25 Inconvenient Truths for Gore?
Ronald Bailey | July 6, 2006, 10:40am
Six weeks after its release, Al Gore's global warming horror movie, An Inconvenient Truth, has grossed more than $12 million at the box office. In my review of the movie, I pointed to a number of exaggerations made by Gore, but agreed with him that the scientific case for man-made global warming is solid.
The accompanying book of the same title briefly hit the top spot on the New York Times list of paperback non-fiction bestsellers, but has now dropped to the number 2 slot. For the delectation of Reason Online readers, I want to bring to your attention Competitive Enterprise Institute senior fellow Iain Murray's interesting and highly critical review of the Gore book over at National Review Online. (I would have done so earlier, but I was away on vacation and beyond the reach of the internet.)
As I have previously disclosed (see also my profile at Exxonsecrets): I was the 1993 Warren Brookes Fellow in Environmental Journalism at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and I have been the editor of three CEI volumes on environmental policy and science. I also dine and go drinking with CEI staff members from time to time and we usually split the check.
Further Disclosure: Whoops. I forgot to mention that I own a small amount of ExxonMobil stock and that some of my West Virginia relatives were coal miners.
grylliade | July 6, 2006, 3:50pm | #
Ron, really. People like us need to STFU on global warming for a bit. We were wrong. And we were wrong for the worst reason: because we didn't want it to be true. That counsels humility. It DOESN'T counsel recycling the fallback spin of shills.
You definitely have a point. The problem is that shutting up on global warming leaves the field to those that were right about global warming, but are wrong about the solutions. How do I know? Well, I don't. I might be proven to be wrong; maybe the only solution
will be massive cuts in carbon emissions and a rapid transition to alternative fuels. But I don't think that, because I was wrong about global warming, I should shut up about the whole subject. Indeed, a willingness to admit when you were wrong is the hallmark of a
good scientist, in my book.
And there are still problems with the narrative of completely anthropogenic climate change. It's possible, even likely, that we're seeing a combination of natural warming and artificial warming. Either one might be the dominant factor. There's evidence that both Mars and Jupiter have undergone a warming trend in climate in the last decade; Mars' ice caps, frozen out of its atmosphere, have almost disappeared (or maybe it's just one cap that has; I can't recall at the moment). Temperatures in the world at the moment are not historically astronomical; as best as I can tell, the world was as warm or warmer during the Medieval Warm Period. Which is one problem with statements like "2005 was the warmest year on record"; our records only go back a century and a half, and began when the Earth was just coming out of the Little Ice Age. But when your average person hears "warmest year on record," they don't think that way; they hear, "It's never been hotter on Earth." Hell, even
rapid climate change might not be that rare in Earth's history; there's some evidence that the temperature of the planet dropped sharply over the course of a decade at the beginning of the Younger Dryas, and that was only thirteen thousand years ago or so (and the evidence doesn't even come from corporate shills!).
So I don't think that deniers of global warming need to shut up. We need to realize that we were wrong, and should
definitely be more skeptical of sources that tell us what we want to hear (though that's good advice for anyone, in any situation). We need to be more aware of our own biases, and be prepared to admit to being wrong again if proven wrong. And I, and probably others, need to learn to like the taste of humble pie. But if you think someone's science is wrong, or incomplete, then it needs to be questioned, whether or not you were wrong before.
grylliade | July 6, 2006, 6:44pm | #
I do not accept his bona fides, and offered Bailey's total absence of remorse as evidence.
I don't follow your reasoning there. He isn't sorry, so he must have been malicious? Maybe he doesn't think that what global warming is happening (and will happen) is catastrophic, so being wrong is nothing to apologize for. Or maybe you're right. Maybe he
knew all along that global warming is happening, and with malice aforethought decided to screw everyone in the world over to make a buck. In that case, you're right, he would have something to apologize for. I'm not Ron Bailey; maybe that's what actually happened. But I doubt it.
The evidence has been strong enough to convince the overwhelming majority of the world's climate scientists that human activity was inducing global warming for a decade before Bailey decided to follow the Luntz memo's advice.
A minority of one can be right. Scientific truth has little to do with what most scientists believe. It's what the evidence shows. Those scientists may have been wrong, though in the event they turned out to be right. What you're saying is that deviance from the party line is thought crime, as far as I can tell. There's no room for anyone playing devil's advocate? The science is not as cut and dried as you seem to think it is. Climatology is very, very complex, and there's a lot of room for disagreement. Legitimate, honest disagreement.
Do you think that having this bias towards environmental issues has helped or harmed your ability to draw good conclusions about global warming?
Helped, overall. It may mean that I take longer to convince of dire predictions, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, especially when we're talking about policy prescriptions that will cost tens of trillions of dollars to implement. Look, I'm not saying that all environmentalism is religion, just that, like Marxism, it shows many earmarks of it. That means that when an environmental activist predicts dire consequences, I expect somewhat bad consequences, or maybe looking only at the costs of an action and ignoring the benefits. Even at my most skeptical, I thought it was possible that global warming was happening, though it was not proven; I just don't believe the predictions of apocalypse (nor do I now). Instead of catastrophic upheavals of society over the next century, I expect some difficulties, most of which can be overcome. So yeah, I'm biased against environmentalism. And I probably don't correct for it as much as I should. But that doesn't mean I don't correct for it.
thoreau | July 6, 2006, 8:34pm | #
Ron-
I would agree that we all need to have our assumptions, or at least estimates of relative probabilities, that we use to evaluate new claims. But when talking about scientific claims, those assumptions are of a somewhat different character than ideology in a political or social context. Your example of being skeptical about price controls isn't really a matter of ideology, it's more a matter of well-established fact that price controls don't work. To the extent that one regards economics as a science, the laws of supply and demand can be taken as a good starting point for evaluating claims, just as I can take Maxwell's theory of electromagnetic waves as a starting point for my work in optics. (Of course, a superficial application of the laws of supply and demand might lead to erroneous conclusions, just as a superficial application of Maxwell's theory might rule out quite a few recent developments in optics.)
