Clive James died a few years ago, which made me sad even though it was no surprise, as he’d had a terminal illness for years. I love his essays and his poems, and it struck me that he’s the last of the pure writer/pundits. In the tradition of Orwell, or Shaw, or Wells, he had no expertise in anything but writing, but he had lots of life experiences, the ability to write well, broad interests, and lots of opportunities to write about what he wanted. Other examples would be Janet Malcolm and Joan Didion.
I’m distinguishing these people from other categories such as writers who have opinions but don’t ever become all-purpose pundits (for example, Lionel Trilling or Jonathan Franzen or Lorrie Moore) or reporters who, even when they do offer opinions, pretty much do it by telling the stories of others (for example, Malcolm Gladwell or A. J. Liebling) or people with relevant subject-matter expertise (Krugman, Mankiw, Steven J. Gould, Scott Alexander, etc.: you might disagree with some of these people and feel that they’re misrepresenting their fields or overstepping their bounds of knowledge, but ultimately they do have some home base where they have some knowledge).
What are things like now? We have lots of all-purpose pundits who offer hot and cold takes (newspaper op-ed columnists, political bloggers, etc.) but that’s not quite the same—these people are opinion-havers, not literary artists. In some sense, literary merit and literary ambition should be irrelevant to all this, but somehow it’s not. I read Clive James because he’s entertaining and has interesting things to say, and this leads me to be interested in what he has to say, if you know what I mean.
I was thinking about all this after coming across this climate denial article by an elderly Clive James. It’s like a parody of a Clive James article in that he uses his writing skills to misrepresent reality: you can see all his skills right there, and it’s very sad. At some points he loses control over his syntax (“But for now – and it could be a long now – the advocates of drastic action are still armed with a theory that no fact doesn’t fit”), and the essay doesn’t line up well with physical reality, but most of the time he’s got the rhetoric machine under control, and the article reads in a similar way as his old-time eviscerations of 1970s-vintage books and TV.
It’s hard to be angry at James for writing this silly thing during his last years, but I can be annoyed at whoever it is who flattered and conned him into doing it, taking advantage of an old man like that. I guess we can remember James in his prime, just as he would have us remember Johnny Weissmuller.
Andrew wrote:
“…at whoever it is who flattered and conned him into doing it, taking advantage of an old man like that.”
That’s pretty vicious.
I am more curious how you formed your conclusions. You have never mentioned reading climate science, and I have seen no indication that you have. There is no doubt that you could read the literature if you were interested, but you don’t seem to be which strikes me as odd since you seem to have such strong opinions about it. Meanwhile, Clive James has clearly read at least some of it.
Matt:
Take a look at James’s article and it is clear he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He’s just spinning words. That’s fine—he’s a word-spinner, and this works well for writing memoirs, TV criticism, literary criticism, all sorts of things. I’m a huge Clive James fan, I think he’s just great. but writing about science, that’s way outside anything he knows about. As I wrote above, I don’t hold it against him that when someone asked him to write about climate change, he did his best. But I do think it was unethical for whoever commissioned that piece to do this. It’s basically elder abuse. I don’t have strong opinions about the substance of James’s article, as it has no substance. I have strong opinions about someone talking him in to writing it. The whole thing just makes me sad.
I would have thought James’ ignorant and unpleasant article indicates that he hasn’t been anywhere near the climate science literature!
and speaking of “vicious” how about James’:
“Compulsorily retired now from the climate scene, Dr Rajendra Pachauri was a zany straight from Swift, by way of a Bollywood remake of The Party starring the local imitator of Peter Sellers”
It’s not completely straightforward to parse the meaning (James trashes climate scientists he considers he doesn’t like with the “Swiftian” insult – such wit!) but it seems to refer to the comedy Indian character played by Peter Sellers in the Party (Sellers in “brownface” with a comedy Indian accent).
Matt –
> Meanwhile, Clive James has clearly read at least some of it…
I will admit I gave up well before the end (as indeed it just seemed to me like a run-on claptrap of “skeptic” best hits), but I’m curious as to which aspect of that article you think is about climate science?
Looks to me like an article anyone who’s read WUWT for a bit could write (albeit unlikely with James’ wiring skill) without ever reading one iota of the relevant science. One would just need to believe that the view that ACO2 emissions pose a risk is a hoax (and that any any climate scientist who says thst it does is an “alarmist”) and take it from there.
