{"id":1887,"date":"2015-03-18T18:55:04","date_gmt":"2015-03-18T17:55:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.mr-int.ch\/?p=1887"},"modified":"2015-05-17T12:56:36","modified_gmt":"2015-05-17T11:56:36","slug":"climate-controversy-two-diametrically-opposed-wagers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.mr-int.ch\/?p=1887&lang=en","title":{"rendered":"Climate controversy: two diametrically opposed wagers."},"content":{"rendered":"

The climate controversy [i]<\/a> will only be resolved by time. And a lot of time, centuries, because validating a model or confirming a theory can only be done with the aid of experimental data, and we only have one single and slow laboratory in which only one unique experiment is running: the Earth [ii]<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Positions are hardly reconcilable: on one hand there are the anthropowarmists, and on the other hand the climatosceptics. While there is no doubt about the reality of a warming over the last century and a half, what distinguishes these two groups is to attribute its cause either to CO2<\/sub> emissions, or to other natural or artificial phenomena that remain poorly elucidated. Neither the ones nor the others know if an even stronger warming would have harmful or beneficial consequences for human life on earth; the firsts think in terms of catastrophe; the others know that they don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

For the firsts, the cause of climate change – burning the fossil fuels coal, oil, and gas – must immediately and drastically be reduced in order to delay and limit warming before the imminent disaster will intervene (which they foresee if and when 2 \u00b0C will be exceeded, and we are now at 1\u00a0\u00b0C). Ultimately, we should not consume fossil fuels at all.<\/p>\n

For the others, and whatever their basic arguments [iii]<\/a>, curbing the use of fossil fuels is a strategy that cannot be crowned with any success; it is unjustified by the lack of evidence on the causes of warming, or even by the evidence that CO2<\/sub> did play no role in previous changes and may have a very minor one in the present case.<\/p>\n

In fact, there are two bets, based not on knowledge but on own preferences.<\/p>\n

The first is the alarmist\u2019s kind of a Pascalian wager [iv]<\/a>: let\u2019s curb CO2<\/sub> emissions and if warming is stopped or slowed significantly this will have been beneficial; otherwise no harmful consequences would result (and we will have contributed to a so-called sustainable development).<\/p>\n

The bet of the pragmatics is a complementary antonym of Pascal’s wager: we have time, wait and see, taking adaptive measures where it would be necessary (e.g. dams for flood control, as was done in the Netherlands). If nothing happens you will not have sacrificed the people\u2019s freedom as well as enormous resources to fight a false cause for a futile purpose at the expense of other more important and urgent development. And if the warming continues you will have to abide by it. If you lose, you will have time and means to adapt; if you win you will have avoided making big and foolish things.<\/p>\n

These two positions are irreconcilable, for many generations to come. The anthropowarmist credo is opposed to the doubt of the sceptics. And this is certainly no scientific debate because science is unable to be settled within this magma of clues and uncertainties [v]<\/a>. Indeed it\u2019s about anyone\u2019s ideological position, a deliberate choice he or she makes.<\/p>\n

In this situation of opposition, each considers the other one as irresponsible: one accuses the other of sacrificing the planet in the name of unbridled exploitation of natural resources; and the other accuses the one to sacrifice the so much needed social and economic development of populations in the name of a hypothetical future disaster that should be avoided by a new collectivist dirigisme. There is no possible common morality or consensus in this matter because the choices are diametrically opposed.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless the sceptic cannot content with staying in limbo, in the indecision, because, first, the activist bustles continuously and, second, to stay outside of the game on the pretext of uncertainty has never allowed progress. He has to take a stand in spite of his awareness of his lack of knowledge.<\/p>\n

For my part, and the reader will have understood it in the tone of my writing, I follow resolutely a heretical road: yes to science and knowledge, no to the dogmatic, monomaniac and reducing anthropowarmism.<\/p>\n

______________________________<\/p>\n

[i]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 To deny that there is a controversy by claiming an alleged \u00ab\u00a0scientific consensus\u00a0\u00bb is a sham.<\/p>\n

[ii]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It is doubtful that any general climate theory will ever be confirmed in non-linear, chaotic systems such as the Earth’s climate and the interactions with the sun.
\nIt cannot be achieved in human medicine despite the availability of many samples of a large number of more or less healthy or more or less sick people. For example, it is doubtful that the billion euro which is now put into the European \u00ab\u00a0Human Brain Project\u00a0\u00bb for 112 research institutions in 24 countries would result in a general simulation of all neural functions of the mouse, and then of Homo sapiens sapiens.<\/p>\n

[iii]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 Denialist arguments:<\/p>\n