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Jiro comments on Argument Screens Off Authority - Less Wrong
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The anti-global-warming measure most commonly advocated as needing to be done immediately (or sooner) is reduction in fossil-fuel use. So far as I can see, this isn't politically convenient for anybody.
Beyond that: sure, it's worth distinguishing between "do experts agree that AGW is real?" and "do experts agree that AGW is real and likely to produce more than a 2degC rise over the next 50 years?" and "do experts agree that we need to cut our CO2 emissions substantially if the result isn't going to cause vast amounts of suffering and expense and inconvenience and death?" and "do experts all predict exactly the same best-guess curve for temperatures over the next 50 years?" and all the other questions that one might ask.
Eliezer's original nomination of global warming as something not to try to work out on one's own was from back in 2007, and slicedtoad's claim that "experts don't agree" is from yesterday. There's been a shift, over the years, in the commonest "skeptical" position on global warming (and hence in what question we might want to ask) from "it probably isn't happening" to "well, of course it's happening, everyone knows that, but it probably isn't our fault" to "well, of course it's happening and it's our fault, everyone knows that, but it probably won't be that bad" to "well, of course it's happening, it's our fault, and it's likely to be really bad, everyone knows that, but major cuts in fossil fuel use probably aren't the best way to address it". I think we're in the middle of the transition between the last two right now. My guess is that in another 5-10 years it may have switched again to "well, of course it's happening, it's our fault, and it's likely to be really bad, and the answer would have been to cut fossil-fuel use, but it's too late now so we might as well give up" which I've actually seen (I think here on LW, but it might have been over on Hacker News or somewhere of the kind).
In 2007, a little digging suggests that the transition from "probably not happening" to "probably not our fault" was in progress, so perhaps the question to look at is "are human activities causing a non-negligible increase in global temperature?". On that question, I think it's fair to say that "experts agree".
Right now, though, the question is probably "how bad will it be if we continue with business as usual, and what should we do about it?". My impression is that to the first part the experts all give answers of the form "we don't know exactly, but here's a crude probability distribution over outcomes"[1] and their distributions overlap a lot and basically all say at least "probably pretty bad", so I'm pretty comfortable saying that "experts agree" although I might prefer to qualify it a little.
As for "what should we do about it?", I'm not sure who would even count as an expert on that. I'd guess a solid majority of climate scientists would say we ought to reduce CO2 emissions, but maybe the nearest thing we have to experts on this question would be politicians or economists or engineers or something. I wouldn't want to make any claim about whether and how far "experts agree" on this question without first making sure we're all talking about roughly the same experts.
[1] Though they don't usually put it that way, and in particular despite my language they usually don't attach actual probabilities to the outcomes.
Seriously? You don't understand that there's ideological opposition to fossil fuels (and to technology in general with unprincipled exceptions for such things as the anti-technology people's personal iPads) and that global warming is extremely convenient for it?
Also, one of the if not the biggest measure advocated is government regulation and taxes. Surely you can see how that is politically convenient.
It appears to me that opposition to technology as such is rare among voters and even rarer among politicians, at least in the countries whose politics I know anything about. I'm sure there are some luddites who talk up the dangers of climate change in order to attack technology, but if you're claiming that they explain a substantial fraction of what political support there is for taking action against climate change then I'll need to see some evidence.
Yes, one way to discourage fossil-fuel use is to tax it heavily, and I can see why a politician might want more revenue to play with. But I can equally see why they might want to be seen not to favour high taxes; all else being equal, most voters prefer to be taxed less. If I imagine a Machiavellian politician thinking "I'll advocate higher taxes to discourage the burning of fossil fuels, and then X will happen, and then I'll be more powerful / more likely to be elected / richer / ...", I'm having trouble thinking of any really credible X.
It goes the other way around: They advocate taxing fossil fuels because they are generally in favor of government regulation.
How do you know?
Same way you do. You imagined a Machiavellan politician; well, I imagined another one.
I have to ask: Do you seriously think you are making a rational argument at this point? (Or have you, e.g., decided I'm an idiot not worth engaging with in actual rational discussion? Because if so, you could just say so.)
It makes no sense to answer my question "How do you know?" with "Same way you do" because I am not claiming to know anything about politicians' motivations here, and you are.
When you imagine your Machiavellian politician, does your imagination provide you with something that plays the role of X for mine? Or does your imagined politician simply want more regulation as a terminal value, regulation purely for the sake of regulation? If the latter, what reason is there to think that the number of such politicians is not tiny?
I don't expect a politician to literally want more regulation sa a terminal goal. However, I expect a politician to have terminal goals, such as doing better in the bureaucracy, signalling power to other politicians, etc. which more regulation helps him achieve. Bureaucracies given a chance to expand to encompass more regulation will take it.
It looks to me as if you're mixing up two things that sound almost the same but are actually importantly different. (1) An actual preference for there to be more regulation. (2) A tendency to make there be more regulation. I agree that politicians are likely to have #2 because it may boost their status if their name is on lots of laws. But I don't think that implies #1, and it's #1 rather than #2 that I can imagine being responsible for insincere professions of belief in and concern about anthropogenic climate change.
I would expect #2 to manifest as politicians liking to introduce laws about whatever they happen to think important, or whatever they expect their voters to be impressed by. If you're a politician with a severe case of #2 and not otherwise inclined to think climate change is a big deal, there's no need for you to jump on the bandwagon just in order to have regulations to introduce. It's not like there's a shortage of other things to regulate. (Or, for some sorts of politician, to deregulate. That can go down well with voters and senior party officials too.)
