Our Response

Remember the crux of this issue.  The theory has been falsified and without correlation you cannot have causation.

INTRODUCTION

On this page, we will look at how to problem solve in a rational way. First, taking a broader perspective then, with the help of some Readings, in a more detailed way. Finally, we will summarise what went wrong with our approach to the “global warming” problem.

A Broad Overview

Let us look at the steps needed to respond rationally to a problem couched in the following terms;

“Man is causing global temperatures to rise significantly and, in the future, the effects will be catastrophic.”

There are six steps necessary before any action is justified.  First, our society should have determined “normality” before assuming that something abnormal was happening.  This would have established that some global warming was occurring, but it appears to be natural global warming.

The second step was probably the most important step.  How much of this global warming was natural and how much was caused by Man?

Because we were panicking, decision makers were told and believed Man was causing most if not all the global warming.  If we had asked this question, we would have found that natural global warming started in 1700 at the coldest period of the “Little Ice Age” well before any suspected influence by Man.  And Man’s contribution was small – contrary to what the decision makers were being told.

The answer to this question would then determine if our strategy was one of “prevention” or “adaption”.

The next step required us to look at the “other side of the coin” and see what benefits would come from this global warming, so we could determine the net effects of this global warming.

Before deciding on what strategy we should adopt, we needed to establish if we could successfully prevent Man’s influence and at what cost.  Also, the likely success and cost of adaption strategies would need to be assessed.

After this cost benefit analysis, the problem of global warming should have been ranked with all the other problems in our society to see if we could fund our response.  If we couldn’t fund either adaption or prevention initiatives – then we would have to live with it.

The following flow chart shows how this rational approach would work.

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A More Detailed Discussion

We will discuss each of the six questions in the flowchart above.

Question 1. Is There Global Warming? This question is not as simple as it appears. ‘Warm’ and ‘cool’ are subjective terms that need to be clarified before the question can be answered. For some people who find something warm, others would describe it as cool.

Because of the loose language used in this issue, the term “global warming” often means catastrophic warming or warming that is bad. Once again these are subjective terms and need to be clarified. Reading 4.1.1, titled “When Does Global Warming Start?“, attempts to do this.

We now find that “bad” or “nasty” global warming might not start, if at all, for more than one hundred years. This poses a second question; “What is the hurry?”. Given that time frame, we should not panic and make sure our response is both rational and well thought out. Reading 4.1.2 attempts to answer the question “What is the Hurry?”.

Question 2. Natural or Man-made?

From day one of this campaign, the Green Movement knew that Man was only a small contributor to the annual production of atmospheric CO₂. This had to be hidden or downplayed to stop people taking the adaption route rather than the prevention route. The prevention route would achieve the Greens’ social engineering goals – adaption wouldn’t help them.

Initially, the World was told that Man was 100% responsible for all global warming. By rewriting climate history, the Greens incorrectly told us that the climate had been in a benign state of stability before “Wicked Man” (their words) had upset this with man-made global warming. Several poor “Hockey Stick” studies helped reinforce this idea.

Eventually, when the Greens started to be criticised for ignoring natural warming, they claimed we did not understand. They had re-defined “Global Warming” without telling us, to mean only the warming caused by Man. Therefore they could claim that all their “global warming” was caused by Man. Note the deceit tools used here.

Once people realised that they were being lied to, once again, the race was on in the Green movement to turn Man’s very small contribution (say 1-4%) into a larger amount (e.g. 8-12%). This debate continues today but the exact figure is not germane to this conversation. We can assume that Man’s contribution is minor when compared with naturally produced CO₂ . In the flowchart it is shown as up to 15%.

If this was a real problem rather than an imagined problem, then this would suggest we needed to go down the adaption path as we could only partially prevent a small part of a much larger natural problem.

Reading 4.1.3 shows you the major “sinks” and “sources” of CO₂. Note that Man’s contribution of less than 3% will grow to 6% by 2050.

Question 3. Are The Net Effects Bad?

Irrational panic reigned when this question was answered. While ignoring all the benefits of increased CO₂, the costs were exaggerated beyond belief – all based on the Greens’ Armageddon predictions. We are all going to die, so what price do you put on that? This was a plea to be given a ‘blank cheque’ to be spent by the Greens.

But if we were ‘blank chequeing’ prevention attempts to save us, we were forgetting that 85-97% of the problem was out of our control and we were all going to die anyway. The Greens weren’t concerned for two reasons. First, they would get the money and second, like every previous campaign, they knew the human race was not going to become extinct as there was no problem.

