Approach

Nature of Science

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Script

This video is called “Nature of Science” and is part of the expansion pack accompanying the orginial video “How It All Ends.”

This video will explore the nature of science a bit, looking at how it is unavoidably tentative and uncertain. The purpose is that we can then do a better job of putting into context the things we hear about the science of global climate change.

Let’s start out with my assumptions. If we’re talking about the meaning of life, then science can be informative, but is just one tool of many equally valid ones, like faith, love, and direct experience. But when we’re talking about trying to predict and manipulate the physical world, I think that science is our best bet. It’s certainly got by far the best success rate. As Carl Sagan observed, if you want to know when the next eclipse of the Sun will be, you might try magicians or mystics, but you’ll do much better with scientists. If you want to save your child from polio, you can pray or you can inoculate.

One more thing before we dive in: scientific thinking and critical thinking in my mind are essentially the same thing. So as I talk about how science goes about figuring out what to believe, underneath it all I am at the same time suggesting how we as individuals—as citizens—should go about deliberating issues.

It’s a well-established psychological phenomenon—and, in fact, is simply human—to start out with your beliefs, and then go looking for evidence to support them. The problem is, we tend to forget or simply not hear evidence that contradicts our beliefs. I mean, who wants to be shown that they’re wrong? Formally, that phenomenon is called “confirmation bias.” The devilish result is that if you’re not diligently aware of it, you could be served up a plate of equally balanced evidence, and come out convinced that yours is the viewpoint that was better supported by the evidence, because you gave greater weight to the evidence that agreed with what you already believed, and discounted—or simply didn’t hear—what contradicted it. So confirmation bias can serve to actually reinforce misconceptions in the face of evidence. That’s why it’s critical to be vigilant about it in your own thinking, and why you’ll hear me refer to it again and again.

In science (and in criticial thinking—like we should all be trying to do in the whole climate change debate), it’s the opposite. Instead of starting with beliefs and then looking for evidence, you start by looking at whatever the evidence is, and then use that to form beliefs. I think that’s pretty much what a chemistry professor of mine once meant when he was teaching us about climate change. He said “Get informed, and let it change you.” That’s sort of the nutshell of how a good scientist might go about advocating for something: he doesn’t tell you what to believe. He just reminds you: start with the evidence, and move to belief, instead of the other way around.

“That’s exactly what I’ve been saying!” I can hear the shouting in my head right now, from some online commentors who’ve latched on to my previous videos about climate change. “Why don’t we just go with the facts!??”

Hey, sounds good to me. Simple, right? Just go with the facts? The sticky part is determining what exactly are the facts. Here’s an example. I’ll give a series of increasingly complex statements, and you think about at what point we can no longer simply agree it’s a fact, and instead have to do some interpreting.

[Behind burning candle] I have a candle in front of me. Fact. The candle is burning. Fact. I’m sitting in a chair. Here you might ask for more evidence before we pronounce it fact, because you can’t see it, so how about if I showed you? Okay, with a little checking—fact.

The problem is, I’m not really sitting in the chair, because I’m not actually in contact. What’s really happening is my outer electrons are repelling the outer electrons of the chair strongly enough to make me hover imperceptively above it, like magnets that can push on each other without touching [DEMO]. Okay, so I’m tricky. “Don’t be such a dork,” you say. “Some things are just obvious.” Well [eat candle], one of my favorite quotes on the matter is from Buckminster Fuller. In fact, students have to walk underneath it to get into my room. He wrote “Everything you learned in school as ‘obvious’ becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe.” [Open mouth with “Ahhh.”]

This becomes a central point. Because, while we may all agree that—for all intents and purposes—I am sitting in this chair, when we shout at each other about whether the globe is warming or not, it turns out both claims are subject to the same question: how are we to decide whether something is a fact or not? It’s not always as clear cut as we’d like.

This may seem like splitting hairs, but it becomes kind of important if you have a question about a complex system or a really important issue, like: gee, is that asteroid going to hit the Earth or barely miss? Is this case of bird flu a human-to-human transmission or not? Is the globe warming or not? Are we the ones doing it or not?

“Sophistry!” you cry. “We can just look at the evidence.” Well, problem is, evidence still needs to be interpreted, which can be done poorly or skillfully. You see webbed foot tracks in the hall, come across a shimmery green feather, and hear a quacking sound. You conclude there must have been a mallard duck who recently passed by. It’s obvious. But is it possible it’s actually a kind of duck you’ve never seen before, and had you been better trained as an ornithologist, you would have known that the green was slightly the wrong hue for a mallard, and the tracks a little too big? Interpreting evidence well takes skill, training, and experience.

You wouldn’t propose lowering prescription drug costs by hiring my high school chemistry students instead of people with Ph.D.s to research the drugs, would you? They both look at the same printouts from the same machines: who’s interpretation of the evidence are you going to trust? “Well then, let me do it myself,” you say. Um—go for it. But then don’t be expecting me to accept your drugs, which is the case with climate change, since it’s global, which means you’re not the only one affected by your decision. I’ll stick with the professionals, thanks.

Here’s an example I often give my students. I tell them that we’re going to get creamed in Friday night’s football game, because—have they heard?—the opposing side’s offensive line has an average weight of just over 300 pounds! That usually worries them, until I tell them that the linemen weigh 110, 103, 98, 97, and 1120 pounds. That leads to a discussion of the difference between the “mean” average and the “median” average, and gets them to question their faith a little bit in the reality so obviously implied by such simple numbers as “the average.” If something as simple as the average can be so tricky, how come we’re okay with Joe Schmoes like you and me doing armchair analysis of climate science—one of the most complex topics in human history—instead of leaving it up to the scientists?

Why does evidence need expertise to interpret it? Because things are almost always way more complicated than they seem.

I once cornered a Yale University particle physicist at a wedding reception, cuz even though I teach physics and chemistry, I’ve always got some questions myself, and no one around to answer them. Anyway, I asked him how big an electron really is. I’d been wanting to know for a while, so I was determined to get a solid answer. An hour and several diagram-covered napkins later, I finally got him to grudgingly assent to a single sentence answer that we’d negotiated like it was a UN treaty. The deeper you go, or the bigger the system (like climate), the less accessible the “evidence” is to easy interpretation. (Fair warning: if you’re an expert in some field of the physical sciences, you’ll probably want to avoid me at parties. . .)

Yeah, but not everything is as complex as the climate, you say. You’re right, some things are simpler, like 1+1=2. Here’s Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead’s proof of that outlandish mathematical statement.

This is part of why all science is inherently uncertain, and tentative. Because the world is tremendously complex. So how do we get any answers? Well, you delve as far into the complexity as you need to for your purposes, or as far as you can get with your measuring instruments, and then you make an explicit estimate of how close you think you probably got to the “true value,” acknowledging that you’ll never get there.

The goal, of course, is to make that uncertainty as small as possible. There’s a couple basic ways of doing that.

The first is to be very careful about what biases—or preconceived notions—the scientist brings to the table. The scientist Konrad Lorenz summed up that duty when he wrote: “It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast.” Why? Because if you aren’t aware of your preconceived notions, then you are susceptible to the trap of confirmation bias—starting with belief, and then looking for evidence, rather than the other way around.

This can be insidious, because you don’t realize you’re doing it, and as a result, you become more confident of your conclusions than the evidence really merits.

The author Douglas Adams put it perfectly when he observed that “assumptions are the things you don’t realize you have.” That’s what the candle thing was about.

Here’s a couple more examples. You’ll probably be on your guard now, but see if you can do more than just avoid being tricked. See if you can identify the assumptions you hold that allow me to mislead you.

[In front of board with 1+1=10 on it.] If I asked you to make some simple observations, you might say I’m sitting in a chair in front of a whiteboard, which has an incorrect equation on it, and my toy is missing a green ring. Well, we’ve already established that I’m not really sitting on my chair—I’m hovering imperceptibly above it. And what if I told you that’s not a whiteboard—it’s a showerboard from Home Depot? Or that I’m not missing a green piece, but a blue one [switch and reveal]. Or that this is “base two” math, and you approached it with the wrong assumption—that it was standard “base 10”—so that YOU were the one who was wrong, even as you pointed your finger at me? And I bet you thought this was a fancy hat. Well really, it’s folded newspaper. In each case, you make an unconscious assumption, which leads you from “the evidence,” to a totally incorrect conclusion. Not because you’re dumb, but because you didn’t have the appropriate training or experience to be qualified to interpret the evidence.

So in scientific or critical thinking, you take great pains to identify the assumptions you don’t realize you have, so that you can account for them, and not wind up with a wrong conclusion when you interpret the evidence.

Okay, okay, you’re saying. Let me try another one. I’m ready this time. This time you’ll need a pencil or pen, and a piece of paper. Hit the pause button while you go get one.

What I’m going to do is flash an image on the screen for just an instant. Your job is to reproduce it as accurately as you can on your paper. I’ll just flash it for an instant, and it’s not fair using the pause button. Ready? Here we go. [Flash “Paris in the the Spring.”]

Okay, now press the pause button again, and do your drawing. When you’re done drawing, play the video again.

[Playing with some toy.]

Okay, have you reproduced faithfully what you saw? Here it is again. See how you did. [reveal]

If you got it right, that means you’re thinking more like a scientist, trying to be deliberately conscious of your assumptions. Well done. Most people write “Paris in the Spring,” when it quite clearly says “Paris in the the Spring.” Why? Because the human brain is amazing. When it doesn’t have the opportunity to fully examine something (a picture, a sound, a social interaction, a political problem), it fills in the blanks using past experience.

That’s great, and really really useful, but the problem arises when we don’t realize we’re doing it, because it can cause mistakes. When I get disheartened with all of the really confident and totally incorrect stuff I hear from most people who are skeptical about climate change, I have to remind myself that their brains are just doing what they are supposed to: filling in gaps in a really complicated picture, using past experience. For instance, I often hear: “How arrogant to think that humans can change the planet—we’re so small.” Now that you’re more aware of how bias and preconceived notions influence conlusions, can you identify the past experience coming into play there? It’s probably that throughout human history, the weather and climate have always been acting on us, and never the other way around. So I guess it’s not surprising that people feel that way.

But it is disheartening, because I wish they would be a little bit more humble. To acknowledge that—hey—you might be wrong. Think of it this way: the only way to ever improve, is to admit that you might be wrong. Not one of us is infallible. That means that each of us—you and me included—is right now carrying around some beliefs that are mistaken. If we don’t acknowledge that we may have some, then we’ll never have a chance to get rid of them—to trade them in for more correct or more useful beliefs. That means you’ll never improve, and will die no more correct than you are right now. I don’t know about you, but the idea that I am right now as good as I will ever be is oppressive to me—as well as being flat out ridiculous. I mean, what are the chances that you know everything right now?

That’s one reason why I got frustrated during the online debate about my original video “The Most Terrifying Video You’ll Ever See.” When I reworked my argument in response to some holes that people had poked in it, a couple people essentially said “So why should we listen to you now, since you admit you were wrong before?” and sat back smugly, convinced they’d won the debate. To them, I lost credibility because I changed my argument in response to the critiques. That’s just crazy talk! In science and reasoning, admitting you’re wrong makes you more reliable, because in the future, people can trust that if you’re wrong, you’ll change. If you never admit you’re wrong, you lose credibility, because your claims of being right simply become unbelievable. No one is right all the time.

