By Alex Epstein
Question from his speeches.
Q: David Collum of Cornell University says that the relationship between CO2 increase and global temperature changes is too complex and unknowable. What’s your take on that?
A: He’s an interesting guy. I’ve interacted with him a little bit. Let me say one thing about this. I won’t address his exact version of the argument because I haven’t seen it, but there is a kind of argument that I don’t like, which is the idea of, “Science is always unsettled.” It’s often put this way.
People will say, “Well, climate change is settled science,” and then somebody will say, “Well, science is always unsettled.” What does it mean, science is always unsettled? In the sense of, you’re open to new ideas—but we have to make decisions, including policy decisions, based on our understanding of how the world works. We make it based on gravity, we make it based on the science of guns killing people and stuff like that, and if you have a nuclear weapon in your backyard, you’re not really allowed to do that, and that’s based on the current understanding of nuclear weapons. “The science is unsettled”—maybe the nuclear weapon, if it goes off, will make you really healthy or something.
You have to go on what the best evidence we have at a given time is. When people say, “Oh, the science is unsettled, etc, etc,” it gives way too much credit to the other side, because it makes it seem like the best evidence we have is that fossil fuels are making the climate unlivable, whereas all the evidence we have is that they’re making it livable.
In terms of Collum’s point, the complexity we have is that the cause is going both ways, as far as we can tell historically. So historically, temperature increases CO2, and CO2 can increase temperature to a certain degree, and there are all sorts of other things going on. If you look historically, Al Gore will show you this thing of “Look, the CO2 went up and the temperature went up,” but historically, it’s actually the CO2 went up after the temperature went up. It’s actually that the temperature went up and warmed the oceans and then the CO2 evaporated.
More recently, despite what people say, the warming has trailed the CO2. There are physical reasons for both of these, and there are lots of other things. So in the sense of: is it too complex for us to really predict exactly? Yes. But I don’t think that means somebody can’t say at least a plausible range of, “We think it’ll warm this much.” And we should think about it.
And my view is that the range of plausible things people can think about, none of them really create problems, so we shouldn’t be very alarmed. But if somebody, given the current state of science, said, “You know what? There’s a possibility hurricanes are going to be 10 times more intense,”I would listen to that. I wouldn’t say, “Well, we can’t really know exactly.”
So, he’s definitely right technically, but sometimes even when you have an imperfect understanding, you need to make decisions.
https://alexepstein.substack.com/p/answers-to-questions-about-the-social
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