Global Warming

TEOTWAWKI: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

Megan McArdle is discussing anthropogenic global warming today, in the old-fashioned sense of "warming" and not merely "some combination of climate conditions we can't predict that will be either colder or warmer or both at once, but very bad." One of her commenters made a sensible point:

I won't give serious consideration to the arguments of any eco-doom prophet who does not first demonstrate that he has invested all his money in a way that hedges against that which he professes to expect.

The more extreme the predictions, the more extreme the investment must be. If these guys haven't spent all their money on -- I don't know -- oxygen tanks, canned food, firearms and property on very high ground, they should shut up. Because there's no internally consistent way that a person could actually believe such things while spending their lives blogging from coastal cities.

Hear, hear. I feel the same way about market bears and bulls who spout off in public: if they're serious, they'd better be able to establish that they're all in, going short or long, according to their prediction. Otherwise I just figure they're making noise, because that's what they get paid to do.

I have severe misgivings about the future. You can tell I'm not that sure what will happen, though, because I've taken only limited and tentative steps to hedge against a societal collapse, beyond the sensible precaution of being old enough that I probably won't live to see it. But here's a list of my favorite post-apocalyptic fiction, anyway, which keeps me mulling over the possibilities:

1. Lucifer’s Hammer (Larry Niven/Jerry Pournelle)
2. A Canticle for Leibowitz (Walter Miller)
3. Millennium (John Varley)
4. The Stand (Stephen King)
5. Malevil (Robert Merle)
6. Farnham’s Freehold (Robert Heinlein)
7. Orphans of the Sky (Heinlein)
8. Tunnel in the Sky (Heinlein)
9. Fiskadoro (Denis Johnson)
10. Slapstick (Kurt Vonnegut)