I have argued in previous posts that we have no reason to expect climate change to have large net negative effects. Yet quite a lot of countries are doing expensive things that are defended as ways of reducing climate change: subsidizing renewables and electric cars, forcing the conversion of maize into alcohol, discouraging the production and use of fossil fuels.
You are entirely right. Climate catastrophe is a religious cult. Virtue signalling is cost less and you get to call out the bad deniers! Those evil nasties. That makes it even more attractive in our tribal world.
People against nuclear war! There is a thought provoking analogy.
Operation "Steel Box" removed chemical weapons from Germany during a few months of 1990. Much of the transport was by rail. There were large demonstrations by protesters trying to block the trains, which were REMOVING the chemical weapons!
I guess the protests were not about chemical weapons. :-)
The protests in my view, were anti-capitalist, with the US being the symbol of capitalism. The religion of global warming is no different -- it's essentially an anti-capitalist reflex, hard wired in emotion.
I spent much of my life as an evangelical "spirit-filled" Christian, evolution-denier etc., my one redeeming value was believing in a libertarian NAP foundation (which lead me to anarchy even as a Christian, partially through the writings of Jacques Ellul).
Today, I am an atheist (although I think we probably live in a construct built by AI in the next level up universe, so I guess I might still be a bit of a creationist, lol, albeit a naturalistic one).
I bring this up only to point out that I totally understand, in a gut-level, emotional-level, and quasi-intellectual-level what it it's like to believe totally unbelievable things based on a mixture of faith, emotion, group identity, and some quasi-intellitectual apologetics.
The environmental movement is similar to religion the same way politics is similar to religion, people believe in things on a bad epistomology, i.e. faith, and nothing can be presented to them to change their mind. Strong and good counter-arguments only make them more faithful.
You’ve pointed out that nuclear is the most reliable, non-intermittent, non-CO2-producing energy source we have, and ask why people concerned about AGW nevertheless tend to oppose it. One explanation is the sort of tribal-affiliation phenomenon you describe. But another, more obvious and more classically “rational”, is that most people concerned about AGW aren’t concerned _only_ about AGW; they think of AGW as one example of the broader problem of anthropogenic pollution.
Nuclear power generation doesn’t produce CO2 (except as a side effect, e.g. of producing concrete for the containment buildings), but even when working as intended, it produces radioactive and heavy-metal waste which are hard to dispose of. Furthermore, nuclear plants tend to work very well for years until they abruptly work very badly, by which time their designers and builders have retired or died and are no longer accountable if they cut some corners thirty years ago. (By contrast, if you make a faulty windmill or solar panel, it’s likely to fail soon enough that you lose repeat business.) One could argue that these pollution concerns are less urgent than AGW, but they’re not costless.
Nuclear power (even the older designs) produce less pollution than other forms of energy generation. This is largely because it is so energy-dense. The polluting and environmental effects of coal mining are obvious, but there are also polluting and environmental costs of solar and wind due to the large amount of materials needed.
In the past couple years I have seen more people become more favourable to nuclear, perhaps it might soon become a high status belief. Fears about underpopulation are also starting to do that, wonder what will happen to all the previous prophets. Interesting question would be how much of the various shifts in public opinion are correlated with what the most reasonable beliefs are given the information available at that time, that is are the current pro nuclear and pro natalism lot forming their beliefs on the basis of the best available evidence etc. or just signalling etc.
One interesting case is the loss of belief in the Soviet model of economic development, five year plans and the like. Sixty years ago, both the governments of poor countries and their western advisers mostly took it for granted that that was the way to go.
India stagnated, Taiwan and South Korea became developed economies, the Soviet Union collapsed and, in doing so, revealed the real state of its economy. For a while it looked as though the evidence against the socialist model was strong enough to overcome the ideological commitment in favor. Some poor countries such as India have switched to something closer to a market model. China did for a while, but now seems to be sliding back.
Going further back, classical liberalism in the 19th century achieved extraordinary results but that didn't prevent it losing out to dirigiste views in the 20th.
Covid provides another example. To what extent is the current abandonment of lockdowns due to the reduced risk of Covid, to what extent due to voters getting tired of them, to what extent due to the evidence that they did not do much to reduce infection?
