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» Comment on this Reason Roundtable

Response by Jerry Taylor, Senior Fellow, Cato Institute

Donald Boudreaux argues that politicians can't possibly know the "right" level of emission controls to impose because that knowledge can only arise through market interactions, and voter preferences are notoriously incapable of mimicking real consumer preferences. Fair enough, but as Don confesses, transaction costs prohibit market interactions that might reveal that information. But his conclusion - that because of the above, the state should do nothing - is unpersuasive. After all, one can make exactly the same argument about national defense expenditures, but we wouldn't conclude that this suggests that the state should not provide for national defense. The problems he highlights are very real, but the global atmosphere is a public good and all public goods present the same problems to policymakers. Don's argument is, in essence, an argument against libertarianism (which explicitly acknowledges the need for the state to provide public goods, however imperfectly they might do so) and for anarchism, but I don't get any sense that Don appreciates that.

Julian Morris' essay is the best of the lot, but he ducks the tough issues. For instance, it's all well and good to say that the state should protect property rights as a means of ensuring that we can adjust easily to future warming, but one can make a strong argument that protecting property rights requires action against greenhouse gas emissions. If economic transactions between coal-fired generators and their customers in the Midwestern United States or China, for example, increases global temperatures to such an extent that disastrous flooding occurs in Bangladesh, couldn't Bangladeshi flood victims reasonably argue that their property rights were violated by the owners of coal-fired power generators? The response - "if you Bangladeshis were richer, less damage would have been done" - might be quite right but is utterly irrelevant from a libertarian standpoint. Libertarians can't simply dismiss the economic damages that warming might inflict on others because it will be offset by economic gains elsewhere.

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Response by Henry Payne, Writer and Detroit News Editorial Cartoonist

Excellent pieces all. But while the analysis of the pitfalls involved in addressing global warming is superb and thorough, I fear that Reason is making a critical mistake in surrendering on the fundamental point of global warming science. To say, as Boudreaux does for example, that "the Big Issue - human's harmful affect on the climate and our consequent need to correct the problem - is settled," is flat out false.

In fact, the science is more uncertain than ever.

As a journalist who has written on this subject since the late 1980s, read the scientific literature, and interviewed climatologists from Schneider to Singer, I am struck by how uncertain - how politicized - the science is. The only consistency in the science, in fact, has been the "contrarian opinion" which asserts simply: "We don't know."

Reason has for years been an educated contrarian voice on science matters -- on silicon implants, on acid rain, on power-line EMF, on "Cancer Alley" in Louisiana (on which I contributed), and so on. For Reason to throw up its hands on the science of "global warming" and accept conventional wisdom is, therefore, both disappointing and uncharacteristic.

It's fair to ask, if the science is so uncertain, how has global warming achieved conventional wisdom? Like other cases aforementioned, global warming is a political movement that has hijacked the infant science of climatology to suit its goals. Why has global warming seized our attention? Not because of any scientific breakthroughs, but because of the maturation of the 1970s environmental movement which today has large power centers in the media and government.

A careful study of the global warming "problem" finds that it tracks -- not scientific evidence -- but the 30-year rise of this political movement.

These media and government outlets give a daily megaphone to one side of the global warming debate, but the science is in considerable doubt. Betraying climatology's shaky foundation, the consensus on climate change has swung wildly from global freezing to global warming in just 30 years. Had the environmental movement matured 30 years earlier, we would today be dumping planeloads of soot on the poles because that was the late-1970s "consensus" on climate change!

Polls taken of climatologists show a majority believe in global warming -- but not a large majority. The UN's IPCC report (affirming global warming) boasted 1,700 signatures. But the Petition Project of the Oregon Inst. Of Science - which states that the science proves no such thing - is backed by 2,500 signatures.

Bourdeaux (and Reason) might benefit from the work of another George Mason professor, Edward Wegman, whose just-released report for the House Energy Committee found deep flaws in the IPCC's basic science.

Again, I do not argue with Reason's superb market analysis that treating the global warming problem is surely worse than the disease. Both Bourdeaux and Morris are superb on this point.

But accepting a "problem" at all makes it a global priority. And that is precisely the danger of an international movement led by Al Gore, Greenpeace, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Europe's Green parties. To accept that CO2 is a "problem" is to put into regulatory play ALL of industrial man.

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Julian Morris Replies

Jerry Taylor says that I "duck the tough issues. One can make a strong argument that protecting property rights requires action against greenhouse gas emissions. If economic transactions between coal-fired generators and their customers in the Midwestern United States or China, for example, increases global temperatures to such an extent that disastrous flooding occurs in Bangladesh, couldn't Bangladeshi flood victims reasonably argue that their property rights were violated by the owners of coal-fired power generators?"

