Moderated Global Warming Discussion

[3point14]

OK, not quickly enough I get.

If I've read Beerina's post right he's talking not so much about teching it, but allowing the market to guide us as opposed to forcing it. By forcing it I mean diverting funds or subsidizing green measures.

I don't know where I stand on this. Some of the really big projects have to come by way of government involvement. Obviously here in Canada, but also in the US. I think there are effective ways of providing stimulus, but the government seems to get wrong more often than get it right. I think it has to do with urgency resulting in short sightedness. It seems like if the government doesn't do a 5 year multimillion dollar study they're bound to get it wrong.

At the same time I think the last time the government undertook projects like this they did fairly well. I'm not that well versed in US history but what I've seen of the projects they did during the depression most worked out well and dug the country out of a hole like they are currently in. Then again I've heard the opposite.

My limited experience with Beerina is that his(?) fervent belief is that every single problem can be resolved with 'the invisible hand of the market'. I'm always somewhat wary of anyone who proposes the same solution for every problem, it makes them sound like an idealogue.

I believe that the 'market' will always take the cheapest option. I believe that the cheapest option is often the diriest. The only way to make it financialy viable to take the 'clean' option is to legislate to make the dirty way the most expensive.

 

[lomiller]

Imagine a person taking exception to being publicly labeled a slanderous term designed to invoke disdain because of the obvious correlation to Nazi apologists

Denier is a well understood generic term for someone for whom no amount of evidence is sufficient. While holocaust deniers certainly fit that description so do AIDS deniers climate change deniers and many others.

 

[Furcifer]

Denier is a well understood generic term for someone for whom no amount of evidence is sufficient. While holocaust deniers certainly fit that description so do AIDS deniers climate change deniers and many others.

I suppose you'd need to do a public poll on this to get a good idea. Outside the internet I believe it's much more specific to the Holocaust. I know before I had heard it here in this forum I had only heard it that way. I'm not familiar with the history of the term but I seem to recall it coming into common usage after the Holocaust. I also know among the Jewish community it's not "generic".

If it makes you feel better to think it's a generic term so be it. It's apparent he doesn't feel that way.

 

[Furcifer]

My limited experience with Beerina is that his(?) fervent belief is that every single problem can be resolved with 'the invisible hand of the market'. I'm always somewhat wary of anyone who proposes the same solution for every problem, it makes them sound like an idealogue.

I believe that the 'market' will always take the cheapest option. I believe that the cheapest option is often the diriest. The only way to make it financialy viable to take the 'clean' option is to legislate to make the dirty way the most expensive.

Well there's a difference between "cheapest" and "economically feasible" but yah that's how things tend to go.

You still have to wonder if private companies can't turn a profit how can a responsible government take it on? I mean we're talking about huge projects add in the usual government inefficiency and that's a lot of money. Obviously the budget needs to be adjusted to accommodate such projects and aside from the US military budget I'm not sure what else can get cut. Granted I don't follow US politics close enough to know so there may be many, I'm ot sure. But they have to be big, really big, to do things to the infrastructure.

And while the government is spending that money they have to keep the economy strong enough to support it. And I've got to admit I'm no economist but in this global economy don't you need an export to maintain that stability? If you could start a tourism industry based on people coming to see a high speed train or nuclear plant being built that would be great, otherwise I think your GDP falls and your economy slows.

At least I think that's some of the risk of not allowing the market to dictate and instead trying to stimulate it in another direction. I'm not sure you can create a green revolution, it's something you have to let happen.

To tie this all in, when I as active and very much an alarmist I was all about the science, and what the science was saying. Moving away from that now I can see how global warming has a lot more to do with economics. There isn't going to be some paradigm shift where everyone stops what they are doing, and grabs a shovel and starts building nuclear power plants. If we can't afford it it's going to have to wait. And because it's a global issue that means the whole planet has to afford it or we're all going to have to wait.

 

[metzomagic]

Imagine a person taking exception to being publicly labeled a slanderous term designed to invoke disdain because of the obvious correlation to Nazi apologists

This one always kills me. You get to read it dozens of times in the comments per post even, over at places like wattsupwiththat. It invariably goes something like this:

"How can you call me a climate change denier when anyone can see that the climate changes all the time?"

That's because it's a bald-faced straw man being thrown up. People who are well versed in the science behind AGW are not calling the skeptics 'climate change deniers'. They're calling them anthropogenic climate change (or global warming, GW) deniers, i.e. they deny that mankind has anything to do with the current rapid climate change the planet is undergoing. The AGW is implicit, given the topic under discussion. Even worse is the claim that they are being equated with holocaust deniers. Now they've (intentionally) gone and left off not only the 'A', but also the 'GW'. But that's one of the things AGW deniers are very good at: erecting straw men.

