I dunno jbc, an interesting exercise, but too many variables and they are all probably sliding scales, interconnected…

at a guess:

V1: 65% mostly right (might even be worse? or ameliorating effects due to some climate change goodness [dumb stuff like, its warmer in NHemi, CO2 good for plants etc]) Of your 4 ‘beliefs’ I think 1 and 2 are pretty certain, 3 is very much a sliding scale (how bad will it get?) and 4 is debatable, as we can’t know for certain, but bad things might be just bad or our-species-ends-badly

V2: over 50 years, net positive.. mb -$1000 over 50 years? IF we take action now we can reap the savings in jobs, environmental impacts, new taxes, construction, technology (build brains, not bombs) One year cost would be over $100,000 (for every American? or entire human race?) But $1000 would seem generous over 10 to 20 years, then it would gradually flip over to being more and more net pluses (esp if you start calculating the cost of the bad effects)

burning stuff to power our civilization is the old way, building the new way will be cheaper in the long run

V3: no actual bullets needed (or, they are all blanks) Doing something will be a slight net drag on growth over 10 to 30 years. Doing nothing will be good for growth now, but terrible over 50 to 100 years. If you were to force me to pick a number I’d say 85% to 95% blanks (see previous eco freakouts: CFCs and SO2, simple market based solutions with simple government oversight). But this is also a sliding scale, the less we do, the fewer blanks, doing nothing and its mostly bullets, hmmmmm. Every year we do nothing takes away blanks and increases the worse case scenario odds. The sky will not fall if we institute a small carbon ‘tax’ (really just a real world assessment of the overall impact of an energy source) and bump the CAFE standards up a bit more aggressively.

V4: if the ‘climate hawks’ are right and we do nothing, we are shot in the leg as a species and limp along (mb 50 years of climate catastrophe is normal for our equiv tech, until we stop burning rocks and move to ??? source of energy). If the hawks are wrong, and it is *worse* than expected, mb that leg is blown off and we might not make it out of our planetary cradle. If the hawks are wrong and it is not so bad, we’ll adjust as we go and costs come down even further.

I think the sterilization of the planet is a very low probability scenario. Once we start dying off in our millions and billions, nature will come back and fix things. It may take thousands or millions of years if it is on the outer edges of worst case scenarios.

As a species we may not do as well as if we took prompt action, but we’ll survive. How much pain could have been avoided is between you and your tides.

Clearly, though, the immediate choice between a decade of relative poverty on the one hand, and a substantial risk of wiping out “virtually all life on the planet” (including all human life, now and in perpetuity) makes the “take action” choice justified. Many people would not actually do it, though. Just as many novice poker players incur too much risk, and wind up busting out. Yes, it’s human nature to make bad decisions in areas like that. But that doesn’t change the implacability of the odds.

It’s both hilarious and pathetic.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/06/oreilly-god-causes-tides_n_805262.html

PS: Yeah, I’m kind of lost on how to play this Climate Roulette.

e.g. Asteroid approaching earth will arrive in 10 years, 25% chance of direct impact that would wipe out virtually all life on the planet. 75% it will harmessly miss earth.

“Earth” decides to hold a single binding referendum to authorize action or to authorize inaction. Options have already been debated, there are now no other alternatives allowed besides action or inaction. The single question posed to you is this: Do you agree to give 90% of your annual income for the next 10 years (food and shelter will be provided by the government if you need it) to finance a force field around the planet that will divert this asteroid and future asteroids from collisions with earth?

Choose one:

Yes, I agree to this radical action to protect earth.

No, I will take my chances that the catastrophe will not happen.

IIRC, you are trying to better understand peoples’ position on this issue by analysing their assumptions about the variables. That assumes peoples’ positions on this issue are arrived at in a rational manner. I’d Hypothesize that assumptions about the variables play less of a role than their degree of risk aversion, therefore the analysis of their assumptions will produce inconsistent results, until you add in risk tolerance. Or perhaps risk tolerance is actually what your metaphore is actually measuring.

I’m going to confuse things even more, the way you have it set up now it is still pretty black and white that we either do everything or nothing, not exactly I understand, but close. I would like to see a variation where we do some things but not everything. For instance, my contention is cap and trade will do nothing to help the environment but do a lot of harm to the economy (US) say +0 environment but will hurt the economy -30 on a scale of 100. But wind would slightly help the environment +8, it would help the economy some because it creates some jobs (most are transferred) +2 but hurts the economy because of higher energy prices -4. So what do you do now? Add all the numbers and come out with a +6?

It seems there is only one option available if the hawks are wrong and we do nothing, we neither lose nor gain anything, but there are a wide number of possibilities (mostly negative) if the hawks are right. I know that isn’t exactly true but it is a sense I get when I read it.

For instance, in my example (since it is simpler) if my sister doesn’t have the work done that the mechanic did but only has the work done I suggested she saved $800 or you can extrapolate that out to several thousand dollars if it is invested, money that could pay for a semester of college. It seems you are extrapolating out the negative effects on the environment but not extrapolating the negative effects on the economy. Does that make sense? Again I think you could do that better with a form than the blog format, if you give the economic aspect the same number of options you are giving the environment like I want, then you are basically doubling the complexity of something that is already too complex. Good luck.

ps

Also when you take the possibility to 0 it makes the whole exercise moot, at that point you have lost your audience, I don’t know how to get around that, I haven’t given it as much thought as you, but I know it is a problem. That might also rectify itself with a form or not giving the analogy until after input from the audience.

I also want to make an interactive version of it, allowing users to plug in their own numbers and then actually run the simulation to conclusion to find out what result they got. I could even include a feature that would run the simulation a set number of times (100?) and let you view a table of all the outcomes and their frequencies. That might be fun to play with.

It would be relatively easy to make a web form backed by a mod_perl script that would display a static HTML page of results. A fancier approach would be to do it in flash, with animation and sound. My son is learning flash animation in school; maybe I could interest him in taking that on.

I’m curious, shcb, why you say that this version of the scenario is too heavily weighted toward the hawks being right. Players can assign whatever probability they want to that, down to and including 0. What about the scenario makes you feel it is weighed to heavily in the hawks’ direction?

This is real world, this happened to my sister. She and her family were visiting, she complained her brakes were making noise, I looked at them as best as I could since time was short and told her the discs needed to be turned and new pads, maybe new discs. Cost, $100-400. Now, auto mechanics is one thing I do have a diploma in so I guess that makes me an “expert”. She took it to a brake place and they convinced her time was critical and the problem was MUCH worse than her other expert (me) had said, to the tune of $1200.

Needless to say she had the work done. Now, did she actually need that extra work done? It really doesn’t matter now, she chose to play it safe and the money is gone, my expert opinion is she got hoodwinked, maybe it was a false diagnosis with no malice intended, but I think a shop manager needed to fill a quota and saw a sucker that thought time was critical.

The next part of the analogy is what was harmed, climate hawks will say it is an investment even if they are wrong. Sure she spent money she didn’t have to spend but look at all the good it did, it kept a couple guys busy for a couple hours, it sold some parts that someone else made keeping them busy and now she is sure her master cylinder is good (was, truck was destroyed in the tornado, sounds like a country song). But she didn’t need to spend that money, now her son won’t have a few thousand dollars he could have used for college, but that’s ok, a three and a half year degree is still pretty good.

Var. 2 $40,000 Cost of evasive economic action

Var. 3 30% Chance to avoid catastrophe if take evasive economic action

Var. 4 Torso aim = catastrophic consequences over an extensive area & time span, some eventual recovery.

Variable 1: 75
Variable 2: $10,000
Variable 3: 25
Variable 4: torso

My Bet: red