Hacker News Reader

Comment by ruby_roo | Hacker News Reader

I personally feel that it is better to err on the side of caution in regards to global warming. I say "feel" because I'm just not smart enough to navigate fact from fiction on this issue anymore. There's going to be extremes on both sides, but I don't see what we have to gain by not taking better care of our planet.

Even if global warming is only partially manmade, shouldn't we do what we can to minimize the effect? And plain old pollution is a visible problem regardless of warming effects; it's now in our food and water supply.

That is how I see this issue. Hope that is a reasonable approach considering all the FUD out there. I don't see how society is harmed by erring on the side of caution on this one.

View on HN

"I don't see how society is harmed by erring on the side of caution"

Let me try to help you see then.

Even though it's extremely important that you prevent tooth decay, and even if you have a huge chunk of "Jolly Rancher" stuck between your teeth, it would be a non-optimal use of resources to use your last match as you were shivering on the side of a mountain with a broken leg, to dislodge the offending piece of candy.

I'm sure you'll agree with this, in this extreme case. But what you are missing, is that humans have a limited supply of productivity that we use to feed and house the populations of our respective countries, and hopefully, to build infrastructure for the next generation to feed and house their populations. When you siphon off that productivity to dislodge a piece of candy, you better be damn sure the candy is going to harm you. In the case of the warmists, since you are literally stealing food and medicine from people's mouths with your demands of what is necessary, you better be damn certain you're right.

Given how much we spend on entertainment and other luxuries, is it really fair to say call spending money on what is likely essential to the preservation of our species "literally stealing food and medicine from people's mouths?" Hell, given what we spend on killing each other over oil and religion, how is it that spending money on understanding and dealing with climate change is stealing? In the United States alone, we have spent over $600 billion on the Iraq war-- even a few of those billions could make the difference between action and inaction on climate change.

> even a few of those billions could make the difference between action and inaction on climate change.

Really? If we spent $20B on global warming you'd go away happy?

> is it really fair to say call spending money on what is likely essential to the preservation of our species

Interestingly enough, if you read the cost estimates from the advocates, it's reasonably cheap to deal with the problem after it occurs, at least compared to the total global GDP at that time.

The only way you get to "spend now" vs "spend later" on an economic basis is by using a negative rate of return.

Of course it'd take more than $20 billion over the span of our lifetimes. I meant that within the context of the Iraq War spending, diverting even a few of those 600 billions of dollars could have made a very positive impact and would have meant that Bush was not completely inactive on the issue. I realize I phrased that poorly, and I'm sorry for that, but my point still stands: compared to what we spend on killing each other, the money that is being asked to save our whole way of life is chump change. Moreover, the issue of climate change runs much deeper than economics alone. Talking about rates of return and deferred action neglect the potential for catastrophe if we simply continue to do nothing.

> would have meant that Bush was not completely inactive on the issue.

Actually, he wasn't. He didn't do what you want, but that's a very different than nothing. Are you going with ignorance or "I was trying to emphasize my point"?

> I realize I phrased that poorly, and I'm sorry for that, but my point still stands: compared to what we spend on killing each other, the money that is being asked to save our whole way of life is chump change

The mainstream folks who want money for climate change disagree. They want hundreds of billions of dollars.

If they're wrong, that's a huge deal. Let's see some details supporting your "chump change" estimate. Are they wrong?

> Moreover, the issue of climate change runs much deeper than economics alone. Talking about rates of return and deferred action neglect the potential for catastrophe if we simply continue to do nothing.

Catastrophe is short-hand for "very expensive", so you're merely making a "numbers-free" economic argument.

The AGW folks have predicted the costs of "catastrophe" and "measures to avoid". (The latter are surely low because they don't significantly affect the predicted climate change.)

Once again, if they're wrong, that's a big deal.

Let's see the details.

With deflation it just might happen.

You're unhappy with the amount we spend on entertainment and the Iraq war, and would like us to divert all the money towards global warming mitigation. Perhaps we could cork some volcanoes or do some cloud seeding to induce some rainstorms to get rid of water vapor. Let's take your $600 billion that you say would make a huge difference.

As we're writing the check to the cloud-seeding company, or the volcano corking company, it occurs to you, that there's a lot of things you could do with this money. You could use it to try to stop Iraq from developing biological weapons to kill hundred of thousands with, for instance. Or, if you knew more than the French, the Israelis, and the U.S. did, or just didn't think that was a problem you cared about (let him do it, it's no skin off your nose), you still might think "Wow, I could buy DDT for every man, woman, and child in Africa with this, and save millions of lives." Or, if you didn't want to do that, since DDT is evil and might kill birds, you might think "I could build desalination plants to get the water to feed hungry people in arid climates. and give them relief now, not in 100 years."

When you have the checkbook in your hand, and you are considering choosing to spend the money on volcano corking, or, god forbid, something actually foolish, you may, instead, say "Hey, maybe we should be sure before we blow this money." I think if I gave you the checkbook, you'd think a lot differently than when somebody else has the checkbook.