“I’m curious as to which aspect of that article you think is about climate science?”
Here is an excerpt from James:
“The notion of a count-down or a tipping point is very dear to both wings of this deaf shouting match, and really is of small use to either. On the catastrophist wing, whose ‘narrative’, as they might put it, would so often seem to be a synthesised film script left over from the era of surround-sound disaster movies, there is always a count-down to the tipping point.”
It is likely that James did not know a thing about control systems theory when he wrote this, but his take here is nevertheless better than anything you will read coming from climate scientists.
Climate stability can be demonstrated with an average temperature plot of the earth going back 500 million years displayed in degrees Kelvin. This way we can clearly see that the climate stays within 1% of baseline, a very stable system by any measure. Now it would be one thing if we had a set of even rudimentary control system equations that we could study to understand how the climate manages to remain so stable, but we have nothing of the sort and climate models don’t work that way. We do have physical evidence of a rapid temperature change from the last ice age, but no evidence at all of any kind of tipping point that goes from our current temperature to some sort of hothouse climate. From this perspective, even mentioning the possible existence of a climate tipping point based upon positive feedback is highly speculative and inherently unlikely. To insist that there is a tipping point and that we are careening towards it is exquisitely ridiculous. I could give more examples.
Matt:
I’m with Joshua on this one. Your comment indeed has some climate science in it, but the quote you gave from James has no climate science at all! It’s just rhetoric. It’s rhetoric that you happen to agree with, and that’s fine, but it has no climate science content at all; it’s just free-floating language.
What? Where’s the scientific insight in the James quote? It’s ill-informed invective. Do you really consider that a meaningful contribution to understanding about climate or climate science? In reality the insight for climate science and climate scientists is a very clear understanding of the relationship between atmospheric CO2 and Earth surface temperature. The possibilities for tipping points are real and can’t be discounted by invective although climate science shows us that CO2-related increases in temperature are likely to be very problematic without reaching tipping points.
What do you mean by this?:
We can’t “clearly see” anything unless you link to your source. I hope you’re not suggesting BTW that by using a Kelvin temperature measure (absolute zero to around 293K) that one can discount temperature changes since these are only 1%! That seems like a sleight of hand to me. The relevant temperature range of concern to biological life is perhaps from 273 to 323 at the most (323 is obvious a disaster as would be 313).
In fact over the last 500 million years the evidence supports temperature variations of around 8 oC (plus 7 to minus 1 oC) and there is very little doubt that the driver of this variation is atmospheric greenhouse gas levels (see for example DL Royer et al. CO2 as a primary driver of Phanerozoic climate GSA Today; v. 14; no. 3, p 4). It’s a long time since I’ve looked at this in detail and no doubt there’s some more up to date info.
Anyway please give a cite to your source for your 500 MY 1% stability of temperature.
Matt –
So if say it’s obviously not a good idea here to get into an argument about climate science (and I’m not just saying that because I’ll guess you know the science better than I)… But…
> but his take here is nevertheless better than anything you will read coming from climate scientists.
Yah, from what I do understand. I don’t believe that’s true. You have lumped together all climate scientists to be basically completely wrong in anything they might have to say about tipping points, as well-described by someone who kmisf likely) has never actually studied the sconce. I won’t completely rule out the possibility thst everything every climate scientist has ever said about tipping points is total nonsense – but as someone who can’t claim mastery of the relevent science, your characterization seems to me to be unlikely to be true. Now I could just take your word for it, but that doesn’t seem like a great idea, just as it wouldn’t be a great idea for me to assume (behind any shadow of doubt) that all climate scientists HAVEN’T spouted compete nonsense when they’ve talked about tipping points.
Instead, from where I sit, your characterization of the science of tipping points we basically rhetorical in the same way as James’ essay was. Tipping points is often with reference to an emissions-influenced change in the climate whereby the world as we know it (and have known it during historical times) will be significantly changed. And sometimes it’s used to represent a runaway mechanism where by a cascade of disasters will render the climate completely inhospitable to basically any known species.
I don’t think it’s very scientific to employ rhetoric that (1) conflates those to interpretations of “tipping points” and (2) assign the most extreme interpretation to anything that any climate scientists have ever said in the subject (which you did, but James at least took some effort to avoid – although in other aspects be basically employed the same rhetorical device).
