John Llewelyn, a senior economic policy adviser at Lehman Brothers, had a great piece in the Observer yesterday identifying five distinct categories of belief on climate change:
The Ideological Mainstreamers: this group has been around the longest. Its members did not have to wait for evidence. They were certain there was a problem well before the rump of scientists reached today’s near-consensus.
The Ideological Contrarians: these people require standards of proof no higher than those of the ideological mainstreamers, but hold the opposite view. If they have an intellectual belief, it is that they are smarter than the crowd. More often, though, it is just a game of attracting attention by attacking the majority.
The Grey Conservatives: members of this coterie specialise in appearing reasonable. They are neither pro nor anti, they gravely insist: the problem is simply that there is not enough evidence to support policy action of any sort. Do more research, collect more data and continue the debate, they counsel sagely.
The Non-Sequiturians: various arguments are advanced by this group, but they share a structure. Warming was caused by sunspots, or fluctuations in the Earth’s orbit, or volcanic eruptions. Therefore it cannot be caused by mankind. The ‘therefore’ is the giveaway, the delicious non sequitur: just because Earth has warmed for one or another reason in the past is no reason why it cannot warm for a completely different reason in the future.
The Busy Executives: their argumentation is loftier, but no fuller than it needs to be. Elevating pragmatism to a virtue, they take the position that what matters is not whether the science is right or wrong, but what policymakers are going to do. Given that it increasingly seems that policymakers are going to do various things, the argument runs, skip the argumentation and go straight to the implications for business.
But what perplexes Llewelyn is this: “What is so fascinating about all this is how happy most of the participants seem to be in their respective argumentational cocoons.” So who’s Llewelyn with? The scientists:
As the son of two scientists, brought up to believe that we are unlikely ever to know the complete truth, I was brainwashed far too early to be able to be a happy ideologue. Two options gone, therefore. Equally, as someone who spent nearly 20 years advising on international economic policy, I find it hard to live with the philosophy that we never know enough to make policy. Another one down. Similarly, while most arguments contain an uncomfortable number of unspoken ‘therefores’, as a would-be logician I do think that when we actually spot a non sequitur we ought to reach for our gun. Another one down. So what of the busy executive’s approach? It is doubtless efficient for decision-making, but it is intellectually unsatisfying, at least on a Sunday.
Time to get off the fence. It seems to me that when the mainstream of science points almost unanimously in one direction, that ought to be given preponderant weight.
