Describing an analysis by Bickel and Lane, Neil Reynolds of the Globe and Mail wrote today about global warming:
'So what have we done to lessen the destructive consequences of this impending and certain environmental disaster? In a paper released earlier this month, two climate change authorities reckon that we - meaning the world - have achieved zilch.'
There is then a discussion about how carbon emissions have continued to rise over the last 2 decades.
Yet, to make this claim, they really should provide evidence of where the world would have been without the efforts made so far. And in the real world, this is extremely difficult to do, in a compelling way, since we do not have the option of running an experimental control.
This is relevant to a range of current issues - such as in whether to provide aid to Africa, initiate government stimulus spending during the 'credit crunch', or whether carbon offsets provide 'additionality'.
In our decision-making, we need to be clear about how we would likely make a difference to a problem. We should also build our best appropriate measurements to judge whether it really did make a difference (comparing actual outcome with most likely outcome if we did not do this action).
