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Confession of a Global Warming Skeptic |
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If someone makes a statement and then declares "the debate is over", then it wasn't a debate.
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Confessions of a Global Warming SkepticRecently after an on-campus political event I was chatting with a fellow participant. When he learned that I was skeptical of global warming claims he scoffed, declared "The debate is over" and walked away with zero curiosity about why I might feel that way. The debate is not over, at least for me. Please allow me more time to decide, without branding me a heretic or a denier. The arguments on both sides are so convincing that whenever I listen to one side alone I find myself agreeing with that side. Since currently the "alarmed" side of the debate seems to be leading, let me support the underdog for the moment and bias my reasons for indecision toward the "not alarmed" side. These are merely my personal, unscientific intuitions, but see if you find yourself nodding in agreement with any of them. To me the global warming debate merits caution because... 1. The debate feels more fanatical than other debates, say, about health care or the war in Iraq. I sense some unconscious emotional forces at work, including an in-group mentality. Being on the wrong side of this debate can affect your social relationships, as it did in the incident above. 2. There are likely hidden agendas. What was once a scientific debate has migrated into the political realm, where stakes are high in research funding, corporate profits, political careers, and possibly even geopolitical strategy. (Do powerful nations unfairly handicap underdeveloped nations by holding them to higher environmental standards than they themselves upheld?) Disinformation could be lurking anywhere. 3. There is a Luddite contingent that unconsciously *enjoys* carbon dioxide being considered a deadly substance because that slows industrialization. The calls to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, which warm the earth, far outnumber the calls to *increase* aerosol emissions, which cool the earth. Why? 4. Al Gore will not debate challengers. If he is passionate about the issue and his reasoning is sound, why wouldn't he relish the opportunity? What is he afraid of? Are criticisms of "An Inconvenient Truth" legitimate? 5. The IPCC summary report for policy makers demonstrates bias by reporting a long list of harms of global warming while barely mentioning benefits. For example, a search for the word "tourism" reveals that in Europe the prognosis is bad for southern regions in the summer because of the higher temperatures, and the prognosis is bad for mountainous regions in the winter because of shorter ski seasons. Might there be some counterbalancing benefits in some regions during some seasons? Would global *cooling* be correspondingly beneficial as all the listed harms were reversed, or are we, coincidentally during the tenure of these climate scientists, at the ideal temperature, where change in either direction is bad? Presumably the research the report is based on is similarly harm-focused, and possibly even climate research funding in general. Policy decisions are best made on the basis of cost-benefit analyses, not just cost analyses. 6. Even if we did suffer a worst-case, ten-degree-Fahrenheit temperature rise and two-foot sea-level rise over the next century, I am not convinced, in the context of genocide, war, poverty, AIDS, deforestation, pollution, etc. that the harms of global warming are all that devastating. An international group of economists (the Copenhagen Consensus) listed humanity's most serious problems and ranked the solutions to those problems by return on investment. First on the list (most cost-effective) was AIDS prevention. Last on the list was global warming prevention, whose solution cost was over twice the cost of the solutions to all of the other problems combined. (Google "TED talk Lomborg".) An invitation: So the debate is not over, at least for me. If it is also not over for you (or even if it is) consider participating in an experiment I have set up. I have long wished for a general debate Web site where one could find the best arguments on both sides of any issue, lined up against each other, with claims and rebuttals side-by-side on the same page. But I could never find one. Special interests all seem to prefer having their own Web site espousing just their own views, conveniently excluding threatening arguments. Good for them, bad for the reader's education. So, motivated by the recent global warming controversy in these pages, I started such a debate Web site myself over spring break, called wikidebates.org . It is a wiki, which means any visitor can write anything, so it may be a disaster, but I figure it is worth a try. It is little more than a blank shell right now, so please visit and be one of the first to start debating! Jeff Laird Computer Science graduate student |
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© 2008 Derica Lorraine
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