The long-awaited Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2013 report is now making headlines. The report is designed to inform the global community about the current state of climate science — the scientific debate, consensus and (most importantly) data.
We will learn of the latest scientific projections of temperature increase, sea level rise and extremes in weather. The report is seven years in the making and is currently the ultimate in climate science — not Al Gore, not Rush Limbaugh, but actual scientists who study climate.
So, expect three things to happen: Media sensationalism, arguments for government interventionism in the market and, finally, the continuing stigmergic revolution.
Media sensationalism has already started. This is nothing new. The media always presents, hypes and glorifies two sides of the environmental issue of our time (even though there is overwhelming consensus that anthropogenic activity is impacting climate). My advice when it comes to the media and climate change? Turn off the radio, turn off the television, put down the book Bill McKibben or Sean Hannity wrote and please instead devote time to the science. Mainstream media is not for news, it is for entertainment — sadly.
Then come the calls for government interventionism. Whenever climate change is in the limelight, liberals tend to champion the need for our great government institutions to once again save human civilization. Conservatives and other skeptics advocate that these same government institutions should save big business from the liberals. Both arguments are absurd.
Modern liberal visions of empowering the state to combat climate change are short-sighted to say the least. Empowering bureaucracy to combat something as urgent as climate change will only exacerbate our environmental problems. Bureaucracy is slow, un-democratic and ripe with special interests. Any hope of changing power structures so they act with benevolence will fall flat. In the face of complex wicked problems facing our entire biosphere we should act in ways that make our institutions unnecessary — to work around hierarchy and build a new society free of institutional supremacy.
Which brings me to my other point: On the other side of the very same bureaucracy we have modern conservatives advocating that “junk science” should not foster policy and any attempts to do so are just outright attacks on good ole American capitalism. In reality, what we often find is government supporting big industry. For just one example, liberal champion and US President Barack Obama is stomping around the country advocating natural gas as a clean burning “bridge fuel” — the answer to the climate problem. The administration has ignored methane emissions (by touting that they are less than projected as if that means there are no emissions), groundwater contamination and other environmental impacts of hydraulic fracturing. Government institutions go out of their way to protect and support the economic ruling class. Big business has no better friend than big government.
In the face of our environmental crisis, however, we are witness to emerging orders.
The greatest of biological phenomenons — Spontaneous Order — is already at work solving the problems we face today. We see this in emerging ideas of food production in the form of local permaculture farms and the urban food movement. We see it in the emerging philosophy of Adaptive Collaborative Management in regards to the utilization of natural resources. We see social movements dedicated to preserving cultural and natural heritage. There is work being done that is changing our institutions to give communities democratic energy in the form of micro-generation and solidarity economies. There are many more examples of grassroots movements working to protect our ecology.
Climate change presents a great challenge to civilization. Where there is labor to be done, we will do it. Expect us.
Citations to this article:
- Grant Mincy, Climate change, institutions, orders, Yorkton, Saskatchewan News Review, 10/03/13
- Grant Mincy, Protecting our ecology, Dhaka, Bangladesh New Nation, 09/??/13
- Grant Mincy, Climate change, institutions and emerging orders, Dhaka, Bangladesh New Age, 09/??/13
Good article, Grant. Often missing from the debate, however, is the fact that the standard regulatory response actually stimulates the very mechanisms that cause the problems the regulations are purported to control. Therefore we replace a small unsolved (but solvable) problem with a huge, partly-solved problem.
Exactly, which is why I think liberal calls for empowering institutions are just as bunk as conservative calls for the same thing.
That being said, I agree with the consensus, more importantly knowing people who work on the issue, i trust their concern. As always, I trust spontaneous order over the “centralists” in solving our problems any ole day of the week. As long as we can freely communicate and exchange ideas, that is the kind of order that will emerge as well. Living in the age of the stigmergic revolution is a beautiful thing1
You have raised this with me before: "Often missing from the debate, however, is the fact that the standard regulatory response actually stimulates the very mechanisms that cause the problems the regulations are purported to control."
