Not to mention available jobs (in the academy in particular) following graduation.
When I was an undergrad I knew a married couple both getting their PhDs at the same time. The wife had six job offers. The husband had zero (at the time; he might've had more later, after we lost contact). As far as I could tell they were about equally capable.
One anecdote does not a theory prove, but I'll bet this happens a lot.
The problem with this is that the Precautionary Principle as normally stated admits no cost/benefit analysis. If effect X causes a cost of Y, the PP would normally state that it should be mitigated if Y exceeds some threshold. But X might also have a benefit of Z which already mitigates Y, or even exceeds it.
I'm not suggesting that public policy be made on strict utilitarian principles, btw. Rather, each case is separate. Costs and benefits can't always be netted together. (Suppose a cost of $1 million brings the benefit of the avoidance of 1 death? Suppose the cost is $1 billion? Is the net cost/benefit positive or negative? We have no - and should have no - dollar/life conversion ratio than answers this question neatly.)
Here's an example of the PP gone awry: DDT. In developed nations, DDT is considered an environmental threat. It's known to build up in organisms higher up in the food chain, it's a human toxin, etc. And - importantly - the benefits from using it aren't all that great: we have other anti-mosquito toxins, and we don't have endemic malaria or other mosquito-borne illnesses anyway.
But there are African countries where this is not the case. The costs are still there, and they are grave. But the cost of not using DDT is arguably worse: they can't afford more expensive toxins, and they have serious disease problems. Hundreds of thousands of malaria deaths a year might be avoided through the use of DDT. I don't necessarily argue that it should be used - I'll leave that for another topic - but debate on the subject should not be curtailed by the PP. There should be debate on whether the environmental, and human, damage caused by DDT spraying is offset by the benefits of reduced disease.
One last little thing: I've read a couple of times that the alternative to expensive mitigation today might be "wiping out the entire human race". But come on, this isn't serious. Even in "The Day After Tomorrow" (which is obviously an implausibly disastrous, fictitious scenario) the equatorial regions were still livable. Is there any plausible scenario involving climate change where the entire human race is wiped out? This is the sort of hyperbole that hurts your side of this debate. If you want to use a bad scenario, use something plausible, like: Billions of people, mostly in developing countries, die from disease, starvation and rising sea levels. That's plenty bad enough, and at least it's possible.
However, stating that we need major CO2 emissions reduction is well within their competence. So they're stating that.
No, it isn't. It's within their competence to say that to reduce temperature by X degrees requires Y. That's doesn't mean we need Y, although they might think so. (And I'm eliding here a point about the degree to which they can draw even the direct relationship between X and Y - I don't think it's as exact as you seem to think.)
Same deal with virologists. Sure, we need them to tell us that we need X doses of flu vaccine to protect against the possibility of Y. But whether we think Y is a serious enough threat to be worth buying those X doses is not their call.
Let me clarify: almost all climate scientists think that we need major economic measures _yesterday_.
I don't think that's true, but even if it is, they're not in a position to make that call, are they? They're not economists, for one thing, and while they may be expert in climatology, they are not expert in macroeconomics. A climatologist can tell us, "If you want to avert X degrees of warming, you'll need to reduce CO2 emissions by Y." But - as experts - they cannot make the call of how much X degrees of warming is likely to cost, how much a reduction of CO2 emissions by Y is likely to cost, or what trade-off should be made between those extremes.
Finally, while climatologists have just the same vote that I do for making these trade-offs in a democratic society, they don't have more votes than I do. Ultimately, it's up to voters to decide where the trade-offs should lie. The alternative is basically global tyranny*, which I (for one) consider a cure worse than the disease.
* I'm not even being hyperbolic here. The scale of measures being proposed is massive and there would be a huge incentive to cheat. Therefore, the only way to enforce these measures would be to subjugate every nation to a global power capable of enforcement.
I'm not sure I should respond reasonably to someone who immediately calls me an idiot, but let's try. First of all, the post to which I was responding itself posited that the cost would be a trillion dollars, and the GP used the same cost. I was merely adhering to the standard applied by those posts.
Second, you assert that the cost will be "much, much higher" without any data. Let's look at environment protection in history; the Clean Air Act might be a good example. Suppose we had required 2009 emission standards back when Ford was producing the Model T. Do you think that car would've been economically viable using turn-of-the-century technology? No way - would've been much too expensive, or lacked power, or had some other major flaw. Later, as technology improved, we developed catalytic converters, fuel injection systems, etc., and brought air pollution from cars way down for much less cost. Furthermore, air quality improved drastically once emissions standards rose. The cost of improving air quality via auto emissions controls was thus dramatically lowered by waiting than by insisting on it from the get-go.