Seeing a comment like this on a forum like this makes me sad.

First, economics isn't a zero-sum game. You could waste that check away on destroying a country and impoverishing millions due to the threat of imaginary weapons, or you could build something.

For a long time I thought wind farms were surely wasteful forms of energy. I thought about all of the energy required to manufacture them, install them, and maintain them, and compared that -- in my mind -- against all of the idle wind generators that I saw at farms like the Altamont and whatever huge one there is down in southern California.

Then I got some real numbers, and it turns out that I was pretty dramatically wrong: wind energy actually provides an even better energy-return-on-investment than nuclear energy.

So, potentially, that $600 billion could be spent building cheaper forms of energy generation using existing technology, and developing new technology, and now you've just made a steep initial investment that will pay returns for the rest of our society's existence.

That, to me, sounds like one heck of a good deal. And it's good for the environment too.

[1]: http://www.eoearth.org/article/Energy_return_on_investment_(...

" In the case of the warmists, since you are literally stealing food and medicine from people's mouths with your demands of what is necessary, you better be damn certain you're right."

The same goes for you - if the warmists are right, then the non-warmists are stealing food from people's mouths (as farmland will be burned or flooded or whatever).

There's a number. For example, trying to prevent developing countries from using coal/oil etc That's harming to those countries.

Also it's an absolute ton of money to spend on something that hasn't been proven.

I'm of the opinion that it's unlikely we are to blame, we should obviously as always try to use less energy, and we should spend money on more important causes.

I read of an interesting thought experiment once - a way to take the moral judgment out of the anthropogenic global warming debate. Imagine that there were never fossil fuels or elevated CO2 levels. Now imagine that scientists have (somehow) determined that the sun has suddenly increased its energy output in such a way that would exactly mimic on this imaginary planet, the proposed effect of elevated CO2 on our planet (this turns out to be about a 0.3% increase in output).

Would this discovery warrant massively restructuring the world economy by central decree in an attempt to counteract the sun? The spending of billions (trillions?) of dollars? These are the decisions you are making when you err on the side of caution.

That doesn't make sense to me. It completely sidesteps both the questions of responsibility, as well as questions about our desired environment.

I am -- or was, before my "startup" days -- an avid hiker, backpacker, etc.; to me, your thought experiment translates this way: Imagine that I was out hiking, and that I see a bunch of trash on the trail. Now imagine that the trash doesn't belong to me. Should I pick it up?

It doesn't make sense to me that, as a species with the ability to dramatically affect our environment, we should choose to not take care of it. It doesn't make sense to me that we would spoil our own living conditions.

To get back to your thought experiment: if the causes behind global warming were out of our control, but if the global warming had the potential to create an environment which we didn't want to live in, and if we had the power to counteract the changes, then I think it makes sense to do so.

As a practical matter, "massively restructuring the world economy" is also known as progress. We're certainly not going to burn coal in space.

"As a practical matter, 'massively restructuring the world economy' is also known as progress."

Except that the next three words were "by central decree."

I think your analogy is flawed, since it assumes that the trash was put there by another person (just like CO2 in the atmosphere was put there by other people). A better one would be if you came upon a barren, ugly landscape - would you be morally obligated to improve it?

That said, I see your point about us humans managing our environment and making it more to our liking. We've been doing it for thousands of years. I just don't understand what basis we have for making the sort of radical changes proposed by "climate change" alarmists. How do we know the outcome will be to our liking?

I think your example is useless. Of course predicting any kind of calamity would warrant spending money to reduce the damage (in the larger context, ie considering where spending the money will have the most effect). If a meteor would be about to land on your hometown, would you scramble to get to the other side of the planet? Of course you would, no matter if the meteor falls down because of natural causes or because of a giant magnet somebody build to attract it.

Rational decision making always involves assessing the (probable) costs and benefits of potential actions. If the potential benefit is small and uncertain, and the cost is large and certain, it probably makes sense to wait and collect more information.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/bjorn_lomborg_sets_global...

http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/CCC%20Home%20Page.aspx

A friend and I once carried several large pieces of trash out of a wilderness area. We were sore, and tired, and our packs were heavy, and we were eager to go home and shower and eat some junk food.

I'm glad we didn't make a rational decision.

You are glad based on how it made you feel, not on what impact it made. Most probably it didn't have much impact and you might as well have dropped the trash. Not that that's what I would've done, but saying we should trust our emotions on this big and costly problem makes no sense. Of course, throwing rationality out of the window by definition doesn't make any sense. I'm not sure what your point is.

I was taking issue with the definition of a "rational" decision in terms of environment as merely a cost-benefit analysis.

I'm, frankly, sick of cost-benefit analysis being applied to everything. It has become the hammer that's turning everything into a nail. It's led to a pretty ugly state of software in a lot of different arenas, because a CBA doesn't support spending much time running down memory leaks, or trying to reduce software footprint.

The problem with using CBA in software -- and more to the point, in the environment -- is that it ignores the cumulative effect of lots of small decisions. Each individual action may not make "rational" sense in terms of CBA, but the consequences quickly add up.

