Why knowledge sucks! (2)

Yesterday the Kyoto treaty kicked in. It will commit the signatories to reduce their level of primarily carbon dioxide emissions in order to further prevent global warming. At the same time the treaty allows countries to sell and buy emission rights from each other, which puts a value (or a price) on the emissions.

I am not an expert in this and I guess the treaty is better than doing nothing, even if I find it rather bizarre legitmate pollution by actually building an exchange market for it. Also the fact that it´s basically only carbonoxide that is concerned when gases like methane stays unregulated, contributing to the green house effect twenty times more seriously than CO2 feels pretty weird.

But I am an expert in what make people change their behavior. And I just can ask all of our alternative energy advocates - don´t use the Kyoto treaty in your communication.

If climate change is the main purpose for people to change their lives, then we don't have to do it if it proves wrong. Isn't that right?

And it does prove wrong all the time. In a recent article in Geophysical Research Letters researchers Ross McKitrick and Stephen McIntyre argue that the simulations of the worlds future temperature development are based on an incorrect mathematical model. The results given, an important argument for the green house effect showing the tempurature will rise significantly in the coming years, will be the same using random data as if the researchers are using the data said to represent the tempurature in the past. The article is only one in the long line of critics that challange the image of a world soon drowned by the water from previously potent icebergs.

The thing is not to stop care about what could be done about our environment. But to argue on a lower and more basic level. Without the greenhouse effect there are still tons of arguments for not driving too big cars, clean our industry or stop using landfills for our waste. To prevent acid rain, lowering risks for cancer, save our oceans and stop the pollution in our cities are only some and they actually lead to the same behavioral change that the knowledge of the green house effect does. But they are scientifically unchallanged.

Further we can drive smaller cars because they are cool, like the Mini Cooper, or because Leonardo di Caprio has one, like the Prius. We can recycle organic waste because it "feels" good, no matter what it leads to. We can make industry to stop pollute because we want no smell.

The reasons why people change their behavior is not important. It's the fact that they do change that is.