Max Borders

Climate Alarmism or Pascal's Wager?

Blaise Pascal, the 17^th Century religious philosopher and mathematician, asks us to consider his “Wager,” which says faith is a good bet:

1. The consequences of non-belief in God are hell and damnation.
2. The costs of believing in God are low by comparison, though still costly. (You can’t live any way you like, for example.)
3. If you believe – even if there’s no hell and damnation – you won’t lose everything.
4. But if there is a hell, you lose everything.
5. So, if you’re going to make a safe bet, believe in God.

Of course, a religious person might argue with Pascal that faith isn’t about placing bets. But we can agree, perhaps, that global warming alarmism takes on a strikingly similar form. 

1. The consequences of skepticism about manmade Global Warming are catastrophic.
2. The costs of “green” taxes and regulations are low by comparison, though still costly. (You can’t live anyway you like, for example.)
3. If you’ll just believe man causes global warming – even if there is no catastrophe – you won’t lose everything.
4. But if there is catastrophe, you lose everything.
5. So, if you’re going to make a safe bet, introduce green taxes and regulation.

I’ll leave it to the reader to decide whether the largest tax increase in American history (cap-and-trade or carbon taxes) will be based on faith, a ‘safe bet,’ or something else. But when you consider the broader question – Is environmentalism a religion? – significant indicators point to a green ideology based more in faith and fear than in fact.

Climate Consequences & the Giggle Test

David Friedman has a different type of 'What if They're Right?' argument from mine here, which deals largely with political economy. His is more about the consequences of warming as more or less likely to be catastrophic. (Hell, I've always wondered why it wouldn't be beneficial to humanity and ecology, as in past non-anthropogenic warm periods.) Anyway, here's a good sliver:

But most of the argument is put in terms not of what might conceivably happen but of what we have good reason to expect to happen, and I think the outer bound of that is provided by the IPCC models. They suggest a temperature increase of about two degrees centigrade over the next hundred years, resulting in a sea level rise of about a foot and a half. What I find implausible is the claim that changes on that scale at that speed would be catastrophic—sufficiently so to justify very expensive measures now to prevent them.

Human beings, after all, currently live, work, grow food in a much wider range of climates than that. Glancing over a U.S. climate map, it looks as though all of the places I have lived are within an hour or two drive of other places with an average temperature at least two degrees centigrade higher. If people can currently live, work, grow crops over a temperature range of much more than two degrees, it is hard to imagine any reason why most of them couldn't continue to do so, about as easily, if average temperature shifted up by that amount—especially if they had a century to adjust to the change. That observation raises the question with which I titled this post: Does climate change catastrophe pass the giggle test? Is the claim that climate change of that scale would have catastrophic consequences one that any reasonable person could take seriously?

Find the whole post here. (HT: Michael Strong)

Remember that these 100 year, foot and a half sealevel rise predictions are the most extreme conditions made by a body who has strong incentives to bias their work in favor of warming. Indeed, empirical observations over the last ten years have seen no warming and no cooling. IPCC models predicted temperature increases, which simply haven't happened. Why should we trust their models on something even more difficult to predict -- i.e. future consequences of warming? I'd say ecologists like Dan Botkin are more qualified to talk about such consequences to the ecology. Indeed, I'm very sympathetic to Botkin's "non-steady state" view of the climate and ecosystem. 

Automaker Fascism and a Chilling Proposition

Robert "Fourth" Reich proposes something chilling in the wake of government's takeover of the auto industry, from the NRO:

As Chrysler headed into bankruptcy, the government got the company’s creditors that were dependent on TARP funds to do its bidding and take a substantial “haircut.” The banks, too, knew to heed the directive of the ultimate interlocking directorate.

As the next logical step, former Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich has proposed putting public directors on the boards of all companies in which the government has an ownership stake. “In exercising their oversight function,” Reich writes, “they should seek guidance from the president and his top economic officials.”

Over time, this public-private arrangement will be subject to all the traditional pitfalls of interlocking directorates, from collusion to conflicts of interest to strategic myopia. The directorates have at times been used to create cartels, commonly defined as “a form of collusion between firms in the same industry aimed at restricting output and increasing prices.”

What's worse? This is the sort of thing Mussolini did. Whenever college students say something about "corporate fascism," it's usually due to a brain spasm. Now that we actually have it, not a peep from the kids. They voted for the fascist. Due to our public education system, most Americans are ignorant sheep. "Mussa-who?"

Crony Climate Capitalism

Excellent piece - "The Climate Industrial Complex" - in the WSJ today. Bjorn Lomborg points out the unholy alliance between corporate rent-seekers and green activists:

Some business leaders are cozying up with politicians and scientists to demand swift, drastic action on global warming. This is a new twist on a very old practice: companies using public policy to line their own pockets.

The tight relationship between the groups echoes the relationship among weapons makers, researchers and the U.S. military during the Cold War. President Dwight Eisenhower famously warned about the might of the "military-industrial complex," cautioning that "the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." He worried that "there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties."

This is certainly true of climate change. We are told that very expensive carbon regulations are the only way to respond to global warming, despite ample evidence that this approach does not pass a basic cost-benefit test. We must ask whether a "climate-industrial complex" is emerging, pressing taxpayers to fork over money to please those who stand to gain.

Bootleggers and Baptists, of course. (Bruce Yandle sees this coming as far back as 1998). Public choice theory may finally be getting a hearing in the public forum. Let's hope so. Because now the left can't decide whether it wants to be socialist or merchantilist. My money goes on crony capitalism.

Good News on Earth Day (Really)

Did you know that air pollution continues to decrease on almost every measure--despite a threefold increase in the number of cars on the road since 1980? Did you know that our water is cleaner and forestland is more abundant than in any time in U.S. history? Even the Amazon rainforests may be healing. Did you know that on just about every conceivable metric, the environment has improved year by year over the last 50 years? And here is evidence.

This Earth Day, you'll continue to get hysterical media accounts of melting glaciers and abnormal weather patterns. These reports are designed to justify tremendous accretion of state power and resources by government (resulting in more control over our lives by bureaucrats and special interest green groups who stand to benefit from new subsidies and regulations). Sadly, all of this is carried out in the name of the public good.

What you are not likely to hear is that the globe has basically not changed temperature in the last decade, that the last decade does not track AT ALL with the UN's climate models, and that the so-called "scientific concensus" on global warming is composed almost entirely of political appointees and climate "modelers" in the IPCC who have consistently been wrong with respect to the actual climate data and temperatures.

Oh, and did you know that the environment is cleanest in the market economies of the world? It's true. Capitalist countries use resources more efficiently and are more likely to employ efficient technologies. We can also afford environmental amenities. So, enjoy the good news this Earth Day. And please: don't take my word for it that climate change is largely a terrible instance of groupthink set in motion by socialists looking for means to power and increased wealth distribution. Trade your carbon credits for some critical thinking. (Note: Don't forget the late Julian Simon, who is still winning bets.)