VitalAccurateThinking

David Deutsch on Global Warming

H/T Chronicle of the Conspiracy

David Deutsch is a legendary physicist who is lecturing on the nature of the universe in this video. He has this to say about Global Warming:

So let me apply this to one issue of current controversy – not because I want to advocate any particular solution, but just to illustrate the kind of thinking I'm advocating. The issue is global warming. I'm a physicist but not knowledgeable about the relevant physics. So for these purposes I am a layman. And for a layman, the rational thing to do is to take seriously the prevailing scientific theory. And according to that theory, it is already too late to avoid a disaster. Because if it's true that our best option currently is to prevent carbon dioxide emissions via the Kyoto protocol with its constraints on economic activity and its cost of hundreds of billions of dollars and so on, then that's already a disaster by any reasonable measure. And these actions aren't even purported to solve the problem, merely to postpone it a little.

So it's too late to avoid it, and most likely it was already too late to avoid it even before anyone knew about it. It was already too late in the 70s when the best available science was telling us that industrial emissions were about to precipitate a new Ice Age in which billions of people would die. And so the lesson of that seems very clear to me, and I don't know why it isn't informing public debate, namely: we can't always know. When we know of an impending disaster, and how to avoid it at a cost less than that of the disaster itself, then there isn't going to be much argument. But no precautions, and no precautionary principle, can avoid problems that we do not yet foresee. Hence, we need a stance of problem-fixing not just problem avoidance.

It is true that an ounce of prevention equals a pound of cure. But that's only when we know what to prevent. If you've been punched on the nose, then medical science does not consist of teaching you how to avoid being punched in the future. If medical science stopped seeking cures, and concentrated only on prevention, then it would achieve very little of either.

The world is currently buzzing with plans to force reductions in gas emissions. At all costs! But it ought to be buzzing more with plans to reduce the temperature, or with plans for how to live with a higher temperature. And not at all costs but efficiently and cheaply. Some such plans exist: things like swarms of mirrors in space that would deflect sunlight away from the Earth; encouraging aquatic organisms to eat more carbon dioxide, and so on. But at the moment these are fringe research. They are not central to the human effort to face this problem or problems like it. But with problems that we are not aware of yet, the ability to put things right, not the sheer good luck of avoiding them indefinitely, is our only hope not just of solving them but of survival. So take those two stone tablets, and here's a better way of phrasing the two denials I spoke of: On the first tablet, carve: problems are inevitable. And on the second, carve: problems are soluble.

The complete transcript is here

What great thinking ability. Approaching it from a greenhouse gas emissions standpoint is a losing proposition. It was a losing proposition a long time before I bought my SUV.

posted by Jim VAT @ 9:02 PM