Suppose in thirty years we develop a cheap carbon-sequestration technique that allows us to completely control global ppCO2? Or we develop an cheap method of cooling the atmosphere, maybe some variant on this notion of spraying seawater into the air? That would pretty dramatically change your cost assumptions, wouldn't it?
One last point: while I'm well aware that the "no-tech-improvements" cost of doing nothing now would probably be many trillions (not just $1T), you also have to admit that the proposals now under consideration don't cost just $1T right now and then nothing else later. Rather, they would cost trillions per year, forevermore. That's pretty expensive. It might be perfectly rational to wait 50 years and spend $100T at that time instead (especially since we might develop technology that requires us to spend much less).
These are all debates worth having. What pisses me off more than anything else is when people want to curtail debate by calling other people idiots or saying that these issues are all settled. They aren't.
You should work on your straw man arguments. It works better when the bit you quote (e.g., "certainty of the future") actually has something to do with the straw man you argue against (e.g., "anthropogenic warming").
To be clear: there probably is some anthropogenic warming. Its extent is subject to some debate. The future of the climate is subject to a lot of debate. The future of the global economy given climate change (and at this stage we are out of the realm of climatology and into the social sciences) is so cloudy that we might as well not even make projections.
No, there are TWO problems -- the one you mention, and another one, where the people who make their coin on the status quo (and the politicians that they own) will ignore all evidence that the current way of doing business might make the planet unlivable. Or, at a minimum, cost a trillion dollars to adjust to as it changes.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
If we have to choose between spending a trillion dollars now and spending a trillion fifty years from now, which should we do? Personally, I'd rather wait the fifty.
But more importantly, there's a philosophical point to be made. When faced with a possible problem, should you always make a radical change to the status quo? Well, what do you do in your personal life? Most people don't do this, unless the potential problem is both very serious and has a high probability. The ones who want to effect massive changes know this and want to convince us on both counts.
Ultimately, though, broken models like this one do damage to the radical policymakers. Those policy choices are dependent on not just climate models, but economic models based on those climate models. If we can't even trust the climate models, where do you think we are with the economic models? And how can we possibly justify spending such massive sums with that much uncertainty as to the outcome?
We might end up impoverishing ourselves to such a degree that we don't have the technology to handle whatever the climate does throw us. And that would be just as disastrous. So there are risks either way. I say stick to the status quo until we know we can't.
There are two separate issues here. On the one hand there are certainly serious scientists working on climatology and climate change. I have no doubt they will incorporate the new information and work to improve their models. However, they are also much more careful about their certainty of the future, than...
The other side of the debate, which is political; it deals with what policies (if any) should be put in place to combat climate change. And in this realm, we are being bombarded by "it's settled science", "it's going to happen", "we have to act in ten years or it'll be too late", etc. ad inf. And the unseriousness of these positions is made clear by radical flaws in models such as the one referenced in this article.
And it's not even destruction of embryos that was prevented. It's federal funding of same. This has to be one of the least understood and most poorly reported issues of the entire Bush administration.
That's exactly how it works in the private sector.
Er.... no, it's not. Or else everyone would own $100k BMWs. What actually happens is people weigh the price of the car against the price of other goods they might buy. For example, I could (technically) afford a $100k BMW - if I took a major cut on my housing and other expenses. I choose not to do this, but the reason is not that I'm not getting fair value for my $100k. It's that I have better ways to spend my money.
I have to agree with the grandparent: As a taxpayer, the focus should be on what we as citizens get for our tax money, not how much we pay in taxes.
So, continuing my analogy (which no one who replied seemed to get), you'd be fine if the government said, "Free BMWs for everyone! And btw, your taxes will be going up $100k to cover our cost." According to your argument, you should just focus on whether you got value for your tax dollar, and clearly, you would have.
So your reasoning is that if there's a budget deficit, we must be undertaxed? That reasoning would seem to include the possibility that we could be taxed at 100% and still be undertaxed. Whose argument is invalid now, Mr. Anonymous?
Hmmmm... yes, I'd say that's a completely fair dichotomy. Clearly, anyone who says their taxes are too high must be arguing for a zero-tax anarchy state. Thanks for opening my eyes!
People shouldn't focus on taxes, they should focus on services and their costs. Taxes are just how you get money to cover those costs.
You'll see the error in this line of thinking when you apply it to the private sector. Would go like this: "People shouldn't focus on PRICE, they should focus on services and their costs." In other words, the $100,000 price tag of that new fully-loaded BMW is perfectly fine. Look at all the car you get!
Have you ever compared your personal income tax rates to any other country's other than tax heavens? I didn't think so.
Hey, just because you guys are even more overtaxed doesn't mean we're not overtaxed, too. We're overtaxed together.
Your argument is sort of like this: (1) The murder rate in our country is too high! (2) Are you kidding me? It's way too low! Look at America's murder rate!
Slashdot Mirror
True, but happens not to be the case here: they were actually working on the same topic and had written papers together.
