Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Former Cato institute vice president Jerry Taylor thinks that we should act on climate change because, even if the science is far from certain, the downside risk of ignoring climate change is too great to accept.
What Changed My Mind About Climate Change?
Risk management is not a binary choice.by JERRY TAYLOR
MAY 21, 2019 5:56 AMI spent the better part of my professional life (1991-2014) working at a libertarian think tank—the Cato Institute—arguing against climate action. As Cato’s director of Natural Resource Studies (and later, as a senior fellow and eventually vice president), I maintained that, while climate change was real, the impacts would likely prove rather modest and that the cost of reducing greenhouse gas emissions would greatly exceed the benefits.
I changed my mind about that, however, because (among other things) I changed my mind about risk management.
If we think about climate risks in the same fashion we think about risks in other contexts, we should most certainly hedge—and hedge aggressively—by removing fossil fuels from the economy as quickly as possible.
…
When asked why I changed my mind about federal climate policy, this is a large part of my answer. Building an argument against climate action upon a forceful claim about the most likely outcome of greenhouse gas emissions is to build an argument upon analytic sand.
You don’t have to believe with all your heart that the worst-case scenario is sure to happen. You just have to understand that it is one possible outcome. And that we should not be making policy based on an assumption that we are certain of this or that outcome.
When it comes to managing large-scale risks, straight-forward economics suggests that we ought to take climate change very seriously.
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Read more: https://thebulwark.com/what-changed-my-mind-about-climate-change/
The problem with Jerry’s argument is you could build a similar case for taking action against witches.
Consider the following false logic; Our understanding of the universe is imperfect, so we can’t categorically rule out the possibility of witchcraft. You don’t have to believe with all your heart that the worst case scenario – that witches exist and contribute mightily to human suffering – is sure to be the case. But it would be insane to ignore the risk that some of our fellow humans have sold their souls.
Why would you reject this argument for taking action against witchcraft? For the same reason you should reject taking worst case climate scenarios seriously.
There is no observational evidence that there is a real problem, nor is there any shred of paleo-climate evidence that moderately elevated CO2 levels are associated with major negative consequences.
Money spent “acting” on climate change cannot be spent on hospitals or schools or clean drinking water or food or helping poor people.
Given the vast cost of any meaningful CO2 reduction, it would be insane to commit such resources on the basis of the wild predictions of deeply flawed models, without the support of observational evidence which confirms that we do indeed have a problem.
…growing cauliflower would fix it
I see what you did there! +1
Until the “Scientists” involved use open and reproducible science. Until the groups such as the IPCC use open modelling and adjustments that acknowledges other drivers of climate change. Until there is a real open debate about climate without the emotions. Until we get rid of the stated goal of imposing a socialist state as the result of climate fear. Until these things happen nothing should be spent on climate change. As clearly and succinctly pointed out above the precautionary principle is a fool’s errand.
By this logic we should impoverish everyone on earth in order to spend all our resources on a meteorite defense shield. And then do it again for every other imaginable doomsday scenario. This is the philosphy of the insane.
Everyone should be forced into chemotherapy for life. Because cancer…
Okay this counts…..
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/22/british-steel-collapses-putting-5000-jobs-at-risk.html
Dear Jerry Taylor,
Why the fear for witches or monsters under your bed? Have a a read on the publications of Richard Tol about the lesser expected damages caused by rising temperatures, the publications of Nic Lewis about the lesser rising temperatures caused by rising emissions, and the publications by William Nordhaus about the lesser emissions under a business as usual economic scenario.
Same as argument of Nassim Taleb who blocked me and others on twitter for questioning it. If people who should know better are repeating alarmism, it is difficult to know how we can disaude kids of the errors of CAGW.
This fellow is no economist. He hasn’t heard of opportunity cost. If something bad has a modest chance of occurring, it does matter how much resources (money incl.) and longterm pain it could cost to prevent it. $100 triilion, mass starvation, deindustrialization, collapse of civilization under a command economy run by elitists…So what is the difference between the consequences of doing nothing or buying into the plan? Arrival of a disaster is no worse than the cure for 99% of the population.
Now, we could buy airconditioners for every household and shack on the planet for 2or 3 trillion and mitigate as we always have for any sea level rise. Even Chimp model 8.5 does NOT change the tropics temperatures. A 3C rise will mainly warm the Arctic and in the temperate zone, warm the winters and the night.
Plants love it so we will have bountyful food, even spreading agric up into the taiga. With forest areas expanding a percent a year and especially in arid areas. We will be able to fire up our converted coal burning electroplants as with Drax in UK and recycle our carbon back into forests if it becomes necessary!
What about the risk of it turning cooler – the Big One. We know this WILL happen in the future. Shouldnt we do what we can to prevent that (ie business as usual) What about the risk of plant starvation with CO2 declining over millions of years. Shouldnt we be banking CO2 in the atmosphere against this real terminal threat?
