

Politicians must not elevate mere opinion over science - 1337biz
http://www.newstatesman.com/sci-tech/sci-tech/2012/12/brian-cox-and-robin-ince-politicians-must-not-elevate-mere-opinion-over-sc

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tezza
? At some stage the science must be condensed into someones head and becomes
opinion.

Even if that opinion is 'What is the current scientific view of this?', it is
still an opinion of a flawed human being.

So Politicians must get as good as possible in judging opinion.

Being scientifically knowledgable themselves is a good step, but not
sufficient.

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jbooth
It's one thing to have a considered opinion based on facts, statistics and
reason.

It's another thing to be confronted with a mountain of scientific evidence,
shake your head haughtily, and announce "Well I believe differently."

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tomjen3
I love that argument, because it completely ignores the reality of politics.

Politics is a war with words rather than bombs, but if you limit yourself to
always speaking the truth, you would be like a commander who never feigns an
attack in one place to keep the enemy from attacking somewhere else -- in
other words, a very poor commander.

I don't have any doubt that there is something going on with the environment,
I am somewhat more sceptical with regards to the long projections (50+ years),
but I can't admit that in public, because the automatic response to issues
about greenhouse gasses are that we must cut down and degrade our livestyle,
rather than build the necessary dikes and compensate for lost farmland by
irregating and better management (most useful in the developed world).

However as there is no political consensus for that plan, I have become forced
to support the anti-science guys.

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AnthonyMouse
>the automatic response to issues about greenhouse gasses are that we must cut
down and degrade our livestyle, rather than build the necessary dikes and
compensate for lost farmland by irregating and better management (most useful
in the developed world).

I kind of wonder how much of that is just idiots talking over each other. I
have no doubt that there are _some_ people advocating the position you're
ascribing to your opponents, but I think it would be a mischaracterization of
your more reasonable opponents.

Example: Suppose we implement a revenue-neutral energy cross-subsidy. Tax
equivalent of ~$50/barrel only on fossil fuels, distributed back to all forms
of energy, including fossil fuels. As long as fossil fuels continue to make up
a large proportion of our energy consumption, the result will not be a large
immediate increase in the price of fossil fuels, because you'll end up paying
~$50/barrel and then getting, say, $40 of that back (the rest going to
subsidize non-fossil energy sources). On the other hand, build a wind turbine
and you get the same $40/barrel equivalent without paying into the pool, so
the market incentive is to build a ton of wind turbines (and solar arrays and
nuclear power stations etc.) We end up with a large market incentive for
generating less from fossil sources very quickly, which, when acted upon,
naturally reduces the amount of the cross-subsidy because it's funded by a
fixed-rate tax on fossil fuel use which is now lower, thereby over time making
fossil fuels substantially more expensive but only _after_ the replacements
have already been developed, constructed and brought online.

The result would be a modest short-term increase in energy costs (because
fossil would become somewhat more expensive before renewable construction
completes) and most likely a long-term reduction (because maintaining an
already-constructed renewable power generating facility is less expensive than
maintaining the equivalent fossil fuel facility _plus_ having to buy the ever-
scarcer fuel). I don't see how it would result in any unreasonable decrease in
quality of life.

On the other hand, it still isn't likely to happen before the deleterious
effects of climate change are felt -- we're already there -- so we still need
to take mitigation measures for that like you're describing. But I can't
imagine any sound reason why the two should be mutually exclusive.

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tomjen3
While your suggestion is not as bad as others I have heard, any tax increase
will automatically result in a lower standard of living.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
The logic is that the cost of the tax will be less than the cost of the extra
mitigation measures that will be needed in the alternative.

Plus, you get automatic standard of living improvements by destroying more of
the other negative externalities of fossil fuel use, like coal mining deaths,
air pollution and dependence on foreign oil.

