politics

Pawoopsie Bridge Might Be Out (so we must act on climate change?)

107 Comments

There seems to be something about climate change that spawns really stupid analogies. Today’s is penned by a William Skaggs posting at Scientific America. Get this:

Larry Jones is driving the minivan across the Utah desert on Highway 163, with Sally in the passenger seat and the two kids dozing in the back. According to the map they are approaching the town of Pawoopsie. The radio is on, tuned to a Pawoopsie station that plays country music, but the reception isn’t very good. Suddenly the music cuts off and an announcer’s voice comes in: “static–one sixty-three–static–Pawoopsie–static–bridge collapsed–static–highway patrol says–static”, and then nothing but static.

Sally sits up. “Did he say that the highway bridge in Pawoopsie collapsed?”

Larry shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“It sounded like that’s what he was saying.”

“I don’t know; too much static.”

“Aren’t we getting close to Pawoopsie?”

“Yeah, should be a couple more miles.”

Larry, don’t you think you should slow down?”

“Why?”

“Well, if the bridge has collapsed . . .”

“Are you sure that the bridge has collapsed?”

“No, but . . .”

“Then why should I slow down?”

Here’s the thing about that story: it’s not at all hard to understand. You can tell it to 100 people, and 99 of them will realize that Larry Jones is being stupid. It doesn’t take a brilliant mind to figure out that when you’re hurtling toward possible catastrophe, only a fool would refuse to slow down and start paying attention.

Whaaatttts?!?!?!

Does William Skaggs really think that 99 out of 100 people would ‘know’ that it is stupid to not slow down a minivan a couple of miles ahead of a collapsed bridge?

Let’s assume we are 100% certain the bridge has collaped. Does William Skaggs think the bridge won’t be visible at least 400 yards before the minivan reaches it? Does William Skaggs think the Larry the driver doesn’t have eyes? Does William Skaggs think minivan’s don’t have brakes that can stop within 400 yards? Does William Skaggs think Larry’s minivan is ‘hurtling’ at break neck speed through those mysteriously dense vision obscuring fogs that frequently materialize in the Utah desert making the bridge invisible?

Heck, even assuming Larry the driver is particularly short sighted, his mini-van brakes work no better than those on the average train and he is actually driving his child-transporting minivan sufficiently fast to warrant the verb “hurtling”, does William Skaggs think that a country western radio host and the highway patrol both know the bridge is out, but road workers will not have put out those orange cones or “road closed” signs that might indicate the bridge is out?

Or… does William Skaggs think the ominous static on the radio means the bridge was taken out by invading “War of the Worlds” type Martians and Larry and Sally should slow down and be on the look out for signs of Marvin?

Or maybe they should slow down because the bridge collapse might be due to invaders from the moon?

On the one hand, this stupid analogy tells us nothing about what we should do about climate change. But it sure tells us that William Skaggs has absolutely no sense of proportion when hearing possibly bad news. The fact is that 99.999% of sane people who hear this story will continue driving at a normal speed until the bridge is in sight. Sane people would probably also try to find a radio station with less static so they can grove to the tunes.

107 thoughts on “Pawoopsie Bridge Might Be Out (so we must act on climate change?)”

  2. I think a better fit would be hearing only “static–Pawoopsie–static–bridge–static” before leaving home, and deciding to take the amphibious car rather than the minivan. Just in case, you know. Don’t be concerned with the fact that the amphibious car doesn’t have a rear seat, and the kiddies will be forced to crowd themselves in amongst the baggage. Oh, and the amphibious car only goes 30 mph max.

    But if the bridge really is out, then they won’t have to go around, and they’ll feel like they’re ahead.

  3. I think they are trying to replicate Greg Craven’s cartoonish you tube false dichotomy. At least Greg made his daft video vaguely relevant to climate, but even with that it was still complete nonsense.

  5. Meteors exists and have exterminated life in huge quantities before and will do so again … maybe even next week.

    Therefore only an idiot would object to spending 100 Trillion on a planetary defense system.

  7. It might be one of those dastardly bridges that do a 180 turn while you are driving on it, so you end up going back where you came from.

  10. I think it is safe to say that even with no warming from the Pawoopsie radio stations Larry would see whether the bridge on Highway 163 was out in time to stop his mini-van.