When the “downside risk” is actually a bonanza revenue scenario for the political class and their spending agenda, the public debate becomes a massive intelligence test of who the players are and their unrevealed motivations. And the random assaults on the public consciousness from these characters without fact checking further distorts the public debate.
This reminds me of a post I saw today on the weather.com website, saying that a 6.5-foot (1.98 meter) rise in sea level predicted by unidentified “experts” would drown an area three times the size of California.
In recent decades, the rate of sea level rise has been less than 2 millimeters per year, and it is not accelerating. At that rate, the sea level would rise 1.98 meters by about the year A.D. 3000.
Instead of crippling our economies and sending millions of people back into poverty by banning fossil fuels (which may or may not prevent the sea level from rising), the human race has nearly 1,000 years to take Earthling2’s suggestion and build seawalls to protect vulnerable cities.
There have also been two periods of global cooling (AD 500 – 700, and AD 1350 – 1600) during the past 2,000 years, so it is likely there will be another global cooling period during the next 1,000 years, which would stop the sea level rise (by causing glaciers to grow and removing water from the sea).
We can’t, as Barack Obama promised, stop the seas from rising. But we can build sea walls to protect our cities if the sea does rise (very slowly).
I have modelled what would happen if witches were plotting to ruin our politics, and there is a perfect match between my models and what is happening now.
There is no way that things like Brexit and the Trump Election could have happened without the Dark Lord being involved.
So that proves it. We must elect a WitchFinder General immediately…
I wonder if AOC weighs the same as a duck….?
She turned me, into a NEWT!
…Well, I got better.
~¿~
CBC could not resist the alarmist Rhamstorf/Shellnhuber edited paper from PNAS and its 2 m sea level by 2100… https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/05/14/1817205116
https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/sea-level-rise-climate-change-1.5144739
As usual with this journalist, there are always pearls in the text:
Oceans to become denser as they warm???? New physics at work.
Mortillaro and consorts make sure this happens… LOL
Also on CBC today, David Wallace Wells presented his justification for being an alarmist: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/tapestry/why-david-wallace-wells-is-ok-with-being-called-a-climate-change-alarmist-1.5139082
Heard part of interview on CBC radio today. Immediately followed by interview with Kari Norgaard. What a pair !
Kari Marie Norgaard
Rewriting history: “treatment” of climate sceptics disappears from University of Oregon press statement
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/02/rewriting-history-treatment-of-sceptics-disappears-from-university-of-oregon-press-statement/
Global-warming skeptics are sick and must be treated, says prof
https://www.iceagenow.info/global-warming-skeptics-sick-treated-prof/
The human race does not just survive, but thrives even though the extremes each year may go from -60F to 120F, from no rain at all to floods, from famine to feast, and through many other natural and Man-made disasters like wars. We’ve done so for thousands of years now.
I cannot view a degree or two F change in average temperature over 100 years or more as a problem that cannot be easily dealt with, if it’s even a problem at all. It’s not in my view.
But he is ignoring the more likely risk of cyclic turn into a cooling period., something we are absolutely unprepared for! Cold kills (see winter mortality figures for the last two winters in Europe).
Moreover, since we have reduced our capacity to keep ourselves warm in winter (“Let me count the ways..”). these deaths cannot be guarded against or mitigated. Rolling brownouts/ blackouts in winter in Oslo would not be great, when the thermometer drops to -20°C for a few weeks.
“You’re killin’ me, Smalls!” AND, you are cynically complicit, IMO, Mr. Taylor!
Since the claimed scenarios, especially the worst case, are all nonsensical and unphysical fairy tales, we should do with them exactly as we do with all other silly superstitions: chuck in the trash bin, where they belong.
True WORST CASE has a basis in actual data.
What “actual data”? Cite some.
I believe kenw is implying that the worst case scenario being featured here has no basis in actual data.
Climate Change?
If the gentleman concerned used the same logic,Waiting for the Asteroid would drive him insane.
the worst case, for humans ,is going to happen.
Sooner or later,meanwhile we huddle at the bottom of earths gravity well, obsessing about plantfood.
I do love his logic,suppose I applied that same logic to hysterical idiots?
A definite danger to my well being.
Unsafe to have running any organization.
Totally incompetent to handle other people money.
Emotional unstable and untrustworthy.
In fact too dangerous to share a technological civilization with.
Therefor we must round up and banish all such creatures.
Imagine how low your car insurance could be.
The reduction in industrial accidents and injuries alone would pay for this.
Banish all fools and Bandits.
I agree completely!
Hysterical idiots are absolutely intolerable.
And anyone saying we need to assume some particular worst case fairy tale needs to be the focus of our attention and economic prospects, is at the very least hysterical, and an idiot.
“When it comes to managing large-scale risks, straight-forward economics suggests that we ought to take climate change very seriously.”
