Jim Manzi: On Global Warming, Climate Change, and What To Do About It

Conversations with Bill Kristol

News, Society & Culture, Government, Politics

4.7 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 1 June 2019

⏱️ 72 minutes

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Summary

How should we think about global warming and climate change? How can we develop a sensible strategy to confront a problem for which the risks are inherently difficult to predict with accuracy? And how might the risks from climate change compare with other threats we'll face in the years ahead? In this Podcast, Jim Manzi, a leading technology entrepreneur, shares his perspective. In contrast to the maximalism we often hear in debates about climate change—“is the world going to end?” or “is this a hoax?”—Manzi urges us to think quantitatively about climate change and to pursue a strategy that would allow us to deal with a range of possible outcomes. Manzi explains why the predictions about climate are inherently uncertain—and warns against taxation that would not meaningfully affect climate change but would empower rivals to the United States like China. Instead, Manzi recommends “technology rather than taxation,” a strategy that emphasizes public and private investment in ambitious research toward technologies that will equip us to meet possible challenges and threats from climate change in the years to come.

Transcript

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0:00.0	And the Welcome to Conversations, I'm Bill Crystal.
0:15.0	Very pleased to be joined today by Jim Manzi.
0:20.0	Once again, our third conversation, I guess, which is on diverse topics which reflects
0:24.9	your diverse expertise and knowledge or at least or lack of no no I wasn't
0:31.0	I could even say that you had genuinely do have a read the discussion on your excellent book, which I do really recommend uncontrolled on experiments and public, the application of the experimental method to public policy is that a fair way
0:42.8	saying it and then did a conversation on artificial intelligence the field you're now
0:48.4	doing you're in as a as a businessman and tech entrepreneur.
0:52.6	But you've written a fair amount about climate change
0:55.5	or global warming, as we used to call it in the old days.
0:58.5	And I thought it would be great to have a conversation
1:00.1	where you just explain to people like me who don't understand the science and don't
1:04.6	know what to think.
1:05.6	Maybe not what to think about it, but at least how to think about it.
1:09.0	So why, incidentally, why is it now climate change in not global warming?
1:13.0	It wasn't?
1:14.0	Well, I think there are probably a lot of rhetorical reasons for that
1:17.0	in an attempt to kind of control the debate by controlling language.
1:21.0	I think that the fundamental underlying phenomenon is
1:24.8	actually global warming, which is you're adding energy to the system and
1:28.4	that raises temperatures. I think the manifestation of it is not always necessarily purely temperature rising, but instability
1:36.3	in climate.
1:37.3	And I think that's the rationale for using that and using that term and debate so that you can't basically dismiss it
	...

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