At any rate – the bottom line is that from where I sit, unless I’m willing to take your discourse on tipping points as climate gospel (which I’m not inclined to do) than you weren’t actually talking about climate science (which I believe is more mixed than your characterization) in your comment, but instead employing rhetorical spin. It I could see where in some kind of logical construct, James was talking about science just as you were – and anyone who disagrees about the implications of “tipping point” is just a foolish alarmist (whether they have scientific credentials or not).
I’m interested in other members of this set. James, Didion, Malcolm. McPhee? Paul Theroux? How literary do you have to be and how much (or little) reporter? Liebling? Mailer? David Foster Wallace? What about Ben Lerner? Can you write mostly humorously, like PJ O’Rourke?
Jonathan:
I guess that any of these people would fit, except maybe not Ben Lerner, at least I didn’t know that he wrote nonfiction political or social commentary. Not Liebling either, in that he was more of a straight reporter.
To be in the set, a person has to be a compelling writer but to have no other qualifications. I have the impression that, 50-100 years ago, there was more of an attitude that leading literary or cultural figures could offer social and political commentary. Not so much anymore. More typical, perhaps, is someone like Martin Amis, who keeps trying to offer this sort of commentary but just gets ignored. Nobody takes him seriously except when he writes about literature, which is probably a good thing.
McPhee doesn’t seem to fit either, in the sense that he’s not doing punditry. I think he would be disqualified for the same reason you gave for excluding Liebling in the original post — to the extent there’s social commentary it’s by telling the stories of others, at least in the things I’ve read.
I was going to suggest Coates, though he’s not an “all purpose” pundit; he has (or maybe had?) a more narrow slice of subjects for political commentary. Literary talents are in the eye of the beholder, but I think his writing is pretty powerful and he has since had success in purely creative fiction writing. Of course, that success came after becoming famous for his non-fiction work. Also, he seemed to stop doing political commentary as he began more and more fiction work.
Fi:
Yes, I agree with you regarding McPhee.
For sure McPhee doesn’t fit as pundit, given deeply-researched works like Control of Nature
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Control_of_Nature
To get scared about Lousiana, read 1/3 of that, “Atchafalaya”: The Misssippi River is long overdue to change directions, and climate-change-amplified rainfalls upstream are unlikely to be good:
https://web.archive.org/web/20140729130323/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1987/02/23/atchafalaya
https://openrivers.lib.umn.edu/article/meeting-the-atchafalaya/
Jonathan:
Just to elaborate: it’s not just that Clive James, George Orwell, Bernard Shaw, and H. G. Wells were writers who also expressed political opinions. It’s that they seemed to feel qualified to opine on absolutely any subject, with their only qualification being that they were good writers. That’s different than, say, a modern op-ed columnist in that the op-ed columnists owe their standing not to their skill as writers but to their positions.
Not sure that applies to Orwell and H. G. Wells – Orwell in particular created for himself multiple qualifications [e.g. spending a period working in the industrial north of England before writing “Road to Wigan Pier”; 18 months fighting (and getting shot by a sniper) in the Spanish Civil War]; he was more than qualified to opine on different subjects. Likewise Wells was highly self-educated in the science so that his science fiction had an nice underpinning of plausibility – and he wrote proper books on history and science (he even wrote a three volume book on biology with Julian Huxley). He was a proper polymath who was justifiably qualified to opine on may subjects. These two also lived in a time when individuals could be very broadly self-educated on many aspects of the world.
What about going in the other direction and asking why goodness-at-writing would lead people to be interested in your opinions more generally? I am thinking about Mark Twain in particular, whose writerly virtues seem inseparable from a very general perceptiveness. Sometimes Twain reads like a twentieth-century person who’s been plunked down into the middle of the nineteenth century. Even his jokes are often making a deep point.
Yes I totally agree with you. Mark Twain wrote an absolutely delicious take down of intelligent design which showcases his usual wit as well as a perceptive knowledge of the scientific data on evolution and Earth history as it stood at the time (1903). In case the link below doesn’t work you should be able to find it by googling “Mark Twain Was the world made for man?”. it’s definitely worth 10 minutes of anyone’s time:
https://d32ogoqmya1dw8.cloudfront.net/files/NAGTWorkshops/paleo/activities/twains_metaphor.pdf
“Mark Twain in particular, whose writerly virtues seem inseparable from a very general perceptiveness.”
