Global Warming

[John Feeney]

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http://dieoff.org/page8.htm

"The full list includes a majority of the Nobel laureates in the sciences"

Just throwing this out there. I hate to appeal to knowledge based on authority (these guys must know what they're talking about) as it's something that could never possibly convince me.b

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The knowledge of such a letter is not without value though. It's just one indication of what you'll find as you look further into the climate change issue: that the scientific consensus is now very strong that we are in a period of climate change that is, to a large extent, human caused. As wacki mentioned, there are very few qualified experts who dismiss what the consensus is telling us. The tiny number who do are typically financially backed by big oil or other such corporate interests. Now, you should of course do your own investigating and develop some understanding of the science involved, but without a major time investment you'll still need to rely to some extent on expert opinion. Which experts does it make sense to listen to? The ones who are paid to speak for big business or the ones doing legitimate, peer reviewed research in respected journals? Again, you can find a great deal of quality information from climate scientists on RealClimate. They include there lots of posts and articles on the topics the "skeptics" have challenged.

[Borodog]

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Can you explain how human greenhouse emissions can be reduced, for example by one half (preferably by one order of magnitude), without crippling the world economically?

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I've posted links to all of this stuff before so I'm not going to dig them up again. I'd rather make a website so I don't have to repeat myself 20 times a month.

Scientists at berkeley are very close to coming out with an algae that can be used to fuel all of our cars while taking up only a very tiny amount of farm land to grow.

MIT has tons of battery technology coming out.

Algae factory scrubbers perform amazingly well cutting CO2 emissions to a fraction of what it originally was.

If ITER ever comes online (fusion power) that is zero emissions.

All of this is non-profit research btw.

OCES is zero emissions.

I'm becoming more and more confident that we not only can reduce our emissions but we can eventually become a zero emission country through technology. WIth phytoplankton seeding we should be able to become a negative emission country. The only major barrier IMO is developing a fuel cell catalyst. I strongly believe that all the other pieces can be solved with simply time and money. Even the fuel cell catalyst can be avoided if solid state batteries ever come to fruition.

The very economist you link to wants us to tax $1 a gallon and all of these programs would only cost 5 cents a gallon to fund. I really don't see why it isn't being done. Obviously the tax won't hurt the economy and the extra technology will only spur our economic development.

I'm not going to provide a ton of links because I've done them a dozen times before. I'm just going to create a website instead. Il mostro send me your e-mail cuz I know you are a great source of information despite being overly pessimistic IMO.


I'm 99% sure this is my last post for the day.

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That all sounds great, but it's only half of the equation. How much will these alternative technologies cost? If they are uneconomical, then forcing their use is wasteful, and if you're talking about forcing waste on the entire economy, it's going to cripple the economy.

Also, you're confusing me with someone else again, because I haven't linked to any economists advocating any kind of taxes for anything. You're probably thinking of natedogg.

My point is, and will remain, that when alternative energy technologies and cleaner production technologies become economical, they will be used. Until they are economical, they are uneconomical (by definition). Doing things that are uneconomical is wasteful (by definition). Wasting resources makes people poorer. Wasting resources on a large scale makes lots of people a lot poorer. What the world needs is less poverty, not more.

[FlFishOn]

Look closely at the top graph. Note the temp scaling on the left vertical axis. The progression goes -1.0, -0.5, 0.0, +1.0 all at equal displacements. This is careless at best, discrediting at worst. When I see such attached to 'scientific' work, I trust it not at all. Think of the level of inattention required to f-up such a simple thing as linear scaling on a graph. Sad.

I remember a protest and the TV frontman was dressed up as a thermometer. There were 5 hacks between 5 unit marks, dividing 5 degrees into 6 units. Not too confidence inspiring, eh?

[Borodog]

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Look closely at the top graph. Note the temp scaling on the left vertical axis. The progression goes -1.0, -0.5, 0.0, +1.0 all at equal displacements. This is careless at best, discrediting at worst. When I see such attached to 'scientific' work, I trust it not at all. Think of the level of inattention required to f-up such a simple thing as linear scaling on a graph. Sad.

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I think you're assigning too much weight to a typo. I was just going through my dissertation the other day and discovered a typo I'd never noticed before (and neither did any of the members of my committee). Does that make us all "inattentive"?

Having said that, I would like to see the graph corrected.

[Il_Mostro]

I remember reading (no link, sorry) that someone had done an estimation on how much money we where given by the natural processes going on. How much the earth absorbing and cleaning pollution, CO2 and whatnot is worth, i.e. what it would cost if we should do it on our own. Their conclusion was that what we get for free was at least 10x the total world economy.

Guess I'm not making any real argument here, but I belive the effects of pollution and climate change has the potential to cost large large large amounts of money.

" Doing things that are uneconomical is wasteful (by definition)"
I'm not at all sure this is true. It's only true if the price you are paying are reflecting the real value. And in many cases what we are paying does not reflect the actual value, especially not when it comes to natural resources. When it come to oil for example we are paying the price it takes to get the stuff out of the ground, but not really the price it would take to replace it. The value of a barrell of oil is a lot more than 60$ if you should supply the energy or the material for production in some other way.

[Borodog]

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Which experts does it make sense to listen to? The ones who are paid to speak for big business or the ones doing legitimate, peer reviewed research in respected journals?

