Assessing risk is very difficult and it is a question that confronts us at all turns. In some cases, government has decided to penalize people who take some risks. You have to wear a seat belt while driving and you have to have proof of insurance. Both of these actions are penalized by fines. Driving under the influence can be a fine or can be jail time.
Smoking outside of designated areas can cost you money in this day and age as well, as can selling cigarettes or alcohol to minors. Governments around the country have taxed cigarettes much more heavily than other products.
The question is: just how dangerous is it to smoke? This is a difficult question to answer and the answer must be stated in statistical ways, which is to say we do not have proof like we have in mathematics, but instead confidence levels and correlations.
This means it is possible for a smoker to live to be 90 and die from some cause not related to smoking, just as it is possible for someone who quits smoking and exercises regularly to die at the age of 52 like Dr. Jim Fixx, a physician who advocated a life of regular strenuous exercise.
Here is a simple metaphor, and I admit it is likely too simple. Think of life as a game. The rules are just about the same for everyone, but we are all rolling our own set of dice. Certain risks are so big that you are opting for a set of dice that really do hate you, if I may borrow a joke from the great nerd cartoonist John Kovalic.
Still, there is wild variation. John Banner, the actor who played Sgt. Schultz on Hogan's Heroes, died just a few years after the series was over at the age of 63 from am abdominal hemorrhage. It would be easy and likely fair to blame him early death on his weight. But consider Leon Askin, another fat actor from Hogan's Heroes. He was big all his life and lived to be 97.
(Two other coincidences in the lives of Banner and Askin. Both were Austrian Jews. One part of that is not such a coincidence, since the regular actors playing German soldiers and/or Nazis on Hogan's Heroes were Jewish.)
This randomness is often used by people who want to downplay the risks of smoking, many of them in the pay of the tobacco industry, others addicts of the product. Among the addicts who likely took no cash from the tobacco industry to complain about the unfair restrictions on their habit are the great statistician Sir Ronald Fisher, the novelist and strong believer in evil government ineptness Ayn Rand and the musician and composer Joe Jackson, not to be confused with the father of The Jackson Five and daughters Janet and LaToya.
Which brings us to climate change. Again, this is a matter of statistical risk, not certain mathematical risk. Many of the arguments against any human cause for a warming climate have a stance similar to the arguments against links between smoking and human health risks. More than analogies, many people who were in the pay of the tobacco lobby are now in the pay of the petroleum industry.
To steal a joke from a friend who is a public defender, these people sell reasonable doubt at a reasonable price.
Regular readers will know I took a few months on this blog to look at climate data and came to the conclusion that the climate is changing and in the great majority of places, the climate is warming, in some places at catastrophic rates. As for human causes, to accept this we have to pile statistics upon statistics. That said, the model for the increase in CO2 is a much better predictor than most statistical models and is showing no signs of slowing down as humans continue to consider their addiction to fossil fuels a God given right.
Again to quote Mr. Kovalic, when it comes to the climate, our dice really do hate us. It's time for all of us to try to do what we can to change the set of dice that will determine the future for the generations that will still be here when we are gone.
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