Bryan, I'm just curious if you think it is possible that Alex might be going overboard in his position. I'm a former DOE Global Change Fellow, and I've been deep in the weeds of this discussion.
I've also blogged in favor of some of Alex's ideas, and the importance of development for climate adaptation.
But it seems clear to me that there will be a lot of *suffering* caused by climate change, if only because we have so much poverty in the world right now. There will be many more climate refugees, and that will further stress the West.
I think we should be much more broadly balanced in our discussion, rather than just attacking one side as "wrong" or "flawed" or "anti-science."
As with anything else, one should ask "Compared to what?" Are there other areas of widely accepted and impactful scientific discourse that Epstein thinks do a lot better than climate science? If so, can he point to some to emulate? If not, does he discount publicly expressed consensus in other areas of science as much as climate science?
Bryan - so far your posts about Alex Epstein's work have focused on the meta and epistemological questions he raises about our knowledge system, rather than the specific scientific evidence he uses to support his claims that we should not worry about climate change and in fact should continue burning fossil fuels at an accelerating pace.
You do say that the book contains a lot of detailed evidence for his claims but I have not yet seen you interrogate that evidence. Will you? I would be very interested in reading your analysis of his interpretation of the scientific literature.
More generally, while elements of the climate movement are indeed extreme, the reality is the world is not and will not move to renewables unless and until they are economically viable and reliable. No nation, ever, to this point has contemplated "switching off" fossil fuel power. For all the "steelmanning" he does, to pretend that we are at risk of voluntarily walking back into the dark ages is a strawman in the extreme compared to what voters and policymakers are doing in reality.
I agree with you that our default assumption should be that worst case scenarios are unlikely. But the relevant question is how much should we be willing to pay for insurance against those scenarios, especially if they are irreversible (e.g., meteor hitting earth)?
Investments to look for meteors and develop methods to divert them from earth seem like a great idea. So do pan-coronavirus vaccines to prevent the next pandemic. So do investments in green technology.
Measured against current political and policy realities, what exactly is Epstein arguing against? That we should stop trying to make wind/solar cheaper and more reliable? That we should not invest in better battery technology? That trying to make baseload power from Enhanced Geothermal Systems is not a good long-term bet? That we should not invest in nuclear fusion or small fission reactors? That as those sources become economical and reliable we should not use them to replace fossil fuel power?
Those all seem like very reasonable investments and insurance against a climate change and are the de facto choices the world is making. THAT is the steelman he should be contemplating. Not the strawman argument that we are going to suddenly and voluntarily reduce our standard of living to save the climate, which has not and will not be permitted by voters and the populations more generally.
Coming back to my first point - you obviously agree with his positions on the failures of our knowledge system. But what say you about his interpretation of the scientific literature on the impacts of climate change, what probabilities do you assign to his claims, and what are the implied levels of insurance/investment that would be required by such probabilities?
A number of years ago, I read the IPCC AR4 in some detail. My take was that it was quite credible on the sensitivity of temperature to CO2, fairly credible on other geophysical impacts (noting that this seems to be a hard problem, which it communicated pretty well). I don’t recall whether I thought it was credible or not on mitigation/human impacts - for whatever reason, I found this section very forgettable.
It is interesting to hear the journey that people like Epstein, Shellenberger have gone through. Nothing new, it is the classical path from idealistic / ideological positions to data driven, facts driven, science driven positions. The issue is that they are considered apostates by the mainstream media and morally corrupted scientists who need research grants to make a living. There is a lot of education to be done among journalists especially because the profession has lowered its standards dramatically.
Regarding the issue of what mitigation strategies are worthwhile it seems largely an academic question as even a revenue nuetral carbon tax is still a pipe dream. As such a policy replaces taxes on desireable things (profits) with a tax on something with a negative externality it's pretty clearly a net positive policy. Whatever views ppl have beyond that don't seem that important if we can't even get there (tho I do think the rhetoric often pushes people away).
Regarding the issue of credibility my confidence in the predictions about climate change was hugely changed when (previously quite skeptical) physicist Richard Mueller basically started from scratch and reached very similar conclusions.
To be clear, what this convinced me of is the reliability of the mainstream predictions in the scientific literature not the political recommendations. The question of what to do about it is where things get less reliable but see the first part of this comment.
I feel like there is some work being done here by lumping in the estremist voices opposing solutions like nuclear with the many people raising concerns about climate change who are either proponents of those solutions or simply not commenting on them. Of course, there are crazies on any issue and if you lump them in with the people you are critisizing you can make them look worse.
Bryan, I'm just curious if you think it is possible that Alex might be going overboard in his position. I'm a former DOE Global Change Fellow, and I've been deep in the weeds of this discussion.
