> The vast majority of people who believe in global warming have only one real piece of evidence: Climatologists believe in global warming.
And that is fairly strong evidence, even if we admit the possibility of politically motivated lying by large groups of scientists. After all, what would the scientists' motivation be here? The politics at least originally was downstream of the science rather than the other way round.
In addition to that I have the fact that when I was a boy, people were arguing on grounds of simple physics I could understand about whether Milankovich cycles would plunge us into a new ice age, or the greenhouse effect would keep us warm and indeed possibly too warm.
Both effects seem to be true as far as I can tell, indeed it seems that early forest clearance and the resulting rise in carbon dioxide in ancient times might have been what has caused this current interglacial to last so long, and it seems rather silly to not believe in the greenhouse effect, or that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide and a recorded rise in the amount in the atmosphere won't have strengthened the greenhouse effect as predicted.
What no-one's ever managed to convince me of is the idea that global warming is some sort of terrifying threat. It might even be a net positive. That's the interesting bit of the debate. And yes, there I can well believe that politics is silencing some dissenting academic voices.
Possibly even yours. Cost-benefit analysis is your domain. What do you think? What really are the consequences of the world getting a bit warmer? I think everyone would agree that a bit colder would be bad. Why would we assume current temperatures are optimal?
And if you did think it wasn't so bad, would you actually be happy to become one of the despised "science-deniers" in the enemy tribe? It's sure not a hill I'd be prepared to die on.
"Believe in global warming". Gotta say, I hate seeing that phrase. Do you mean "believe in anthropogenic warming"? Maybe? Who knows? I can't tell. The language is imprecise.
I think most people believe that the globe is warming. But even climatologists do not all agree that the warming is anthropogenic. And there is no way to be sure, because you can't actually measure anthropogenic effects on the climate. You can make predictive models, but the models are not the real world.
We do not KNOW any of the following:
--that anthropogenic warming is happening
--that if it is happening, whether it is significant
--that if it is happening, whether the net effect is "bad" or "good"
--whether it is bad or good, whether spending trillions of dollars on mitigation will have any effect
Take it from an academic: lay people who are curious about any of this need to understand how financial and status incentives (and disincentives) affect the practice of scholarship and science. The effect is extremely large.
It doesn't actually matter whether it's anthropogenic or not, surely? If it's actually bad, we should be thinking about what we can do to mitigate it, and which costs are worth paying, irrespective of whether we caused it?
You can observe that burning fossil fuel emits CO2 - a direct experiment you can do yourself (eg a flame, enclosed container, liquid to dissolve the CO2, measure the acidity of the liquid).
You can, with nominal equipment, measure and verify 400+ppm CO2 in the atmosphere, and if you started 10 years ago, you’d by now have pretty convincing personal evidence that it’s increasing, in line with the rate at which we are emitting (there’s a degree of trust in finding figures of how much fossil fuel is burned, but there are lots of ways to triangulate that.
And you can pretty simply perform a greenhouse experiment demonstrating that increased CO2 retains more solar heat.
That’s a pretty convincing chain of reasoning that there’s a climate forcing stimulus.
Determining how *much* that impacts the climate is much harder, since there are so many rational positive and negative feedback loops. But trust it is likely to increase, and that it is anthropogenic, seem pretty clear.
That’s a good starting point for consulting with a range of experts who have thought about it a lot deeper, and tentatively trusting their hypotheses, especially when ocean temperatures, dates of first snow in winter, dates of blossoms, and fall of autumn leaves, retreat of glaciers, and many other climate related natural world phenomena keep moving in an observable fashion which is in line with the predictions, in magnitude if not in absolute value.
Where we strongly agree is that examining the financial incentives of the loudest voices is a key indicator to figuring if out who is lying…
It's more complicated. If you do that, you'll find CO2 has a very weak effect on temperature. All experts agree to that. Everybody also agrees that there is a secondary effect: the slight CO2 effect can be magnified by increasing the amount of water vapor, and then it might be a big temperature effect. Except then, there is a disagreement as to the effect on cloud cover, which could dampen out the water vapor effect. That's where the politicized experts cheat.
Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life is a 1978 book by philosopher Sissela Bok.
While the book is a bit dated and treatment relatively dry, a very worthwhile read. Lying is deeply ingrained in human behavior in every context. Bok's book does a good job of walking through a variety of cases and concludes, in part, that lying is a feature not a bug. Important to make conscious decisions to lie or not!
