-year or more tirade about how it wasn't happening. That is simply not true. This planet is getting warmer, on average. And, as it warms, some unpleasant (seemingly) things will happen.
For instance, the ocean levels will rise. In fact, the ocean is deeper than it was fifty years ago, by maybe a foot (I think, but don't quote me on the exact amount.) In any event, this is bad for places like Venice, where they now have portable inflatable items to walk over during the ever more frequent floods. If the average temperature continues to rise, then all of the places Al Gore says will be under water will, in fact, be under water. That is all simple facts.
Now, the hyperbole comes in. The warmth of the planet is tied up with something called the carbon cycle. That is true. The carbon cycle involves carbon being locked up by plants, stored at times deep in the earth in the form of fossil fuel, and also liberated by almost all living things in the form of carbon dioxide gas, which then is used by plants to build more plants, thus locking it up again. We're still on true ground here.
Also true is the fact that we have discovered how to remove the stored carbon from the ground and liberate it as carbon dioxide in a hurry. A motorcar turns a lot of locked-up carbon into carbon dioxide all at once. The fact that more and more people all over the world are using more and more motorcars is not just driving up the cost of locked-up carbon (oil, that is,) it's also producing a lot of extra carbon dioxide. This is true to the extent that present carbon levels in the atmosphere are many times what they have been in the past several million years at least. That's still a fact, Jack.
Here's the uncritical part. In an emotional and Oscar-winning appeal, the movie "An Inconvenient Truth" puts forth the proposition that humans have so much skewed the carbon cycle that we are pretty much screwed, temperature wise. This may be true. As I wrote before, pretending that it is will generate a lot of new jobs and new sources of income as new industries develop to deal with the ramifications. But, in fact, are we screwed because of what we've done to the planet? The critical reading of the situation is, and this is from a scientist, friends, "there is insufficient data to answer that question." Or so a computer in an old, bad Sci-Fi movie might say. We really can't say for sure. That's the truth.
Now, on the other side I read about the "trillions of dollars in cost" taken from "fixed resources" that we don't have in order to basically destroy our civilization and save us from this climate change problem that either doesn't exist or that "we can't do anything about, anyway." There's more emotional baggage in that argument than in Al Gore's movie.
Money is not a "limited resource." Anyone who says it is, is selling something. Money is an abstraction of good will and nothing more. It is always possible to generate more good will. You do a favor for somebody and you generate more good will. That's why economists say that money must keep moving to be effective. Money stuffed in a mattress doesn't pass good will along. In fact, since inflation is a constant companion of any currency, the good will you stuff in the mattress will eventually, so to speak, leak out and disappear. I'm not saying not to save for emergencies, but I am saying that spending money is what keeps the good feelings circulating. That's what FDR meant by his famous line about having to fear nothing but "fear itself." He meant the fear that keeps you locked up at home and not spending money, because that fear stops the economy dead in its tracks.
So, since we can generate more money simply by doing productive things, there is no reason to fear for the "trillions" of dollars it will cost to, as the common phrase has it, "go green." The Federal budget for 2009 is about $2.6 billion US. That's trillions of dollars right there, and that's what they spend. Since even the harshest tax critic will admit that we get to keep more of our money than we give to the IRS, which means that individually Americans spend trillions of dollars a year outside of taxes! So the emotional tirade about all that money is nothing but a smoke screen for somebody who, for whatever reason, resists the idea that we could or should do something about climate change.
As for not being able to do anything about it, that's nothing. Literally. We can't do anything about the weather at all, but we manage to eliminate the worst effects. I live in a place where summers can be brutal, with daytime temperatures as high as 120 degrees Fahrenheit. But I am rarely uncomfortably hot. Nor am I cold during the unexpectedly chilly winters here in Southern Nevada, where it frosts almost every night for a couple of months. If you accept that the negative effects are going to happen whatever we do, then you must also accept the necessity of doing what we can to get along with the worst of the effects. Since the main thing required to overcome the negative effects of climate change are to get to work and build things, it simply requires more good will, which we have in unlimited supply. Not much of a problem.
I used this issue deliberately because of the amount of hyperbole coming from both sides. Both sides are probably wrong at least in some respects. Which doesn't matter, because we have the resources, brains and will to do whatever needs doing no matter what the climate throws at us. That's the great thing about being human. We can adapt, or adapt to, just about anything. And that's the critical truth.
Labels: Politics, Social Commentary