Twain and Orwell share the same critical trait: their experiences and the wisdom they draw from them resonate with people.
Dmitri:
That fits Clive James too—most of the time. When reading Clive James, I had the impression that, yes, he liked to be clever, but he was thinking things through each time. When reading him, it’s not exactly that I “trusted” him in the sense that I’d just pick up his opinions and take them as my own (as I did with Orwell back when I read him in my late teens), but I enjoyed reading him, not just for the style but for what he had to say.
Another way that James is like Orwell or, to take a lesser-known figure, the nonfiction writer David Owen, is that all of them have a kind of plain-man aspect: they’re very talented but they’re clearly not geniuses (whatever that means). So we can read them and feel . . . ummmm, not quite that we could write just like them, but that we could reconstruct their reasoning ourselves if we were just to put in the effort and stay honest.
Again, I don’t hold that climate-change-denial article against James, given his health problems and advanced age when he wrote it; I blame whoever commissioned the damn thing. I wish whoever it was had just talked James into making a financial donation or something.
I think this article is typical Clive James in rapid-fire mode – skill level unchanged. I also don’t see any problem with the syntax of that sentence, he often wrote like this.
(Declaration of COI – I’m Australian).
Same here on the grammar … it’s really a cutting comment.
Likewise on that syntax; it parses out fine for me. Indeed, the idea of “a theory that no fact doesn’t fit” reminds me that Clive was a fan of Karl Popper’s epistemological thought. (Declaration of COI – I’m Australian too. Maybe the humour is particularly Antipodean.)
Nick, Elin, David:
Fair enough. Instead of saying that James lost control over his syntax, it would be more accurate to say he lost control over his understanding the content of the article (or that he never had any understanding of the content), and his tricky syntax didn’t help any. Straight-up b.s.-ing can be fun for TV criticism but it doesn’t make so much sense when commenting on science and policy.
The statistics (methodology and results) in climate sciences are something I would like Andrew (and others on this blog) to look into and write about. The science around climate change is such an essential but very politicized field. I would imagine such a combination would lead to nefarious incentives. Research misconduct, statistical alchemy, and outright fraud are everywhere these days. Maybe there is some in climate science. Or perhaps climate science is pure and untouched by the unmorality of men.
Savoy:
I’ve done research in climate science; see here.
Andrew: Thanks, I love tree rings, I will read.
In my previous life, I worked as a carpenter. My boss then specialized in restoring old (several 100 years) wooden buildings. He remarked that the three rings were much denser (read higher quality) in old wood materials. Now trees are growing faster, and it is quit hard to get wood material of equal quality as say the mid 1700s.
Andrew:
James’ climate article is spot on with respect to the media circus of climate change. You don’t – or shouldn’t – have to be a fanatical anti-climate-change-policy nut to appreciate it! I love the comments about Tim Flannery. I’m not familiar at all with his climate agenda, but I love this quote:
“Australian climate star Tim Flannery will probably not, of his own free will, shrink back to the position conferred by his original metier, as an expert on the extinction of the giant wombat. ”
Hilarious! Climate change punditry is loaded with erstwhile wombat experts relishing the media spotlight they never thought they’d see and pumping climate change for everything it’s worth to keep their egos inflated.
There has never been sensible discussion in the media – much less in science – about climate change. The clickbait of imminent disaster is too much for the collapsing news media business to resist, even as it now claims to be not a business at all, but an THE PROTECTOR OF DEMOCRACY! (So interesting that these claims emerge at a time of historically hot air!). And pity the poor wombat scientist, the helpless victim of the media’s relentless ego puffing! They can no longer go back to the dingy rooms of wombat fossils and bottles of formaldehyde without significant mental distress!!
And last of all, all the poor politicians, rushing now to get some cred for banning gas vehicles before they disappear at the behest of Musk and the capitalists! Hilarious. These days the universe can’t produce enough scorn to justly bestow the Great Leaders their due. Orwell and Twain would be reveling in it. Let Clive have his fun too.
“There has never been sensible discussion in the media – much less in science – about climate change.”
Huh? You seem to have a lot of certainty on that particular ridiculous claim.
