An Open-Minded Skeptic's Response to Al Gore's Speech at TED
Vice President Gore gave an impassioned speech last night at TED on the threat of global warming.
Now I don't want to be a doubter, among the many reasons not least of which is I know absolutley nothing about environmental science. But as an educated, open-minded person, I should hope I'm the target audience for his message, which is that human behaviors can impact geological trends in unforseen ways.
I'm particularly interested in learning more as my relatively deep reading (for an amateur) in evolutionary biology and long-standing interest in economics & regulation makes "unintended consequences" an a salient topic for me.
In particular, Jared Diamond's recent book Collapse, has opened my eyes to the varying lengths of feedback, regeneration, and response-time cycles of the earth, life, human institutions, and technology, which are, perhaps, measured in millions, thousands, tens and units of years, respectively. As we are very good at creating new technologies, it is incumbent upon us to ask how good we are at understanding their long-term effects on the fundamental "technology" of our biologically-based home here on Earth.
Vice President Gore's assertion in his TED speech was:
"We are witnessing a collision between our civilization and the earth ... We have no more than 10 years within which we can make a difference; otherwise it's too late. It's a question of political will, but in a democracy political will is a renewable resource."
So in the spirit of open inquiry that pervades TED, here are my questions:
- Is there a selection bias in the peer-reviewed community? Gore cited the Science article that found zero out of 928 peer-reviewed abstracts disagreed with the main point that greenhouse gases cause global warming. I imagine that a similar review of abstracts of peer-reviewed creation scientists (in what? "Anti-Science Magazine?" :) ) would find that zero of them find evolutionary theory explanatory. Does that inform our understanding of the theories, or merely inform our understanding of career choices among ideologically-minded people?
- What are the incentives for environmental scientists? He unironically cited Upton Sinclair's quote "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." Is it possible that people who are paid to study global warming have an interest in finding that, yes, global warming as a result of human actions exists?
- Humility in science. Whenever a scientific argument announces that there is no counter-vailing evidence, my nonsense detector lights up. Even Newtownian mechanics gave way to the more complete understanding provided by quantum theory. Is there really, absolutley, not a single stitch of countrary evidence? My experience leads me to believe there must be, and folks who deny it lose some credibility in my eyes as dispassionate pursuers of the Truth.
- What are the limits of our computer models? Even the water dynamics in a particular city's bay is too complex a task for computers to calculate, which is why the army builds these scale models in Louisiana. Is it really possible that environmental scientists are so much better at computer modelling that they can predict water, wind, temperature, soil, and current dynamics over thousands or millions of years?
- What are the human costs of proposed actions? Our societies don't build super-tankers, drill for oil, create large-scale manufacturing plants, or engage in industrialized agriculture for fun. Hummers and other ostentatious displays of wealth excepted, we do all these things because there is a market for it, which means that in some appreciable way, people's individual lives are better as a result. And as Hans Rosling so ably points out, there is a direct linear correlatoin between life expectancy and welath. What will be the cost in lives lost due to the proposed course of action?
I look forward to hearing (reasonable, civil) arguments from my fellow TEDsters!