As Bryan notes, maintaining healthy skepticism about the limits of our knowledge as well as the knowledge of others is important in the search for the truth.
Good post. Please write more. This might benefit from more formal modelling. "Cascades" are relevant-- after the first 3 people believe, everybody else just lazily goes along.
Ilyich himselt illychstrates one situation: everybody lies about fatality. Since he knows this is Victorian convention, he can ignore what they say.
I think you neglect to mention an important reaction: Doubt yourself, not them, until you can figure out a motive or an explantion for why everybody else is wrong.
I am not a big consumer of philosophical porn*… but even I can recognize when it’s gone off the rails.
If one uses Tolstoy as a jumping-off point requiring extension via Byron’s philo-porn platform, be ready for some scrutiny.
The post above states:
“Tolstoy’s on to something big: Human beings face intense social pressure to lie.”
Not sure… maybe…???
• In the social context, the “pressure” is probably not to lie so much as it is to conform. And that pressure is likely a phenotypical expression of a trait designed to stabilize tribal living for reproduction (see Byron’s post on abortion 😊).
• Tolstoy writes that from the perspective of the dying man, this trait—ritualized choreography—feels lonely and looks like a conspiracy of lies. After all, to the dying man, reproduction doesn’t matter anymore, and the tribe he conformed to now looks stupid.
[I will cap it there. I won’t get into the intense human need for “union” or quantum entanglement (the eerie connection between particles after they have had sex)1–3, nor the kinky 1950-era experiences on conforming.4–6 I have no time to do this… even if unemployed.]
But before I depart, one more thing regarding views of X banging Y for “ego gratification” or the “maximal humiliation” by Y to X.
Consider also:
• You’re both right, but about different things. This view is quietly stabilizing, and often overlooked.
• You’re right because you see what they can’t. This view is empowering, and sometimes accurate.
• They’re right because they see what you don’t. This view is humbling, and often the simplest.
• You’re reading the same facts differently. This view is non-threatening, and common in complex issues.
• They’re not lying — they’re defending themselves. This view is psychologically plausible, and emotionally messy.
• You’re right, but at the wrong moment. This view is subtly ironic, and context often proves it.
• They disagree because their incentives require it. This view is strategically plausible, and socially frequent.
• They’re performing agreement for social harmony. This view is politely dishonest, and widely practiced.
• You noticed something real, but overextended it. This view is partly true, and partly self-inflated.
• You’re speaking from truth; they’re speaking from comfort. This view is emotionally accurate, and mutually frustrating.
• The situation is genuinely ambiguous. This view is unsettling, and intellectually honest.
• They’re soft-lying to protect you. This view is tenderly wrong, and morally complicated.
• Everyone is confused, including you. This view is disarming, and usually correct.
• Everyone is just playing their assigned role. This view is socially coherent, and existentially bleak.
• Each of you holds only a fragment of the truth. This view is pluralistic, and quietly profound.
• You’re pursuing meaning; they’re pursuing stability. This view is motivationally accurate, and irreconcilable.
• The conflict isn’t about truth at all. This view is relational and explains nearly everything.
I conclude with an insight from the father of philosophical porn:7
“Best left unsolved.” — Nigel Tufnel, Lead Guitarist, Spinal Tap (1984)
*The author of this comment follows only Byron Cantor, so at some point he must have said something that blew the author’s mind.
References:
1. Einstein A, Podolsky B, Rosen N. Can quantum-mechanical description of physical reality be considered complete? Phys Rev. 1935;47(10):777-780.
2. Schrödinger E. Discussion of probability relations between separated systems. Proc Camb Philos Soc. 1935;31:555-563.
3. Bell JS. On the Einstein Podolsky Rosen paradox. Physics. 1964;1(3):195-200.
4. Asch SE. Effects of group pressure upon the modification and distortion of judgments. In: Guetzkow H, ed. Groups, Leadership and Men. Carnegie Press; 1951:177-190.
5. Asch SE. Opinions and social pressure. Sci Am. 1955;193(5):31-35.
6. Asch SE. Studies of independence and conformity: I. A minority of one against a unanimous majority. Psychol Monogr. 1956;70(9):1-70.
7. This Is Spinal Tap. Film. Reiner R, director. Embassy Pictures; 1984.
> The vast majority of people who believe in global warming have only one real piece of evidence: Climatologists believe in global warming.
