Stephen Schneider

The Department of Energy in the United States recently had a high official testify before the United States senate and I happened to have been sitting next to that official and we had a clash over exactly this issue of whether the present evidence was sufficient for policy, and they said that there was too much uncertainty for us to invest any substantial sum of money because why should we hedge against a problem whose dimensions we don't understand. And what I said was that platitudes about scientific uncertainty has been used by the Department of Energy for the last 20 years to avoid action, and what made me angry was that they claimed that it was scientifically unjustified to act. It depends more whether you fear investing present resources as a hedge against future change or whether you fear more having the world perform the experiment of rapid climate change without trying to slow it down.

Let me go beyond that. I would not argue that the world should take literally the details of the scientific projections for the future. We can't know the exact distribution of where it's wetter and dryer, but I think we have to take very seriously these calculations because the probability of the world being much warmer in the next century than it is now is very high, well above 50%. If you think about this as a gamble, what we're doing is we're gambling with very high odds and the rate of our change is very large. So the question then becomes what do you want to do as a hedge against that.

Think of it like insurance. Every person I know has insurance, only a very foolish person would have no insurance or a very foolish person would spend all their income on insurance. So the question is, what's the right balance? And that is, again, not a scientific question but a value political question. And I would say, in my value system, what you want to do is hedge against, meaning slowing down the greenhouse effect, by making those prudent investments that make sense even if the greenhouse effect weren't true.

The most obvious example of that is using energy more efficiently. If you get more mileage out of your car or if you have a better insulated house or if you have an electric power plant that's got a more efficient boiler or has a more efficient turbine, then you're using less energy for the same economic service, and what that does is it reduces the emission of greenhouse gases, it reduces the emission of acids which create acid rain that is very serious in Europe and Scandinavia and parts of North America and will become increasingly serious in Asia as the Chinese and the Indians use coal, it reduces the health effects of air pollution, it reduces the dependence for countries that don't have that much fossil fuel on foreign supplies, and it makes those countries more economically competitive because they have less energy costs in their manufactured products.
So the thing is climate change is just a reason to do something that makes sense anyway and it gives you a little added pressure to spend a little public resource as an insurance policy against the possibility that the uncertainties won't necessarily make the problem become less but could make it more.

And what I said was that platitudes about scientific uncertainty has been used by the Department of Energy for the last 20 years to avoid action, and what made me angry was that they claimed that it was scientifically unjustified to act

PeterCS wrote:Try telling that to The Mad Monk.

Mick Sawyer wrote:

PeterCS wrote:Try telling that to The Mad Monk.

aye - he's in deep debt to the arch conservatives & I can feel the shadows approaching.

More than ever I despise Rudd for not calling a double dissolution when the imperative presented itself.

PeterCS wrote:Try telling that to The Mad Monk.

He would have gone in with a 15 point lead too.

tac wrote:I thought this was about the dude/dudette from Twisted Sister . . . .

Mick Sawyer wrote:

PeterCS wrote:Try telling that to The Mad Monk.

aye - he's in deep debt to the arch conservatives & I feel the cold shadows approaching.

More than ever I despise Rudd for not calling a double dissolution when the imperative presented itself.

G.Wood wrote:

tac wrote:I thought this was about the dude/dudette from Twisted Sister . . . .

that's a rather embarrassing admission

using the excuse it would look oportunistic and put the houses out of whack. (Which shows how clueless he was). Then and there they made up their minds to dump him the minute he looked even remotley unelectable

G.Wood wrote:Wouldn't it be more fun to throw rocks on Therese and shag his roof?

G.Wood wrote:I can just imagine Ruddy chasing after MS yelling "Those Chinese Mick Sawyer f**kers are trying to rcat-f**k us."

skully wrote:Back On Topic. I'm quite pleased for Schneider. He didn't get to see the looming environmental apocalypse that he predicted. Funnily enough, neither will any of us.

skully wrote:Back On Topic. I'm quite pleased for Schneider. He didn't get to see the looming environmental apocalypse that he predicted. Funnily enough, neither will any of us.

JGK wrote:

skully wrote:Back On Topic. I'm quite pleased for Schneider. He didn't get to see the looming environmental apocalypse that he predicted. Funnily enough, neither will any of us.

But he probably went to death knowing that the rest of mankind was farked.

eowyn wrote:Of course the climate is changing, the earth's climate has chnaged constantly. Ice ages, warmer ages, the evidence is all there in fossil records.

Right now we, here in Britain, are getting drier springs and wetter summers while the overall temperatures are rising slowly. It's a fact we can see because for about a hundred years now we've been taking accurate weather measurements. The only real debate there is is now much human activity is adding to the rate of increase. It might be minimal, it might be quite a lot but how ant can think that chopping down vast areas of forest, whilst pumping out CO2 from burning fossil fuels can't possibly have some effect must just be hiding from reality.

I also think that unless you believe mankind should become extinct that we should be doing our upmost to preserve the plant that gave rise to our existance. Recycling, finding alturnative fuel sources, stopping mass deforesation, etc can only be for the common good.