[At board] In fact, I would argue that it not only increases your credibility with others, but it increases your happiness to admit you’re wrong. Here’s what I mean. Let’s say you choose to belong to the group of people who never admit they’re wrong. In that group, there are two subgroups: those who actually never ever make a mistake, and those who sometimes make a mistake. If you’re always right, then hey presto—life is good. But if you are one of these people, bad things happen, cuz sometimes you’re going to be wrong, but not admit it. You get into nasty fights, you lose credibility with people, and you never learn anything new.

Now let’s say you choose to belong to the group of people who will admit to themselves and others when they’re wrong. Again, two subgroups: those who never make a mistake, and those who sometimes do. Again, being actually infallible is all giggles and joy. Here, when people admit it when they make a mistake, they can take that opportunity to fix it: they learn new things, they have less nasty conflicts, and people not only like them better, but respect their opinion more.

Wouldn’t you say there are probably precious few of these people in all of human history? What are the chances you or I are one of them? Since we’re almost certainly in one of these groups, don’t you think this is the better bet than this?

[Back at desk.] So how does this work in science? First, as I mentioned, scientists acknowledge that neither they nor their instruments are perfect, and so they always include an estimate of the error or uncertainty in any scientific statement. Second, scientists take great pains to identify and isolate their assumptions, trying to identify and eliminate errors that they may be making. Third—and this is terribly important—they put their work out there and ask for criticism, so that weak points can be identified and strengthened, and the uncertainty reduced. That’s why it’s so important to ask if the statement you’re hearing about climate change has been “peer-reviewed.” That’s the official process that science goes through to sift the solid, credible ideas from the sloppy science. Although it doesn’t always work, it is a bruising, messy, drawn-out process designed to only let the best, most robust ideas float to the top. If something has been peer-reviewed, generally that means that it’s methods are up to snuff, and the scientific community thinks its worth looking at. It’s getting close to “the best answer that science can give us.”

Keep in mind, it doesn’t always work. Sometimes a peer-reviewed scientific article is shown to have significant problems. Guess what happens then? The peer-reviewed journal that published the research admits it, and sometimes even formally retracts the article, apologizing in the process! Why? To increase their credibility!

Peer-review is the process science uses to get closer and closer to the truth, but it is critical to remember in this whole climate debate: science never claims to actually gets there. That’s the surprising thing: science—that most precise and anal of all human endeavors—is also the one to never claim to know the truth. Isn’t it ironic? Don’t you think?

Another dynamic of science that’s worth noting is that of establishing when one thing causes another, and when the two things are just correlated. Here’s what I mean. If you look at this chart, it is clear that as the number of pirates in the world has decreased, the average global temperature has increased. There’s the evidence, and no one disputes it. So, what’s the interpretation? That the lack of pirates causes global warming? That pirates combat global warming, and therefore we should start some pirate schools ASAP? This is an example of correlation, two things whose trends track each other. But science is careful to not yet say that one causes the other.

For a serious example, it turns out that left-handed women contract breast cancer at a higher rate than right-handed women. So does left-handedness cause cancer? How does science go about answering that question? Well, it’s complicated, but this much is useful for us lay people to know: if two things are correlated, but scientists can’t find a way to feasibly explain the mechanism by which one influences the other, then they are not considered cause and effect. That doesn’t mean science says “They aren’t cause and effect.” It means science says “We don’t have any reason to believe they are cause and effect,” but they are always open to future ideas and evidence.

Sometimes you hear the criticism: “Scientists can’t even predict the weather, so why should we listen to them about something even bigger, like the climate?” That’s a little bit like saying: mathematicians can’t even predict how this coin flip will turn out, so why should we listen to their predictions of how a million coin flips will turn out? Climate is about averages and overall trends, which are easier to predict than a particular occurrence. Also, the predictions are getting better and better over time. Remember: science never claims to have the exactly correct answer—that’s just a misconception—and an inappropriate demand—by the public and the media. But the self-critical nature of science means that it tends improve (which, incidentally, is why it’s so disturbing that the predictions of climate change have gotten more dire as time has gone on). But it never is done.

Sometimes you hear the criticism “There is no consensus among scientists about human-caused climate change.” News flash! There’s no consensus among scientists about anything! The inherent uncertainty of science means there will almost always be dissent on any scientific issue.

Pick the most well-known, well-established scientific law you can think of. The Law of Gravity, right? Guess what? There’s no consensus on it! We’ve got a satellite up there right now, Gravity Probe B, testing our current understanding of gravity. And you know what it’s looking for? I’ll give you a hint: remember the phenomenon of “confirmation bias?” Scientists are really careful to avoid that, so the probe isn’t so much looking for evidence to confirm our theory. It’s looking for evidence to contradict it! We’re actively trying to disprove perhaps the most widely accepted and beloved of all scientific theories. Why? Because we love it so much, we want to make it stronger. Looking really hard and conscientiously for contradictory evidence and failing to find it does more to increase our confidence than looking for supporting evidence and finding it.

Science is never certain. You know that classic Mentos and Diet Coke reaction? [show video] You want to know the scientific explanation for it? Here it is: no one knows!!! There’s lots of conjecture—it’s quite the hot topic in the chemistry education community. So you can find explanations, but the uncertainties associated with them are going to be very large. Why have we not studied it further to reduce the uncertainties? Because it’s not worth it. But the more important the issue is, the more research goes into it, the smaller the uncertainties become. But if you’re waiting for there to be no dissent at all, then you’ll wait forever, no matter what the scientific issue.

It’s sort of like with this whole climate debate, it’s easy to find websites giving all sorts of reasons to believe what I already believe. But that doesn’t increase my confidence. I want my argument to be rock solid, so I go looking for websites that contradict what I believe. And when I can’t find much that’s credible, that increases my confidence in my views. It’s like testing to see if something is watertight. You look for the leaks, and if you can’t find any, then your confidence increases. It feels great to have everyone tell you you’re right, but it’s a deceptive, complacent game. The way to really get confident is to go poking at the other side, saying “what’s your response to this? How would you contradict this?” which I’ve done quite a bit with my grid argument about global climate change, which is why there are so many bloody minutes of me talking on video as a result: the experience left me bruised and battered, but it left my argument that much stronger. In fact, as I film this, an early version of “How It All Ends” leaked onto Digg.com a couple days ago, and I am heartened the every single criticism I read there already is countered in my video scripts. It didn’t get that way by me talking to people who agree with me. In fact I handed my scripts to one of the best critical thinkers I know and said: “Please find the holes in this argument.” That’s why science is the most self-critical endeavor in the history of humanity—it knows that that is the most effective way to get better.

How about this objection: “Climate models are just models, just predictions about the future, which we can’t test until the future actually happens. We don’t know what’s really going to happen. So they’re just conjecture, and therefore useless.” My response is—ever ridden on a modern airliner? Cuz they’re all designed on the computer, modeled on the computer, tested in the computer model, then physical models, and finally computer models again, which is where the pilots learn to fly them. When the Boeing 777 was first flown, all the technicians, managers, and you can bet test pilots, were extremely confident that it would fly. Why? Because we’ve learned how to make good computer models, by tweaking them until their output matches what we see in the physical world.

Climate models on the computer, for instance, are calibrated with the observed climate of the past. If we feed a model the conditions in 1950 and it churns out predictions for the period 1950 to 2000 that closely match what actually happened, then that gives us confidence in the predictions it makes when we put in the conditions for 2000 and ask it about 2030.

It’s been proposed that the greatest knowledge is to know that you do not know. So when you hear pronouncements about how global climate change is bunk, or that we’re not the ones doing it, keep that in mind. Now that you understand a bit about the uncertain and tentative nature of science, ask yourself: how credible are pronouncements about a scientific issue, when they’re made with such certainty?

Along those lines, I was struck by how many people in the comments to my “Most Terrifying Video” made absolute statements of truth about the world. A ton of people flat out said “Humans are not causing global warming.” Other comments I got included:

“Humans are too small to have an effect on the climate.”

“Global warming is a ploy for the elites to grow the government and take away your freedoms.”

“It is true that the climate is changing, but there’s a lot of debate about whether we’re the ones causing it.”

“Taking action may make things worse.”

“Climate changes all the time.”

“We’re coming out of a cold cycle, so this is natural.”

“100 years of data is not enough to know 1000s of years of the past climate.”

“Personally, I don’t think global warming is as definitely man-caused as popular media make it out to be.”

“Personally, I think?!!??”

We’re talking the most complex science in the history of humankind. Chaos theory was discovered studying weather systems. “Personally, I think?!!??” Who the heck are you say what the physical truth is?

But then, I admit, I fell into a similar mistake of being absolute, claiming in that video that “the only choice” is column A. Who the heck are we to think we’ve got a lock on truth? Have you ever been completely sure of something, and then turned out to be wrong? Shouldn’t that temper our confidence the next time we feel that way? It should give you pause when the trained person is less certain of themselves than the untrained person. I was certainly humbled by the unexpected explosion in my classroom that I describe in the video “I Hope I’m Wrong.” I guess the bottom line lesson is here that we will probably do better for ourselves and for the whole with some humility.

Look, I don’t have the answers. And neither, probably, do you. But we, as a people, as a species, can probably come up with something that’s decent. Will it be right? Will it work? We can’t know for sure. Will it be better than nothing? Probably.

I forget where I read it—maybe it was even a bumper sticker LOL—but I recently came across a line that I think pretty well sums up the lesson in humility that scientific thinking teaches us. And I suspect it may help us make some headway in this whole discussion of what to do about climate change. It’s just this:

“Don’t believe everything you think.”

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Risk Management

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Script

This video is titled “Risk Management” and is part of the expansion pack accompanying the original video “How It All Ends.”

The purpose of this video is to further explore the question of “How do you go about making a decision when faced with uncertainty,” and to expand on the grid about global climate change presented in the video “How It All Ends.”

First, a couple warnings to the viewer. Ronald Reagan said it well in 1985 when he told college students: “Your generation is subject to more information than any generation in history. Let me suggest one thing, don’t let me get away with it. Check me out, but check everybody else out too. Don’t just take it for granted because you read it someplace. Check it out.”

When I first posted the decision grid about climate change in “The Most Terrifying Video You’ll Ever See” in Spring of 2007 I got accused of telling people what to believe. “I’m not telling you what to believe,” I replied. “Well you’re telling me what to think,” some said. “I’m not telling you what to think, I’m telling you how to think,” I said. “Well don’t tell me how to think,” they said. “Crikey!” I said. “What am I allowed to tell you? Why are you watching this? For entertainment? You’ve got plenty of that elsewhere. [Mentos backwards]”

So here’s what I am doing: I’m suggesting how to go about making decisions for yourself in this very complicated issue that has really high stakes, but some uncertainty. But don’t just accept what I say because it sounds reasonable and you like my face. Think it through for yourself. Sort it out with others. Check my sources.

