Ian K’s Recent Comments

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  1% doctrine

  If the police had a tip-off about planes flying into the World Trade Center, I would expect them to act, even if the likelihood of the tip-off being accurate were only 1%.

  If scientists were sure that there were a 10% probability of a known asteroid obliterating all life on earth in 30 years time I would personally be prepared to undergo a fair deal of financial hardship to avoid that event even though 9 out of 10 times that effort would be wasted. I mightn't be willing to work in a salt mine in Siberia for the next 30 years but I would be willing to take a hit on my "quality of life" by spending time and money avoiding that possibility.

  So should we be willing to act upon global warming when the probability of it being man-made is (properly) 92.5%, by IPCC judgment, and it may not hit us fully for quite some time. It will not be a catastrophic event like the asteroid and there is a 7.5% chance that we will be wasting our time.

  To me, my decision depends on a trade-off between, on the one hand: how much I value the world as it is against the world as it will become with accelerating global warming and on the other hand: how much I value the other things I could do with my time and money if I were not preoccupied by this issue.

   From what I have read, if you change your level of income, either up or down, you may find it pleasant/unpleasant for a while but after that you adjust your expectations to your new circumstances and are just as happy as before (as long as your income doesn't drop below the poverty line). Furthermore I believe that if others are also making a sacrifice then a cut in income is more tolerable (as happened during WW II).

  So I am not impressed by the argument that we shouldn't act because we will take an economic hit (though I agree that Ethiopians could validly make such a claim). I am also not impressed by the economic argument because there is a 92.5% probability that I have (unknowingly) bought my ease and wealth at the future cost of Ethiopians, Chinese peasants and the like.

  A further argument for inaction I have heard is that money spent on global warming would be better spent on helping the world's poor directly, ie via charity. I can't see the relevance of this. I am not acting out of charity by spending money on global warming (although my actions will indirectly help poor countries). By tackling global warming I am really acting in my own self-interest to maintain the world as it is because I value (and hopefully my children will also value) its diversity of wildlife, etc. So any money devoted to global warming should come out of selfish expenditures - my priority would be various subsidies, defence expenditure, etc which have no relevance to charitable funds which should logically remain unaffected.
  On The scoop on the new IPCC climate-change report posted 2 years, 9 months ago 11 Responses