Would you bet your entire life on the assertion that climate change is happening, humans are causing it, and that it will result in global disaster? I mean truly 100% can you discredit the skeptics out there who claim that global warming is bogus?
Major scientists and scientific institutions have claimed that global warming is happening and it is likely being caused by humans. Their conclusion is that we need to be doing something about it. But, what about the skeptics? What do we do with people such as Singer, Lindzen, Christy, etc.? These people at least put some doubt in a 100% claim for human caused climate change.
Because we can’t predict global warming with 100% accuracy we inherently have some risk in our choice of whether we do something about climate change or not.
So, given the uncertainty, how do we make a choice between doing something and not doing something? Basic risk management helps us do just that.
If you haven’t seen the wonderingmind42’s series of videos on youtube, they are all well worth watching, and his risk management sections gets into detail on probability and risk management decisions. Watch the following:
In both scenarios (climate change is true and climate change is false) we have two options. We can either do something or do nothing.
Let’s go with the case that global warming is false. If global warming is a big scam and we decide to not do anything about it, then life continues as normal and everyone is happy. If, on the other hand, we do something to mitigate human emissions, then the worst possible scenario is a global economic depression.
Now, let’s go with the case that global warming is true. Again, we have two options. If we do something about it, then we mitigate the warming and lessen the effects it will have. If, on the other hand, we don’t do anything about it then we have global disaster (famine, death, economic depression, etc).
Now lets look at the risks presented to the world in both scenarios. The two risk in the first scenario is that that we will have a global economic depression.
The risk in the second scenario is that we will have global disaster (including global economic depression).
The tools of risk management tells us that to make the best choice, we must choose the option that presents us with the smaller risk.
To mitigate the potential risks that global climate change poses to the world, since is at least possible that there are risks on both sides of the argument, it only makes sense to mitigate climate change.
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Great post. I will read your posts frequently. Added you to the RSS reader.
A prety neat way of looking at climate change, pretty much most things really, never thought of it in terms of risk mangement, pretty neat.
Snapa
Climate change is a serious matter, and you wouldn’t suspect that someone like me in air conditioning would give a flip about it but I actually do. Green technology is a BIG part of what I do and believe in. Browsing blogs for the first time this week. I’m amazed by the sense of community I’m finding here and it other good blogs. This is definitely one for my bookmarks.
BTW, vist my Wordpress blog for my business here: Long Beach Air Conditioning