[AT THE BOARD] I got accused of being manipulative too, by oversimplifying. So here’s my official disclaimer. Just because it’s written down or even published somewhere doesn’t make it true. Check it out for yourself. But at the same time, be very careful, because just because you disagree with something or don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

For instance, when I make this claim [Write 1+1=10 on the board], you may think “What a dope he is!” But it turns I’m correct, as I explained in the video “How It All Ends: Nature of Science.” If you think it’s wrong, it’s because you unconsciously brought the wrong assumptions to it. So be very careful of doing exactly that as you hear different things in the climate change debate.

[DESK]

So the question before us is, what do you do when

1- You can’t figure out the right choice, but

2- You have to choose.

The answer is: you do the best you can with what you have. As I explained in the video “How It All Ends: Nature of Science,” we cannot have certainty on climate change, so we’re just going to have to tolerate some ambiguity. It is incredibly unlikely that we will get the answer exactly right, and spend the exact right amount of money and resources to get the exact effects we want.

That means no matter how careful we are, we are either going to overspend or underspend. And let’s be big boys and girls about this: that means we can either err on the side of overspending, in which case we “waste money” but get done what we want to get done, or we can err on the side of underspending, in which case we don’t waste any money, but less gets done than we wanted.

Anyone who says that’s a false choice and that we can spend exactly the right amount of money to get done exactly what needs to get done is either lying to you, or just dumb. Sorry—no need to be mean. They’re either being disingenuous, or they haven’t fully thought things through yet.

So, the formal process of doing the best with what you have is called “risk management,” and it’s a great tool that’s used all the time by industries and governments.

What risk management does is relieve you of the necessity of knowing things for certain before making a decision. That’s the really powerful part: you don’t need to know the truth, in order to still be confident that you’re making the choice that will most likely bring you what you want. And that’s a big relief, because it means you and I don’t need to sort out all the arguments about climate science.

We can leave that to the people who actually know what they’re doing. Like I said before: during WWII, would you have insisted on personally resolving all common sense contradictions of atomic physics—like the ideas that matter and energy are the same thing—before agreeing that the Manhattan Project was a good use of resources? No.

You and I are not qualified to evaluate the science, so we shouldn’t get too cocky about trying. This is why objections like “100 years of data is not enough to know thousands of years of the past climate” always curl my toes. Who the heck are you to say that? Have you studied the various competing statistical models for integrating proxy data into supersets? Can you even tell which parts of that sentence are valid and which parts I just made up?

Or are you applying that “common sense” that, as we saw in the video “Nature of Science,” is so woefully ill-equipped for evaluating complex scientific evidence?

There’s a reason it takes a long time and a lot of coffee to get the letters “P,” “h,” and “D” behind your name in the sciences. What you and I are qualified to do, is basic risk management. Which is good, because that gives us the oversight of the whole process. That hopefully answers the objection “Well, we can’t just surrender control of our future to a bunch of eggheads who we don’t know and never elected.”

They do the science, and then we weigh the risks and costs, and—as a society—decide what to do. So by trusting scientists to do science, we are in no way abdicating control of our lives to the scientists or the government. We retain that. (That is, if you vote.)

Okay, so how do we go about doing this risk management? Turns out it’s a whole field of study, but we can simplify it a bit for our purposes, and take a page from the playbook of casinos and insurance companies. Both of those stake their existence on potentially huge costs associated with unpredictable events. So how do they manage to stay in business, and in fact, turn a healthy profit? Well, it pretty much boils down to something called “Expected value.” It’s worth taking a look at.

[AT BOARD] Let’s take a simple example and say you’re playing a game where you buy a ticket, and that ticket has some likelihood of paying off. We need to distinguish here between two different ideas. The first is the probability that the ticket will pay off. That’s expressed as a number between 0 and 1. 0 means it cannot payoff, 1 means it will definitely pay off, 0.5 means it has a 50% or 1-in-2 chance of paying off.

The second number is the consequence, or what happens if the ticket pays off—what you win in this case. Every ticket has a probability, and a consequence that go with it.

So let’s say the game is such that 1 ticket costs $1, has a probability of 0.5 (or a 1-in-2 chance of winning), and the consequence is the house gives you $2 (that’s the payoff if your ticket wins). Now, we can’t say what will happen with a given ticket, whether it will payoff or not, but we can track what happens over a large number of plays. To make it easier to understand, let’s say the winning happens at even intervals.

cost 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
consq. 0 2 0 2 0 2 0 2 0 2 0 2 0

Over 12 plays, your total cost is 12 x $1 or $12, and your total winnings are 6 x $2, or $12. You broke even.

The expected value is a way to predict at the beginning whether you’ll break even or not, by looking at what one ticket—on average—is worth. You won $12 over 12 tickets, so your tickets—on average—brought in $1 each, even though no single ticket did that. That’s the expected value of the ticket, one dollar, and you can calculate it before ever playing the game in a very simple way.

To get the expected value of an action (in this case, buying a ticket), you just multiply the action’s probability by its consequence. Here, 0.5 x $2 = $1. So at the very start, knowing the odds and the payoffs, you can compare the cost of a ticket ($1) to that ticket’s expected value ($1) and see that over time, you can expect to about break even.

What if the odds change? Let’s say the probability of the event (a ticket winning) goes to 1-in-4, and the consequence stays the same. Now the expected value of a single ticket is 0.25 x $2 = $0.5, while the cost remains at a dollar. Now you know you can expect to lose money.

Does that mean you will lose money? No. You may come out ahead. But you can expect not to. If you’re there for a good time and can spare the cash, go for it, have fun. But if you’re betting with your retirement, that game wouldn’t be a very wise choice.

[BACK AT DESK] Before we apply this to the climate change grid, I want to be clear on something. Some critics of my older video kept shouting “But that’s just a PREDICTION” (all caps), as if that means it’s pure conjecture. Predictions are not statements that something WILL happen, but that something might happen, and the better the prediction, the more robust the work that went into it, the more likely it will turn out to be true.

For instance, if I’m betting on a roll of a pair of dice with all payoffs being equal, I’m going to bet on the seven, because my study of past dice rolls predicts that a seven is the most likely outcome. But betting on a seven doesn’t require that I believe it will happen. It just means that based on my study, it’s my best bet, it’s expected value is the highest of my choices.

And before you go crying “but the expected value is a flawed mechanism—what about the St. Petersburg Paradox?” I’ll just make the point that if it’s good enough to turn a profit for casinos and insurance companies, it’s good enough for our purposes here.

So to use this device of expected value for our grid about action on climate change, we need to get some sense of the probability of the two rows, and the consequence of the scenarios in each box. But with “the Google” here to serve up statements supporting pretty much any conclusion we want, how do we sift through all the noise to come up with a confident assessment of probabilities and consequences?

The problem is, you can read Michael Crichton’s State of Fear, and then Fred Pearce’s With Speed and Violence: Why Scientists Fear Tipping Points in Climate Change. You can look up the “Leipzig Declaration” and then the “Scientists’ Warning to Humanity.” And at the end of the day you’ll still be left with the question “But they all contradict each other, so who’s right?”

I know it sounds like I’m making the point that it’s futile to do any research, but I’m not. I’m trying to make the point that if you want to get anywhere, you can’t just read stuff. You’ve got to do things differently: to examine the source, to look at credentials and possible bias, to take a step back and ask not “Who should I believe,” but instead “What is the process I will use to decide what to go on?”

I’d suggest you do it by assigning weight to different statements based on the credibility of the source. As a science teacher, I’ve spent a lot of my time thinking about how you evaluate claims and assign credibility to sources. That doesn’t answer the question “What should I believe,” but it does provide an answer to the question: “Given the uncertainty, what is probably the most useful statement to move forward with?” Which, really, is the fundamental question you’re faced with at the heart of most matters.

As a disclaimer, I’ll point out that these are just general guidelines—any source could be wrong, and as a colleague of mine is fond of saying: “Even a blind squirrel finds a nut occasionally.” So this is a tool to use just as a starting point.

[AT THE BOARD] I would place sources on a spectrum running from less reliable to more reliable, based on two factors. One is: how much does the source know about what they are doing? Are they trained? Are they speaking about their expertise? Are they conscientious? In other words, how likely are they to arrive at a correct conclusion?
The other factor is: how likely are they to spin that conclusion? Do they have an agenda of some sort? What’s the likelihood that they are biased in some way that will affect what they choose to tell me, and what they don’t?

Using those, I’d say at the very bottom of our spectrum lies the individual lay person—who doesn’t necessarily have expertise, and may very well have an agenda. That’s not to say there’s nothing to be learned from individuals, though. They can be useful for new ways to see things, or directions to go. It’s just that you don’t want to rely on their information any more than is necessary. Like Reagan said—check out what they say for yourself.

I would give more weight to the individual professional who is speaking about their area of expertise, because they may have an agenda, but at least they know what they’re doing. I might give still more weight to think tanks and advocacy groups—like the Cato Institute or Greenpeace. They’ve still got an agenda, but they’ve got greater resources than just a single person, and so can be more thorough.

For example, I found an interesting figure about atmospheric carbon dioxide I wanted to use in this project. So before throwing it into the video script, I looked at who provided it, and saw that it was someone with a Ph.D. after his name (better than nothing), from the Environmental Defense Fund (not as credible as I’d like—their agenda is right there in their name). So what do I do? I go look it up somewhere else! Because I’m looking for the truth, not just support for my beliefs.

Now this one, I’m not sure where to put—floating somewhere around the middle, I guess—petitions and other self-selecting statements, like the Oregon Petition or the Economists’ Statement on Climate Change. They may very well know what they’re doing (you should check to see of the signers have expertise in the area), but the big problem is the signers are self-selected—by definition, there are no dissenters on there, so their spin factor can be fairly high.

They really are susceptible to the trap of confirmation bias I described in the video “Nature of Science,” though they can be pretty credible as well. For example, the Oregon Petition was a project of a small think tank of six employees in rural Oregon, while the Economists’ Statement on Climate Change had 6 Nobel Laureates sign it, so I wouldn’t give equal weight to the two, even though they both fall into this category. Again, it depends a lot on who the signers are.

Somewhere in here I’d put university research programs. They’re generally more credible than think tanks, because they’re a couple of funding steps removed from vested interests.

Now we’re getting into the pretty credible stuff: peer-reviewed scientific articles. As I noted in the video “Nature of Science,” this is getting close to “the best that science can offer,” because it’s gone through a bruising process of critique by experts in the field, and only gets published if the journal in question feels it’s up to snuff.

Now, some journals are higher quality than others, and their publications can be weighted more—there are a ton out there, but anything from the journals “Science,” “Nature,” “The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science,” or “Physical Review Letters” is going to be literally the best you can get in science—they generally don’t publish an article unless they believe that it marks a significant breakthrough in its field.

I just recently discovered a danger in this rule of thumb about trusting peer-reviewed stuff, that you should be aware of if you’re going to be analyzing sources. Usually when someone gives me a reference to back up what they’re saying, my first question is “Is it peer reviewed?” And generally the stuff that’s skeptical of human-caused global climate change hasn’t been published in a peer-reviewed journal, because it didn’t fit the expectations of rigor that most peer-reviewed journals maintain.

