Imagine hearing that someone you love… someone for whom you feel responsible… someone who has been entrusted to your care… is very ill.  You are told that it is not completely clear how quickly, or how completely, she will recover even if aggressive treatment begins immediately.  Some doctors suggest that there is no time to waste in responding; it is a situation that should have been addressed long ago.  Other doctors say they cannot even be certain that she is sick and suggest it is probably best to proceed as if nothing were wrong while waiting for the results of further tests.  What would you do?

Many people think this situation is analogous to the one we are in with respect to the Earth.  We have a responsibility (to ourselves, to the millions of impoverished people around the globe, and, according to some at least, to God) to preserve and protect the environments on which our lives and the lives of future generations depend.  This responsibility has been neglected to such an extent that we cannot be sure how many threatened ecosystems, species, and cultures could still be saved even if everyone began to act responsibly right now.  Still, many people seem unwilling to take action…

So, what would you do if you were in this position with a loved one? Would you sit by calmly and hope that everything works itself out? Or would you begin doing everything you could immediately?  If you did nothing and she died, would you find comfort in being able to say that you couldn’t have been certain she was actually sick? If you began treatment immediately, and it turned out she was not as sick as some had thought, would you feel your efforts had been wasted? 

Now, does what you would do in the case of a loved one have any bearing on what you think you should do, or even on what you will do, in response to the claims you are hearing about global climate change?

(Thanks are due to the Rev. Canon Sally Bingham for suggesting this analogy during her recent talk at the conference Stewardship or Sacrifice? Religion and the Ethics of Climate Change)  

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3 Responses to How Should We Respond to Global Climate Change?

  1. A-Bax says:

    Mr. Fisher,

    Thanks for your response. You are right, of course, that science is rarely, if ever, fully settled. (In the “trivially true” sense that you allude to). What I mean though, is that the AGW hypothesis does not have nearly the degree of explanatory power or predictive success that its proponents often claim for it.

    You ask, “which parts of the debate are not settled enough to evaluate the range of suggestions that are out there concerning how we ought to respond?”. I would like to answer by citing an article by MIT meteorologist Richard S. Lindzen . Please forgive my slinging of links in your direction, but Mr. Lindzen does a much better job than I can of defending the claim that climate science isn’t settled.

    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703939404574567423917025400.html

    Thanks.

  2. A-Bax says:

    While the analogy between the changing climate and a sick loved-one is tempting, it is inapt.

    How is it an inapt analogy? The “environment”, outside of science fiction, is not a sentient being that can become “sick”. The environment is constantly changing, and it is not clear what drives these changes. In recorded history we’ve experienced much, much warmer climates (medieval warm period) without the benefit of anthropogenic C02 emissions. We’ve also experience much cooler periods (little ice-age, where the Delaware and Hudson river would routinely freeze over in winter). Given the recent fraud committed by East Anglia, and the cloud of suspicion that hangs over Penn State’s Michael Mann and UN climate chief Rajendra Pachauri, it is prudent to have a healthy skepticism toward those alarmists who insist than the “sky is falling”.

    Despite what many would have us believe, the science is simply not settled when it comes to climate change. In the above analogy, this is akin to the doctor’s diagnosis being in question. It is not clear that the patient is ill, and the doctors disagree. Moreover the “treatment plan” (something along the lines of Kyoto) causes considerable stress and pain to the patient. (In terms of stifled economic growth, and high incidences of death from disease and starvation in undeveloped countries that are barred from using conventional energy sources.)

    If we insist on a medical analogy, I suggest this: Some doctors say the patient has cancer, others disagree. There is no definitive answer. Yet, one faction of doctors insist on chemotherapy. The other faction of doctors aren’t sure whether there’s any illness at all, and if there is, see very little evidence that the illness is cancer. So, if we proceed with Chemo, we’ll severely hurt and possibly kill someone who might not even be sick, and if they are sick, might have MS instead.

    But, back to the environment proper. I find it telling that the term “global warming” has been replaced with “climate change”. Why the switch? My guess is that environmentalists have noticed that for the last decade or so, there has been no warming. So they focus on “change” as opposed to “warming”. But where do they get the idea that the earth’s climate it static? It manifestly is not. It has changed in enormous ways, from much hotter than it is now, to much colder than it is now, before humans existed.

    Also, environmentalists insisted in the 70s that we faced a coming ice-age. They insisted that we “act now” to avert this looming crisis. But, the cooling abated on its own, and we experienced a warming. So environmentalists then became alarmist about “warming” and insisted that we “act now” to avert a looming crisis. But the warming has abated on its own, and environmentalists are reduced to alarmism about “change”. It is here that one beings to see environmentalism as more of a quasi-religion, impervious to empirical revision, than it is legitimate science.

    The late Michael Chricton explored this topic in his excellent piece “Environmentalism as Religion”. It’s worth a read:

    http://www.michaelcrichton.net/speech-environmentalismaseligion.html

    • Mark Fisher says:

      A-Bax,

      Thanks for the comments. You provide an interesting criticism of the analogy I use and suggest one of your own that you contend is more apt. While I am open to hearing why this is so, I don’t find you presenting much in the way of evidence that one could track down and evaluate in making up his or her own mind here.

      You say that the science is simply not settled on climate change, which sounds to be at once both trivially true (since science is rarely, if ever, settled) and potentially misleading. Could you tell us a bit more about precisely which parts of the debate are not settled enough for us to be able to evaluate the range of suggestions that are out there concerning how we ought to respond?

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