Maybe energy wasn't the best example. My concerns boil down to the way that scientific claims are sometimes treated in a manner that would be more appropriate for policy claims. Some scientific claims might deserve more skepticism than others (depending on the plausibility in light of what we know in advance, if one takes a Bayesian view), but the social implications should have no bearing on how much skepticism a scientific claim receives.
OTOH, how much skepticism a policy claim should receive depends on whether the claim proposes to expand or restrict liberty, for all of the usual reasons: Coercion, free will, consent, yadda yadda.
Anyway, to elaborate on my concerns:
Consider two scientific claims: "Molecule A causes cancer" vs. "Molecule B cures cancer." Both of these should be treated in the same manner (assuming that we have little prior knowledge of either molecule). These statements can (at least in theory) be evaluated with evidence, and both should be approached with the same degree of skepticism going into the investigation.
OTOH, consider two policy claims: "Molecule A should be banned" vs. "Molecule B should be freely available." There are perfectly good reasons to subject those two proposals to very different standards of proof. But that shouldn't change the way that we evaluate claims regarding the efficacy of molecule B or the danger of molecule A.
Finally, I don't have a favorite alternative fuel researcher. If I do find one I'll let you know. I have a few technologies that I'm cautiously optimistic about, but no favorite researcher.
buendia | July 7, 2006, 1:41am | #
"Which is a tragedy itself, because we've wasted at least a decade, during which the problem has only become greater and more intractable. You'll understand if I harbor some ill feelings towards those who used dishonesty and misdirection to waste those ten years."
This is what's pissing Joe off so much not really the debate over warming itself. Joe and his *ilk* of planners (hey, not tarring anyone, he's a professional planner) believe that when a natural or man made or social problem occurs 'we' need to do something about it. If Joe and like-minded techocrats were to lose their romance with technocracy and instead do some research in market proposals and other bottom up approaches to problems he and they wouldn't be so pissed off, as they would have evidence then that human ingenuity and bottom up approaches offer the best hope for any sort of problem - at least most of the time. But if someone usually leans towards political decision making as the first tool to reach for he is naturally going to be upset when others aren't jumping off that ship with him. The statist sincerely believes he can engineer the decisions of millions of displaced actors and make the world better. And when I said 'left leaning groups' before I was wrong to use this label. 'Statist' is probably preferable as this also applies to George Bush and his goons who think they can remake Islamic civilization from the top down. And btw, I was just as skeptical (actually more so) of the WMD theory, and Bushites stated reasons for invasion, as I was of global warming.
Other points: it's a good point that one shouldn't confuse environmentalist alarmist groups with the scientists working on climatology but then to assume that these are completely distinct groups is also not completely accurate. I suspect they intersect in something like a Venn diagram analogy.
Also to assume that scientists don't have political connections (does this also imply no political bias? That's an even more extreme and naive position) is a little naive. This is not to suggest that scientists are incapable of objectivity. No, not that. But at the same time, they are not robots, lacking a moral and political bias like the rest of us. Or are Jennifer and Joe suggesting that it is only right wing scientists who are biased?
A few other points need to be clarified. There's the data, then there's the interpretation of the data (which scientists often don't agree on) then there's policies that are recommended from that. Scientists are who we look to for the first two but their opinions are not so relevant for the latter. Here we should turn to economists.
Joe keeps demanding Bailey repent. But
Bailey has admitted he was wrong on the data. So he didn't come around as soon as Joe would like. Joe, do you hold these same sorts of standards of purity and saintly like virtue for the people on the other side of the spectrum? Per ejemple, Lomborg has demonstrated strong evidence for his positions yet not only has he been attacked, he's been screamed at, had things thrown at him in public, been harassed etc. Have any of them repented for this? Admitted they were wrong for not only their positions but their abusive behavior? Much much worse than saying 'there's conflicting evidence in the data so I'm skeptical of warming and especially of the proposals put forth by technocrats' (followed by, 'okay, I was wrong about the data'). That's a position of virtue, especially relevant to the way your side has reacted to Lomborg. Also, what are you doing to stop global warming? Have you given up driving? Are you still flying anywhere? Do you use any vehicles, including busses to get to where you want to go? Do you 'repent' everytime you do? You should, according to your way of thinking, as you're part of the problem. And have you ever been wrong on a question of science, economics, or culture that had a relationship to public policy? If so, how did you react when the evidence pointed away from your position? Did you get down on your hands and knees and grovel and beg forgiveness? Did you even admit you were wrong, in a public or private format? Did you 'repent' for this?
Jennifer, if you're not able to distinguish the evidence for warming from the economic policies of what to do about that evidence then it's you who have lost the forest for the trees. And a Creationist never admits he's wrong. So much for your weak, cheap shot, and wise-ass analogies.
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