Winning Over Global-warming Skeptics

On global warming the environmentalists have it all wrong — wrong, that is, about how to sway the skeptic.

First, they say, ratchet up the gloom-and-doom decibel level. Dramatize the images of melting ice-cap waters engulfing entire nations, migration marches of starving families, lush agricultural lands transformed into deserts.

Second, impugn the authority of the skeptics' experts. Insist that most of them work for the oil industry or other powerful energy interests. Debunk their scientific theories and evidence.

The first strategy fails for the same reason that Chicken Little failed to garner support for his sky-is-falling theory. One seldom frightens people into modifying belief systems or behavior.

Strategy two fails, because one never prevails by mocking the other's sources or arguments.

How, then, can the discussion be advanced? First, with a few ground rules.

Rule 1. Forget about changing closed minds — meaning those who insist that global warming is a myth or a left wing plot and, conversely, those who declare that human activity alone is causing global warming.

Rule 2. Accept in good faith the credentials of experts on both sides of the debate, their theories, supporting data, and projections.

Rule 3. Remember that we are dealing with probabilities as regards theories and forecasting models.

Rule 4. Recognize the relative proportion of experts on each side of the issue.

The skeptic's argument is simple. Since the debate is still ongoing and the jury still out, we should not get all hot and bothered about turning the world upside down to satisfy the doomsday environmentalists. Let's take no action. The Earth will eventually normalize. Seems reasonable enough.

Or is this Russian roulette? You remember the game. The revolver has six chambers, one of which contains a bullet. I spin the magazine, put the revolver to my head, and pull the trigger. Will it fire? Probably not. Indeed, there is an 83 percent chance that I will survive, only a 17 percent chance that I will die (Rule 3). The single bullet represents, of course, disaster for the human race; while the empty chambers, an adjusting planet returning to normal. Odds for the survival of the planet, 83 percent are not too bad. Why not chance it?

But wait. The forecast of catastrophe is held by 80 percent to 95 percent of scientists, with only 5 percent to 20 percent predicting that the changes will be manageable. Not one chamber but five chambers contain bullets. If I spin the magazine and pull the trigger, will I blow my brains out? Now the probabilities are reversed — suicide, 83 percent; survival, 17 percent. Still in the game?

The analogy is simplistic, claims the skeptic, since it ignores the horrendous economic consequences of following the environmentalists: a Wall Street crash, whole industries belly up, total dollar collapse, millions of jobs lost.

No one is denying that the corrective measures called for are severe. However, their effects are forecasted by two opposing economic models. One gives predominate weight to negative impacts.

The sky is destined to fall. The other predicts the cost of inevitable rebuilding to be lower than the cost of controls. It also factors in opportunities for new research, new technologies, new industries, new export markets, new jobs. The disruption to the economy, they forecast, will be minimal. Neither model is “correct,” and the reality may prove to lie somewhere in between.

In any case, we have survived world wars, a depression, bank crises, overseas outsourcing, recessions (and we will make it through the current one). More to the point, if without blinking we can throw away more than $1 trillion of our grandchildren's money on futile wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we can surely find the resources and endure the sacrifices to ensure that the planet remains viable for those same grandchildren — indeed, for the world's grandchildren.