 

[Trakar]

[qimg]http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/webdata/ccgg/trends/co2_trend_mlo.png[/qimg]

The "line of best fit" through the above graph represents an approximate increase of 1% per year.

382+(1%)=385.82 (2008)
385.82+(1%)=389.67 (2009)
389.67+(1%)=393.57 (2010)
393.57+(1%)=397.51

That's an approximate increase of 1% per year. The actual numbers are approximately (385) (386) (388) (391). A little less than 1% per year.

So if I've misrepresented anything it's that the increase is a little less than 1% per year.

You're not really making your case here (I'm assuming given your proclivity for overestimating things of this nature pointing out it "isn't as bad as I said it was" wasn't your intent)

Even when the numbers are right there for you, you prefer to make them up to incorrectly assert a linear fit.

from the data linked at the Mauna Loa monitoring site:
(ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_annmean_mlo.txt)
2000 369.41
2001 371.07 0.45% change from 2000
2002 373.16 0.56% change from 2001
2003 375.81 0.71% change from 2002
2004 377.54 0.46% change from 2003
2005 379.78 0.59% change from 2004
2006 381.86 0.54% change from 2005
2007 383.73 0.49% change from 2006
2008 385.54 0.47% change from 2007
2009 387.35 0.47% change from 2008
2010 389.78 0.63% change from 2009

There is no 1% per annum, linear "best fit" to the data, even at this grossly truncated segment level of examination (and as a general RoT, the smaller the data sampling and the more averaged the numbers in that sampling, the easier it is to force a linear curve onto the data). At the scale of climate relevent time periods (3 X 20 = 60 years) there is a slight apparent geometric progression taking place, and if this is coupled to a multiple century (3 x100 = 300 years) data plotting, a logarithmic nature is more apparent in the data character.

 

[lomiller]

lol, yes I said 1% increase in ppm when I meant to say 1% increase in rate.

I'm obviously scientifically illiterate.

Your statement in question was:

the increase has been linear and approximately 1% per year.

There is no evidence whatsoever that you were attempting to sat the rate was increasing by 1% per year, and when people pointed out that 1% per years is not a linear increase you argued for 2 pages (so far) that your statement was correct. This is pretty much a classic example of a denier.

 

[keale]

My limited experience with Beerina is that his(?) fervent belief is that every single problem can be resolved with 'the invisible hand of the market'. I'm always somewhat wary of anyone who proposes the same solution for every problem, it makes them sound like an idealogue.

I believe that the 'market' will always take the cheapest option. I believe that the cheapest option is often the diriest. The only way to make it financialy viable to take the 'clean' option is to legislate to make the dirty way the most expensive.

You are correct the bottom line for the market is profit and with that in mind the market will find the cheapest option good or bad. Thats part of the reason why things are made in China its the cheapest option with the highest profit margin. China is now seeing the effects of industrial pollution and I suspect in the coming decades will dearly regret some of the things its doing now.

 

[Furcifer]

There is no evidence whatsoever that you were attempting to sat the rate was increasing by 1% per year, and when people pointed out that 1% per years is not a linear increase you argued for 2 pages (so far) that your statement was correct. This is pretty much a classic example of a denier.

The increase is approximately 1% per year. That's 1%, then 1% then 1%. It doesn't change and by definition is linear. You can't deny this.

I can't believe I'm explaining straight lines in a science forum.

Anyhow, I inferred incorrectly it was the ppm, not the rate of increase. The fact that it doesn't matter and you've brought it from another thread, and it's totally off topic suggests how little you have to argue.

 

[3point14]

Well there's a difference between "cheapest" and "economically feasible" but yah that's how things tend to go.

You still have to wonder if private companies can't turn a profit how can a responsible government take it on? I mean we're talking about huge projects add in the usual government inefficiency and that's a lot of money. Obviously the budget needs to be adjusted to accommodate such projects and aside from the US military budget I'm not sure what else can get cut. Granted I don't follow US politics close enough to know so there may be many, I'm ot sure. But they have to be big, really big, to do things to the infrastructure.

And while the government is spending that money they have to keep the economy strong enough to support it. And I've got to admit I'm no economist but in this global economy don't you need an export to maintain that stability? If you could start a tourism industry based on people coming to see a high speed train or nuclear plant being built that would be great, otherwise I think your GDP falls and your economy slows.

