Climate Change & Bad Arguments
Details
For the fall/winter, we've moved our discussions indoors to Café Walnut, not too far from our summer meeting spot in Washington Square Park. The cafe is near the corner of 7th & Walnut in Olde City.
Since we're using the cafe's space, they ask that each person attending the meetup at least purchase a drink or snack. Please don't bring any food or drinks from outside. If you're hungry enough to eat a meal, they have more substantial fare such as salads, soups & sandwiches which are pretty good and their prices are reasonable.
The cafe is fairly easy to get to if you're using public transit. With SEPTA, take the Market-Frankford Line & get off at the 5th Street Station (corner of 5th & Market), and walk 2 blocks south on 5th and then turn right on Walnut Street and walk 1 block west. With PATCO, just get off at the 9th-10th & Locust stop and walk 3 blocks east. For those who are driving, parking in the neighborhood can be tough to find. If you can't find a spot on the street, I'd suggest parking in the Washington Square parking deck at 249 S 6th Street which is just a half block away.
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CLIMATE CHANGE & BAD ARGUMENTS:
This meetup will assume that most or all participants accept the expert consensus on anthropogenic climate change and want to learn more about it and find better ways to persuade climate change deniers that the problem is real & serious. One of the major ways we can get better at this is to understand the way political psychology affects climate change denial and this is a subject we'll discuss at a meetup that will run back-to-back with this one, going from 3-5pm at Café Walnut. Here's the link so you can RSVP if you're interested -
https://www.meetup.com/Philadelphia-Political-Agnostics/events/241409266/
However, another way we can get better at advocating for climate change awareness is to stop making bad arguments. Therefore, this meetup will address 4 arguments for climate change awareness that went viral, often being shared by people in the skeptic community, but that are all flawed in some way. My hope is that by addressing the flaws in these arguments, we can all get a better understanding of the nuances of climate science and environmental economics and make better arguments in the future.
A lot of bad arguments for climate change probably stem from "tribal epistemology" where information is evaluated based not on well-established standards of evidence & logical rigor, but on whether it supports the values and goals of our "tribe" or in-group (i.e. science-believers) and is vouchsafed by our "tribal leaders." In the case of the public debates over climate change, the people who have the highest media profile in terms of warning about climate change tend to be various politicians, pundits, celebrities & "science communicators" rather than climate scientists, which as we'll see can lead to some bad arguments becoming widespread.
(*FYI - David Roberts had an excellent essay on "tribal epistemology" recently at Vox. We won't discuss it in detail, but if you get a chance check it out - https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/policy-and-politics/2017/3/22/14762030/donald-trump-tribal-epistemology (https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/policy-and-politics/2017/3/22/14762030/donald-trump-tribal-epistemology) )
As with other well-established scientific theories like natural selection, anthropogenic climate change is worth taking seriously & acting on because it's supported by a convergence of multiple lines of scientific evidence and because the overwhelming consensus among climate scientists is that it's real, not because it promotes a shift to a "more natural" and "less capitalist" way of living you've believed in all along, nor because you like to watch science celebrities you admire get on TV and throw zingers at obnoxious climate change deniers you hate. Science & skepticism aren't supposed to be spectator sports or enablers for confirmation bias.
One of the problems I see with some members of the skeptic community is a tendency to harp on obvious examples of pseudoscience & conspiracy theories and thereby gain a false sense of self-confidence about their own rationality. It's almost like a martial arts school that only goes to tournaments with little kids & when their students consistently mop them up in sparring they proclaim themselves world champions. As Scott Alexander suggested in his essay "The Cowpox of Doubt", we should also turn our skepticism on our own rationality and realize that we could be mistaken about a good number of things, and as soon as we start challenging ourselves with some more complex problems we may learn some "epistemic humility". If this point isn't clear, check out Scott's article for a more in-depth explanation - http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/15/the-cowpox-of-doubt/
The videos & articles you see linked below are intended to give you a basic overview of the major points in these debates over climate change. As usual, I certainly don't expect you to watch all the videos & read all the articles prior to attending our discussion. The easiest way to prepare for our discussion is to just watch the videos linked under each topic, which come to about 46 minutes total. The rest of the articles in the other sections are just there to supply additional details. You can browse and look at whichever ones you want, but don't worry - we'll cover the stuff you missed in our discussion.
