In for a Penny or In for a Pound?
A Conversation About Climate Change
Scott: Okay, so, a little while ago you wrote a pair of posts stirring the climate change pot a bit. It might be easy for some folks to see your writing as simple rabble rousing for the sake of rabble rousing, calling an overwhelming consensus into question because, well, it is important to question our overwhelming consensuses from time to time, to question our underlying assumptions. But it strikes me that you were doing more than that with your critiques of the so-called “green movement” and, more specifically, Al Gore’s (in)famous chart.
Engaging in a bit of a distilling exercise, what is at the core of your unease with what is an increasingly broad movement around addressing environmental issues and, specifically, climate change?
Erik: I think that for years – decades really – the green movement was in shambles. It had its isolated victories (Clean Air Act) but was really a ramshackle bunch of disparate causes with no unifying theme beyond some vague notion that we should treat the earth, or animals, or fish, or water, or air, etc. better. It was largely a fringe movement because it was largely a movement about activism. Now, with global warming the green movement has become an actual movement rather than an assortment of activist groups, and it’s entered the mainstream. Indeed, it’s become the new conventional wisdom, and those who may disagree with it or with the proposed solutions to it have become the fringe.
What leaves me feeling a bit disquieted about the whole thing is the speed at which the science, which isn’t that old in terms of science, has become accepted as fact, and really as belief. If you disagree either with the theory or the proposed solutions to that theory, you’re angrily written off as a “denialist” and given a scarlet letter to wear around town. But this is science we’re talking about, and science is something that should be discussed openly and with skepticism. Especially when the science in question has major policy implications with very real economic ramifications. The “Climategate” emails simply reinforce many people’s fears that the whole story isn’t being told, something that I’ve worried about for a long time. My post about Al Gore’s misleading chart was just one piece of the worry I have over this whole global warming thing. The limitations of cap & trade is another.
Scott: But what would be the threshold for you in terms of accepting the science? I mean, it is relatively striking how broad the consensus amongst a disparate cross-section of scientists is on this issue. And, as you mention, it’s not as though those scientists were at the forefront of driving the nascent stages of the “environmental” or “green” movement, it was, again, as you mention, primarily an activist oriented movement for many years (with, of course, some scientists involved, but not the degree of involvement now seen).
Doesn’t the chronology of that evolution in environmentalism as an item of social consciousness suggest a certain neutral bias that lends support to the science? And doesn’t it also strike you that it is rarely the scientists themselves and more often the activists of the green movement that lash out at “non-believers” in the angry fashion you describe? Should the science in question be tarred by the actions of activists who have, to be fair, endured years of ridicule and dismissive posturing? [Read more →]
December 3, 2009 45 Comments
