However, it is true that if there is already too much CO2 in the atmosphere, and the time constant for CO2 is a large as many believe, the tub has already overflowed, and we are now filling the basement! So, we need to go out and find a big pump to get the water out.

See where analogies lead us?

I can’t go into details about why its “to late” to act (ie mitigate) right now, but if people demand an answer to this, I’ll supply it later. I’ve been meaning to do this for a while.

I’ve never really considered the IPCC economic forcasts. Those are somewhat separate from temperature forecasts.

If they overestimate– and the way to do that is monitor the fidelity of the sorts of projections that can be monitored– I suspect it’s unintentional. It would be interesting to see if some any blogger has posted their own or IPCC proofs that any previous projections were either not falsified, or validated with a test of with sufficient power to reduce the β error to 5%. I’ve never seen such a thing, but who knows?

What I do see over and over is proofs that the trend of 0C/century is falsified for recent times. Yes. It is. But I don’t think that’s the important question. The question is: So what is the trend?

I regard myself as a “sceptic” in the global warming debate, not because I don’t think that man is able to alter climate nor because I don’t think CO2 causes warming. In fact I find plenty of evidence, not least in historical records, of significant change of regional climate caused by human behaviour and I also find it very plausible that the primary impact of CO lies in the 2 – 4 W /m2 region.

Where I disagree with the IPCC is

1) that I believe they have overestimated climate sensitivity

2) that I am almost certain they have significantly overestimated the lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere (which I find to be somewhere in the 30 to 50 year range)

3) that I am certain that they have done truly incompetent economical forecasts. If ones faith, as in the case of the IPCC leadership, leads you to think that man will return to a coal based economy by 2100 and to combine that with forecasts of much higher economic growth rates than anything seen in the 20th century, even in the OECD countries, you will have to neglect the very basic premise of why we have had economic development at all. To a large part economic development is driven by technology (with some contributions from specialization, organisational and institutional development). To believe that the economy will spurt on ever faster while we stop the development of new technologies is flabbergastingly stupid, and especially so when currents trends point in the reverse direction.

4) that I believe that the policy this “policy neutral” organisation pushes is a road to hell rather than salvation. I sincerely believe that short term regulation of the economy will impede our long term goal of building a sustainable society, including our ability to develop new tehcnologies, to adapt to climate change (of whatever sort). The “statist” or “technocratic” ideology of the IPCC leads the organisation and the world in the wrong direction.

By the way, I did put some numbers to the earth rotation vs temperature. It shows that to see the kind of speed shifts we’ve seen in the last 9 years, the sea would have to be roughly 1 K colder down to 700 m. But I doubt the whole idea as the needed sea level increase would be easily detected and I think it hasn’t been, so something else is also in play…

If we don’t how are we to gauge the correct level of response, or select which method are most suitable?

Perfect! in the US we continue to let a privaledged few, live on faultlines ( SanFran), live in fire zones, ( socal)
live in huricanne hit zones ( NOLA), live in drought susceptible areas ( Georgia), without any regard for the burden
they place on others in the future.

Do you have any opinions on the longer term data?

No, I really don’t have much of an opinion one way or the other on the longer term data. I read the Miskoczi issue. I can’t speculate over what happened at NASA. Also, I skimmed the paper, but it’s not my area. So… I don’t really understand it!

Throwing the baby out with the bathwater is used here too. As you know, having been born in a developing nation, and lived there for my formative years, I too am concerned with harming the economy in ways that hurt the poor. When I was a child, I saw way too many little boys running in the streets wearing nothing but t-shirts. (And I mean nothing but the t-shirt.) I saw kids begging in the streets daily. I know how the maids with few economic choices were often treated in home.

I am aware of both the downside of ruining the world economy and the downside of global warming.

We don’t need bathtub analogies to show why and how poverty is bad.

I can’t fix your short term memory. If your tub does overflow, what I would advise is:
1) Have a plumber come in and check your overflow to make sure it’s large enough and drains freely.
2) Buy a gameboy so you can play Triptych in the bathroom while keeping an eye on things.
3) Never start filling the tub unless you want to take a bath.

Actually, I’d love to hear what you think about AGW. I happen to think it’s probably real and have said so repeatedly, here, at climate audit and in comments at other blogs.

I’m interested in knowing how fast or severe it’s likely to be. I think this is important for planning.

I’m a bit amused at the sorts of arguments pro and con I read. I think the “Tetris-Bathtub” analogy was opaque, a bit silly, and could support the Lomborgian view of economics better than the alternate view.

But, as to any underlying economic argument: I think it’s useful to take some steps now to address warming.

Heck, I’ve been for energy conservation and alternate energy since the mid-70s. My undergraduate senior project was on solar energy. Many engineers who concentrated in the thermal-fluids side of mechanical engineering were motivated by the need to conserve, develop alternate technologies etc.

Who do you think does the work to develope, refine and implement these technologies?

Michael Tobis: doing “nothing” is akin to allow the process to continue, that so far have solved most environmental problems, lifted billions out of poverty, and has led us to a point not far from where renewables can compete with fossile fuel.

Now you and the IPCC, Al Gore and others, state that we face a risk so great that we must control in detail the emissions of CO2 all over the world. Doing so on short term requires lots of interference with the economy. How can you all be sure that by doing so, you wont stop the wonderful progress humanity makes each and every day?

How do you know that you wont throw out the baby with the bath water, to use a swedish saying?

(And “doing nothing” may include a lot of sensible stuff such as switching taxes from income to fossile fuel, investment in research etc, just not Kyoto style central planning.)

The world comes with no warranties attached.

A rogue comet or meteor could appear at any time and cause much more devastation. We cannot control what might happen but we can adapt. Ultimately, that is our only real option.

You forgot to mention that the Paleocene-Eocene episode happened over 20,000 years – rapid in geological terms but longer all recorded human history. We will run out of fossil fuels long before then. That episode is not a justification for immediate drastic action. You also forgot to mention that the earth’s climate ‘corrected’ itself which provides pretty compelling evidence that poorly understood negative feedback mechanisms exist.

That said, that does not mean we should not keep an eye on things and adopt prudent measures designed to reduce our ecological footprint without obsessing about CO2. Balance is important.

Consider the Paleocene-Eocene boundary. Who broke the valve then?

The world comes with no warranties attached.

All, I don’t deny that this problem must be weighted against other problems. I simply question the soundness of the methods doing the weighting in the Lomborgian view, which seems to be the preferred paradigm here.

If the physical and biogeochemical world works the way we think it does, any understanding that CO2 and similar global perturbations are negligible is based on an obviously inappropriate theory. That is to say your Tetris score is not the whole story.

Next time the hands should stay in shot longer too. Like show the dangerous overflowing while they’re being washed.