In terms of the discussion format, my general idea is that we'll address the 4 topics in the order presented here and we'll spend about 30 minutes on each section.
GREEN JOBS AS "BROKEN WINDOWS", RENEWABLE ENERGY AS A "FREE LUNCH", AND JOEL PETT'S "WHAT IF WE CREATE A BETTER WORLD FOR NOTHING" CARTOON:
1a) Daniel Hannan, "The fallacy of green jobs" (video - 1:02 min.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCg-rzICBIM
1b) Alex Epstein, "Can We Rely on Wind and Solar Energy?" (video - 4:23 min.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObvdSmPbdLg
- Joel Pett, "The cartoon seen 'round the world" (short article on the cartoon)
http://www.kentucky.com/opinion/op-ed/article44162106.html
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- David MacKay, "A Reality Check on Renewables " (video - 18:28 min.)
https://www.ted.com/talks/david_mackay_a_reality_check_on_renewables
- Ronal Bailey, "Is Government Action Worse than Global Warming?" (short article)
http://reason.com/archives/2009/09/08/is-government-action-worse-tha
- Jim Lippard, "Lomborg, Global Warming, and Opportunity Costs" (short blog post)
https://lippard.blogspot.com/2007/09/lomborg-global-warming-and-opportunity.html
- John Tirman, "Pascal's Wager: A Bet For All Seasons" (short article)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-tirman/climate-change_b_1685982.html
ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER'S VIRAL FACEBOOK POST - CONFLATING AIR POLLUTION, CARBON MONOXIDE POISONING & CLIMATE CHANGE:
2a) Arnold Schwarzenegger on Pollution vs Climate Change" (video - 5:48 min.)
2b) Mikah Sargent, "WHO: 1 In 8 Global Deaths Linked To Air Pollution" (video - 1:27 min.)
2c) Lissette Padilla, "Are Electric Cars Actually Better For The Environment?" (video - 4:27 min.)
- Arnold Schwarzenegger, "I Don't Give A **** If We Agree About Climate Change" (facebook post)
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- Samantha Page, "Did The Governator Just Come Up With A Republican-Proof Argument On Climate Change?" (article)
- Bjorn Lomborg, "Arnold Schwarzeneggers Is Wrong on Climate Change" (article)
- Isaac Orr, "Refuting Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Fact Free Video on Pollution" (article)
http://blog.heartland.org/2016/11/refuting-arnold-fact-free-video/
PERILS OF THE PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE, EXISTENTIAL RISK & GREG CRAVEN'S VIDEO COMPARING CLIMATE CHANGE BELIEF TO PASCAL'S WAGER:
3a) Greg Craven, "The Most Terrifying Video You'll Ever See" (video - 9:33 min.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zORv8wwiadQ
3b) Topher Field, "Saving the World With Pascal's Wager... Or Not" (video - 3:55 min.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvVoBbMBv2c
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- Robert Blumen, "Must We Do Something, Anything, about Global Warming?" (short article)
https://mises.org/library/must-we-do-something-anything-about-global-warming
- Robert Tracinski, "Pascal's Wager for the Global Warming Religion" (short article)
http://thefederalist.com/2016/05/03/pascals-wager-for-the-global-warming-religion/
- Tom Bell, "Craven's Wager" (blog post)
https://www.tombell.net/?p=1354
OBSERVATION VS INFERENCE, INTERPOLATION VS EXTRAPOLATION, SIMPLE VS COMPLEX SCIENCES, AND NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON'S TWEET ASKING WHY THERE'S NO SOLAR ECLIPSE DENIAL OR HURRICANE DENIAL:
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- Tamsin Edwards, "How To Love Uncertainty in Climate Science" (video - 13:17 min.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RP5nhmp06xs
- Justin Gillis, "Should You Trust Climate Science? Maybe the Eclipse Is a Clue" (short article)
- Bryan Gaensler, "Most people have never seen a total eclipse—so why do they believe they’re real?" (short article)
- Ben Shapiro, "DeGrasse Tyson: If You Believe In Eclipses, You Must Believe In Climate Change" (short article)
http://www.dailywire.com/news/20019/degrasse-tyson-if-you-believe-eclipses-you-must-ben-shapiro
Climate Change & Bad Arguments