The 'Facts' of Climate Change?

Andrew Revkin, the NYTimes' major climate reporter, has a post on "basic facets" of the climate debate that "are not in reasonable dispute." He sees this as a "foundation for weighing policies" and for shifting "this discussion away from unresolvable whipsaw debates." It's a good post, and it reveals a number of things that are wrong with the climate change debate - though in ways I don't think Revkin intended.

First, nothing is gained by calling something indisputable. If it's indisputable, then nobody will dispute it. If someone disputes it, then it is disputable, and calling indisputable is a debater's trick, aimed at making the disputer look crazy, irrelevant or immoral. Phrases like "the science is over" are not only not true - climate science at all levels is still underdeveloped and evolving - but are generally pitched to favor a political position ('the globe is in crisis!'), rather than scientific conclusion. It is in that category of rhetorical devices that include calling someone a 'climate-denier,' as if to disagree with environmentalists were the moral equivalent of holocaust denial. To his credit, Revkin is trying to avoid the worst of this, but his list reproduces it nonetheless.

Second, though the list initially presents itself as ten scientific conclusions, it fast bleeds into social and moral arguments that are even more disputable than scientific facts. The first facet, it is true, is scientific - "carbon dioxide is a heat-trapping gas." But by point 4 we start to see a blurring of the lines:

"Coal is still abundant, has helped today’s industrial powers become rich, and is helping poorer countries grow their economies. But it comes with significant environmental and social costs (scoured landscapes, carbon dioxide, around 4,000 deaths a year in Chinese mines, tens of thousands of premature deaths from respiratory ailments linked to sooty pollution)."

Point five is similar:

"Oil is still reasonably abundant and fairly cheap, but comes with a large external price tag including international conflict, pollution, and (of course) carbon dioxide."

To take just one way in which these are not mere (and indisputable) scientific facts, there is no reason why the very existence of coal mining causes mining deaths. That is dependent not upon the properties of coal, but upon the way the Chinese organize coal mining. If workers were better represented politically, and had more control over the mining process, and had safer mining technology, I'm sure 4000 wouldn't die a year. Moreover, there are indeed negative externalities to fossil fuel production and use. However, there are also numerous positive externalities. Cheap energy allows people greater mobility, more leisure time at night, and to be emancipated from various kinds of toil and drudgery because automated tools can take their place. It allows people to cool their homes during the summer, and warm their homes during the winter, both of which contribute substantially to reducing temperature related morbidity. Indeed, the most significant relationship between industrialization (on the back of fossil fuel) and health is the radical improvement in life expectancy. Just this century, worldwide life expectancy has more than doubled, an unprecedented improvement in human history. So too have other health factors like height and weight.* It is simply a prejudice common to environmentalist arguments about pollution and fossil fuels that most of the intended effects of using coal and oil are positive but most of the unintended effects are negative. It is also an unfounded assumption, and unworthy moral judgment, that somehow the benefits are mainly wasteful luxuries (driving big cars around, jet-setting across the globe, keeping the houselights on, having plenty of consumer products) while the negative externalities are mainly bad for sheer survival (war, cancer, respiratory disease.) It's much more complex than that. Moreover, all this can't be appreciated unless we acknowledge that a number of social issues and moral ideas are being smuggled in here as 'indisputable facts.'

Finally, there is nothing wrong with talking about the science of climate change. That is one area where there should be vigorous discussion, because the facts are one dimension of the debate. But as I intend to demonstrate in future posts, I don't think the facts, even if we agreed on them, would settle very much at all about what we should do. That is to say, for the sake of argument, let's say the conclusions of the IPCC about the science of climate change really were the indisputable truth. This science would be unable to tell us what our political response should be. That is because the science is only one dimension of the argument. There are serious differences over matters of moral principle and social organization that are also at stake. Whether we should invest time, money and energy into mitigation vs. adaptation strategies - reducing greenhouse gas emissions or developing technologies to adapt to climate change - raises social and political questions that simply are not the domain of natural science. I think that thinking through all the dimensions of climate change suggest we should not invest in mitigation strategies, but rather in technologies that help us adapt to climate change, in and political reforms that make society more equal. In this post, I can't substantiate that claim. But what is clear enough is that the science, even when distinguished from other matters, doesn't actually take us as far as people would like it to.



I will get the exact, page number reference for these figures in the next week - I left the book at the office!