I've seriously taken climate activists to task, most recently in Losing My Religions. https://www.losingmyreligions.net/
I've also blogged in favor of some of Alex's ideas, and the importance of development for climate adaptation.
But it seems clear to me that there will be a lot of *suffering* caused by climate change, if only because we have so much poverty in the world right now. There will be many more climate refugees, and that will further stress the West.
I think we should be much more broadly balanced in our discussion, rather than just attacking one side as "wrong" or "flawed" or "anti-science."
As with anything else, one should ask "Compared to what?" Are there other areas of widely accepted and impactful scientific discourse that Epstein thinks do a lot better than climate science? If so, can he point to some to emulate? If not, does he discount publicly expressed consensus in other areas of science as much as climate science?
Bryan - so far your posts about Alex Epstein's work have focused on the meta and epistemological questions he raises about our knowledge system, rather than the specific scientific evidence he uses to support his claims that we should not worry about climate change and in fact should continue burning fossil fuels at an accelerating pace.
You do say that the book contains a lot of detailed evidence for his claims but I have not yet seen you interrogate that evidence. Will you? I would be very interested in reading your analysis of his interpretation of the scientific literature.
More generally, while elements of the climate movement are indeed extreme, the reality is the world is not and will not move to renewables unless and until they are economically viable and reliable. No nation, ever, to this point has contemplated "switching off" fossil fuel power. For all the "steelmanning" he does, to pretend that we are at risk of voluntarily walking back into the dark ages is a strawman in the extreme compared to what voters and policymakers are doing in reality.
I agree with you that our default assumption should be that worst case scenarios are unlikely. But the relevant question is how much should we be willing to pay for insurance against those scenarios, especially if they are irreversible (e.g., meteor hitting earth)?
Investments to look for meteors and develop methods to divert them from earth seem like a great idea. So do pan-coronavirus vaccines to prevent the next pandemic. So do investments in green technology.
Measured against current political and policy realities, what exactly is Epstein arguing against? That we should stop trying to make wind/solar cheaper and more reliable? That we should not invest in better battery technology? That trying to make baseload power from Enhanced Geothermal Systems is not a good long-term bet? That we should not invest in nuclear fusion or small fission reactors? That as those sources become economical and reliable we should not use them to replace fossil fuel power?
Those all seem like very reasonable investments and insurance against a climate change and are the de facto choices the world is making. THAT is the steelman he should be contemplating. Not the strawman argument that we are going to suddenly and voluntarily reduce our standard of living to save the climate, which has not and will not be permitted by voters and the populations more generally.
Coming back to my first point - you obviously agree with his positions on the failures of our knowledge system. But what say you about his interpretation of the scientific literature on the impacts of climate change, what probabilities do you assign to his claims, and what are the implied levels of insurance/investment that would be required by such probabilities?
A number of years ago, I read the IPCC AR4 in some detail. My take was that it was quite credible on the sensitivity of temperature to CO2, fairly credible on other geophysical impacts (noting that this seems to be a hard problem, which it communicated pretty well). I don’t recall whether I thought it was credible or not on mitigation/human impacts - for whatever reason, I found this section very forgettable.
FWIW the 97% statistic itself appears to be false: http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2014/02/a-climate-falsehood-you-can-check-for.html?m=1
Enjoy your travels, my friend. Enjoy.
—————————-Ross Faris
It is interesting to hear the journey that people like Epstein, Shellenberger have gone through. Nothing new, it is the classical path from idealistic / ideological positions to data driven, facts driven, science driven positions. The issue is that they are considered apostates by the mainstream media and morally corrupted scientists who need research grants to make a living. There is a lot of education to be done among journalists especially because the profession has lowered its standards dramatically.
Regarding the issue of what mitigation strategies are worthwhile it seems largely an academic question as even a revenue nuetral carbon tax is still a pipe dream. As such a policy replaces taxes on desireable things (profits) with a tax on something with a negative externality it's pretty clearly a net positive policy. Whatever views ppl have beyond that don't seem that important if we can't even get there (tho I do think the rhetoric often pushes people away).
Regarding the issue of credibility my confidence in the predictions about climate change was hugely changed when (previously quite skeptical) physicist Richard Mueller basically started from scratch and reached very similar conclusions.
To be clear, what this convinced me of is the reliability of the mainstream predictions in the scientific literature not the political recommendations. The question of what to do about it is where things get less reliable but see the first part of this comment.
I feel like there is some work being done here by lumping in the estremist voices opposing solutions like nuclear with the many people raising concerns about climate change who are either proponents of those solutions or simply not commenting on them. Of course, there are crazies on any issue and if you lump them in with the people you are critisizing you can make them look worse.
Thanks for a great book recommendation! I’d love to hear about other books you have found compelling.
Minor typo: "While Alex Epstein’s Fossil Future presents a lot [of] evidence"