It was not long ago that the rule for polite conversation at dinner parties was to avoid religion or politics. If one could not find a neutral topic, then the suggestion was to “talk about the weather”.
Alas, this is no longer applicable, as the weather – like politics and religion – has become a controversial topic. Indeed, any freak or extreme weather event is almost invariably accompanied by a knowing nod and reference to climate change.
Belief in global warming has itself become a quasi-religion, and one is faced with the obvious choice between enlightened affirmation or “anti-science” denial.
For those not willing to be bound by this binary straitjacket, here is a list of reasonable positions to hold at any dinner party or social gathering of moderately well-informed people. Consider it your passport to intelligent, polite conversation while remaining true to a fair reading of a difficult and complex problem.
‘97% cannot be wrong’
This is perhaps the most misleading statement perpetrated by climate-change alarmists. We are constantly told that there is a “consensus” of scientific opinion that human-caused climate changes are occurring and that radical changes in policy and behavior are required. A classic example is a tweet by then US president Barack Obama in 2013: “Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: climate change is real, man-made and dangerous.” The subtext is obvious: “Who are you to challenge this?”
So, what exactly do scientists agree on? The answer is that climate-science experts have a variety of opinions, ranging from “the climate always changes” and “humans have some impact on climate” to “we are going to have catastrophic climate change if we don’t go all out to replace fossil fuels”.
Most climate scientists would agree with the first two statements while expressing serious reservations, if not strong disagreement, with the third. So whenever one comes across the “97% consensus” reference, the best counter would be first to express agreement with the obvious while calling for sober reflection on the question as to “what is to be done”.
Appropriate policy responses need to consider all economic costs and benefits and their distribution across the population. Your dinner companions will not be able to fault you on this reasonable position.
Extreme weather: ‘told you so’
Hardly any week passes by these days without some media report about extreme weather events and their alleged link to global warming. Yet there is little or no evidence linking specific weather events to climate change.
Weather change and climate change are two different phenomena, one contingent and short-term, the other very long-run and cumulative. The links between the two are tenuous and causality is difficult to prove under our current state of knowledge.
The adage “one swallow does not a summer make” not only will remind your fellow dinner-party guests about this basic distinction, but will score you brownie points with respect to your literary bent.
The axis of evil: coal, oil and gas
In these days when “green” is a measure of one’s virtue, and all-out support (at taxpayers’ expense) for solar and wind energy an enlightened position to hold, the truth is far less convenient.
The development of human civilization is also a story of the development of fossil fuels. From the use of wood, straw and cow dung since time immemorial, the extraordinary growth of fossil fuels beginning with coal mining and the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century has provided cheap and reliable energy for the needs of ordinary people around the globe.
It has saved forests and alleviated backbreaking human effort, delivering higher standards of living for those lucky enough to go up the energy-consumption chain.
The chief economic adviser to the Indian government, Arvind Subramanian, recently stated that India, like other developing countries, must not allow the narrative of “carbon imperialism” to get in the way of realistic planning. The latter would include adopting the best technology in the use of cheap coal for power generation, increasing the use of cleaner fossil fuels such as natural gas, and recognizing the hidden costs of intermittency of newer technologies such as wind and solar power.
After the vast investments by Germany on these newer technologies in its rush to phase out nuclear power, leading newspaper Der Spiegel ran a story in 2013 about the country’s “energy poverty” headlined “How electricity became a luxury good”.
This example will come in handy if you are speaking to a visiting guest from the West. You will have made it clear not only that we in the East might have a legitimately different perspective, but even among the countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development there are serious unresolved issues with dramatically reducing dependence on fossil fuels.
The end of the world: ‘What about our children?’
Emotional blackmail is not an uncommon occurrence at dinner parties, and this is a line often used by the alarmists. But your dinner-party interlocutor cannot hide behind a blanket charge of “catastrophe”.
The best current models that link climate change and economic impacts come up with costs of 10% or less of the global gross domestic product by the year 2100 and beyond. As University of Chicago economist John Cochrane puts it, “That’s a lot of money – but it’s a lot of years, too.” Between now and then, it may well be smarter to ensure high economic growth and healthy research and development budgets for new technologies to adapt to climate change.
It is not just climate change that is the source of Armageddon scenarios. What about nuclear war by a rogue state or a global pandemic as antibiotics lose out in the struggle against constantly evolving viruses? “Buy insurance,” your dinner-party friend might counter, possibly with a smirk.
Well, as anyone with a limited budget would be aware, buying insurance at high premiums for all sorts of potentially catastrophic risks will lead you to run out of money soon. Your dinner-party friend will be reminded that global-warming policy must compete for scarce resources with policies to mitigate other credible threats to human welfare, including the scourges of malaria, dirty water and child malnutrition afflicting the human condition now.
By now, you will have come out of your dinner-party conversations as a reasonable observer of the climate-change debate in an Eastern context. You will have imparted much-needed moderation to some of the more excitable, bandwagon dinner-party friends. Who knows, you might even get a date or, if already married, your wife or husband will love you even more for your fine (meteorological) mind.
It never ceases to amaze me how arrogant leftists glom on to an issue that they see will give them leverage against conservative ideology. Al Gore did this with his campaigning against Global Warming after he attended an annual gathering of people studying climate excesses and postulating theories to explain them.
Those who wish to blame Global Warming on human activity have lost the battle because their predictions and explanations have not stood the test of time. So they switched the label but kept the arguments. The switched to Climate Change which is undeniable. But what they ignored in sticking with their argumaents were the much more powerful and scientifically explainable reasons for climate change. Sunspot cycles impact the weather, the Gulf Stream affects the weather, the Jet Stream affects the weather, The angle of the earth’s tilt of the earth towards the sun affects the climate. You have to know a little bit about Einstein’s Perturbation Theory, and the physics involving rotation and specific gravity though. But the earth is populated by people who live on crusts of the earth that shift against each other, resulting in earthquakes resulting in changes to the surface of the earth. Over millennia Africa looks like it was connected to South America, the Antarctic was once a richly forested jungle and people walked across the north pole to migrate from Asia to North America.
what gets lost in all this stupidity is the fact that humans do cause pollution and we should have aa major focus on that, but it gets wrapped into these spurious arguments on Global Warming and Climate Change, by stupid political groupies spouting memorized talking points..
We not only pollute the air with unnecessarily dirty carbon emissions, but we without impact assessment kill forests that convert carbon dioxide to oxygen. But nature pollutes too and not just a little. Volcanoes and Forest Fires are heavy polluters. Can’t do much about volcanoes (maybe-should study it), but we could do more with forest fires. There could be a viable business in thinning forests to cut down on the vulnerability to fires and increasing other defensive equipment, people and strategies where forest fires are historically a risk. Same could be said of flooding by rivers. Creating runoff pipelines from rivers that are historically vulnerable to flooding could not aonly moderate that effect but maybe help areas that need wat brought in from other parts.
Renewable energy is simply a good idea and should be pursued but without the passion and extremism of its supporters of today. Oil will not last forever and it is used for other things than energy. Also as we drain the oil form the ground we change the specific gravity of the earth in spots. Don’t know the effect but is is a consideration.
This subject needs rational thought and practical solutions. We probably need to take it out of the political arena to get there, though…
Very nice piece. I think many ‘children’ in oil exporting countries are not happy that their governments ‘saved’ oil resources for them when prices were high.