But I recently learned there is now a small journal named “Energy & Environment,” which I’ve read most scientists don’t take seriously, but which does have its own peer review process. The upshot is—and the editors admit it—it’s an outlet for climate skeptics to get their stuff published, so that others in the political and popular debate can then cite “peer reviewed” scientific studies that show global warming isn’t such a big deal after all.

I find that scary. It seems like an abuse of trust, cuz scientists know which journals are more reputable than other, and so they know how much weight to give to the publications of different journals, but the public doesn’t—to us, if it’s “peer-reviewed,” then it must be solid stuff. That used to be true. Thankfully, it still is for the most part.

Here we get to the two types of sources that I think carry the most weight, and I don’t think I’d rank one over the other in general. Here you’d put statements from an organization that contradict its normal bias. For instance, if the local timber lobby said “We’ve got to thin out this forest for its own health” you wouldn’t be that convinced, but if the Sierra Club made the same statement, you’d sit up and take notice. The reasons must be really compelling if the Sierra Club is going to contradict their normal message.

Finally, there are professional organizations. That is, organizations that exist not to advance a particular agenda, but to simply serve the communication and training needs of a particular profession, like the American Medical Association, the American Institute of Architects, etc.

Not only are they made up of people who know what they’re doing, but for the association to actually come out with a statement generally requires that most of the members agree with it, so there’s going to be a bruising and very thorough process to make sure it’s not some whim or a flimsy statement that may later embarrass the organization.

It’s important to note that I just totally made up this credibility spectrum. This is just what I do when I’m deciding how much weight to put in statements I read, and I’m suggesting it here as a tool to use in our discussions. If you have a better tool or some insight that refines this, please share it with me. And, while I’m quite confident of the two ends, the middle can get pretty mixed up.

For instance, you may find a book published by a think tank, but it was written by a professional individual, and so shouldn’t necessarily be given more weight than any other book. You really have to think about what biases might be present in any given example. Remember: this is just a starting point.

Now, armed with our credibility spectrum, we can explore the grid more.

PROBABILITIES

[DESK]

Let’s start by trying to get a sense of the probability of human-caused global climate change being true. Before we look at direct statements about it, I’ll share a rule of thumb that may be useful to you, if you have the inclination. Look at what scientists are saying to each other when the media isn’t interviewing them. I regularly read some scientific and lay scientific literature, and I’ll tell you, for a number of years now, the tenor about climate change has been not at all controversial.

Generally when it’s mentioned, it assumes the reader is on board with the idea that humans are causing the climate to change. The hot debate is on what exactly that will look like, and how fast it will happen. That should tell you something.

In the video “How It All Ends” I shared that the two most well-respected scientific organizations on the planet—AAAS and NAS—recently called for significant and immediate action on climate change. They fall into that topmost area on our spectrum of credibility, so it’s worth looking at exactly what they said.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science, or AAAS, has 144,000 members, has been around since before the Civil War, and is the publisher of the journal “Science”—the gold standard for peer-reviewed journals. In December of 2006, it approved an unprecedented statement calling for action on climate change. Next time you hear someone matter-of-factly say global warming is bunk, remember these next couple paragraphs, and who wrote them:

[On board: Google “AAAS statement climate change”]

The AAAS statement, starts out:

[ON SCREEN] “The scientific evidence is clear: global climate change caused by human activities is occurring now, and it is a growing threat to society. Accumulating data from across the globe reveal a wide array of effects: rapidly melting glaciers, destabilization of major ice sheets, increases in extreme weather, rising sea level, shifts in species ranges, and more. The pace of change and the evidence of harm have increased markedly over the last five years. The time to control greenhouse gas emissions is now.”

[DESK] Remember—this isn’t Al Gore talking. This is the AAAS.

[ON SCREEN] The statement continues on to say: “As expected, intensification of droughts, heat waves, floods, wildfires, and severe storms is occurring, with a mounting toll on vulnerable ecosystems and societies. These events are early warning signs of even more devastating damage to come, some of which will be irreversible. Delaying action to address climate change will increase the environmental and societal consequences as well as the costs. The longer we wait to tackle climate change, the harder and more expensive the task will be.”

[DESK] Doesn’t this make you little nervous? This isn’t from your local “save the stream” organization. These are the guys who know what they’re doing better than anyone else in the world.

And the statement ends with an uncharacteristic call for action.

[ON SCREEN] “It is time to muster the political will for concerted action. Stronger leadership at all levels is needed. The time is now. We must rise to the challenge. We owe this to future generations.”

[DESK] This isn’t Greenpeace. These are some of the stodgiest, most well-trained, intelligent people on the planet. They’re not infallible, but if you’re not going to listen to what they have to say about a scientific issue, then who are going to listen to? It’s not a rhetorical question. Who would you listen to?

Maybe the National Academy of Science. NAS, which is pretty much the other crown jewel of scientific societies, has 2,100 members (1 of every 10 members has won a Nobel Prize), and has been around since 1863.

The NAS statement of June, 2005 wasn’t just from the NAS. [Google “joint academies climate change”] It was a joint statement made along with the national academies of the other major industrialized countries (the G8), and included China, India and Brazil as well.

[ON SCREEN] The NAS statement said: “The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action,” and it called on world leaders to “Acknowledge that the threat of climate change is clear and increasing,” and to “Recognize that delayed action will increase the risk of adverse environmental effects and will likely incur a greater cost.”

[DESK] There you have the two most well-respected scientific organizations on the planet (along with the national science academies of pretty much every other major industrialized nation) both saying: the globe is warming, we’re the ones doing it, it’s going to be bad, and we’d better do something about it quick. That is huge. This isn’t just a couple, or a dozen, or a hundred scientists talking.

That doesn’t mean every member agrees with the statements, but if AAAS and NAS say something about a topic in science, that is the closest we are ever going to get to a statement of “What science knows.” They are the Science Establishment (capital letters). If that’s not good enough for you to change your mind, then I gotta tell you—nothing from science ever will be. Cuz it just doesn’t get any stronger than that.

It’s worth noting here that both the AAAS and the NAS statements explicitly endorsed the findings of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). I mention this because a lot of skeptics simply dismiss the IPCC as a political hack, implying that its findings are incompetent and biased. Well, maybe now that won’t be so easy, given the endorsement of the top two scientific bodies in the world.

AAAS coming out and saying that climate change is a real problem that needs to be dealt with fast is a lot like when the AMA came out and said that smoking was bad for you. You could still find doctors that disagreed, but the issue was pretty much as close to settled as it could ever be. The only way it could get any more settled would be if the tobacco companies themselves admitted it. Which they finally did, long after it was obvious to everybody that they’d been financing a misinformation campaign.

Well, it turns out, we can take that analogy even further. Because remember the other category at the top of our credibility spectrum—organizations making statements that contradict their normal stance? In the video “How It All Ends,” I briefly shared—okay, I flashed it on the board for a little over one second—a tiny bit of the statement from the [SMALL BOARD] US Carbon Action Partnership (USCAP), which includes Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, Ford, Chrysler, GM, GE, PGE, Dupont, and Dow Chemical. These guys are calling for mandatory requirements on carbon emissions—on themselves!

And get this: last year, none other than Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson himself said about climate change: “The potential risks to society could prove to be significant, so despite the areas of uncertainties that do exist, it is prudent to develop and implement strategies that address the potential risks.” [Google “Rex Tillerson prudent”]

He may not sound totally gung-ho, but given that Exxon has long been the poster child of corporate climate change denial, that’s pretty much like the tobacco companies finally saying that yes, it may be that cigarettes can harm you. Plus, for the first time last year, Exxon didn’t donate to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a think tank that has been at the forefront of the climate change issue.

In the past, when I’ve cited the AAAS and NAS statements, I’ve sometimes heard the criticism that those citations are just “argument from authority,” and are therefore useless. Talk about grasping at straws. The criticism can be valid in a formal logic structure—like in mathematics. But if we’re talking knowledge about the physical world, of course authority matters.

“Honey, remember your doctor warned that if you didn’t cut down on the salt, you’ll have another heart attack.” “Don’t just argue from authority. Explain to me the details of cellular metabolism and osmosis, or I eat as many chips as I darn well please.”

And ask yourself this: does the Earth go around the sun, or does the sun go around the Earth? No one even seriously questions that anymore, right? Try this sometime. Stand and point to the sun in the sky. A few hours later, stand in the same spot, facing the same direction, and do it again. Is your arm pointing in the same direction as it was before? No! Clearly, the sun is the thing that moved, and clearly, the Earth is too large to have gone anywhere, and is right where you left it.

If your senses—and your common sense—are so easily fooled, then how do you decide what to believe about the natural world? Well, why do you so firmly believe that the Earth orbits the sun, despite all evidence and common sense to the contrary? You believe it because: smart people told you so. And you trust them, when it’s their area of expertise, and enough of them agree. Of course authority matters. That doesn’t mean it’s infallible—just ask Galileo. But it’s certainly a better bet than armchair analysis.

So who is providing the rebuttal to AAAS, NAS, and USCAP? I’ll share a handful of names, and if you keep your eyes open, I guarantee you’ll recognize them in the future, cuz they come up again and again. [SMALL BOARD] Lindzen, Landsea, Singer, McIntyre, McKitrick—they’re almost all professional individuals. Remember—there are a lot of people out there to cherry pick from.

Maybe this is the origin of the objection I sometimes hear: “It is true that the climate is changing, but there’s a lot of debate about whether we’re the ones causing it.” Hopefully you see now from the AAAS and NAS statements that no—there really isn’t debate about the cause of climate change. At least not in the scientific community, who really are the only people actually qualified to debate the evidence.

And these scientists who are climate skeptics? You’ll hear them complain again and again that they’ve been marginalized because they spoke out against the orthodoxy. No. They’ve been marginalized because they no longer have any credibility with the other scientists. No one will even debate them, because they’ve gotten so far out there. Incidentally, that’ll be a claim you hear, too—”The chickens won’t even debate me, because they know I’m right.”

So you will see quotes from guys with scientific-sounding titles after their name, giving reasons that human-caused climate change is bunk. They can be found. The Google is a wonderful thing. But just because someone on the web can provide quote after quote doesn’t make the case convincing. Volume doesn’t count for much when you’re down here on the spectrum. The only category less credible than the one these guys are all in is some random jerk on YouTube. Wait.
[Beat]

Speaking of us jerks on YouTube—[we jerks? we jerk? !!!]—speaking of YouTube, I’ve had a bunch of people send me links to at least 3 separate documentaries on YouTube “proving” human-caused global warming to be false. Now, if someone sends you such references, you can either look up the criticism of those movies (being sure to evaluate the credibility of those providing the criticisms), or you can save time and short-circuit the whole debate by simply asking the person who sent you the links: “What is your explanation for why these filmmakers would be more correct about the science than AAAS and NAS?” If they fall back on “Well, the scientists have a vested interest in people listening to them, cuz it keeps the grant money coming, so they’re biased,” try applying that standard to the filmmakers—filmmakers vs. scientists for Pete’s sake! Is it really reasonable to think that scientists’ paychecks are more vulnerable to the public’s tastes than filmmakers’?

[BOARD, GRID] Make up your own mind, but like I said in “How It All Ends,” it sure seems to me that the reasons are overwhelming to believe that this row has a much greater probability than this one, pushing this line up.