Ricardo worked out the logic of comparative advantage more than a century ago and the U.K. and, later, Hong Kong prospered under free trade, but most public discussion of trade policy still seems to assume the mercantilist/absolute advantage model.
I think truth has some weight in what people believe, but, at least in the political context, not a lot.
Why did Hong Kong only benefit from free trade later than the UK? If one takes the abolishment of the Corn Laws in 1846 as the beginning of the era of free trade, both the UK and Hong Kong should have started to benefit from that simultaneously.
“I have argued in previous posts that we have no reason to expect climate change to have large net negative effects.”
Yes, you have, and fairly convincingly, if we’re looking at long-term steady states. But much of the concern people raise about AGW is about short-term, transient effects — measured in years or decades rather than millennia. I don’t much care whether the Earth of 3000 AD, or even 2200 AD, is slightly more human-habitable than that of 2000 AD, because nobody I know is likely to see those future Earths.
You’ve mentioned positive effects, like more arable land in Canada and Russia, which will take decades if not centuries to take advantage of. (Land that has supported only small bushes and lichens for millennia will take a while to build up the biomass to support crops.)
You’ve mentioned hypothetical but plausible technological mitigations to the negative effects, but those mitigations will take at least decades to invent, and more decades to trickle down to all the victims of negative effects. (And if the people who would benefit most from them happen to be poor, as seems likely, those inventions may not happen at all.)
In short, even if you’re right that AGW is (in the long run) a net positive for humanity, I would argue that there’s real value in slowing it down.
I think you are exaggerating how fast it is now — every negative climate event gets blamed on climate change. And note that one big positive, CO2 fertilization, is already happening, indeed greening the Earth as well as increasing crop yields.
According to the IPCC -- despite it's explicitly pro-exaggeration position -- there are few significant effects of climate before 2050 and barely more by 2100. So, if you believe the downsides, they also will take some time. However, I agree with David that the positives are being ignored.
You are entirely right. Climate catastrophe is a religious cult. Virtue signalling is cost less and you get to call out the bad deniers! Those evil nasties. That makes it even more attractive in our tribal world.
People against nuclear war! There is a thought provoking analogy.
Operation "Steel Box" removed chemical weapons from Germany during a few months of 1990. Much of the transport was by rail. There were large demonstrations by protesters trying to block the trains, which were REMOVING the chemical weapons!
I guess the protests were not about chemical weapons. :-)
The protests in my view, were anti-capitalist, with the US being the symbol of capitalism. The religion of global warming is no different -- it's essentially an anti-capitalist reflex, hard wired in emotion.
I spent much of my life as an evangelical "spirit-filled" Christian, evolution-denier etc., my one redeeming value was believing in a libertarian NAP foundation (which lead me to anarchy even as a Christian, partially through the writings of Jacques Ellul).
Today, I am an atheist (although I think we probably live in a construct built by AI in the next level up universe, so I guess I might still be a bit of a creationist, lol, albeit a naturalistic one).
I bring this up only to point out that I totally understand, in a gut-level, emotional-level, and quasi-intellectual-level what it it's like to believe totally unbelievable things based on a mixture of faith, emotion, group identity, and some quasi-intellitectual apologetics.
The environmental movement is similar to religion the same way politics is similar to religion, people believe in things on a bad epistomology, i.e. faith, and nothing can be presented to them to change their mind. Strong and good counter-arguments only make them more faithful.
You’ve pointed out that nuclear is the most reliable, non-intermittent, non-CO2-producing energy source we have, and ask why people concerned about AGW nevertheless tend to oppose it. One explanation is the sort of tribal-affiliation phenomenon you describe. But another, more obvious and more classically “rational”, is that most people concerned about AGW aren’t concerned _only_ about AGW; they think of AGW as one example of the broader problem of anthropogenic pollution.
Nuclear power generation doesn’t produce CO2 (except as a side effect, e.g. of producing concrete for the containment buildings), but even when working as intended, it produces radioactive and heavy-metal waste which are hard to dispose of. Furthermore, nuclear plants tend to work very well for years until they abruptly work very badly, by which time their designers and builders have retired or died and are no longer accountable if they cut some corners thirty years ago. (By contrast, if you make a faulty windmill or solar panel, it’s likely to fail soon enough that you lose repeat business.) One could argue that these pollution concerns are less urgent than AGW, but they’re not costless.
