A Convenient Experiment
I saw Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth" yesterday. Global warming definitely belongs in the "important if true" category. However, it's also important not to undertake costly changes if they aren't necessary, so I think we should take an empirical approach to the whole issue.
Luckily, Gore provides a good experiment we can perform to determine if society is already taking enough measures to reduce carbon emissions. Gore analogizes society to a frog that will jump out of a pot of boiling water if it's thrown in while the water is boiling, but won't jump out if it is thrown in when the water is cool and then gradually heated. Gore's point is that we don't notice incremental change around us and have to be shocked out of our complacency.
It strikes me, though, that this is unlikely to be true. If there's a serious problem, we will respond whether it appears slowly or all at once. A good test of Gore's proposition would be to run the experiment with the frogs and see what happens. If the frogs behave in the way he describes, then maybe he has a point. I suspect, though, that all of the frogs will jump out of the pot, regardless of when they're put in. If that's true, then society is already responding adequately to the problem of global warming and all this alarmist rhetoric is dangerous and irresponsible.
Luckily, Gore provides a good experiment we can perform to determine if society is already taking enough measures to reduce carbon emissions. Gore analogizes society to a frog that will jump out of a pot of boiling water if it's thrown in while the water is boiling, but won't jump out if it is thrown in when the water is cool and then gradually heated. Gore's point is that we don't notice incremental change around us and have to be shocked out of our complacency.
It strikes me, though, that this is unlikely to be true. If there's a serious problem, we will respond whether it appears slowly or all at once. A good test of Gore's proposition would be to run the experiment with the frogs and see what happens. If the frogs behave in the way he describes, then maybe he has a point. I suspect, though, that all of the frogs will jump out of the pot, regardless of when they're put in. If that's true, then society is already responding adequately to the problem of global warming and all this alarmist rhetoric is dangerous and irresponsible.
posted by James | 4:07 AM
4 Comments:
The frog story is an urban legend, not to mention a crappy analogy. In any case, I don't think it has much to do with the substance of the problem of global warming.
It amazes me that you could even say "important if true". You should know better. There is no credible doubt that the Earth is warming. Major scientific bodies around the world, including our National Academy of Sciences and the UN's IPCC have issued reports explicitly confirming human-induced global warming. What, exactly, are you waiting for to decide if it's "true?"
Do you own a thermometer?
This spring was hotter than the previous one, and that was hotter than the spring of 2007, and I haven't skated after 1980s because the lake never freeses... No evidence that the Earth is actually warming???
Can you read atentively?
"The third and final factor causing the collision between humankind and nature is both the subtlest and most important: our fundamental way of thinking about the climate crisis.
"And the first problem in the way we think about the climate crisis is that it seems easier not to think about it at all. One reason it doesn't consistently demand our attention can be illustrated by the classic story about an old science experiment involving a frog that jumps into a pot of boiling water and immediately jumps out again because it instantly recognizes the danger. The same frog, finding itself in a pot of lukewarm water that is being slowly brought to a boil, will simply stay in the water—in spite of the danger—until it is...rescued.
"(I used to recount this story about the frog with a different ending to the last sentence above: "until the frog is boiled" But after dozens of slide shows were followed by at least one anguished listener coming up to me and expressing concern for the fate of the frog, I finally learned the importance of rescuing the frog.)
But of course the larger point of the story is that our collective "nervous system," through which we recognize an impending danger to our survival, is similar to the frog's . If we experience a significant change in our circumstances gradually and slowly, we are capable of sitting still and failing to recognize the seriousness of what is happening to us until it's too late. "Sometimes, like the frog, we only react to a sudden jolt, a dramatic and speedy change in our circumstances that sets off our alarm bells.
"Global warming may seem gradual in the context of a single lifetime, but in the context of the Earth's history, it is actually happening with lightning speed. Its pace is now accelerating so rapidly that even in our own lifetimes, we are beginning to see the telltale bubbles of a boiling pot.
We are, of course, also different from the frog. We don't have to wait for the boiling point in order to understand the danger we're in—and we do have the ability to rescue ourselves."
Al Gore. An Inconvenient Truth, pp. 294-5.
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