His risk management/economics logic seems backwards. The higher the probability of an event the more should be spent in mitigation. The lower the probability, fewer finite dollars would be spent. I see a severe California San Andreas Fault earthquake as a much higher probability of catastrophe than climate change. So, according to Mr. Taylor’s thinking, if this were true, all Californians should be moved away from the coast immediately. Beyond this, I can’t possibly imagine that he thinks climate change is a higher probability event, given that it is supported only by computer models tuned to make CO2 the main climate driver. The chance the climate model projections are right has to be a much lower probability than the outright occurrence of the earthquake.
Those earthquakes are only a question of when. They are not probabilities, they are certainties.
Only the “when” part is in doubt.
It could be tomorrow. Most of the at-risk portions of the fault are seriously overdue, judging by reconstructions of past events and historical accounts. In fact the whole West Coast is in serious danger of a huge tsunami. Cities like Portland are at severe risk of a catastrophic lahar, which may be very sudden and virtually unescapable once it occurs.
People in these areas are well advised to move to somewhere else.
Higher CO2 is beneficial. There is zero evidence it is dangerous at all. Only speculation.
Warmer temps being deadly are not speculative, they are delusional.
Honestly, there is no comparison.
People are awful at assessing risk and planning accordingly, even when the truth and the facts are plain as day and widely known.
This is what happens when you accept the “Precautionary Principle “- you end up being ruled by the people who tell the scariest stories. You lose the ability to think about whether the scary stories are, in any way, meaningful, or just stories. You lose your ability to reason, and end up huddled in a ball in a cave, consumed by fear.
Well, Cato is well rid of this ass-clown. He’s saying we should pay 1 billion dollars to insure an asset worth 1 million dollars. You wouldn’t ever pay even a million dollars to insure an asset worth a million dollars. You’d figure out the LIKELIHOOD that you’d lose that asset in any given year, and pro-rate a premium amount that you could afford as the insurance company figures out how much risk they can take, while still making a return on their risk and investment. Insurance is always about giving up something. The question is, how much are you willing to give up. Jerry is willing to give up virtually all of Modernity/Western Civilization on the off-chance we might lose some of Modernity/Western Civilization to CO2 based heating, the risk of which is minuscule. This is a fool’s bargain if ever I’ve seen one, and Jerry Taylor is a colossal fool (albeit an apparently well-paid one).
Burning carbon is good – get it out of the ground and make it useful, to people, and in the end the C02 also helps people by growing plants better, all around win!
Precautionary Principle
Think about that for a moment. What happens if we do the Green Agenda or something close to it? Global economic collapse? Starvation rampant? Massive blackouts with deaths from inability to heat or cool homes? Skeptics have claimed those and more disasters and have a much higher probability of that than the effects of a minor rise in temps. Not only that but we’ve seen signs of those in Europe with their blackouts and having to import energy. Look at the third world for what the condition of the people will be with a lack of energy. Given their Precautionary Principle why would you implement something so dangerous?
They have all sold their souls and have become brainless Zombies repeating the company line.
Science is a separate issue. Science is not a fight. There are no sides.
What is, is, if that is what the observations show.
Sure, everyone knows CAGW is serious.
CAGW is a human created monster that is tearing our governments and legal system apart.
Wasting money which we do not have is serious.
The green schemes do not work, except in making electricity very expensive. It is serious that Germany has proven that to be true and everyone is continuing to push dead end schemes.
Science that goes somewhere is exciting. i.e. Stuff that real changes what we believe is or what is or is not possible.
It is possible now to absolutely physically prove we did not cause the CO2 rise.
This is cool puzzle as it is old school science, almost no math, and the observations are astonishingly supportive of the assertion that the thing exists.
It so basic, fundamental to everything concerning the earth, it is more like the discovery of a thing about the earth, a fact that changes everything, as opposed to a theory.
A geological Forest Gump breakthrough.
“What Changed My Mind About Climate Change?”
What mind?
‘You just have to understand that it is one possible outcome.’ ‘straight-forward economics suggests that we ought to take climate change very seriously. We should take Climate Change seriously. One possible outcome another ICE age. Another possible outcome, a very, very large rock hitting the earth. One more possible outcome, supper volcano erupting. I’m sure you could come with more possible outcome that would cause a swing in our climate not based on poor little CO2.
The reality is that, based on the paleoclimate record and the work done with models, the climate change we have been experiencing is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control. Despite the hype, there is no real evidence that CO2 has and effect on climate and there is plenty of scientific rationale to support the idea that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero. Even if we could somehow stop the Earth’s climate from changing, extreme weather events and sea level rise would continue unabated because they are part of the current climate. We do not know what the optimum global climate is let alone how to achieve it. Wasting time and money, not knowing what we are doing, is not such a good idea. We would be better off spending time and money solving problems that mankind does have the power to solve. Right now the best thing that we can be doing is trying to improve the economy.