And that is fairly strong evidence, even if we admit the possibility of politically motivated lying by large groups of scientists. After all, what would the scientists' motivation be here? The politics at least originally was downstream of the science rather than the other way round.
In addition to that I have the fact that when I was a boy, people were arguing on grounds of simple physics I could understand about whether Milankovich cycles would plunge us into a new ice age, or the greenhouse effect would keep us warm and indeed possibly too warm.
Both effects seem to be true as far as I can tell, indeed it seems that early forest clearance and the resulting rise in carbon dioxide in ancient times might have been what has caused this current interglacial to last so long, and it seems rather silly to not believe in the greenhouse effect, or that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide and a recorded rise in the amount in the atmosphere won't have strengthened the greenhouse effect as predicted.
What no-one's ever managed to convince me of is the idea that global warming is some sort of terrifying threat. It might even be a net positive. That's the interesting bit of the debate. And yes, there I can well believe that politics is silencing some dissenting academic voices.
Possibly even yours. Cost-benefit analysis is your domain. What do you think? What really are the consequences of the world getting a bit warmer? I think everyone would agree that a bit colder would be bad. Why would we assume current temperatures are optimal?
And if you did think it wasn't so bad, would you actually be happy to become one of the despised "science-deniers" in the enemy tribe? It's sure not a hill I'd be prepared to die on.
"Believe in global warming". Gotta say, I hate seeing that phrase. Do you mean "believe in anthropogenic warming"? Maybe? Who knows? I can't tell. The language is imprecise.
I think most people believe that the globe is warming. But even climatologists do not all agree that the warming is anthropogenic. And there is no way to be sure, because you can't actually measure anthropogenic effects on the climate. You can make predictive models, but the models are not the real world.
We do not KNOW any of the following:
--that anthropogenic warming is happening
--that if it is happening, whether it is significant
--that if it is happening, whether the net effect is "bad" or "good"
--whether it is bad or good, whether spending trillions of dollars on mitigation will have any effect
Take it from an academic: lay people who are curious about any of this need to understand how financial and status incentives (and disincentives) affect the practice of scholarship and science. The effect is extremely large.
It doesn't actually matter whether it's anthropogenic or not, surely? If it's actually bad, we should be thinking about what we can do to mitigate it, and which costs are worth paying, irrespective of whether we caused it?
> “you can’t actually measure anthropomorphic effects”
Well, you certainly can, to first order.
You can observe that burning fossil fuel emits CO2 - a direct experiment you can do yourself (eg a flame, enclosed container, liquid to dissolve the CO2, measure the acidity of the liquid).
You can, with nominal equipment, measure and verify 400+ppm CO2 in the atmosphere, and if you started 10 years ago, you’d by now have pretty convincing personal evidence that it’s increasing, in line with the rate at which we are emitting (there’s a degree of trust in finding figures of how much fossil fuel is burned, but there are lots of ways to triangulate that.
And you can pretty simply perform a greenhouse experiment demonstrating that increased CO2 retains more solar heat.
That’s a pretty convincing chain of reasoning that there’s a climate forcing stimulus.
Determining how *much* that impacts the climate is much harder, since there are so many rational positive and negative feedback loops. But trust it is likely to increase, and that it is anthropogenic, seem pretty clear.
That’s a good starting point for consulting with a range of experts who have thought about it a lot deeper, and tentatively trusting their hypotheses, especially when ocean temperatures, dates of first snow in winter, dates of blossoms, and fall of autumn leaves, retreat of glaciers, and many other climate related natural world phenomena keep moving in an observable fashion which is in line with the predictions, in magnitude if not in absolute value.
Where we strongly agree is that examining the financial incentives of the loudest voices is a key indicator to figuring if out who is lying…
It's more complicated. If you do that, you'll find CO2 has a very weak effect on temperature. All experts agree to that. Everybody also agrees that there is a secondary effect: the slight CO2 effect can be magnified by increasing the amount of water vapor, and then it might be a big temperature effect. Except then, there is a disagreement as to the effect on cloud cover, which could dampen out the water vapor effect. That's where the politicized experts cheat.
Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life is a 1978 book by philosopher Sissela Bok.
While the book is a bit dated and treatment relatively dry, a very worthwhile read. Lying is deeply ingrained in human behavior in every context. Bok's book does a good job of walking through a variety of cases and concludes, in part, that lying is a feature not a bug. Important to make conscious decisions to lie or not!