At least I think that's some of the risk of not allowing the market to dictate and instead trying to stimulate it in another direction. I'm not sure you can create a green revolution, it's something you have to let happen.

To tie this all in, when I as active and very much an alarmist I was all about the science, and what the science was saying. Moving away from that now I can see how global warming has a lot more to do with economics. There isn't going to be some paradigm shift where everyone stops what they are doing, and grabs a shovel and starts building nuclear power plants. If we can't afford it it's going to have to wait. And because it's a global issue that means the whole planet has to afford it or we're all going to have to wait.

'Cheapest' was a convenient shorthand, but you get the idea.

I don't doubt that it's economically tricky to implement what's necessary to reduce carbon emissions. In economic terms it's a very long term cost/benefit analysis, but with the (non monetary) costs not paid by those gaining the (economic) benefit.

My actual belief is that too many people have too many vested interests to make the necessary changes in lifestyle and economy to fix the problem and that we'll just have to deal with the consequences as best we can when we get to them. I don't think this is the best plan. If it were up to me then we'd be building nuclear power stations and converting seawater into hydrogen to fuel our cars, but as you say, the economic system we live in won't allow this to happen as it's not deemed profitable enough.

I personally think it's the economic system that's broken (which is one reason Beerina and I will never agree, he thinks it's broken in the opposite direction) and broken in such a way as it's not fixable at all, too many vested interests in places of power for that.

Basically, we should change but we can't so we're screwed.

 

[Furcifer]

This one always kills me. You get to read it dozens of times in the comments per post even, over at places like wattsupwiththat. It invariably goes something like this:

"How can you call me a climate change denier when anyone can see that the climate changes all the time?"

I'm not on that site very often but the only comment I've seen in regards to the term was somebody that was Jewish that found it offensive.

That's because it's a bald-faced straw man being thrown up. People who are well versed in the science behind AGW are not calling the skeptics 'climate change deniers'. They're calling them anthropogenic climate change (or global warming, GW) deniers, i.e. they deny that mankind has anything to do with the current rapid climate change the planet is undergoing. The AGW is implicit, given the topic under discussion. Even worse is the claim that they are being equated with holocaust deniers. Now they've (intentionally) gone and left off not only the 'A', but also the 'GW'. But that's one of the things AGW deniers are very good at: erecting straw men.

The term itself is a strawman and confuses the issue. Very few people actually "deny" global warming, anthropogenic or otherwise. I don't know most of the other "generic" deniers, but from my understanding Holocaust deniers flat out deny the event ever happened. Unlike climate change that almost everyone that's been labelled a "denier" accepts.

As for the "A" I wouldn't worry too much about it's absence. Sometimes it's just easier to not write. You're thinking about it in the wrong terms, again for the most part people accept the "A". I agree though at times it's dropped from the discussion for strategic reasons.

 

[DC]

I'm not on that site very often but the only comment I've seen in regards to the term was somebody that was Jewish that found it offensive.



----

so? does he believe the word denier is exlusively for Holocaust denial?
if he believes so, that is his problem, and i could not care less if he is offended by it.
what are you trying to imply with this nonsense anecdote?

 

[Buckaroo]

The increase is approximately 1% per year. That's 1%, then 1% then 1%. It doesn't change and by definition is linear. You can't deny this.

Nope. I do deny this. It's exponential.

 

[lomiller]

You are correct the bottom line for the market is profit and with that in mind the market will find the cheapest option good or bad.

Well, not always, they could also go for better quality at the same price. The issue here is remember is that one way to reduce prices is to externalize costs. In a free market system it’s essential that the producer pays all costs and builds them into the price the buyer pays. If this doesn’t happen you end up with a distorted market that will not give the benefits that come with a free market.

Let’s say I start a company to dispose of industrial, but instead of doing it property I save money by dumping it in people’s back yards. I’ve actually increased the total cost of dealing with the waste but because I’ve transferred those costs to the people who own the yards my own costs are lower and I can undercut my competitor’s prices and take their market share. While the working free market provides evolves towards more and better stuff being produced so there is more to go around, the externality riddled market goes the other direction.

In the case of fossil fuels this is exactly what’s going on. A large part of the costs are not being paid by the producers allowing them to pass this subsidy onto consumers encouraging them to use more and the companies producing the fossil fuels to make more. The problem is that these costs don’t go away rather they are paid by future generations and people in other places, so just like the waste disposal example above they are form of market distortion that increases the total costs people pay and reduce their wealth.

 

[Furcifer]

'Cheapest' was a convenient shorthand, but you get the idea.

