Where Is Blaise Pascal When You Really Need Him?

Both the Washington Post and the New York Times have reported that the Trump White House refused to approve the written testimony of Dr. Rod Schoonover for entry into the permanent Congressional Record. Dr. Schoonover had testified on Wednesday before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on the dangers that climate change poses to the security of the US.

Both the Post and the Times had links to the MS Word document of
Dr. Schoonover’s comments complete with the editorial comments of the WH censors reviewers. I have posted a copy of that document here. (I have added the RBC “Seal” and OCR’d the document.) Reading the document is more alarming than the fact of the suppression of Dr. Schoonover’s comments. It reveals a White House or NSC staff that is dominated with climate-denier ideologues.

For instance, one comment reads:

[T]here is nothing exceptional about current climate and it is profoundly incorrect to say that ‘characteristics of global climate are moving outside the bounds experienced in human history.” There was faster and greater Medieval warming around the year 1000 when Norse settled southern Greenland and developed a thriving agricultural society.

BJME 3.

The blog Skeptical Science shoots a hole in that nonsense:

Firstly, evidence suggests that the Medieval Warm Period may have been warmer than today in many parts of the globe such as in the North Atlantic. This warming thereby allowed Vikings to travel further north than had been previously possible because of reductions in sea ice and land ice in the Arctic. However, evidence also suggests that some places were very much cooler than today including the tropical pacific. All in all, when the warm places are averaged out with the cool places, it becomes clear that the overall warmth was likely similar to early to mid 20^th century warming.

Since that early century warming, temperatures have risen well-beyond those achieved during the Medieval Warm Period across most of the globe.  The National Academy of Sciences Report on Climate Reconstructions in 2006 found it plausible that current temperatures are hotter than during the Medieval Warm Period.  Further evidence obtained since 2006 suggests that even in the Northern Hemisphere where the Medieval Warm Period was the most visible, temperatures are now beyond those experienced during Medieval times  (Figure 1).  This was also confirmed by a major paper from 78 scientists representing 60 scientific institutions around the world in 2013.

Secondly, the Medieval Warm Period has known causes which explain both the scale of the warmth and the pattern. It has now become clear to scientists that the Medieval Warm Period occurred during a time which had higher than average solar radiation and less volcanic activity (both resulting in warming). New evidence is also suggesting that changes in ocean circulation patterns played a very important role in bringing warmer seawater into the North Atlantic. This explains much of the extraordinary warmth in that region. These causes of warming contrast significantly with today’s warming, which we know cannot be caused by the same mechanisms.

However, at the center of the WH attack is the “uncertainty principle.” That is, the proposition that we cannot act on the threat of global climate change because it is possible that our conclusions are not airtight. Thus, they include this quote from Syukuro “Suki” Manabe: “Don’t put your model in a race with nature. Your model will lose this race.” The quote is literally accurate but taken out of context. What Manabe did in his work was to simplify his models, taking out complexities and, thereby, isolating specific factors in climate change. See here. Manabe believes in the reality of CO2 driven climate change and the basic accuracy of climate models.

Finally, we get to Blaise Pascal and his famous wager. In its most simple form, Pascal posits that we cannot by human reason either prove or disprove whether God exists. He points out that if a wager was between the equal chance of gaining two lifetimes of happiness and gaining nothing, then a person would be a fool to bet on the latter. He then concludes that it is irrational to risk an eternal life of happiness for the possibility of gaining nothing. (“If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing.”) (I’m certain that many of the members of the RBC would jump on me if I did not point out that one of the flaws in the wager is that there are many competing gods and that one cannot, using human reasoning, prove which is the true god.)

But that’s not the choice we face in addressing global climate change.

First, modeling, while not perfect, allows us to fairly accurately compute the future temperature rise and rise in ocean acidity due to CO2 buildup. Thus, we are out of “coin flip” territory. The probabilities of a disastrous outcome are, if not certain, very high.

Second, we can assess our costs, but downside and upside, with some degree of accuracy. We have projections of populated areas that are threatened by sea rise, species that are at risk of extinction, and the geographic shift of areas that can be used in agriculture.

Basically, Pascal basic approach was correct. Weigh the upside against the downside. He was in error in assessing the upside (i.e., that there are many competing gods) and could not calculate the probabilities involved. We are not so limited. Except in the White House.