I don't feel well about the precautionary principle - at all!
There is a fairly light hearted cartoon that attempts to mock the failure to do anything.
That is funny, but naive.
Because 1) there is no quantified risk analysis that I know of that has any voracity.
The global climate science assumption is single sided - global climate change is that it is all going to be all quite bad. Eg. we are given egs. a flooded Kiribati, and a lost barrier reef (for Australia's benefit/loss) These do seem pitiful losses, and more wilder calls that within ten or so years all the East coasts rivers and dams in Australia will run dry. ...IF only
So by a similar, but reversed assumption we can also conjecture, will up, or even equally imagine some astounding benefits that global warming will bring. Far greater goods than any of the perceived evils.
• We know for instance that only slight increased levels of CO² have astounding outcomes for biomass, and plant growth. Something like a 10% increase in available CO², yield biomass returns in excess of 40%
• We know that the congested Straights of Malacca, and the shipping bottlenecks in both Panama & Suez will become a thing of the past when both the North West passage AND the Arctic-Siberian route become permanently ice-breakable. Strategically both wonderful outcomes or routes, as both transit only nation. Russia or Canada, instead to the host of countries that impede & restrict international shipping. Besides, both routes the China-USA, China-Europe journey's are shorter.
• We know that a warmer planet occurred during a period when the Sahel was an extensive grassland & Savannah. The Sahara is twice the landmass of Australia, three times the size of the US prairies, and double that of the Soviet Steppes - at this stage totally un-farmed. It surmised that the Sahara's aquifers were all filled in this warmer, greener time too.
• We know that the warmer Taiga, and the thaw of the permafrost, means the wheat growing seasons will be lengthened sufficiently to feed billions of people - due to this output boost to two of the world's bigger breadbaskets.
But global "scientists" breathe not a murmur of these? Why not?
BUT
Because 2) The costs of bio-engineering a planet on the scale that global scientists point to is enormous.
To fully cool the planet, almost all coal fired electricity, internal combustion engines, gas heating would have to be stopped. Of course this is an unsellable ask. It would mean denying India, China, South America & South East Asia to forgo any advance into modernity. This could thin the earth's anthropogenic CO² blanket, in sufficient amounts to begin making educated guesses as to the efficacy of the method. ... IF any/only
So the sell has been softer. In the most case "opportunity cost" is all that has been pitched. But an opportunity cost, is in fact a real cost to human development.
IF...only we install solar panels, or wind generators. Use clean gases. Ignore the Hadley cell.
In the simplest Punnet Square of the simplest risk analysis IF ... is the missing lurgy. CAN WE BIO-ENGINEER A PLANET? We truly don't know.
In over 100 years the planet has not agreed to a sardine catch quota. The incentive to cheat is too great. This impacts only maritime nations. How do we expect to obtain a REAL global climate with similar (trust) agreement, with every single nation on earth?
IF ... global catastrophic warming is averted - all good.
But in all other 15 outcomes the expected outcome for the planet is worse off for trying!
The biggest catastrophe mankind faces - is if we TRY and we are incapable of global bio-engineering the planet i.e. we fail, and Global Warming is catastrophic.
The complete opposite to what that cartoon is lightly suggesting.
That is not to say the evidence of catastrophic outcomes to man due to global warming is even all THAT good!
We know that for most of the Paleozoic period CO² was X 10 - 15 the levels it is now, and life thrived! Both bio-mass and animal life. (This was when all our vast carbon energy deposits amassed & accumulated. ) The animals didn't all drown. Hardly so! That is a figment!
Yet the climate sciences swoon at low decile percentile increases above out current 390 ppm.
Life will be really great when we get to 6000 ppm, as it once did!
It is interesting to note [I say this only as an aside] but all man's greatest myths, both Western, & all modern, but also ancient have been eschatological!
Someone, of extremely high status, has an answer as to how to avert it all in the end. The machinations of the complexities of the unknown! IF ... only
It is a trope that has kept the coffers of Shamans & Sadducees , priests & fakirs overflowing, from the time Amenhotep's singular God assumed (an ivory inlaid) flail or when Zadok first donned a funny hat, (in braided gold), or the full ivory mask of the Benin sage who controlled the divination of Oba's witchcraft, or Quetzalcoatl in his turquoise, gold & silver inlaid yet terrifying mask adorned with the finest parrot feathers, and most regal jaguar hide from all the jungles, ... all made their direct or indirect human sacrifices.
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