To go back to my specific example, you're right that our hauling out some of the trash probably had very little positive impact on our environment. However, it is the cumulative actions of us and others like us who ensure that our trails stay clean.

For yet another example, if you climb Mount Rainier in Washington, you are expected to pack out all of your waste. I would guess the average trip time to the summit and back to be about three to four days, so that means that parties must carry their poop in their pack.

From an individual cost-benefit point of view, that's ridiculous and not rational. It requires a lot of effort for -- on an individual basis -- little environmental benefit.

However, it's the cumulative impact of thousands of summit parties every year that has a very real, and very detrimental, impact on the mountain's ecology.

Basically, cost-benefit analysis is a stupid, shortsighted way to make decisions.

You are suggesting that we ought to take all costs into account when doing cost-benefit analysis. You are not providing a substantive criticism of cost-benefit analysis.

If I had wanted to suggest that, I would have.

How does a group of people take all costs into account when doing a cost-benefit analysis if they can't agree on what constitutes a cost and what constitutes a benefit, and their relative values?

You and others here are talking about CBA as the basis for rational decision making, and yet I bet you couldn't even describe it in any formal way that could apply to all logical decisions.

What does it mean to do a CBA in terms of your immediate environment? What factors are you taking into consideration? Aesthetics? Health? How much money is clean water worth to you? Or, from a CBA standpoint: is it worth pouring a gallon of paint into your drinking water, or is it better to transport that paint to a remote facility which will handle it in some fashion? And in that one relatively minor decision alone, how many different factors are you going to account for? The size of your drinking water supply, the chemical composition of the paint, the ecology of your drinking water supply, the distance to the waste managing facility, the vehicle used to get it there, the methods the facility uses to handle it ...

This CBA hand-waving is bullshit. It's impossible to take all costs into account for this kind of stuff. Most people -- even the most knowledgeable climate scientists -- don't even know what all the costs are. So just how are we supposed to justify our environmental decisions using a CBA when you can't even correctly do the accounting in the costs column?

And this is what constitutes the basis for rational decision making? Bah! Bah, I say!

I think it's perfectly rational to make decisions based on morals and ethics, and whether or not the consequences of that decision get you closer to your goals or not. So, for example, one of my goals is to experience wilderness areas in as pristine a state as possible. I see trash there. The trash is heavy, and I have a long distance to hike out. It will cost me a great deal of effort to remove it. But, it still does help to accomplish my goal: the next time I visit that place, the trash won't be there (nor will it be there for the next visitor). Thus, I will remove it, if possible.

Is that not a rational decision-making process? Does that not make sense from an environmental standpoint, as a species?

Sure, it's hard to measure some costs and some benefits. It's hard, even impossible, to objectively compare them. But it is important to acknowledge that trade-offs exist, and foolish to ignore them. The cost-benefit framework is useful for the reason that it forces people to look at the trade-offs.

It is foolish to give infinite value to the benefit of preserving nature. If we are willing to preserve nature at any price, then we ought to shut down industrial civilization, kill off 5.8 billion people, and go back to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. However, few people think that cost would be worth the resulting benefits to the environment.

Ignoring the costs of environmental activism is short-sighted. Environmental restrictions are not free. They cause real deprivations. We ought to acknowledge these deprivations and consider whether or not they are worth the benefits, even if there is no objective "right" answer.

Sometimes we will decide environmental rules are worth it. Banning CFCs was probably a smart idea. Sometimes, however, we will decide environmental rules are not worth the cost. The Kyoto treaty would cost hundreds of billions of dollars to implement but only push off warming by a few years.

As for the rest of your posts, sorry I just can't follow the logic. I do think cost-benefit analysis is worthwhile, though.

CBA is handwaving, but so is saying "what if everybody did it". I'll concede that CBA gives a false sense of accuracy.

You initially said "I'm glad we didn't make a rational decision", and I don't agree with that sentiment at all. You are free to base your decisions on your morals and ethics, but when it comes to something as global as global warming I'm not sure you can just force them onto the rest of us.

Lomborg's claims rest on the assumption that the benefits are small and uncertain. I remember him citing "heat deaths" as one of the worst predicted outcomes of global warming. "Warmists" would certainly disagree that this is the worst thing to expect. I don't know the proper name for this argumentation technique, in my opinion Lomborg creates a kind of strawman, but that is not quite the right word. He says "look here, heat deaths are a non-issue, so global warming is a non-issue", when really heat-deaths are not the main issue of global warming.

You are of course right about rational decision making, but the estimates of the risks diverge between the groups, so they arrive at different decisions.

While Lomborg's five-minute speeches do not touch on every cost and benefit of Global Warming, the Copenhagen Consensus does operate with the latest research estimates of the comprehensive costs and benefits.

If you're looking for an easy way to dismiss Lomborg, you're not going to find one. The dude is not a hack.

I personally feel it will be futile to be cautious. Instead, we should always prepare for adapting to changes.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com