It’s possible to agree with James on the politics, and also to be amused by the bit about the wombat (which I enjoyed too) while still recognizing that James didn’t have any idea what he’s talking about and recognizing that, yes, there is lots of sensible discussion in science about climate change. Which is no surprise, given that climate change is an important topic, and many scientists are sensible people. Consider just for a moment that people are writing about and studying the topic not “to keep their egos inflated” but because they think the topic is important. Basically the same reason I write blog posts and you write blog comments: we’re expressing our views on topics of interest, and, to be fair, climate change is a lot more important that most of the topics I write about here.
In any case, I’m not stopping Clive or anyone else from having their fun; I’m just expressing sadness that such a great writer was brought so low as to spew out this nonsense.
Science and politics do not mix well. Science is dedicated to looking for reasons that something is not true, and politics/ideology is dedicated to convincing that something is true.
Who cares about clickbate-media when there are blogs to read?
“Huh? You seem to have a lot of certainty on that particular ridiculous claim.”
It’s ridiculous? Then why has nothing been done for 30+ years? Isn’t it because no one is willing to implement the purported “solutions” offered by the scientific community? Doesn’t that suggest that the scientific community has an “unworkable ‘solution’ ” problem?
When you say “there is a lot of sensible discussion about climate change”, of course you’re right, there is, but the volume of sensible discussion is so much smaller than the senseless discussion that in general sense my statement is true: the bulk of the discussion is focused on unrealistic solutions.
Sorry, Andrew, but I think this might have been meant to go here. Not sure, but it seems appropriate.
As Chesterton might have said, cynicism is the realism of fools.
Chipmunk –
> Then why has nothing been done for 30+ years?
I’d suggest a problem here is that you ask that question, rhetorically, and you think you know the answer – but you don’t know the answer, actually, as the issue is more complicated than how you frame it.
perhaps you don’t understand the role of science.
It’s obvious that global warming scientific research has led to a pretty good understanding of the relationship between atmospheric CO2 levels and mean surface temperature and the consequences of this for habitability, sea level rise, the loss of glacial water supplies and effects on the hydrological cycle including consequences for droughts, heatwaves, wildfires, extreme weather events, the effects on ocean acidification and potential consequences, the effects on ocean heat transfer and so on.
The solution is pretty obvious – engineer a steady transition to a world powered by sustainable energy; in the long term that’s the only future for humankind wouldn’t you agree? Unfortunately this is astonishingly hard partly because global warming is a collective problem and we’re not too good at that but also because it’s hugely difficult to make the transition – the solutions for energy transition aren’t fully there yet and we can’t really go faster than the rate at which new technologies and infrastructure come on line allowing transitions at more local levels. But the very large increases in solar energy production (and large recent decreases in cost) together with large increases in deployment of wind powered electricity, the possibilities for clean hydrogen to replace systems difficult to power with electricity, the real and potential contributions from nuclear energy and so on shows that non-cynics are actually addressing the scientific imperatives. Still a long way to go since these only provide around 20% of total energy requirements, use of fossil fuels still increases and it’s possible that we’re stuffed if we can’t get nuclear fusion to work. There are also less pleasant scientific solutions like carbon capture, space mirrors to deflect solar radiation and spraying sulfates into the atmosphere to reduce incoming solar radiation (we’re stuffed IMO if we have to resort to the last two!).
So it’s pretty ignorant to suggest that there aren’t workable (but v difficult) solutions or that nothing’s been done for 30+ years. And all against a virtually industrial scale barrage of misinformation (Clive James’ ill-informed rubbish is just a tiny drop in the ocean). If we screw things up for our descendants it won’t be through lack of scientific understanding and communication of the issues.
Chris said “So it’s pretty ignorant to suggest that there aren’t workable (but v difficult) solutions”
Everything in that claim hinges on what you mean by “workable”. In your mind, it seems to mean “technically feasible”. In the real world, it means “politically feasible”. I hope you understand the difference.
“The solution is pretty obvious – engineer a steady transition to a world powered by sustainable energy”
That’s not obvious at all. Nuclear isn’t “sustainable” but it offers far more energy potential than any other non-carbon source of energy with present technology. That’s been the case since it was discovered. Many people who are very serious about climate change believe it’s the only possible solution. Furthermore, your statement glosses over the question of *when* we get on to new sources of energy, which is also critical, in that it *is the determining factor* in whether such a transition is overall beneficial or not beneficial, because it determines the cost of the transition.
Imagine that we had determined in 1600 that wood isn’t sustainable to power our future and dictated at that time only solar power would be allowed. Would we be better off today?
