Going Cheney on Climate (Megabarf! When has the left ever observed the precautionary principle?)

In 2006, Ron Suskind published “The One Percent Doctrine,” a book about the U.S. war on terrorists after 9/11. The title was drawn from an assessment by then-Vice President Dick Cheney, who, in the face of concerns that a Pakistani scientist was offering nuclear-weapons expertise to Al Qaeda, reportedly declared: “If there’s a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping Al Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response.” Cheney contended that the U.S. had to confront a very new type of threat: a “low-probability, high-impact event.”

Soon after Suskind’s book came out, the legal scholar Cass Sunstein, who then was at the University of Chicago, pointed out that Mr. Cheney seemed to be endorsing the same “precautionary principle” that also animated environmentalists. Sunstein wrote in his blog: “According to the Precautionary Principle, it is appropriate to respond aggressively to low-probability, high-impact events — such as climate change. Indeed, another vice president — Al Gore — can be understood to be arguing for a precautionary principle for climate change (though he believes that the chance of disaster is well over 1 percent).”

The difference here is the fact that the destructive force of nuclear weapons is well documented, not some theoretical hypothesis as is global warming.
It is a documented fact that Al Qaeda’s intent is to destroy the US. Again not theory but fact.
The global alarmist are asking us to make huge sacrifices based upon the possibility that global warming will bring disaster whereas Al Qaeda having a nuclear weapon would almost assuredly bring about that result. Therefore a 1% possibility of assured destruction is a far greater threat than a 50% theoretical assumption of disaster by climate change.

Good post.

When one buys insurance that is to replace the economic loss posed by the risk. Unless the insurance company goes bankrupt, you are made whole.

There is no assurance (and certainly no "insurance") that, even if there is climate change occurring that it is occurring as a result of CO2 emissions. There is no assurance that, even if there is climate change being caused by CO2 emissions, that it is being caused by CO2 emissions generated by man. Even if there is anthropomorphic CO2 climate change being generated, there is no assurance that curbing CO2 emissions will eliminate climate change. Even if there is anthropomorphic climate change which can be stopped by curbing CO2 emissions, there is no evidence that mankind is capable of doing so. Even if anthropomorphic climate change could be stopped by man controlling CO2 emissions, there is no assurance that the limits proposed would achieve that purpose. Even if there is anthropomorphic climate change which can be stopped by mankind capable of curbing CO2 emissions sufficiently and further assuming that the limits proposed are sufficient, there is some question whether the impact would be more undesirable than desirable.

When an insurance actuary concludes that there is a statistical probability of loss when they write a particular policy insuring against a defined risk, he does so based on demonstrable data and immutable laws of probability. How in the world can one analogize the cascading level of uncertainties associated with the "science" of climate change with insurance?

Insurance is a cost to protect against a loss which amounts to a fraction of the economic extent of the loss. The curbs proposed in Copenhagen might well cost more than the risk posed by anthropomorphic global warming. In addition to the economic costs, there is the cost of liberty by ceding control over every facet of our economic and personal lives to a nonelected, unaccountable, faceless, super governmental entity which is a recipe for guaranteed tyranny.

Friedman is an ardent climate change advocate and has been for many years. He would practically stop all drilling in America. It is remarkable how far from the bland and bold assurances of climate change made before revelations of fraud that Friedman has come as he is now reduced to groping for this preposterous analogy.

Cheney argued that even low probability suspects in the war on terror should be investigated. NSA capability is vast and capital cost is sunk, therefore the marginal cost of investigating leads is zero compared with the imminent danger of millions dead caused by a motivated enemy. Seems like a logical argument.

Friedman likens anthropogenic global warming (AGW) legislation to Cheney's argument; citizens should commission a vast global redistribution of trillions of dollars with questionable measurement without the benefit of the world's largest 'polluters' (destroying any guarantee of a positive result) against a distant fear of calamity which by IPCC predictions becomes less dire with every iterative model. The fallacy of comparing the two arguments is clear to any fifth grader. I critique his whole argument on my website.

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