Nuclear power (even the older designs) produce less pollution than other forms of energy generation. This is largely because it is so energy-dense. The polluting and environmental effects of coal mining are obvious, but there are also polluting and environmental costs of solar and wind due to the large amount of materials needed.
I think everyone is religious. Some of us admit it.
In the past couple years I have seen more people become more favourable to nuclear, perhaps it might soon become a high status belief. Fears about underpopulation are also starting to do that, wonder what will happen to all the previous prophets. Interesting question would be how much of the various shifts in public opinion are correlated with what the most reasonable beliefs are given the information available at that time, that is are the current pro nuclear and pro natalism lot forming their beliefs on the basis of the best available evidence etc. or just signalling etc.
One interesting case is the loss of belief in the Soviet model of economic development, five year plans and the like. Sixty years ago, both the governments of poor countries and their western advisers mostly took it for granted that that was the way to go.
India stagnated, Taiwan and South Korea became developed economies, the Soviet Union collapsed and, in doing so, revealed the real state of its economy. For a while it looked as though the evidence against the socialist model was strong enough to overcome the ideological commitment in favor. Some poor countries such as India have switched to something closer to a market model. China did for a while, but now seems to be sliding back.
Going further back, classical liberalism in the 19th century achieved extraordinary results but that didn't prevent it losing out to dirigiste views in the 20th.
Covid provides another example. To what extent is the current abandonment of lockdowns due to the reduced risk of Covid, to what extent due to voters getting tired of them, to what extent due to the evidence that they did not do much to reduce infection?
Ricardo worked out the logic of comparative advantage more than a century ago and the U.K. and, later, Hong Kong prospered under free trade, but most public discussion of trade policy still seems to assume the mercantilist/absolute advantage model.
I think truth has some weight in what people believe, but, at least in the political context, not a lot.
Why did Hong Kong only benefit from free trade later than the UK? If one takes the abolishment of the Corn Laws in 1846 as the beginning of the era of free trade, both the UK and Hong Kong should have started to benefit from that simultaneously.
“I have argued in previous posts that we have no reason to expect climate change to have large net negative effects.”
Yes, you have, and fairly convincingly, if we’re looking at long-term steady states. But much of the concern people raise about AGW is about short-term, transient effects — measured in years or decades rather than millennia. I don’t much care whether the Earth of 3000 AD, or even 2200 AD, is slightly more human-habitable than that of 2000 AD, because nobody I know is likely to see those future Earths.
You’ve mentioned positive effects, like more arable land in Canada and Russia, which will take decades if not centuries to take advantage of. (Land that has supported only small bushes and lichens for millennia will take a while to build up the biomass to support crops.)
You’ve mentioned hypothetical but plausible technological mitigations to the negative effects, but those mitigations will take at least decades to invent, and more decades to trickle down to all the victims of negative effects. (And if the people who would benefit most from them happen to be poor, as seems likely, those inventions may not happen at all.)
In short, even if you’re right that AGW is (in the long run) a net positive for humanity, I would argue that there’s real value in slowing it down.
I think you are exaggerating how fast it is now — every negative climate event gets blamed on climate change. And note that one big positive, CO2 fertilization, is already happening, indeed greening the Earth as well as increasing crop yields.
According to the IPCC -- despite it's explicitly pro-exaggeration position -- there are few significant effects of climate before 2050 and barely more by 2100. So, if you believe the downsides, they also will take some time. However, I agree with David that the positives are being ignored.
Thanks for your dispassionate and thoughtful take.
I draw on you a lot for my blog posts. Something similar to this:
https://www.mattball.org/2023/05/doom-force-that-gives-life-meaning.html
And just yesterday:
https://www.mattball.org/2023/08/the-horror-of-climate-change.html
(Another scheduled for Monday)
Every comment I see of yours on this blog contains a link back to your own substack. You're behaving exactly like a clickfarmer.