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Be careful. I personally think the evidence of global warming both existing and being anthropogenic is overwhelming. But arguments like the above cut both ways. It is very much in the personal interest of scientists fighting for scarce grant funding (and grant funding is always scarce, no matter the level) to attempt to maximize the perceived importance and impact of what they are researching. A great way to do this is to make dire predictions. The more dire the predictions the better in terms of getting, sustaining, and increasing grant funding.

That we may expect scientists employed by corporations to produce results to those corporations' liking is not surprising. What should also not be surprising is that scientists employed by governments produce results to those governments' liking, and what government likes the most is a crisis that allows those in government to justify the extension of their influence, power, and control.

[John Feeney]

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It is very much in the personal interest of scientists fighting for scarce grant funding (and grant funding is always scarce, no matter the level) to attempt to maximize the perceived importance and impact of what they are researching. A great way to do this is to make dire predictions.

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There may be some element of that, but there is also the peer review process and the whole of the sceientific method to put a damper on it. Which is more closely monitored and held accountable -- the work done by scientists through grant funding, published in established, peer reviewed journals, or the work of industry spokespeople?

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What should also not be surprising is that scientists employed by governments produce results to those governments' liking, and what government likes the most is a crisis that allows those in government to justify the extension of their influence, power, and control.

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There's some logic in that, but in practice a lot of complexities probably add to the mix. The current administration has consistently dismissed human caused climate change.

Edit: I guess the bottom line is that I'm simply suggesting putting significantly more stock in the statements of the scientists legitimately working on the problem than in the statements of those paid by industry to argue against human caused climate change? You can't disagree with that, can you?

[FlFishOn]

"Does that make us all "inattentive"?"

Yes, I'm convinced it does. Dozens, perhaps hundreds have looked at this graph and no one caught it. Why? The information in the graph was not their main agenda. It was a club used to promote their agenda.

How many times have I seen major newspapers use million when they meant billion? Plenty. This all goes past editors that don't know numbers, don't care, who knows? It's more than sloppy, it's a sign of people covering a topic where they might not be paying attention, perhaps unqualified.

[Borodog]

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I remember reading (no link, sorry) that someone had done an estimation on how much money we where given by the natural processes going on. How much the earth absorbing and cleaning pollution, CO2 and whatnot is worth, i.e. what it would cost if we should do it on our own. Their conclusion was that what we get for free was at least 10x the total world economy.

Guess I'm not making any real argument here, but I belive the effects of pollution and climate change has the potential to cost large large large amounts of money.

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I think what you're talking about is cost externalities. The argument being that the cost of a barrel of oil is artificially depressed, because the people using it are not paying the costs of pollution. I actually agree with this completely. 100%. What happens is that because the cost is externalized, the resource is used in ways that are uneconomical, i.e. it is wasted, because if the full cost were internalized, the price would go up, and the demand down. Agreed, agreed, agreed. Oil is being wasted by the externalization of pollution costs.

But the solution is not less capitalism, i.e. more government regulations, interventions, and restriction. The solution is more capitalism, i.e. allow the market to internalize the costs of pollution. Statists merely assume the cost must be externalized, and I couldn't disagree more. A completely free market simply would not allow pollution costs to be externalized. I've written about it with regards to private roads before. I think there was a thread by someone titled "Help me understand AC!" where I explained how private roads for example would internalize pollution costs and create incentives to reduce emissions.

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" Doing things that are uneconomical is wasteful (by definition)"
I'm not at all sure this is true.

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But it is true, and true by definition, which is my point. Uneconomical == wasteful.

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It's only true if the price you are paying are reflecting the real value. And in many cases what we are paying does not reflect the actual value, especially not when it comes to natural resources. When it come to oil for example we are paying the price it takes to get the stuff out of the ground, but not really the price it would take to replace it. The value of a barrell of oil is a lot more than 60$ if you should supply the energy or the material for production in some other way.

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That isn't how "value" is determined. How much work or energy went into the creation of a good is completely irrelevent. The only thing that's relevent is how useful it is in satisfying future needs or wants, and how much competition for that good exists in the market.

Frankly, I think fossil fuels are a barbaric and filthy energy source. I am not pessimistic about future energy demands at all, if government allows the market to operate. As the cost of energy goes up and up and up, energy prices, and hence profits, will go up and up and up. This will tempt more and more and more capital into the energy markets. I see no possible fundamental insurmountable technological barriers. The beauty of capitalism is that if energy becomes a bottleneck, if need be, all of the capital of the entire world would eventually be brought to bear in the energy market to break that bottleneck. Literally trillions of dollars of investment, because that will be where all the demand and all the profits are. There's simply no way that humanity working with the available intellectual capital and the technological base that we have now could not solve the "energy problem."

But what really, really, really scares the [censored] out of me, is that I see government turn with hate upon the very providers of what we all need: energy. They see increasing profits as "exploitation". They seek to tax away "windfall profits", i.e. destroy the incentive to invest in the energy industry and supply what we all desperately need. Government will tax away those incentives, install price caps, centrally plan the energy economy (as it has disastrously done for decades) and create endless misery, poverty, and shortages, all the while blaming the "evil capitalists" who are "exploiting the masses". It's happened multiple times in the past (antitrust, the New Deal, etc), and I'm very pessimistic that it will happen again.

[John Feeney]

Have you actually "caught" anything there? I'm not so sure.