Actually the models in the 1990s have predicted rather dire consequences for 2015.
Interesting. Examples?
At some point it is too late to avoid the disaster and better start preparing for it.
Probably true, though probably the sequence actually goes: disaster avoidable -> disaster unavoidable but severity can be mitigated -> disaster unavoidable and unmitigable, time to prepare -> too late for anything, we're screwed. And I'd have thought that second phase might be quite prolonged.
Anyone who predicts do X now or disaster will happen in 20 years and then X is not done loses a lot of cred when they still advocate X.
Only if X is only worth doing if done immediately. What reason is there to think that's the situation here?
Imagine the following super-crude model of climate change. In year 0, we discover that from year 50 onwards the temperature is going to rise by 0.2 degrees (Celsius) per year. There is a drastic action we can take to stop this; if we do this in year Y, the warming will stop in year Y+50. In year 100, regardless, the whole thing will magically stabilize at whatever temperature is reached then.
In this model, if we do nothing then from year 100 onwards the temperature is going to be 10 degrees hotter than now, which it's fair to say will screw a lot of things up very badly. In fact, just doing nothing for 20 years guarantees 4 degrees of temperature rise, which is probably enough to be pretty catastrophic. So the alarmists say: "We must take action within 20 years or it'll be a disaster!".
OK, so now it's 20 years on and no one has done anything yet. We have 4 degrees of temperature rise ahead of us, whatever we do. But the right thing to say isn't "OK, disaster is unavoidable, let's just prepare to cope with it" because the magnitude of the disaster is still open. If we take action now in year 20, we only have 4 degrees of temperature rise to cope with. If we give up on stopping the warming and switch to disaster preparation, we have to prepare for 10 degrees of temperature rise, which is much worse.
(And without the cutoff in year 100, if we give up and switch to disaster preparation then the disaster we have to prepare for is the near-certain extinction of the human race within a few centuries.)
For the avoidance of doubt, I am not putting this forward as an accurate account of the actual climate change situation! But it seems to me to have a lot of features in common -- possible disaster ahead, considerable lag between action and eventual consequences, taking action sooner means smaller effect. And in my toy model, it seems very clear that a sensible and sincere "alarmist" will both (1) say "disaster ahead if we don't act really soon" and (2) continue saying that for a long time as no action continues to be taken. Which is exactly what you're saying they shouldn't be saying in the real world. What are the relevant differences that make your inference a good one in the real world and not in my toy example?
[CW: This post talks about personal experience of moral dilemmas. I can see how some people might be distressed by thinking about this.]
Have you ever had to decide between pushing a fat person onto some train tracks or letting five other people get hit by a train? Maybe you have a more exciting commute than I do, but for me it's just never come up.
In spite of this, I'm unusually prepared for a trolley problem, in a way I'm not prepared for, say, being offered a high-paying job at an unquantifiably-evil company. Similarly, if a friend asked me to lie to another friend about something important to them, I probably wouldn't carry out a utilitarian cost-benefit analysis. It seems that I'm happy to adopt consequentialist policy, but when it comes to personal quandaries where I have to decide for myself, I start asking myself about what sort of person this decision makes me. What's more, I'm not sure this is necessarily a bad heuristic in a social context.
It's also noteworthy (to me, at least) that I rarely experience moral dilemmas. They just don't happen all that often. I like to think I have a reasonably coherent moral framework, but do I really need one? Do I just lead a very morally-inert life? Or have abstruse thought experiments in moral philosophy equipped me with broader principles under which would-be moral dilemmas are resolved before they reach my conscious deliberation?
To make sure I'm not giving too much weight to my own experiences, I thought I'd put a few questions to a wider audience:
- What kind of moral dilemmas do you actually encounter?
- Do you have any thoughts on how much moral judgement you have to exercise in your daily life? Do you think this is a typical amount?
- Do you have any examples of pedestrian moral dilemmas to which you've applied abstract moral reasoning? How did that work out?
- Do you have any examples of personal moral dilemmas on a Trolley Problem scale that nonetheless happened?
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