Climate Change

I was recently engaged in a thread regarding climate change, wherein I encountered the following arguments to discount the science and impetus for action that underlies it:

1. Data is being interpreted in a nefarious manner to support ulterior economic and political motives
2. Fluctuations in weather have always been at play, therefore trends in climate can be discounted
3. Irrespective of point numbers 1 and 2 above, almighty God will ensure that, no matter what we do which might influence the climate, everything will work out fine 

I, personally, have no interest in whether or not someone believes that climate change is an issue, but, rather, am interested in whether or not we can embrace a more common sense way to live in better harmony with our environment.

This is tantamount to quitting smoking in the mid 20th century, when there was no hard evidence that smoking caused cancer. To the extent that even a moderately intelligent chimpanzee knows well enough not to pick up a burning stick and heartily breath in its smoke, I find it perplexing that the apex primate would purposefully do just about the same thing ;-)

Still, to take action, one has to be believe that there is a reason, so let's talk about that.

With regard to point number 1 (nefarious data interpretation), it is a non-starter, because the very premise would indicate that whether data is being interpreted in favor of climate change or against it, the interpreting party has some nefarious, ulterior motive. Therefore, it makes no sense to debate the issue, because I could just as well assume that the man on the street has an ulterior motive, just like NASA and the bulk of the scientific community.

With regard to point number 2 (weather vs climate), equating the weather to the climate is like equating one's neighborhood to the country, which can lead someone living in an upscale neighborhood to conclude that there is no opioid epidemic, or someone living in an impoverished inner city neighborhood to conclude that the entire country is ravaged by an opioid epidemic.

Local versus global points of reference can very easily lead one to miss the global trends, which is the key distinction in climatology. Of course, in order to see trends, one has to leverage data, and to the extent that point number 1 invalidates the interpretation of data, point number 2 seems irrelevant.

With regard to point number 3 (God), if we need not worry about climate change, or, perhaps, any other natural or man made phenomenon, because God will guide us through to a favorable conclusion, then why have vaccines or antibiotics or chemotherapy? Why have pollution controls in factories or catalytic converters on cars? Why have seat belts or smoke alarms or seismic wave detectors?

If there is a God, then he (I use the word loosely) bestowed us with faculties so that we can better take care of and navigate through the world he created for us. To abandon the reason he gave us as unnecessary because of some paternalistic notion is foolish. As you might guess, I am not a biblical scholar, but I have read quite a few quotations pertaining to personal responsibility.

With that, let us consider climate change in the vein of Pascal's Wager.

This proof, put forward by Blaise Pascal in the 1600s, postulates that, in the absence of clear evidence for the existence of God, or not, one would be better served believing than not believing, because the penalty for believing in error is very low, and the penalty for not believing in error is very high.

In our case, it is even more universal, because, in the case of Pascal's Wager, one member of a single-exclusive-deity religion can opt to believe but still not be inoculated from the perspective of a member of a different single-exclusive-deity religion, i.e. because the other fellow believes in the wrong God, as it were.

You can debate whether or not the penalty for investing in Green technology and divesting from Grey/Brown technology is too high, but to the extent that advances in technology continually make the cost of being green lower and lower, I think any such debate loses merit over time.

The fundamental question here, for me, is: Can we endeavor to foster better harmony with our environment without having to agree on the facts of climate change?