CONSEQUENCES

[DESK] Now remember, we’re trying to get a sense of which column is our best bet by using the tool of expected value, which has two components: probability—which is what we’ve just been establishing—and consequence.

With the consequence, it’ll be a little confusing here, because in my earlier example about expected value, the consequence was a payoff from the bank, and therefore a positive thing, that we wanted to maximize.

Here, the consequence is going to be the negative impacts of our actions, which we want to minimize. So once we get our expected value, we’ll want to pick the column with the lower expected value, because it will give a sense of the pain and suffering we can expect from choosing that column.

Another complexity is going to be that—unlike with our gaming example—we don’t know what the consequences in a box will be. That in itself has lots of uncertainties. In fact, in a long back-and-forth with one skeptic as I was trying to find a credible source for the possible consequences here, he finally got exasperated and said “Economic models are even less reliable than climate models!” Which I thought was kind of funny, cuz skeptics are usually all over climate models like a bad rash.

[BOARD, GRID] So when you hear skeptics warning that we shouldn’t take action because it might hurt the economy, ask yourself—or ask them, if you’re feeling up to it—where’s the acknowledgement of uncertainty here, that is the hallmark of the careful, methodical scientist down here?

[DESK, different angles] A: “Anthropogenic global warming is uncertain, and might [have the word “might” flash in real time on the screen] not be true, so we shouldn’t take action yet.”

B: “Why not take action, just in case? Better safe than sorry.”

A: “Because it would [flash “would’] hurt the economy.”

Did you catch the Jedi Mind Trick?

Maybe this hypocrisy of implying certainty for their side while attacking the uncertainty of the other side will count for something when you evaluate these arguments for yourself in the future. After all, where’s the wisdom in ignoring the warnings from the more reliable model of climate change, in favor of heeding the warnings of the weaker model of economics?

[BOARD, GRID] Anyway, to simplify our expected value estimation, let’s neglect putting in the proper range of consequences in each box, and instead just take the feasible worst-case scenario, because that’s what we really care about, right? “What’s the worst that could happen?” That gives us a single value for a consequence that we can then multiply by the probability of the row to get the column’s expected value.

Let’s start with the upper left box, where we took action, but didn’t need to, because human-caused climate change turned out to not be true after all. This is the consequence that the skeptics warn us about. When I first did this grid in “The Most Terrifying Video,” I put in worldwide depression up there. But get this—I just pulled that out of my hat—I totally made it up! Because I was trying to show extremes.

But people got hung up on it, so this time I decided to try to get some reliable sources instead of just blowing smoke. I did a bunch of searching, because I wanted to find some really credible stuff, maybe a professional association of economists, like AAAS and NAS, but from the other side of the debate.

I wasn’t finding much that wasn’t on the bottom of the credibility spectrum, so I challenged climate skeptics to find good sources predicting dire economic consequences for me. I put the challenge in the comments to my “Most Terrifying Video”—I was even deliberately brash, trying to provoke response. It felt kind of naughty.

I had a long back-and-forth with a quite thoughtful, educated guy who referred to his first long response as “The Thinking Man’s Objection to AGW,” a description I found a little odd. I emailed the big conservative think tanks: Cato, CEI, AEI, Heritage. I asked for help in some climate skeptic discussion groups. I even emailed Prof. Ross McKitrick himself—one of the most prestigious skeptics, who is a professor of economics at the University of Guelph in Canada. I figured if he didn’t know, nobody did. And he sent me several documents.

The reason I went to such great lengths was I was want to avoid the confirmation bias described in my video “Nature of Science” by trying to find evidence to disprove my views. I hope you’ll agree that I did a conscientious job looking.

Well, if you’re skeptic, don’t get your hopes up, cuz with all that, I couldn’t find any credible economic disaster scenarios—that is, from sources above conservative think tanks or professional individuals on the credibility spectrum. To be honest, I didn’t even try to find anything from those sources, because I knew I wouldn’t put much stock in it. Maybe economic disaster scenarios resulting from unnecessary action on climate change doesn’t even exist above the individual lay person, which would really say something, wouldn’t it?

Anyway, the most dire stuff I could find that was credible entailed a reduction in GDP growth, with a maximum estimate of 3%. Keep in mind, that’s not a reduction in GDP—that’s a reduction in GDP growth, meaning it’s not growing as fast as it otherwise would have. There’s a ton more econometric numbers in there, but I couldn’t find any sort of concrete description of the fallout of that, like a depression.

And that 3% was the outside prediction—most credible sources put it closer to 1.5-2%. Certainly no mention of a depression, even in just the U.S. If you’d like to look at the documents Prof. McKitrick sent me, I’ve made them available online—perhaps they’re more dire than I could make out. I put them on GoogleDocs and I’ll provide the URLs at the end of this video.

Sorry for the formatting disaster—I received them as pdf’s, which GoogleDocs doesn’t accept, so I did what I could to make them available. I’m sure there are plenty of you out there smarter than me. Let me know what you figure out.

[BOARD, GRID] So, no depression up here. Just some wasted economic resources that could have gone for something else, but no global depression giving rise to the next Hitler or nuclear war. Let’s not trivialize the economic costs—I’ve been laid off before because of a recession. It sucks. But compared to what’s in the lower right corner—well, we’ll get to that.

[DESK] The other source a bunch of people pointed me to was a project called the Copenhagen Consensus, headed by economist Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist. It was an interesting project where 8 economists, 4 of them Nobel Prize winners, got together and asked “Faced with all the world’s problems, if we had 50 billion dollars over the next four years to spend to do good in this world, where should we spend it?”

They ended up putting climate change on the bottom of their list, for some interesting reasons, which I won’t debate here for two reasons. First, it doesn’t help us with our grid, because it doesn’t answer the question “What is the feasible worst-case scenario for harm if we take action on climate change and it turned out to be unnecessary or ineffective?”

And the second reason is, because if you Google “economists’ statement climate change,” [on board] you’ll see that Lomborg’s self-selected group of top economists (including 4 Nobel Laureates) is countered by another self-selected group of top economists (including 6 Nobel Laureates), which conclude, amongst other things, that [ON SCREEN: “ECONOMISTS’ STATEMENT ON CLIMATE CHANGE” — Feb. 13, 1997] ”. . .there are many potential policies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions for which the total benefits outweigh the total costs. For the United States in particular, sound economic analysis shows that there are policy options that would slow climate change without harming American living standards, and these measures may in fact improve U.S. productivity in the longer run.”

They say action would actually be good for the economy, which is an argument I’ve heard a lot of individuals make. Things like “energy efficiency saves money,” “early pioneers in an industry make the big money,” and so on, which is food for thought, but doesn’t help us with our expected value calculation.

Now, I know I said let’s not take into account the range of possible consequences in a box so that we’re just looking for disaster scenarios, but I found something interesting along the lines of action having positive rather than negative effect on the economy that I thought was interesting. USCAP, that group that includes all those heavyweight companies like Shell and Ford, says some surprising things in their document. Most notably:

[ON BOARD] ”In our view, the climate change challenge, like other challenges our country has confronted in the past, will create more economic opportunities than risks for the U.S. economy,” including (my paraphrasing)

- creating new markets
- increased U.S. competitiveness
- reduced reliance on energy from foreign sources
- increased energy security
- improved balance of trade
- world leadership for the U.S.”

[DESK] These guys make this box sound like a party! What a deal—reduce the chance of a global catastrophe, and get paid to do it! Sign me up!

But wait, if it’s such a good deal—if you can cut emissions and not pay a cost—then how come not all businesses are doing it yet?

Look, change is hard—for all of us—okay? There’s a reason that the phrase “business as usual” is used to refer to not being innovative or seeking to improve. It’s way easier that way. Plus, that question sort of assumes that businesses are all-knowing, doesn’t it? That if businesses aren’t doing things a better way now, then that must be because a better way doesn’t exist? That it never takes time, or pressure, to come up with better ways to do things? That necessity isn’t the mother of invention, but just a distant cousin? Sometimes, a prod is helpful.

In 2002, BP committed to cutting its own CO2 emissions by 10 percent over ten years, to get good publicity. At the time they calculated that they could do it at no net dollar cost, and would get great publicity. Well now, they say it’s going to end up saving them $650 million through energy efficiency! That’s cool! And it shows that the dire warnings of the economic doomsayers are really starting to look pretty flimsy.

Along those lines here’s another thing I turned up that I want to share here as you are making your own evaluation of the predictions of economic doom and gloom that the hard-line skeptics seem to so often resort to. [SMALL BOARD] Google “Backgrounder #1229,” and you’ll get the Heritage Foundation’s commentary on a 1998 DOE report about the economic impacts of the Kyoto Protocol. (The DOE report was actually one of the documents Prof. McKitrick sent me.)

The Heritage Foundation’s article is subtitled “More Bad News for Americans,” and their lead economic consequence, the biggest, scariest impact that they chose to highlight to warn the reader of the “Devastating Economic Consequences” was: if we followed the Kyoto Protocol, by the year 2010 a gallon of gasoline could cost as much as $1.91. I had to laugh. I mean, to be fair, there’s lots of other numbers in there. But that’s the scariest thing that they could dredge out of the report, and they repeated it three more times! Given that they’re always calling the people who advocate action on climate change “Chicken Littles,” you just gotta appreciate the irony.

What wasn’t a laughing matter, however, was how deviously manipulative the article was. It was supposedly about the DOE’s report, but woven in with the mild quotes from the DOE report were quotes from “a nationally recognized econometric firm,” which were the ones predicting dire consequences. The carefully crafted message that the casual reader takes away is that the heavyweight DOE report predicted harsh economic consequences from the Kyoto Protocol, something that simply wasn’t true if you looked at the actual report. I take the time to relate this to you in order to underscore the importance of evaluating your sources. That Heritage stuff was downright slimy.

[BOARD, GRID] Yet another rosy economic view of the upper left box by a heavyweight economist is the Stern report of the British government, which says this will cost 1% (pointing at upper right box) of GDP, but this would cost 20% (pointing at lower right box).

So try as I might, I just couldn’t find a credible economic disaster scenario for this box. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist—maybe you’ll find one and send it to me. But I think you’ll at least agree that I tried to be conscientious in looking.

But really, I didn’t need to do all that looking, and you didn’t need to do all that listening, because here’s a point that makes the severity of the economic costs up here moot anyway. Think of it this way if you’d like: the main idea of those who warn that the negative consequences up here are worse than the negative consequences down here, is that government spending and regulation would be bad for the economy. For the moment, let’s simply accept that thesis. Now, imagine the scenario here: we take action on a nebulous threat, but we have the time to do our best to ease the restrictions into place in a planned and thoughtful manner, to minimize the chance of disrupting the economy, skeptics have time to protest, the usual mess of capitalist democracy in action.

Now, imagine the scenario down here. We chose to not take action on climate change, and it ended up happening, despite what anyone’s opinion was. A world full of natural disasters. Will we just sit there and take it? No. If we’re getting battered and bruised, we’re going to do something about it, quickly. And in a panic. Extreme things, maybe even draconian things, because our coastal cities are flooding.