I agree with you, but perhaps do not know how to vocalize this into a piece. What exactly is it that you are trying to flesh out?
Global warming, environmentalism, just more good statist religion. When you're deluded that you're saving the whole planet, you can justify all manner of coercion and violence. As with any good religion, the blasphemers and heretics must be destroyed with righteous fury.
"even though there is overwhelming consensus that anthropogenic activity is impacting climate"
What consensus would that be? Almost every skeptic that I hear or read agrees that the planet has warmed up since the end of the Little Ice Age or that changes in land use impact temperatures in local areas where those changes take place. Most of them also agree that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. But that does not mean that these skeptics agree with the alarmist position taken by those that claim that emissions of CO2 are the primary reason why the planet has warmed up since the 1950s or that the warming is harmful. As such, they should not be counted as part of the AGW consensus.
I will give you an example. The Nuccitelli and Coook paper that Obama was citing made the claim that 97% of papers endorsed the AGW view. But a review of the methodology and data showed a very different result. In their peer reviewed paper, Climate Consensus and ‘Misinformation’: A Rejoinder to Agnotology, Scientific Consensus, and the Teaching and Learning of Climate Change, Legates, Soon, Briggs, and Monckton noted that, "…inspection of a claim by Cook et al. (Environ Res Lett 8:024024, 2013) of 97.1 % consensus, heavily relied upon by Bedford and Cook, shows just 0.3 % endorsement of the standard definition of consensus: that most warming since 1950 is anthropogenic."
Got that. A 0.3% explicit endorsement of the actual standard definition was turned into a 97% by widening that definition. Science does not depend on consensus and even if it did, there is no consensus. So let us stop wasting time and energy by trying to impute a position because if knowing what the position was that important it isn't hard to create an honest survey and ask the 'opinions' of scientists directly.
I also think that smart people, like the author of the commentary above, love to show off their considerable intellect by creating complex logical structures and using many arguments that are entirely unnecessary. Let us dispense with the complexity and begin with what is simple. On that front the best place to start would be to look at what the supposed 'experts' predicted and what actually happened.
http://wpmedia.opinion.financialpost.com/2013/09/…
The figure above comes from a draft of the AR5 summary, which was just released. It was reviewed by the IPCC's 'experts' before it was included. We see that the actual temperature increase was around 0.1C during a period when atmospheric carbon dioxide went up by 12%. The 'experts' predicted a rise of 0.2C to 0.9C depending on how much CO2 concentrations increased. Since CO2 rose much more than predicted we should have observed an increase that is in line with the high end of the estimates. Now I cannot see how any rational individual can look at the predictions, look at the data, and conclude that there is any consensus that CO2 emissions are responsible for catastrophic increases in temperatures. Ross McKitrick, who was one of the two authors of the paper that exposed the hockey stick errors, does a great job explaining this at the link below. Anyone interested in the subject might want to pay attention.
http://wpmedia.opinion.financialpost.com/2013/09/…
If you look at the summary that was just released you will not find that graph. It was taken out by the negotiators who had the power to rewrite the summary and anything in the draft in a very opaque process that took place behind closed doors far from view of anyone who was not a political appointee. How the envelope of the AR4 projections was changed in the new graphic is explained by McKitrick's hockey-stick debunking coauthor, Steven McIntyre. As usual, the explanation is clear and well worth reading.
http://climateaudit.org/2013/09/30/ipcc-disappear…
Given what we know now and given the production of new information that some of the readers were unfamiliar with isn't it time that we dropped the 'experts all agree' claims and start thinking rationally?
"i trust their concern"
Why? The 'people you know' believed models that overestimated the observed warming by more than 100%. What makes them experts whose opinion should be trusted?
http://wpmedia.opinion.financialpost.com/2013/09/…