Taxonomy of Global Warming Denial

[Loudmouth]

Mmm, I think I am understanding your point. Which I guess takes us back to the question of "How much evidence of a phenomenon is required before action is required?"

In the 1970s you have a theory which suggests some risks of putting CO2 into the atmosphere. You have no firm observational verification of this theory. The costs of action were great and the costs of inaction were ill-defined and poorly quantified. There were possible benefits of both action and inaction. The cost-benefit analysis of climate change policy was in its infancy if even conceived.

Essentially, the risk of putting more CO2 into the atmosphere was very poorly quantified with many unknowns.

When you assess risk, it is the unknown but potentially globe changing activities that carry the most risk and warrant the most research BEFORE you put start using those resources.

At the end of the day, fossil fuels were relatively cheap and abundant, and no one profiting from fossil fuels wanted to voice concerns that might dampen those sales. It is a classic case of feigned ignorance is bliss. Also, there was no real green movement at the time. It wasn't until we stopped looking the other way (e.g. PCB pollution) that we realized we couldn't ignore pollution away.

I am saying that there was no solid observational evidence that atmospheric CO2 was increasing or that temperatures were increasing,

That is partially true. We had no observational evidence which direction atmospheric CO2 and temperature were going. That should scare people, not make them confident that fossil fuels are not a problem. If you know something can cause environmental damage, and you have no way of knowing if it has already caused that damage, how reckless is that?

To use another example, there are a few gold leeching mines in my area of the country that use vast amounts of cyanide to dissolve small particles of gold. They are required to constantly test downstream water ways for cyanide to ensure that they aren't polluting. Imagine if they didn't do that? How would they know that they were causing environmental damage until it was too late?

My other comments are similar to these. If you don't know what damage could happen, and there are hints that damage could be caused, then you should wait before using the technology.

 

[RealityCheck01]

I already linked to the NRDC PDF.

I relinked to the PDF for the convenience of readers.
Up to 1.8% of GDP in 2100 which seems not a small change economically.

The report is not a cost/benefit analysis so an analysis of benefits should not be expected.

A 75% increase is "not a big increase in projected growth" IMO a big increase would be needing a 200% increase.

There are a lot of big numbers in global economics so there is nothing special about $12.1 trillion. For example that PDF has $270 billion for USA climate costs in 2025. That sums up to about $20 trillion just in the USA by 2100 without any increases in climate costs.

 

[leftrightleftrightleft]

When you assess risk, it is the unknown but potentially globe changing activities that carry the most risk and warrant the most research BEFORE you put start using those resources.

This is nice in theory, but completely unrealistic in practice. It would handcuff us from using any new technology. You're essentially saying that we shouldn't have started burning coal in steam engines in the 1800s until we had fully assessed all the risks of this new technology.

Unknown unknowns are the hardest ones to find.

I'm of a slightly different mindset: you maintain your course until firm evidence is presented that you should change your course. In the case of fossil fuels, they seemed relatively harmless for the first hundred or so years of their use. Some theories were suggested in the 1950s that perhaps there were some negatives to using this technology, but no observational evidence had confirmed it. Also keep in mind that there had been many people that said that there were many benefits of a warmer world as well. If little to no observational evidence has been shown to substantiate this theorized risk, then it is ill-advised to change your course.

Analogy: lets say you're on a hike and someone tells you there might be a bear on the trail. But they also add that it might be a teddy bear, it is unclear whether it is a real bear or a teddy bear. Do you turn back or do you maintain your course down the trail? I would personally maintain my course until I actually have some observational evidence to confirm whether this "bear": A) exists and B) is bad or benign.

First climate scientists had to show that carbon dioxide and temperatures were actually going up (the bear exists), then they also had to show that this was a bad thing (that it was not a teddy bear).

My other comments are similar to these.

 

[leftrightleftrightleft]

I relinked to the PDF for the convenience of readers.
Up to 1.8% of GDP in 2100 which seems not a small change economically.

The report is not a cost/benefit analysis so an analysis of benefits should not be expected.

Do you know of any proper cost/benefit analyses?

This HuffPost article is all fluff. No numbers given.

This article in the journal Climatic Change says uncertainties are too large.

This article from 1995 also says that uncertainties and long time scales make any analysis very difficult.

Here's another (actually a review of a book) which tries to do it, but, from what I can tell, it does not include any section on the benefits of climate change. It only addresses the negatives.

 

[Loudmouth]

This is nice in theory, but completely unrealistic in practice. It would handcuff us from using any new technology. You're essentially saying that we shouldn't have started burning coal in steam engines in the 1800s until we had fully assessed all the risks of this new technology.

The amount of coal used in the 1800's was a tiny percentage of the fossil fuels we were using by the mid 1900's. That is when we should have been honest about the risk and worked towards curbing the use of fossil fuels until we knew they were safe.

I'm of a slightly different mindset: you maintain your course until firm evidence is presented that you should change your course.

My mindset is to always question the course and do your best to avoid unnecessary risks.

As to the rest, I think we have both made our case, and it isn't falling on deaf ears.

 

[RealityCheck01]

Do you know of any proper cost/benefit analyses?

This is a complex area. Any analysis will be an approximation and there are impacts that cannot be quantified, e.g. how much is a species worth?
You have seen and cited Positives and negatives of global warming with basic, intermediate and advanced versions. The intermediate version is the list of impacts which as you said has more negative than positive impacts.

There are cost/benefit analysis of specific (mostly USA) policies at The economic impacts of carbon pricing.