So if planned, controlled action up here is bad for the economy, how much worse for the economy will panicked, harsh action down here be? An economy which has already been battered by disaster after disaster in a destabilized climate and has fewer natural resources like croplands and predictable growing seasons.

Up here you’ve got negative economic consequences, and anything that flows from it. Down here, you’ve got all of that—every bit of disaster scenario that the individual lay blogger wants to conjecture—plus a bunch of bonus features. So no matter what feasible worst-case economic scenario we grant up here, it is included and made worse down here.

So, we’ve made a very conscientious effort to find credible worst-case economic scenarios that spell disaster up here, and haven’t come up with much.

Let’s now look at that other big negative consequence on the board, where we chose to not take action—or we debated too long (same thing)—and human-caused climate change turned out to be true. Here our feasible worst-case scenario gives us political, social, environmental, public health, and economic catastrophes on a global scale.

Sea levels rise 20, 30 feet, entire coastal countries disappear, hundreds of millions of refugees displaced, pushing in on each other, causing widespread warfare over scarce resources and ancient hatreds, entire forests die and burn, massive floods alternate with killer droughts, the breadbaskets of the U.S. and Russia turn to dustbowls, leading to catastrophic famines, dreadful epidemics spread like wildfire, storms like Katrina and Mitch are the norm, plus all the economic harm from up here, exacerbated by haste and natural disaster.

We’re talking a world straight out of science fiction, a world that makes Al Gore look like a sissy Pollyanna with no guts who sugar-coated the bad news. If the statements from the experts aren’t enough for you in deciding which column is the better choice, just bring your common sense to bear.

Which situation sounds like it would do more damage to the economy: government spending and regulation up here, or a world halfway to Mad Max’s Thunderdome down here?

Watch the video “How It All Ends: Scare Tactics” if you want details for where that picture comes from.

So, let’s recap, and then we can apply the expected value calculation.

First, to establish the probabilities of these two rows, we looked at a bunch of sources.

[BOARD, credibility spectrum with sources on sides] These sources essentially say that human-caused climate change is most likely true and serious. These sources say that human-caused climate change is either not true, or true but not serious. Looking at where all of these sources fall in terms of our assessment of their credibility, it seems pretty much irrefutable [BOARD, GRID] that this row is much more probable than this row, which we can represent by moving this line up.

Then, in terms of consequences, we decided to not worry so much about the range of possibilities, and simply accept the feasible worst-case scenario for each. Up here, we’ve got reduced GDP growth, and all that ripples out from that.

Down here, we’ve got what seems to be almost a Mad Max world. We’ve stacked up Lomborg’s 4 Nobel Laureates vs. “The Economists’ Statement on Climate Change’s” 6 and called it a wash, as well as showing that any negative economic consequences up here are not only included, but also made worse down here. And we’ve deferred looking at the details behind the physical consequences here to the video “How It All Ends: Scare Tactics.”

Now for the hard part—we need to come up with some actual numbers for probabilities and consequences in order to then do our expected value calculation. Except, lucky for us, we don’t. Because we’ve just hit a special case in expected value. We’ve established that both the consequence and the probability of this are greater than this.

And if you go back to our original gaming example, you’ll see that in such cases we don’t even need actual numbers in order to know which expected value will turn out larger. Play with it, and you’ll see that no matter what the exact numbers are, if both the probability and the consequence of this box is greater than those of this box, the expected value of this column will turn out to be larger than this column.

Remember, in this application, the expected value we’re talking about is a bad thing, because it represents our suffering. So we would definitely be betting against the odds, and against our own rational self-interest to pick this column, because it’s expected value of suffering is greater than this column—probably much greater. Remember, this is how casinos and insurance companies do business. They’ve got it figured out. Why should we ignore such a successful tool when betting on the future of the planet—I mean us?

Now, I want to be completely intellectually honest with you, because stuff like that Heritage Foundation article I mentioned earlier just really ticks me off, and I don’t want to even be accused of bowing to their level. So, to avoid being like them, I want to tell you that for the sake of accessibility, I did a little sleight of hand with the expected value “calculation.”

I don’t see how it could change the conclusion, but then, I’m only human and I could be wrong. And you shouldn’t believe anything I say anyway, but check it out for yourself. Here’s the deal: really, the expected value of a column should be the sum of the expected value of both boxes in that column, and we only looked at the worst-case scenarios in each column. If that simplification doesn’t do it for you, and you want the greater complexity, then go watch the video “How It All Ends: The Manpollo Project.”

[DESK] You may be thinking to yourself “Did he just take 30 minutes to tell me ‘Better safe than sorry?’” Pretty much. Only it’s a bit more well founded, cuz “Better safe than sorry” applies to building a defense system against Giant Mutant Space Hamsters, just in case some attack, and as I hope you’ve seen, this risk management is robust enough to not be slain by that criticism, because we established the credibility of the threat.

Also, I’ve heard the criticism that this is the precautionary principle, which is supposedly self-contradictory (at least according to Michael Crichton and Wikipedia, both well-credentialed philosophers). Regardless of the validity of the precautionary principle, this ain’t it, because this isn’t formulated with the criterion of scientific consensus, but just likelihood of outcome.

If you think it’s self-contradictory and invalid, go tell the casinos that there’s no way they’re going to make any money if they keep giving stuff away all day. I’m sure they’ll appreciate your keen insight.

Before we wrap up this brief [bullsh*t!] exploration of risk management, there are a few loose ends to tie up, most of them objections that I’ve heard about these arguments.

Objection: “I think we’ll innovate ourselves out of any problem. We always have in the past. I mean, we’re still here—right, Mr. Gloomy?” My response is: you don’t base your decision to buy car insurance on optimism, but on a realistic assessment of the worst case scenario. We pay to insure our cars, our homes, our health, without knowing for certain that anything bad is going to happen. Why is it suddenly different here?

As for putting faith in science to get us out of any jams in the future, umm. . . that’s pretty much what the scientists are trying to do right now, but no one’s listening. They’re saying “knock off with carbon emissions, cuz it’s probably going to totally hose us.” I think the only reason we’re still talking about this is that NAS and AAAS don’t have a huge advertising budget to get the word out.

And the exuberant faith that our innovation will magically do whatever we need it to quickly becomes ridiculous. The late Julian Simon, a well-respected economist—and, I’ve read, Bjorn Lomborg’s inspiration for writing The Skeptical Environmentalist—actually wrote “the quantity of copper that will ever be available to us is not finite.”

Wait, if something’s not finite, doesn’t that mean it’s infinite? Is he saying there’s an infinite amount of copper available for us? Is he still reading those alchemy books? Do you think, on a scientific issue, it’s wise to listen to people so clearly ignorant of science?

As for the idea that we shouldn’t get all worked up because—hey—we’ve always managed to avoid global catastrophe in the past, that just reminds me too much about what a good friend of mine in high school used to say. He’d do careless, stupid, things, and when I chided that he should be more careful, he’d say, “I haven’t died yet. So I’m not going to.”

It was a joke. It was funny. He’s dead now, from driving drunk. That’s not funny. That’s deadly serious. Is that really the way we want to decide on public policy that influences everybody on the planet? “We haven’t hosed ourselves yet, so we’re not going to.”

Objection: “That grid is just Pascal’s Wager, which has more holes than Swiss cheese. You can’t put lipstick on that pig.” No, but can I put the pig and cheese on rye? Nah, it looks like Pascal’s Wager because they are both basic decision grids. What sunk his was the infinite payoffs, and assumptions without evidence. This one has finite payoffs, and assumptions based on evidence.

Objection: “Whatever negative economic consequences show up here (pointing at grid) would show up here too, since they’re a function of our action, not of what the physical world ends up doing. So if we choose action, we’re doomed to economic harm.”

My response: remember, the negative economic consequences of the left column are just the worst-case possibilities—they are not guaranteed to happen. So choosing action does NOT doom us to economic harm, or even economic costs. That’s just the worst-case possibility. Watch the video “How It All Ends: Get What You Want” to see how it’s actually quite likely that column A would be a net benefit to the economy.

Anyway, if you think adding the worst-case economic scenario to the bottom left corner would change the expected value of column A compared to column B, that’s a pretty complicated calculation. Actually, it’s a pretty simple calculation, but coming up with the numbers to put into is very complicated. If you want to do that, then go watch the video “How It All Ends: The Manpollo Project.”

Objection: “The upper right corner is the only box that looks attractive. So I choose column B.” My response: hey, that’s fine if you’re playing the tables at Vegas—I think that’s called being risk-seeking rather than risk-averse. But you’re not playing at the tables with your own money. You’re playing with the globe which the rest of us have to live on.

That’s not called risk-seeking or risk-averse. That’s just called being a selfish prick [“jerk”]. Go watch the video “How It All Ends: No Holds Barred” to see why that’s such an embarrassingly ridiculous stance to take.

Objection: “We should be saving up for real threats, like the asteroid Apophis hitting us in 2036. If we’ve squandered our money on the climate change boondoggle, we’ll be too economically crippled to do anything about it.” Okay, that’s just bizarre. And I heard it several times.

You’re going to believe scientists when they talk space rocks, but not when they talk climate science? And if you do believe the space rock scientists, then you haven’t even been paying attention, cuz that asteroid has been taken off the danger list. If that’s your reason for not worrying about climate change, I’m afraid you’ve got bigger problems.

Objection: “It’s not that simple. What about the intermediates between no action and all-out action? What if climate change is happening, but we’re not the ones doing it? What if climate change is happening, and we’re the ones doing it, but our actions don’t stop it? Or they make it worse? You need more column and rows.”

My response: Okay. Let’s talk about that. Take a swing through “How It All Ends: Why There Is Still Debate,” and then I’ll meet you at “How It All Ends: The Manpollo Project,” where we’ll get radical and totally blow this grid up.

For the rest of you, when you look at the statements from AAAS and NAS saying that climate change is a real threat, and at the statements from so many industry and economic sources saying that taking action will probably help—rather than hurt—the economy, doesn’t it start to seem kind of ridiculous that we’re still talking about this? Let’s get going. Forward the video to others. Talk about it to friends and family. Git ‘er done.

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dw69vk2_1grchjj
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dw69vk2_3f9z7hv
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dw69vk2_5fzs8wb
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dw69vk2_4dqs3hd
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dw69vk2_6ff5d69
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dw69vk2_2d5g5cv

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Debate

Why there still is a debate?

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Script

This video is called “Why There Is Still Debate” and is part of the expansion pack providing further detail to the arguments contained in the video How It All Ends.

This video will explore the question of why there is still popular debate on the topic of global climate change, in spite of overwhelming agreement in the scientific realm.

I’ve sometimes heard the objection: “But I’ve heard the opposite of all that you say about climate change, so doesn’t that prove it’s still being debated?” Sure. I guess by definition if you see differing opinions, then it’s still being debated. In the media. In the popular press. In the blogosphere. But not in the scientific realm.

As you may have seen in the video “Risk Management,” the unprecedented statements from AAAS and NAS—probably the two most well-respected scientific organizations on the planet—make it clear that the best that science has to offer tells us that: 1) the globe is warming, 2) we’re the ones doing it, 3) it’s going to be bad, and 4) we’d better do something about it quick.