Not to mention available jobs (in the academy in particular) following graduation.
When I was an undergrad I knew a married couple both getting their PhDs at the same time. The wife had six job offers. The husband had zero (at the time; he might've had more later, after we lost contact). As far as I could tell they were about equally capable.
One anecdote does not a theory prove, but I'll bet this happens a lot.
The problem with this is that the Precautionary Principle as normally stated admits no cost/benefit analysis. If effect X causes a cost of Y, the PP would normally state that it should be mitigated if Y exceeds some threshold. But X might also have a benefit of Z which already mitigates Y, or even exceeds it.
I'm not suggesting that public policy be made on strict utilitarian principles, btw. Rather, each case is separate. Costs and benefits can't always be netted together. (Suppose a cost of $1 million brings the benefit of the avoidance of 1 death? Suppose the cost is $1 billion? Is the net cost/benefit positive or negative? We have no - and should have no - dollar/life conversion ratio than answers this question neatly.)
Here's an example of the PP gone awry: DDT. In developed nations, DDT is considered an environmental threat. It's known to build up in organisms higher up in the food chain, it's a human toxin, etc. And - importantly - the benefits from using it aren't all that great: we have other anti-mosquito toxins, and we don't have endemic malaria or other mosquito-borne illnesses anyway.
But there are African countries where this is not the case. The costs are still there, and they are grave. But the cost of not using DDT is arguably worse: they can't afford more expensive toxins, and they have serious disease problems. Hundreds of thousands of malaria deaths a year might be avoided through the use of DDT. I don't necessarily argue that it should be used - I'll leave that for another topic - but debate on the subject should not be curtailed by the PP. There should be debate on whether the environmental, and human, damage caused by DDT spraying is offset by the benefits of reduced disease.
One last little thing: I've read a couple of times that the alternative to expensive mitigation today might be "wiping out the entire human race". But come on, this isn't serious. Even in "The Day After Tomorrow" (which is obviously an implausibly disastrous, fictitious scenario) the equatorial regions were still livable. Is there any plausible scenario involving climate change where the entire human race is wiped out? This is the sort of hyperbole that hurts your side of this debate. If you want to use a bad scenario, use something plausible, like: Billions of people, mostly in developing countries, die from disease, starvation and rising sea levels. That's plenty bad enough, and at least it's possible.
No, it isn't. It's within their competence to say that to reduce temperature by X degrees requires Y. That's doesn't mean we need Y, although they might think so. (And I'm eliding here a point about the degree to which they can draw even the direct relationship between X and Y - I don't think it's as exact as you seem to think.)
Same deal with virologists. Sure, we need them to tell us that we need X doses of flu vaccine to protect against the possibility of Y. But whether we think Y is a serious enough threat to be worth buying those X doses is not their call.
I don't think that's true, but even if it is, they're not in a position to make that call, are they? They're not economists, for one thing, and while they may be expert in climatology, they are not expert in macroeconomics. A climatologist can tell us, "If you want to avert X degrees of warming, you'll need to reduce CO2 emissions by Y." But - as experts - they cannot make the call of how much X degrees of warming is likely to cost, how much a reduction of CO2 emissions by Y is likely to cost, or what trade-off should be made between those extremes.
Finally, while climatologists have just the same vote that I do for making these trade-offs in a democratic society, they don't have more votes than I do. Ultimately, it's up to voters to decide where the trade-offs should lie. The alternative is basically global tyranny*, which I (for one) consider a cure worse than the disease.
* I'm not even being hyperbolic here. The scale of measures being proposed is massive and there would be a huge incentive to cheat. Therefore, the only way to enforce these measures would be to subjugate every nation to a global power capable of enforcement.
I'm not sure I should respond reasonably to someone who immediately calls me an idiot, but let's try. First of all, the post to which I was responding itself posited that the cost would be a trillion dollars, and the GP used the same cost. I was merely adhering to the standard applied by those posts.
Second, you assert that the cost will be "much, much higher" without any data. Let's look at environment protection in history; the Clean Air Act might be a good example. Suppose we had required 2009 emission standards back when Ford was producing the Model T. Do you think that car would've been economically viable using turn-of-the-century technology? No way - would've been much too expensive, or lacked power, or had some other major flaw. Later, as technology improved, we developed catalytic converters, fuel injection systems, etc., and brought air pollution from cars way down for much less cost. Furthermore, air quality improved drastically once emissions standards rose. The cost of improving air quality via auto emissions controls was thus dramatically lowered by waiting than by insisting on it from the get-go.
Suppose in thirty years we develop a cheap carbon-sequestration technique that allows us to completely control global ppCO2? Or we develop an cheap method of cooling the atmosphere, maybe some variant on this notion of spraying seawater into the air? That would pretty dramatically change your cost assumptions, wouldn't it?