As Bryan notes, maintaining healthy skepticism about the limits of our knowledge as well as the knowledge of others is important in the search for the truth.
Wonderful post!
Good post. Please write more. This might benefit from more formal modelling. "Cascades" are relevant-- after the first 3 people believe, everybody else just lazily goes along.
Ilyich himselt illychstrates one situation: everybody lies about fatality. Since he knows this is Victorian convention, he can ignore what they say.
I think you neglect to mention an important reaction: Doubt yourself, not them, until you can figure out a motive or an explantion for why everybody else is wrong.
When Porn Goes Off
I am not a big consumer of philosophical porn*… but even I can recognize when it’s gone off the rails.
If one uses Tolstoy as a jumping-off point requiring extension via Byron’s philo-porn platform, be ready for some scrutiny.
The post above states:
“Tolstoy’s on to something big: Human beings face intense social pressure to lie.”
Not sure… maybe…???
• In the social context, the “pressure” is probably not to lie so much as it is to conform. And that pressure is likely a phenotypical expression of a trait designed to stabilize tribal living for reproduction (see Byron’s post on abortion 😊).
• Tolstoy writes that from the perspective of the dying man, this trait—ritualized choreography—feels lonely and looks like a conspiracy of lies. After all, to the dying man, reproduction doesn’t matter anymore, and the tribe he conformed to now looks stupid.
[I will cap it there. I won’t get into the intense human need for “union” or quantum entanglement (the eerie connection between particles after they have had sex)1–3, nor the kinky 1950-era experiences on conforming.4–6 I have no time to do this… even if unemployed.]
But before I depart, one more thing regarding views of X banging Y for “ego gratification” or the “maximal humiliation” by Y to X.
Consider also:
• You’re both right, but about different things. This view is quietly stabilizing, and often overlooked.
• You’re right because you see what they can’t. This view is empowering, and sometimes accurate.
• They’re right because they see what you don’t. This view is humbling, and often the simplest.
• You’re reading the same facts differently. This view is non-threatening, and common in complex issues.
• They’re not lying — they’re defending themselves. This view is psychologically plausible, and emotionally messy.
• You’re right, but at the wrong moment. This view is subtly ironic, and context often proves it.
• They disagree because their incentives require it. This view is strategically plausible, and socially frequent.
• They’re performing agreement for social harmony. This view is politely dishonest, and widely practiced.
• You noticed something real, but overextended it. This view is partly true, and partly self-inflated.
• You’re speaking from truth; they’re speaking from comfort. This view is emotionally accurate, and mutually frustrating.
• The situation is genuinely ambiguous. This view is unsettling, and intellectually honest.
• They’re soft-lying to protect you. This view is tenderly wrong, and morally complicated.
• Everyone is confused, including you. This view is disarming, and usually correct.
• Everyone is just playing their assigned role. This view is socially coherent, and existentially bleak.
• Each of you holds only a fragment of the truth. This view is pluralistic, and quietly profound.
• You’re pursuing meaning; they’re pursuing stability. This view is motivationally accurate, and irreconcilable.
• The conflict isn’t about truth at all. This view is relational and explains nearly everything.
I conclude with an insight from the father of philosophical porn:7
“Best left unsolved.” — Nigel Tufnel, Lead Guitarist, Spinal Tap (1984)
*The author of this comment follows only Byron Cantor, so at some point he must have said something that blew the author’s mind.
References:
1. Einstein A, Podolsky B, Rosen N. Can quantum-mechanical description of physical reality be considered complete? Phys Rev. 1935;47(10):777-780.
2. Schrödinger E. Discussion of probability relations between separated systems. Proc Camb Philos Soc. 1935;31:555-563.
3. Bell JS. On the Einstein Podolsky Rosen paradox. Physics. 1964;1(3):195-200.
4. Asch SE. Effects of group pressure upon the modification and distortion of judgments. In: Guetzkow H, ed. Groups, Leadership and Men. Carnegie Press; 1951:177-190.
5. Asch SE. Opinions and social pressure. Sci Am. 1955;193(5):31-35.
6. Asch SE. Studies of independence and conformity: I. A minority of one against a unanimous majority. Psychol Monogr. 1956;70(9):1-70.
7. This Is Spinal Tap. Film. Reiner R, director. Embassy Pictures; 1984.