Fallacious arguments based on ideas that “costs of inaction far outweighs the costs of prevention” were used. Or even more foolishly; “We need to take out insurance in case it does happen”. The Armageddon tale had to be believed to go down this path of prevention.

Question 4. Is it Preventable?

The answers to this question rely on several fragile assumptions in order;

• That global warming is not natural,
• We know that the sole cause of the global warming is Man’s CO₂.
• By getting rid of Man’s CO₂ we will stop global warming.

This blinkered view ignores the following;

• What we are seeing might be normal and not caused by Man,
• Man’s CO₂ may not be a cause, or sole cause, of global warming. There are more than 30 factors affecting global temperatures.
• There are many theories on how global temperatures are affected – why believe the “greenhouse theory” is the only theory.

Question 5. Where is it Ranked?

The ranking of this problem is determined by the answers to Question 3 & 4, and the competing priorities.

If we believe in the Greens’ Armageddon story where we are all going to die, then it will ranked first when compared with all our other problems.

Because we cannot prevent the bulk of this problem we have two choices. Spend all our money on maybe saving a few thousand humans. Or, use all our money on everyone as we “party” before the end of Mankind.

If we do not believe in the Armageddon tale but do believe it is a serious problem then it has to compete with other global problems to be ranked high enough to achieve funding.

Before most realised that the theory had been falsified and without correlation there cannot be causation, such rankings were made by the Copenhagen Consensus. Reading 4.1.5 briefly outlines the work.

However, as a prerequisite, Reading 4.1.4 should be looked at first to conceptually understand that there always will be limited funds that cannot fund everything we want.

Question 6. Can We Fund It?

Recently in the media, some were arguing that we no longer “had enough money” to fund Defence at 2.5% of the GDP and Defence funding should be reduced.

This was poorly expressed because Defence was to get some funding but the ranking meant it would get less funding. It is never a lack of funds – it is all about ranking.

In the Second World War, Defence funding was over 40% of the GDP. So there is always funds and, with the expectation that Australia was to be invaded, the ranking of Defence spending at that time was at priority 1.

Ranking needs to be achieved rationally and be based on facts and logic. It will not be done well in an emotional environment where irrational arguments based on factoids are blossoming. Getting the ranking right is the most important task if we are to spend our money effectively.

Not surprisingly, even the environmentalists are becoming frustrated with our irrationality with Green issues. It gives environmentalism a bad name. See Reading 4.1.6

Where Did We Go Wrong?

“Use of emotive words are used to turn on our emotions.  Once we are emotional, we will become irrational creating the perfect storm for us to make some dumb decisions.“

In a nutshell we went wrong in the following ways;

• We have allowed ourselves to become more irrational.
• We are losing our critical thinking skills.
• We have forgotten or are deliberately ignoring all the previous occasions when the Greens have been wrong – in fact, very wrong.
• Because of the three points above we bought a ‘negative good’ – yet again – called “global warming”.
• Because of the top three points above, we didn’t critically examine this new Green issue.
• With the Greens using “salesmen” tricks, we allowed ourselves to be rushed into making our decisions.
• Believing the Henny Penny tale, the issue gained the highest ranking.
• This ranking then led us down the prevention path rather than adapting to real problems as they occurred.
• Without thought, we accepted the assertion that CO₂ was the sole/major cause of global warming.
• We didn’t consider any other causes of global warming.
• We chose reduction of CO₂ as a surrogate goal for stopping global warming.
• After twenty years, when the predicted 3-5 degrees rise in global temperatures did not occur and we only saw a 0.3^oC rise attributed to natural warming, we did not reassess our approach.
• We lost sight of our primary goal of reducing man-made global warming.
• For the next twenty years we continued to use our surrogate goal of reducing CO₂ even though we knew it would not achieve our primary goal.
• At no stage, in forty years have we re-assessed our decisions and modified them.

Remember this has occurred for twenty years when we knew that the theory had been falsified dozens of times, and without correlation there can be no causation. Man is not causing catastrophic global warming.

Too many people still believe we are critical thinkers who behave rationally. We aren’t!

Conclusion

To decide to act, is to choose. To choose rationally, is to compare the costs and benefits of achieving our aims. Then monitor and measure our results and reconsider and test our decision as new information arrives.

Instead we allowed ourselves to be pushed into making quick decisions ‘on the run’. These decisions were made in an atmosphere of fear and emotion and were based on myths, factoids ^[1] and assertions using illogic, rather than logic. Having made the decision, we buried our heads in the sand, believing in our own infallibility, rather than testing our results against our aims. We are still stumbling down the wrong path today, unaware of our failures.

Note. 1 Factoid – an incorrect assumption or speculation that is repeated often enough to be accepted as a fact – a simulated or imagined fact.