One last point: while I'm well aware that the "no-tech-improvements" cost of doing nothing now would probably be many trillions (not just $1T), you also have to admit that the proposals now under consideration don't cost just $1T right now and then nothing else later. Rather, they would cost trillions per year, forevermore. That's pretty expensive. It might be perfectly rational to wait 50 years and spend $100T at that time instead (especially since we might develop technology that requires us to spend much less).
These are all debates worth having. What pisses me off more than anything else is when people want to curtail debate by calling other people idiots or saying that these issues are all settled. They aren't.
You should work on your straw man arguments. It works better when the bit you quote (e.g., "certainty of the future") actually has something to do with the straw man you argue against (e.g., "anthropogenic warming").
To be clear: there probably is some anthropogenic warming. Its extent is subject to some debate. The future of the climate is subject to a lot of debate. The future of the global economy given climate change (and at this stage we are out of the realm of climatology and into the social sciences) is so cloudy that we might as well not even make projections.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
If we have to choose between spending a trillion dollars now and spending a trillion fifty years from now, which should we do? Personally, I'd rather wait the fifty.
But more importantly, there's a philosophical point to be made. When faced with a possible problem, should you always make a radical change to the status quo? Well, what do you do in your personal life? Most people don't do this, unless the potential problem is both very serious and has a high probability. The ones who want to effect massive changes know this and want to convince us on both counts.
Ultimately, though, broken models like this one do damage to the radical policymakers. Those policy choices are dependent on not just climate models, but economic models based on those climate models. If we can't even trust the climate models, where do you think we are with the economic models? And how can we possibly justify spending such massive sums with that much uncertainty as to the outcome?
We might end up impoverishing ourselves to such a degree that we don't have the technology to handle whatever the climate does throw us. And that would be just as disastrous. So there are risks either way. I say stick to the status quo until we know we can't.
There are two separate issues here. On the one hand there are certainly serious scientists working on climatology and climate change. I have no doubt they will incorporate the new information and work to improve their models. However, they are also much more careful about their certainty of the future, than...
The other side of the debate, which is political; it deals with what policies (if any) should be put in place to combat climate change. And in this realm, we are being bombarded by "it's settled science", "it's going to happen", "we have to act in ten years or it'll be too late", etc. ad inf. And the unseriousness of these positions is made clear by radical flaws in models such as the one referenced in this article.
It gets even worse: they're using a CARBON filement! Carbon, people! It's worse than plutonium!
And it's not even destruction of embryos that was prevented. It's federal funding of same. This has to be one of the least understood and most poorly reported issues of the entire Bush administration.
fsck that!
Think less Birgit Nilsson and more Anna Netrebko.
In fact, that's good advice for just about any situation.
BTW, I just realized that our UIDs are just 50 apart. Practically neighbors!
Er.... no, it's not. Or else everyone would own $100k BMWs. What actually happens is people weigh the price of the car against the price of other goods they might buy. For example, I could (technically) afford a $100k BMW - if I took a major cut on my housing and other expenses. I choose not to do this, but the reason is not that I'm not getting fair value for my $100k. It's that I have better ways to spend my money.
So, continuing my analogy (which no one who replied seemed to get), you'd be fine if the government said, "Free BMWs for everyone! And btw, your taxes will be going up $100k to cover our cost." According to your argument, you should just focus on whether you got value for your tax dollar, and clearly, you would have.
So your reasoning is that if there's a budget deficit, we must be undertaxed? That reasoning would seem to include the possibility that we could be taxed at 100% and still be undertaxed. Whose argument is invalid now, Mr. Anonymous?
Hmmmm... yes, I'd say that's a completely fair dichotomy. Clearly, anyone who says their taxes are too high must be arguing for a zero-tax anarchy state. Thanks for opening my eyes!
You'll see the error in this line of thinking when you apply it to the private sector. Would go like this: "People shouldn't focus on PRICE, they should focus on services and their costs." In other words, the $100,000 price tag of that new fully-loaded BMW is perfectly fine. Look at all the car you get!
Hey, just because you guys are even more overtaxed doesn't mean we're not overtaxed, too. We're overtaxed together.
Your argument is sort of like this: (1) The murder rate in our country is too high! (2) Are you kidding me? It's way too low! Look at America's murder rate!
I'm sure you guys are right, but you're missing an important point: IT WAS A JOKE.
No problem: they can just invade Russia, which will be practically depopulated by then.
Actually, 5280 feet is very easy to calculate with - it's evenly divisible by all sorts of things. 5280 = 2^5 x 3 x 5 x 11
If only they'd picked 4,620 feet, we'd really be in the pink. 4620 = 2^2 x 3 x 5 x 7 x 11.
Could be a problem. Have you ever seen a gazelle run and fuck at the same time?
We do what we do because God is with us.
- Barack Obama