If these statements as well as the others examined in that video make for such a slam dunk, then why do we (in the US, at least) still hear so much debate?

I think there are probably a lot of reasons for that.

First off, I found some surveys that indicate it’s the lack of absolute certainty that’s holding most people back. If that’s the case for you, I think that if you watch the “Nature of Science” video, you’ll see that waiting for certainty from science is a losing proposition, and if you watch the “Risk Management” video, you’ll see that we can still make good decisions without knowing for certain what’s going on with climate change.

This hesitation on the public’s part allows organizations and companies which stand to be inconvenienced or economically harmed—in the short run—to delay action by playing up the uncertainty of the science. The basic way it works is this: every statement in science is accompanied by an explicit acknowledgement of uncertainty. Good scientists will be very explicit about the uncertainty. Vested interests—like trade organizations, think tanks, some governments, and individual companies—then emphasize this uncertainty. The media has a couple of reasons to include and amplify this uncertainty. The first is, they know that controversy sells. And the second is, they don’t want to be accused of bias, so they go out of their way to present “the other side.” Unfortunately, this creates the illusion that the two sides actually carry equal weight in the scientific community, which you’ve seen, they don’t.

The Union of Concerned Scientists—which is an advocacy organization, but is rigorous enough that they are often consulted by the government—observed that “public opinion can be easily manipulated because science is complex, people tend to not notice where their information comes from, and because the effects of global warming are just beginning to become visible.”

This is starting to change. Exxon—sort of the poster child for this dynamic of propagating public doubt about climate change—just recently made some stunning public shifts. In a January 2007 Wall Street Journal article, when Exxon’s vice president for public affairs Kenneth Cohen was speaking about greenhouse gas emissions and their effect on global temperatures, he was quoted as saying: “society knows enough now—that the risk is serious and action should be taken.” And in 2006, Exxon, after funding them for years, stopped funding the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a think tank that ran ads just last year saying that carbon dioxide is helpful, rather than a problem.

So there is indeed deliberate manipulation of public perception in order to serve the interests of stakeholders. On some level, I suppose you can’t fault them. After all, they are just playing the game we’ve got, since the whole purpose of a publicly-traded corporation is to “increase value for shareholders,” not “do the greatest good for the greatest number.”

Although some of them, you can fault. It’s worth including here a story that I also share in the video “No Holds Barred,” just in case you don’t manage to slog through that one, because it’s significant, and really helped galvanize me to action.

On either side of this bitter debate, you hear accusations that the other side is in somebody’s pocket. From the skeptics you’ll hear “It’s just a liberal plot to get control of our lives,” and it’s not uncommon for a warmer to imply that anyone who argues hard for the skeptical side must be a corporate shill. I figured that the idea of vested interests hiring people to surf the net and argue for the skeptical side wasn’t too outlandish, but I also thought it sounded a little too sinister to probably be true.

Well, a couple months ago, I was reading a back-and-forth discussion about Grist.com’s “How to Talk to A Climate Skeptic,” [Google the exact phrase “We’re all seekers for truth here” WITH THE QUOTE MARKS] and there was one guy really taking the lead for the skeptical view, talking quite reasonably how there’s a lot to be said for both sides, and the science on the issue is divided, which is why people are divided, etc. He was saying stuff like “The truth is that reasonable people of good will can look at the same evidence and come to opposite conclusions, including scientists. This is what makes the climate change debate so interesting. It is one of the greatest scientific debates in history.” Seemed like a very reasonable, nice guy who just happened to hold a different opinion than mine.

Imagine my surprise and horror when someone outed this guy as a consultant hired by the electric power industry! And as soon as that was revealed, the guy immediately disappeared, though he had been countering most every point up to then! It was really creepy! Especially when I looked back on the stuff that he had written that I had excused before as being simply uninformed, but really, was deliberately manipulative, and downright intellectually dishonest. “This is what makes the climate debate so interesting. . .” It’s not ‘interesting’ you jerk—it’s potentially life or death for real people if the worst case scenarios actually come to pass! We’re not sure it’ll happen, but that’s what the rest of us are sincerely trying to avoid. And you find it an ‘interesting’ discussion. It’s hard to convey how angry that makes me, to see someone so careless about their impact on other people’s lives.

I felt so violated! I share this with you here because you should know that there are indeed selfish, dishonest people out there who will try to manipulate you for their own benefit, regardless of any harm to you. Given that I actually ran across a guy doing this leads me to conclude that it’s not that outlandish to assign a good amount of the remaining public debate about the issue to a campaign by vested interests to take the inherent uncertainty of all science and cloud the public’s perception of this issue.

That said, being human, we have a number of psychological factors which make us quite susceptible to that kind of manipulation [of “the inherent uncertainty of all science and cloud[ing] the public’s perception of this issue”].

One is simply fear of change. If what AAAS and NAS say is true, then it sure sounds like we may be in for some really big lifestyle changes. So it’s natural to just tune it out. If global climate change is really as much of a big, ugly beast as science says it might be, that really threatens the status quo, which people assume would throw millions of people’s lives into turmoil and change. So they resist the conclusion because they’re afraid of it, not because they understand it.

I know personally, when I talk to people about climate change, I’m always very anxious of being criticized and dismissed for “using scare tactics,” which for some reason is a fatal criticism—once someone slaps that label on you, your credibility is destroyed and no one will listen to you unless they already believe what you have to say.

But can’t you imagine a possible situation in which perhaps you aren’t scared enough for your own good? Couldn’t “scare tactics” be a positive thing then? I read a totally engrossing newpaper column a year or so ago titled “If Only Gay Sex Caused Global Warming,” by Daniel Gilbert. He’s a psychologist, and his basic point was that the human brain is conditioned to respond to threats that are immediate, quick, visible, and personal. I call it the Saber-Tooth Tiger Reflex. I’m not sure if I just made that up. ”. . . [W]e accept gradual changes that we would reject if they happened abruptly,” he wrote. “If climate change had been visited on us by a brutal dictator or an evil empire, the war on warming would be this nation’s top priority. . . . When terrorists attack, we respond with crushing force and firm resolve, just as our ancestors would have. Global warming is a deadly threat precisely because it fails to trip the brain’s alarm, leaving us soundly asleep in a burning bed. It remains to be seen if we can learn to rise to new occasions.”

And there’s the hitch. Our way of dealing with problems—being reactive to them—has worked out okay for us as a species so far. When we’ve really blown it somewhere, we could just move on to new ground. But now, with six billion people and techonology that changes the whole bloody planet, there’s nowhere to run to. Nowhere to hide.

Which creates another psychological stumbling block. If a situation is too big to comprehend, or too threatening, then our screen just goes blank. Who among us has not stuck our head in the sand, and ignored a terribly pressing problem, subconsciously hoping it will just go away, and dreading the time of reckoning when it must be faced, knowing all along the situation will only be the worse for our inattention, but still not rousing ourselves to action?

And then there’s the dynamic of confirmation bias which I detailed in the video “Nature of Science,” where we pay more attention to the evidence which supports what we already believe, and less attention to the evidence which contradicts it. This explains what was a very puzzling discovery for me. I came across a poll about public attitudes towards global climate change. And it showed there was a significant split across party lines in terms of the percentage of people who believed that humans are causing the globe to warm up.

Now, you probably don’t find it surprising that more Democrats than Republicans believe in global warming, and ordinarily I wouldn’t either. But I’d been steeping myself in this question of how do you go about deciding what to believe about what’s going on with the physical world, and this split along political party lines about a physical reality just sort of blew me away. Why the heck should political belief influence one’s assessment of what is physical reality? I just got this ridiculous picture in my head of a Democrat and a Republican standing and looking out the same window—the Democrat saying “Gee, it’s pouring rain out there,” and the Republican saying “No, it’s a sunny blue day.” And of course the Greenie saying “Hey—let me see!”

So how does confirmation bias explain that split? It’s fair to say that Republicans have a greater distaste for government than Democrats, and if climate change is really being caused by humans, that strongly implies the need for more government action. A Republican would rather not see this happen, and so confirmation bias ends up making more of the “global warming is a hoax” evidence stick, and less of the “global warming is a problem” evidence stick. Along these lines of conirmation bias, I can’t tell you how many times a skeptic has posted a comment along the lines of “Here are three movies on YouTube you MUST see. They all prove how global warming is a hoax.”

It’s true that films like “The Great Global Warming Swindle” and “An Inconvenient Truth” are exactly these sorts of evidence that can strongly feed confirmation bias. And you can bet that the fans of each movie have a pretty strong political profile, despite the significant difference in how the two movies have stood up to analysis by credible sources. That’s probably because we’re not in the habit of going out of our way to see if we’re wrong. Really, who likes being shown to be wrong?

If you’re a fan of “An Inconvenient Truth,” how much research have you done into the critiques of the movie? How about if you’re in the “Great Global Warming Swindle” camp? Have you looked up some of the really embarrassing goofs the filmmakers made, like filling in the blanks on some of the scientific graphs? Oops. Do some open-minded googling there, and you may be stunned. Whichever movie you’re a fan of, you owe it to yourself: if you can only find weak critiques that are easily dismissed, that increases your esteem for your favorite movie. And if you find there are a bunch of fatal flaws, then thank goodness you found out now rather than later, and can dump that stinker as fast as possible.

It’s just natural when you go about collecting evidence and arguing again and again to become really convinced yourself, and lose the ability to see that perhaps you could be wrong; perhaps someone else does make a valid point. I know it’s happened to me as I’ve steeped myself in the evidence and arguments in writing these videos. More than once I caught myself thinking “My God—how could anyone not be convinced??” So it is a difficult but very worthy skill to step back and clear the board, saying to yourself: “Okay, I’ll pretend I haven’t formed an opinion yet. Let’s see how the arguments stack up against each other.” I try to aspire to it, though I’m not always successful.

In fact, as hard as I try to form watertight conclusions, I still hope I’m wrong. Which is an idea so important, it’s got its own video: “I Hope I’m Wrong.”

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The Manpollo Project

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Script

[DESK] This video is called “The Manpollo Project” and is part of the expansion pack accompanying the original video “How It All Ends.”

This video is to address the concerns of all those who feel that I’ve oversimplified something inappropriately in my risk management approach to climate change represented by the grid in the video “How It Alls Ends,” and that that oversimplification can’t be ignored, because it would qualitatively change the outcome of our analysis.

Generally, I get accused of being either incompetent or manipulative by simplifying. So here, we’ll answer that. So if you think I oversimplified inappropriately, here we’ll make sure we don’t do that, by taking the full complexity head on, and not shirking a single detail. So buckle your seatbelt.

Regarding the grid, I’ve often heard objections such as: “It’s not that simple. What about the intermediates between no action and all-out action? What if climate change is happening, but we’re not the ones doing it? What if climate change is happening, and we’re the ones doing it, but our actions don’t stop it? Or they make it worse? Don’t we need more columns and rows to account for all of those possibilities?”

Okay, those are all valid, but before we explore them, I’ll point out that if you first watch the videos “The Mechanics of Climate Change,” “Scare Tactics,” and “The Solution” you’ll probably see how unfeasible those last three scenarios are—that is, how clear it is that we are the ones doing it, and that action would be only beneficial—and you might no longer be concerned with the need to include them as rows before using the grid to draw a conclusion about what to do.