I don't doubt that it's economically tricky to implement what's necessary to reduce carbon emissions. In economic terms it's a very long term cost/benefit analysis, but with the (non monetary) costs not paid by those gaining the (economic) benefit.

My actual belief is that too many people have too many vested interests to make the necessary changes in lifestyle and economy to fix the problem and that we'll just have to deal with the consequences as best we can when we get to them. I don't think this is the best plan. If it were up to me then we'd be building nuclear power stations and converting seawater into hydrogen to fuel our cars, but as you say, the economic system we live in won't allow this to happen as it's not deemed profitable enough.

I personally think it's the economic system that's broken (which is one reason Beerina and I will never disagree, he thinks it's broken in the opposite direction) and broken in such a way as it's not fixable at all, too many vested interests in places of power for that.

Basically, we should change but we can't so we're screwed.

I don't know, maybe the powers that be are heavily invested and don't want change. I usually point out however most of the forecasting done by companies has seen the coming green revolution and a lot of the oil and coal companies are actually heavily invested in green technology. I've never seen a study done but alot of the big wind farms and solar farms are owned by power companies that own all kinds of sources. They've been diversified for a while. Of course they can only gamble so much and investing too heavily in alternatives or renewables drives down the price making it harder to return a profit.

But yah, we're screwed. We're screwed assuming the market can't get us to where we need to be, and we're talking about the World market. I don't see how you can expect China or India to give up it's development and start building high speed rails and nuclear power plants. They're going to suck all of the oil out of the planet and if that means climate catastrophe so be it.

I'm not convinced of it, but I accept it as a possibility. From what I've gathered we're still looking at about a +1.5 degree increase in average global temperature before we get this under control. I don't think that will screw us, but maybe it will.

And that in a nutshell is part of my move towards a more skeptical view of AGW. If we have to fight the market we're screwed. I think it's no more likely we'll come up with a solution to beat it economically than technologically. If I had to pick one and run with, I'd do what I always did playing Axis and Allies; save up, roll for tech, and hope I got nuclear long range bombers before I got invaded.

 

[Furcifer]

Nope. I do deny this. It's exponential.

*sigh

No it isn't, it's a constant1%. You're thinking of ppm, that's exponential.

 

[3point14]

I don't know, maybe the powers that be are heavily invested and don't want change. I usually point out however most of the forecasting done by companies has seen the coming green revolution and a lot of the oil and coal companies are actually heavily invested in green technology. I've never seen a study done but alot of the big wind farms and solar farms are owned by power companies that own all kinds of sources. They've been diversified for a while. Of course they can only gamble so much and investing too heavily in alternatives or renewables drives down the price making it harder to return a profit.

But yah, we're screwed. We're screwed assuming the market can't get us to where we need to be, and we're talking about the World market. I don't see how you can expect China or India to give up it's development and start building high speed rails and nuclear power plants. They're going to suck all of the oil out of the planet and if that means climate catastrophe so be it.

I'm not convinced of it, but I accept it as a possibility. From what I've gathered we're still looking at about a +1.5 degree increase in average global temperature before we get this under control. I don't think that will screw us, but maybe it will.

And that in a nutshell is part of my move towards a more skeptical view of AGW. If we have to fight the market we're screwed. I think it's no more likely we'll come up with a solution to beat it economically than technologically. If I had to pick one and run with, I'd do what I always did playing Axis and Allies; save up, roll for tech, and hope I got nuclear long range bombers before I got invaded.

About right, yes. The only way that the planet can manage change is if it seems to almost everyone that nothing's changed at all. Tricky that.

 

[Buckaroo]

*sigh

No it isn't, it's a constant1%. You're thinking of ppm, that's exponential.

You wrote: "The increase is approximately 1% per year. That's 1%, then 1% then 1%."

A rate x percent per period of any quantity applied successively over n periods results in an exponential change. It's how, for example, compound interest works.

 

[Furcifer]

You wrote: "The increase is approximately 1% per year. That's 1%, then 1% then 1%."

A rate x percent per period of any quantity applied successively over n periods results in an exponential change. It's how, for example, compound interest works.

No, this is a fixed rate mortgage, it doesn't change, it's constant, hence linear.

We're talking about the rate, it's fixed at 1%. The principle increase exponentially, the rate is linear. (not the delta, or change)

 

[Furcifer]

About right, yes. The only way that the planet can manage change is if it seems to almost everyone that nothing's changed at all. Tricky that.

Well I think it's got to change a lot for Asia and very little for us before we can all begin to make change.

If we stop using oil and coal I'm almost positive the price will go down and Asia will use it all anyways. No net gain until all of those economies go nuclear.