You’re demonstrating exactly the point I’m making: You’re so locked in your belief in renewables at any cost that you’re dismissing the most readily available source of CO2-free energy completely out of hand and completely ignoring the most important factor in whether an energy transition is beneficial or not. Why would anyone take you – or anyone who shares your views – seriously?
Joshua said: “but you don’t know the answer”
I do know the answer: because the solutions that have been offered have not been politically feasible. Is that “more complicated than how [I] frame it.”?
Likely the reason they’ve failed politically is because a large share of the population believes they are economically destructive – i.e., that the proposed cure will be worse than the disease. Here – when it comes to economics – is where we transition from “settled science” to speculative claims on both sides of the issue. The answer to the economic question isn’t known or knowable, which is why climate policy advocates so assiduously avoid it. That unfortunate reality is why I view most of the discussion about climate policy as having no merit.
chipmunk –
> I do know the answer: because the solutions that have been offered have not been politically feasible. Is that “more complicated than how [I] frame it.”?
First, it’s not exactly clear to me why you’re looking at climate scientists to offer politically feasible solutions. Generally, the job of climate scientists is to (1) describe the problem and (2), describe the probabilities associated with outcomes derived from proposed solutions. Of course, many climate scientists do try to influence the politics related to how they evaluate the probabilities – but it seems ill-conceived to me to think that somehow they’re failing if the policies they favor haven’t been implemented. We might as well blame doctors for high rates of obesity and diabetes. Or political scientists for the high rate of gun violence. Or dentists for the heartbreak of halitosis.
But let’s go back to what you said:
> It’s ridiculous? Then why has nothing been done for 30+ years?
The problem with your framing is that you’re stating an opinion, a highly arguable opinion, as fact – and then proceeding merrily on your way to prove your point as if you didn’t just conflation opinion and fact. Of course things have been done. The trajectory of emissions has changed when you consider the pathway it was on, and changes we’ve made (beyond the impact of something like the pandemic) has affected that. As to whether that is sufficient to prevent future harms, that’s arguable and depends on much uncertainty about what amount of future emissions will result in what amount of harms. So then you need to change your framing from the very outset.
Then there’s this:
> Isn’t it because no one is willing to implement the purported “solutions” offered by the scientific community?
That is also kinda conflating opinion with fact – or we could just say is just not factual. There are plenty of people, having heard the problems as described by climate scientists, who support the policy recommendations that some climate scientists propose. But there are also many who don’t. Many don’t for a variety of reasons, but much of it has to do with the associated polarization and tribalism. Is that the problem of the “purported solutions?” I don’t think so, as it think it reflects much larger issues. Are you going to blame climate scientists for tribalism? Is a failure of climate scientists the reason for the lack of movement on gun control? Is a failure of political scientists the reason for the lack of movement on gun control? Sorry, but your logic seems incoherent to me. Instead, it looks to me that the reason is that you’ve decided on your conclusion before you actually looked at the potential mechanisms of cause and effect. Which is why you have the very framing of the discussion skewed from the very start. Have you even defined the effect your talking about (“nothing has been done,” “no one is willing,” etc.)
> Doesn’t that suggest that the scientific community has an “unworkable ‘solution’ ” problem?
At any rate, all of this suggests that it’s a wicked and multi-factorial problem, that touches on tribalism and polarization as well as the very human nature of cognitive biases, particularly in addressing high damage function, low probability risk over long time horizons, within a democratic society and a complicated geo-political context, where moving quickly on large scale problems is highly complicated.
Seems to me that reverse engineering that because a certain level or change hasn’t been achieved, it must be “because climate scientists” is quite sub-optimal.
You seem determined to decide what my views are based on some dreary ideological position Chipmunk.
BTW you might have noticed that nuclear power was on my list of real/potential solutions in transitioning towards a sustainable energy future so your rant is somewhat misplaced!
Anyway, I think we can agree that we’re incredibly fortunate that climate science has given us a good understanding of the consequences of continuing to release greenhouse gases, so that whatever endpoint we reach will have had the benefit of a head start – i.e. with technological development, political will, and collective effort (difficult) we’ll have made some progress in learning how to power our societies with low carbon emissions before really unpleasant consequences become unignorable.
That’s kind of the point of the thread. Clive James’ style (in this article) of dreary misrepresentation and lazy cynicism are not helpful and actually a little embarrassing.