I have argued elsewhere (Morris, J., 2003: 'Climbing out of the Hole: Sunsets, Subjective Value, the Environment and English Common Law,' Fordham Environmental Law Journal, Vol XIV, No. 2, 343) that much more could be done to enable private parties to resolve environmental problems through the legal system. Most legal systems in principle enable the owners of private property to recover damages when that property (or the beneficial use of that property) is damaged by the actions of another, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

Unfortunately, in most jurisdictions, even in countries where the legal system generally operates well, the ability to take action in such circumstances has been undermined by various changes to the law (see above-mentioned paper for the details). Moreover, there are particular problems with defining and enforcing property rights in Bangladesh – and many other poor countries – associated with the fact that the courts are generally slow, costly and corrupt.

Notwithstanding the failings of the legal system in practice, it is worth considering how this particular problem might be dealt with in principle. I am currently working on a longer response that will do that. So watch this space....

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Donald J. Boudreaux Replies

I'm honored to receive Jerry Taylor's comments on my contribution to Reason Roundtable.

My chief purpose in writing that essay was to dispel the notion that opposition to government tax and regulatory efforts to address global warming is a sure sign of scientific illiteracy or of benighted attraction to public policies that are not "reality based." The physical sciences that establish the greenhouse effect, along with those that predict consequences such as melting icecaps and changing weather patterns, are typically treated in popular discussion as the only relevant sciences.

But, of course, establishing man-made climate change and the fact that it might have certain derivative environmental consequences is not, standing alone, a scientifically complete case for government action to combat climate change. Political science matters, too – especially, in my view, that species of political science that is (shall we say) most "reality based": public choice.

Jerry says that if public-choice considerations lead to the conclusion that government should do nothing to combat global warming, such a conclusion "is unpersuasive." Well, I suppose it depends on who we're trying to persuade. It will not persuade self-styled environmentalists, of course; nor will it persuade Al Gore. It likely won't even persuade a single soccer mom. (Heck, it doesn't even persuade Jerry – and he's at Cato!)

My goal, though, was not primarily to have an impact on what sorts of legislation and regulation will be enacted in the next few years. Again, it was explain that a legitimate scientific case can be made against government intervention to deal with global warming.

Henry Payne mistakes my rendition of the "let's-tackle-global-warming-now" crowd with my position. The line he quotes from my essay is one in which I am summarizing my understanding of today's mainstream view on global warming and of what should be done to address it. Like Mr. Payne, I emphatically disagree with anyone who asserts (as I rendered this assertion in my essay) that "the Big Issue – humans' harmful effect on the climate and our consequent need to correct the problem – is settled."

I did concede that the evidence does appear, to the eyes of this non-expert, to show that global temperatures are warming and that at least some of this warming is due to human activity. But the point of my essay was to argue that the truth of human-induced rising global temperatures does not imply any consequent need to correct the problem.

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Selected Other Letters on this Reason Roundtable

My enthusiasm for your roundtable on global warming was effectively dampened when I actually started reading the articles there. First of all I was hoping you would be interested in answering the following relevant questions in this order:

1. Is global warming real? Isn't paleoclimatologist Michael Mann's data which "solidified" the claims about the earth heating-up now in dispute?
2. And even if we assume there is some warming happening, is it a problem? If so, then why
3. And if warming is indeed happening is it primarily caused by human activity?
4. And if global warming is happening and if it is bad and if human activity is the primary cause of it then, can we do something about it?
5. And IF and ONLY IF all of the above are true then what should be done about it?

Instead of addressing these questions in the proper order you've launched into answering question #5. By doing that you've effectively conceded the ground to alarmist theories that something must be done about global warming which is real, bad and caused by humans. The data on climate change is no doubt complex and the debate is so highly politicized that it is hard to get at the truth. So while I think Bush is an idiot on just about every front, I do agree with his "do nothing" policy on global warming for the same reasons.

One important strategic question for you to consider: If the global warming data is complex and unclear and we are not sure the global warming phenomenon is even real and also not sure it's caused by humans and also not sure it is harmful, then why waste Reason's precious time and resources on proposing solutions for it? I would rather see you -- selfishly speaking -- take on questions 1 through 3 or even some other environmentalist cause.

I do realize that this is a "hot" topic and also one which the left has co-opted so it's tempting to want to be in the game. But by focusing on the narrow problem of how the free market can solve this "problem" you're actually playing into the hands of the alarmists and all their bad premises i.e., global warming is real, bad and caused by humans and we should/can do something about it.

