Hippocrates and Global Warming      

Whenever I get into global warming “discussions” with my friends, I will eventually hear the following plea, usually in an exasperated tone:  “Well, it couldn’t hurt to do something.  We have to do something.  We have to try.”   My friends have every right to be impatient with me.  I continue to have doubts, and to express those doubts.  I continue to read on both sides of what my friends believe to be a “settled” debate.  I have always believed that science requires skepticism, but apparently now it just requires advanced degrees. 

But my answer to my friends’ plea to “do something” is this:  There is harm in “doing something” when it is the wrong thing, or when it is likely to be ineffective.  Consider the plea, common some twenty or so years ago, from cancer patients who would come to their doctors asking that they be allowed to try laetrile for their disease.  They made the same plea: “I have to do something, I have to try.” In the case of the cancer patient, there may be at least three problems with trying laetrile.  First of all, the “cure” may be worse than the disease.  Since it is not an FDA approved therapy, the risks are essentially unknown.  Second, the patient may try laetrile instead of proven effective therapies, because they are afraid of the side effects of radiation or chemotherapy.  Thus, they use an ineffective treatment when effective treatment was available and by foregoing effective treatment, they shortened their lives.  Finally, since laetrile therapy required going to another country, the patient would typically have to be separated from family at a difficult time.  This scenario does not even consider the costs of laetrile, which were probably considerable, and not covered by insurance. There is a saying in medicine, “first, do no harm.”  Laetrile certainly did harm.  That’s why doctors did not recommend it. 

So keeping in mind the need to “do something” only when necessary, and when it is likely to be effective, and when it will not make things worse, what does this mean in the context of global warming?  It seems to me there are three questions we need to answer before trying to do something about global warming:  First, is climate change certain to be harmful?  Second, will the harm caused by climate change justify the costs and potential harm caused by efforts to reverse climate change?  Third, can human efforts reverse or prevent climate change?  I find myself skeptical on all of these questions. 

First, climate has changed many times in human history, and in many cases warming was beneficial.  That’s why the Vikings during the Medieval warm period gave Greenland its name despite the fact that today this name is hardly descriptive.  Certainly, food production is better during warm periods than during cold periods.  Human beings are very adaptable, and have lived in a wide variety of extreme environments.  Second, efforts to control carbon emissions may require draconian cuts in energy which would impact the global economy in ways that may be hard to predict.  Given that there are now seven billion souls living on this planet who depend on our modern technological society for food production, storage and distribution, a simple cost-versus-benefit analysis should be required before “doing something” to cut carbon emissions on a worldwide basis.  Third, there continue to be voices in the scientific community who argue that carbon dioxide is an effect, not a cause of global warming, and that the role of precipitation and the oceans is not taken into account by the alarmists.  Correlation is not causation.  Do we really have the evidence to say carbon dioxide causes the problem?  If not, then no human actions to cut carbon emissions will work to prevent global warming.  In that case, if the global warming is really likely to cause problems, maybe we should use our resources to find ways to cope with changes, to adapt to changes in climate rather than trying to control it.  Like the laetrile patient, we would be wasting precious time and resources on an ineffective effort to control climate, while ignoring the need to strengthen the economies and agricultural systems of countries most likely to be affected by climate change.