In any case, I realise I'm not quite sure why we're talking about politicians in any case. Do you have the impression that there is much push for action on climate change coming from politicians? It doesn't look that way to me. I mean, for sure some politicians are saying there should be action on climate change, but I think there has consistently been less political support for such action than climate scientists' analyses would lead one to expect.
There's one obvious high-profile exception, namely Al Gore who has been unusually active in promoting action against climate change, and who (so I gather) has if anything overstated rather than understated the case in comparison to what actual experts would say. But this doesn't seem well explained in terms of political considerations like "doing better in the bureaucracy" or "signalling power to other politicians"; Gore seems pretty clearly to be out of politics now. (I dunno, maybe he'll surprise everyone by running for president in 2020 or something, but I bet he won't. Aside from everything else, he'd be as old in 2020 as McCain was in 2008, and McCain's age clearly hurt him.)
[EDITED to fix an inconsequential typo.]
There seems to be much push for political solutions. Even if it's not a politician who pushes for the solution, the people pushing for the solution generally benefit from increasing their side's political power, and that includes proposing solutions that politicians on their side want because of other incentives.
There's also interplay between different causes (if you can pull off a carbon tax, that increases the respectibility of taxes as solutions, which may help your side if your side also proposes taxes as solutions to other problems).
The terminal value is power. Regulation is an intermediate instrumental goal.
No, you did not. A Machiavellan politician wants to stay in power, that is, to be elected. You're asserting a group interest that does not exist. We observe that politicians are happy to cut taxes (for people who can benefit them) if they personally get paid as much or more than before. Why would it be otherwise? (And any long-term interest, eg power for their family, should take the state of their civilization into account.)
Having the ability to take and redistribute someone else's money provides a concentrated benefit to the one doing the taking and redistributing. Cutting taxes produces a much more diffuse benefit. Concentrated benefits lead to Machiavellian behavior much more than diffuse benefits. It is possible, of course, to have an anti-taxes lobbying group which provides a concentrated benefit, but the overall balance between concentrated and diffuse benefits is on the side of the higher taxes.
That would be a diffuse cost. The politician may care about the portion of the diffuse effectthat affects his family, but that's only a small portion of the total. If the politician makes policy based on which costs help him and his family and which ones hurt him and his family, the concentrated ones will win. The ones that affect all civilization, a small portion of which he actually cares about because it goes to his family, will lose.
FFS, I shouldn't have to tell you the government is not a person and does not make decisions like one. Show me a correlation between tax rates and benefits to individual politicians, or admit it's diffuse as all Hell. Oh, wait:
Well then, since that's always present, we seem to have reached agreement that actually using it is unnecessary for a given politician. Nor, I would say, do we need additional reasons to justify implied taxation threats in a world where the USA is deep in debt.
Here's another comment for Eugine Nier to downvote: you are talking about a political issue and asserting by definition that politicians like Inhofe are not politicians. The real world doesn't enter into it. You are spouting the most shameful tribalist garbage.
"The politician" doesn't mean that I am making the statement about every single politician in the world.
I don't see why you are having trouble.
"I'll advocate higher taxes to get more revenue while saying it is to discourage the burning of fossil fuels, and then I will have control of of more money which I'll channel to my cronies and use to bribe voters.
The common characteristic of most politicians is that they want more power. In Western democracies having control over budget and having money to allocate is a large part of that power.
First of all, for clarity, my imaginary politician was saying "I'll advocate (higher taxes to discourage the burning of fossil fuels)" rather than "I'll advocate higher taxes) to discourage the burning of fossil fuels". That is, I wasn't meaning to presuppose that the politician's real purpose was as stated.
OK, so if this sort of thing is (say) 50% of why those politicians who say we should take action to reduce or mitigate anthropomorphic climate change, then we should expect that (if politicians are perfectly Machiavellian and totally indifferent to what's true and what's beneficial) 50% of politicians who say that either are closely associated with "green energy" companies and the like, or else represent voters a substantial fraction of whom stand to benefit from "green energy" initiatives. If politicians are actually less than perfectly Machiavellian, and temper their pursuit of self-interest with occasional consideration of what would actually be best for their country and what the evidence actually says, then that figure of 50% needs to be correspondingly higher.
We should also, if politicians are that Machiavellian, expect to find that any politician who, e.g., represents a substantial number of voters who could be bribed in this way will advocate action against climate change.
I haven't looked at the statistics, so my opinion isn't worth much at present, but I don't get the impression that things are anywhere near so clear-cut. Do you have data?
Just out of curiosity: What is your opinion about the motivation of politicians who say we shouldn't take much action against anthropogenic climate change? If we discount the stated opinions of politicians on both sides, and of lobbyists for, e.g., solar panel fitters and oil companies, what opinions do you expect to find remaining?
It seems to me that this sort of argument constitutes a fully general justification for ignoring what politicians say. Which, actually, sounds on the whole like a pretty good idea.
Things, of course, are not clear-cut at all because in reality you have a very complex network of incentives, counter-incentives, PR considerations, estimates and mis-estimates, the traditional bungling, etc. etc.
The same :-)
Well, the whole spectrum from "this is bollocks!" to "humanity's survival is at stake!", but probably dominated by "I dunno" :-D