Also independent of whether the science I explained in those three videos allays your concerns, the video “Risk Management” points out that the top scientific organizations in the world have publicly and explicitly said: yes, the globe is warming, yes, humans are the ones doing it, and yes, our actions will have an effect, but we’d bettter get on it quick. So the short answer to the objections is: who are you and I to argue with the top scientists about the science?

But, some of you still don’t trust the objectivity or competence of those scientific authorities, so we’ll take on all those “what if’s” head on, and include them in our pathetically oversimplified grid. Here we go.

[At BOARD, big GRID] Holy sh*t, it exploded!

Across the top we’ve got five columns representing five different degrees of action, from all-out to status quo. Down the side, GCC stands for global climate change, A stands for anthropogenic, or “caused by humans.” T and F are for AGCC ending up being true or false, and we’ve got the effects of our actions on the climate—positive, negative, and no action.

So we’ve got scenarios that range from:

GCC false, but our actions negatively affect the climate

GCC false, climate not affected

GCC false, climate positively affected

GCC true, but not A, and actions cannot affect climate

GCC true, but not A, can be negatively affected

GCC true, but not A, can be positively affected

GCC true, A, can not be affected

GCC true, A, actions negatively affect climate

GCC true, A, and our actions positively affect climate

Into each of these 45 boxes we put our different economic, environmental, social, political, and public health scenarios. If you recall our “expected value” discussion from the video “Risk Management,” you might think we would then assign to each box a number to represent the consequence if that scenario happened—in this case, the cost to us. Not just the economic cost, but some sort of quantified measurement of the various forms of suffering or benefit.

[DESK] But if you remember in that video, I pointed out how each box actually contains a range of possible consequences, and that to simplify our expected value calculation, we purposefully neglected to take into account that range, and instead just took the feasible worst-case scenario. This led a number of people who looked at the simplified grid to claim that column B was the better bet, because they forgot that was just a simplification, and therefore they assumed that choosing column A doomed us to economic harm, no matter how the truth of global climate change played out.

But, now that we’re unpacking that simplification, it’s clear from what I shared in the videos “Risk Management” and “Get What You Want,” choosing column A only brings with it the POSSIBILITY of economic harm, not the certainty. As you saw in those videos, long and conscientious searching on my part turned up exactly zero economic doomsday scenarios from credible sources. All the economic doomsday stories turn out to be simple conjecture from people at the very bottom of our credibility spectrum. And in fact, a number of quite credible sources, including industry leaders in the US Climate Action Partnership, assert that column A quite likely leads to economic growth. So, that should get us over our economic phobias surrounding column A and the boogeyman of government action.

[BOARD, BIG GRID] So if we’re sincerely trying to not oversimplify here, what we need to do gets a little complicated. Fortunately for us, the tool of expected value is scalable, and can be applied recursively. So we’ll go into each box, look at the full range of possible consequences—say in here from global depression all the way to wild economic boom—assign numerical values to each of those possible consequences.

To stay backwardly compatible with our previous oversimplification, let’s still represent consequences that cause suffering as positive numbers—the greater the magnitude, the greater the suffering or impact—and let’s set zero as neutral—no deviation from the norm. Counterintuitively, that gives us negative numbers for good consequences, like an economy boosted by innovation, but we can handle that. That’s why we’re here, instead of stopping at the oversimplified four-boxer.

So next, we’ll multiply each of the possible consequences in a box by the individual probability of that consequence happening, to give us an expected value for each possible consequence. Then we’ll sum up all those expected values of the different possible consequences in just that box to get the expected value of that box as a whole.

That will give us a single number we can then use as the consequence of that box (of course you’ll recognize that it’s really the expected value of the box itself). This replaces the assumed worst-case scenario we used before, which had confused some people into thinking that choosing column A doomed us to economic harm. So we’ve taken care of that problem.

Then we’ll calculate the expected value for the whole column, by multiplying the consequences of each box (again, really the calculated expected value of each box) by its probability, taken from the row, and sum up those nine products to get the expected value of the column. You’ll recognize that’s the exact same process of taking the sum of a series of products that we did in each box, illustrating the very slick recursive nature of the expected value.

Then we’ll move over and do that same process for each column, and the next, and so on. That will eventually give us an expected value assigned to each level of potential action, and we finally get the satisfaction of simply looking at five numbers and asking: which one is the closest to negative infinity? Because that will tell how how much suffering we can expect if we choose that column.

Recall that to stay consistent with our original four-boxer grid-for-the-masses, zero is neutral, positive numbers are suffering, and negative numbers are actually benefits, so the greatest benefit comes from the number that is farthest to the left on a number line. And remember, there are no guarantees, because there were probabilities of probabilities layered in here. But expected value is a well-proven tool, used by businesses all the time, and it’s the best we’ve got here. Okay, let’s get started. [Fake a start.]

Oh, and you’ll recognize, of course that the probabilities of all of our rows are going to need to sum to exactly 1, if we’re trying to be thorough and not neglect any scenarios. That one of course represents the fact that we a have 100% chance of something being true. So the absolute probabilities we distribute across these columns will also handily function as relative probabilities, as in “How much more likely is this row than this one?” [Fake a start.]

Oh, and one more thing. You know how we did that process for the whole range of possible economic consequences for a single box? We’ll need to do an identical process for each of the other factors besides economic, because there are probably things beside economic numbers that we might want to factor into our happiness, don’t you think?

But for our first time through, I’d suggest we limit the factors to economic, environmental, social, political, and public health scenarios, since those will be the easiest to quantify, and probably have the greatest bearing on our standard of living. At the end, if we have a close tie between two columns, then we can go back in and add some other factors to refine our answer.

So, let’s get going with assigning those numbers, because if we break each range of possibilities for each factor in a box into a reasonable 5 cases, that gives us five cases times five factors, times 45 boxes, or a little over 1100 numbers we’ve got to agree on to quantify consequences, and an equal number of probabilities to assign. You might want to go get an energy drink, cuz this may take a while. Ready?

Juuuuust kiddin’! There’s no way I’m qualified to quantify all that! And neither, probably, are you. I mean, look at us—we’re interacting through homemade videos and derisive comments, for Pete’s Sake!

If this is to be done—really done, and not “oversimplified”—why on Earth would we be satisfied with a hack job or armchair analysis?

[DESK] This analysis is how a business who knew their business would do it—like a casino, or an insurance company. Except they wouldn’t be listening to you and me and our opinions of what they should do, because I suspect it’s actually even way more complex than what I just described.

What they would do is hire really smart people with Ph.D.s, tell them to eliminate their biases as much as possible, and turn them loose on the problem. So, if making a profit is important enough for a company to hire the best to do their expected value calculations, how come we’re not doing that in this case, for global climate change, which might have slightly more at stake than one business’s profit?

So if you’re serious about getting to the truth of the matter, and not just taking potshots to buy some time and preserve your opinion, then let’s hire the best and brightest we’ve got, and have them work with the greatest urgency on this. I’m serious—let’s draft the best scientists, political economists, historians, and analysts on the planet to bring their greatest effort to bear, to work round the clock on what our best scientists say may be the greatest challenge we’ve ever faced. I’m talking a project on the scale of the Manhattan project and the Apollo project put together. We could even call it the Manpollo Project if you like, and we would give it the greatest national urgency and resources.

Because you and I may not be qualified to do this grid, but as citizens, what we ARE qualified to do—and in fact are responsible for doing—is deciding how much resources to put into calculating the answer. Isn’t that what government is FOR—to bring to bear our collective time, expertise, and resources to accomplish what you and I cannot individually? You wouldn’t remove your own appendix. You wouldn’t try your own law case. We let the experts do the details—which you and I are not qualified to do—and we retain our supervisory role, examining the executive summary before signing off on a course of action.

In fact, there’s a silver bullet! Both sides of the debate will agree that we should have such a Manpollo, project, and here’s why: because each side thinks the project will get us closer to the truth, and dispel the untruths that the other side has spun. So we all want this, because everyone thinks they’re right, and would love further ammunition to prove the other side wrong. Wouldn’t that be worth the cost?

Because a Manhattan Project is not going to cause a global depression. An Apollo Project is not going to going to bankrupt the US, or lead to government control of your life. So what’s to lose? If we have a Manpollo project and it finds that human-caused climate change turns out to be bunk, then hey—okay, we diverted some government jobs from one sector to another. Isn’t reducing the uncertainty about this at least worth that cost?

Let’s not kid ourselves any more. You can ask about solar activity, or natural cycles, or proxy data, but the climate is way too complex for you or me to do armchair evaluation of this stuff in the face of so much peer-reviewed science. Let’s get the big boys (and girls) on it. Don’t we deserve that?

I am not talking about forming another commission to “study the problem further.” We’ve been doing that for 20 years, and the statements from AAAS, NAS, and USCAP that I shared in the video “Risk Management” make it clear that that time is past. And you can’t resort to “Well, that argument could be made about those Giant Mutant Space Hamsters—we’d better have a Hampollo Project to study it, because the possibility can’t be dismissed.” Climate change has a little more peer-reviewed science behind it than the hamsters.

In fact, faced with the statements from those organizations, if someone still argued that the idea of anthropogenic climate change can be dismissed out of hand, so that it’s not even worth studying our options with a Manpollo Project, at this point people might start to view them a bit like Saddam Hussein’s Minister of Information—the guy who denied the existence of the bombs falling around him.

A Manpollo Project’s mission would be to study the science, study the political economy, study the history, to not only come up with the whole range of possible scenarios, but to actually quantify each one. To come up with numbers for consequences—both positive and negative—and for probabilities, so that an expected value could be calculated that would end this tumultuous, ineffective political bedlam that surrounds the issue, which really should be decided by analysis, and not political rhetoric. The project would have to be well-respected enough by all that the public would place such confidence in it that we would all agree ahead of time to follow its recommendations, even if we didn’t like them. We would all feel confident that the answer recommended was the one most likely to get us what we want, regardless of our individual political opinions.

Because the physical world—which, in the end, is what this all is about—isn’t influenced by our opinions. It is only our actions which have impact. And currently, our actions are firmly in column B. If that’s going to remain the case, don’t you want to know—with as much confidence as you can—that that is the best place to be? Wouldn’t you rather be assured by a huge team of highly competent and unbiased experts, rather than going on your own armchair evaluation of what you’ve read or heard?

In WWII, if Germany’s threat threat to the world justified the Manhattan Project, why wouldn’t global climate change’s threat to the world justify a similar effort now? Just because it doesn’t have a mustache? Look, Hitler himself was undeniably real, but him developing the atomic bomb—which I understand is the threat we were reacting to with the Manhattan Project—was just a possibility. No one—no scientist or policy maker—knew for sure that such a bomb was possible. The scientific issue was uncertain. Yet we took action, in spite of that uncertainty, because the risks of not taking action seemed far greater. Just the possibility that Hitler might get the bomb was enough to justify all-out action. Why not here? Paying for a Manpollo Project is not going to be the end of the world as we know it. But not paying for one, might be.

Let’s get to it.

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