Reena Kapoor, Engineer/Entrepreneur
Redwood City, California

Having read your symposium proceedings with interest, I believe Donald J. Boudreaux is entirely too modest in disclaiming "the expertise to judge whether or not global warming is a reality or the extent to which humans cause it."

Both an awareness of inflation's effects and the ability to deploy the mathematical tools needed to quantify inflation are central to his expertise as Chairman of the Department of Economics at George Mason University. The same experts whom he trusts in accepting the reality of global warming will agree that they have empirical and instrumental knowledge of both the rate of temperature change and the rate at which rising concentrations of gases that absorb and emit infrared radiation are inflating temperature by changing the radiative equilibrium of the Earth. Temperatures rise when the system's energetic income exceeds the outflow of radiative warmth to space.

There are obviously open questions as to how fast and how far from its existing state radiative bracket creep can drive the world. But though the rate of inflation is exceedingly modest on a day-to-day basis – few microwatts per square meter per day -- it is nonetheless continuous, and can grow as long as the linkage of fossil energy consumption and economic growth continues to exist. What is more, it has been going on -- and growing -- for millions of days, especially accelerating to its present upwardly trending rate in the roughly 100,000 days since the beginnings of the industrial revolution.

Just as one can, and should, deplore Mr. Gore's hyperbole in proclaiming a continuing crisis for the last 10,000 days running, should one not be reasonably disconcerted by economists who have discounted with equal zeal what amounts to compounded growth of the thermodynamic equivalent of the money supply?

There is much cause for humility, given the extent of our ignorance of how the Earth's most imposing dynamic systems interact - both ocean and atmosphere are complex in their chemistry and often chaotic in their flow.

But economies are complex too, yet we see Dr. Boudreaux's colleagues striving to model them with ever greater accuracy and verisimilitude as computational power and the ability to gather data grow. They clearly are not scared of using models, and I would hope they would acknowledge that scientists should be of good courage too. Both disciplines are gaining, not losing analytical ground, even as they become increasingly hard for policy analysts to understand.

One way to improve matters would be to include in your model of these roundtables a subroutine that raises an alarm when it discovers that one side in the debate is perilously close to being unable to sustain a quorum, even by rounding up the usual suspects. You don't need much calculus to determine that the integral of warm bodies under the contrarian curve is not keeping pace with the intellectual growth of geophysics -- wet or dry, warm or cold.

Russell Seitz, Physicist
Cambridge, Massachusetts

I have spent 30 years in the semi-conductor industry and helped found two companies in the Silicon Valley area. During all this time, I have watched talented individuals solve all kinds of very difficult technical problems without the involvement of politicians and DC lobby groups. The contrast between how they approach scientific problems in the marketplace and how politicians approach scientific problems in the political arena is thrown into sharp relief when one looks at the issue of global warming.

Notwithstanding all the hype about global warming, the globe is a very complex and resilient system whose future health cannot be deduced from single data points. Yet this is precisely the kind of evidence that most articles – even the UN reports written by scientists – invoke to prove the existence of human-induced global warming. And having done that, they then demand political action.

But even if these people were right, will the solution to global warming come from the federal government regulating carbon dioxide emissions and then sitting back and waiting? Will the pace of innovation be enhanced by putting a certain senator from New York into higher office?

Today we are all familiar with the power of the PC, iPods, cell phones and all of the things that have increased productivity and improved our quality of life. I can say unequivocally that if the semiconductor industry had been politicized the way the global atmosphere has been, we would have neither the PC nor the internet today.

And the reason is that, since the market rewards those who get things right and innovate, scientists in Silicon Valley have an incentive to constantly challenge – and rechallenge – their basic assumptions and received claims. This process – not consensus -- is what leads to scientific discoveries and solutions.

Imagine if Silicon Valley scientists had been polled 20 years ago for a consensus on what the semiconductor would look like today. Would this consensus have been at all predictive of the way the industry has evolved?

Many friends of mine don't see anything wrong with politicians like Al Gore raising the public's awareness about the problem of global warming. Enhanced public awareness is not a bad thing, they say, and would increase the political will to solve this problem. But the political will is the problem. We need to comprehend the nature of scientific innovation and keep politics out of scientific matters. (If you do not believe that, turn off your PC for a few days and then ponder the question again.) The inconvenient truth here is that politics and science don't -- and should not -- mix.

Terry Gannon, Ph.D., Device Physics
Silicon Valley, San Francisco

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