  11. To quote Anthony Watts, “Oooh, the stupid, it burns!” It is hard to believe how Scientific American has become nothing more than a tabloid in recent years. Very sad…

  12. I think this illustrates mainly that the world is a more “interesting” place with extremists in it. The word interesting being used along the lines of the Chinese curse “may you live in interesting time”.

  14. Ray,
    Except if they are trying to communicate some notion about deciding under uncertainty, the situation confronted by the driver in the mini-van is precisely the opposite of what the author intends. If a real driver in a real minivan was confronted with this information and the driver was rational, the would continue driving at a speed the that is reasonable given road conditions.

    Does that mean remaining attentive to road hazards– like wildlife, pets, bikers or anything else that might appear in the road? Yes. (I brake for squirrels and flocks of geese around here.)

    Does that mean slowing down on sharp turns? Yes. Does that mean making sure your brakes work in the mountains? Yes. Does that mean carrying water in the desert? Yes. Blankets when driving from Urbana to Chicago in a jalopy for Thanksgiving break? Yes. Watching out for potholes? Avoiding tailgating? All of these are reasonable precautions.

    But slowing down because a bridge miles down the road is out? Even if you are 100% certain it’s out, that’s freakin’ nuts.

    If your going slow enough to break for Wile E. Coyote or Road Runner, you are going slow enough to stop for the bridge when you see it– which you will. Proper road construction requires bridges to be reasonably visible.

    Carrick is correct that this metaphor shows how “interesting” extremists can be. Because slowing down miles ahead of this bridge because you think it “might” be out shouldn’t seem like a rational suggestion even if you believe we should slow down CO2 emissions because of climate change!

  16. I strongly suspect what people have to react to in their everyday lives and that they have good and relatively certain information about they are not stupid. That is why individual freedom in making those decisions works best.

    What I find anecdotally, however, is that a lot of people who otherwise would be considered well informed and thoughtful can be stupid and here I am talking about AGW. A lot of that stupidity comes from what I think was the intent of the Cook survey and that is these “informed” people hear the part about the scientific consensus that we have had anthropogenic warming, but that appears to be the end of their “scientific” knowledge and what takes over is their political leanings that then make undocumented connections of that warming to just about all adverse and detrimental climate occurrences. Some of these informed people do not even want to accept the recorded instrumental mean global temperature increases over the past 100 years because they think that the it is too small to cause all the problems that in their worlds are connected to it.

    The other side of that coin is those who hear someone of their persuasion call AGW

  17. I strongly suspect what people have to react to in their everyday lives and that they have good and relatively certain information about they are not stupid. That is why individual freedom in making those decisions works best.

    What I find anecdotally, however, is that a lot of people who otherwise would be considered well informed and thoughtful can be stupid and here I am talking about AGW. A lot of that stupidity comes from what I think was the intent of the Cook survey and that is these “informed” people hear the part about the scientific consensus that we have had anthropogenic warming, but that appears to be the end of their “scientific” knowledge and what takes over is their political leanings that then make undocumented connections of that warming to just about all adverse and detrimental climate occurrences. Some of these informed people do not even want to accept the recorded instrumental mean global temperature increases over the past 100 years because they think that it is too small to cause all the problems that in their worlds are connected to it.

    The other side of that coin are those who hear someone of their political persuasion call AGW a fraud and thus reject the settled science on physics relating increases in GHGs to a warming world.

    What I have not seen is a survey that would ask a sample of the population such questions about how much global warming has occurred, and how certain science is about the hind or forecasting of climate models, how certain we are that AGW has increased the frequency of hurricanes globally and how well science can relate AGW to local weather and storm intensity. The responses could then be measured against stated political preferences.

    For a journal that attempts to connect science to the reasonably well-informed and interested lay population, Scientific America would be the obvious choice to do such a poll.

  18. I find it remarkable how many warmists I communicate with who flat out deny that coal use is accelerating in China. Over 300 new coal power plants in the pipeline there. Over 900 proposed, counting total between China and India. (World Resources Institute, Global Coal Risk Assessment: Data Analysis and Market Research, Ailun Yang and Yiyun Cui)

    Hit the brakes? Sorry, was somebody under the impression we were driving the car? (Gah, forgot rhetorical rule. I suck. Looks to me like people are under this impression, I think this impression is false.)

  19. About the Author: William Skaggs is a neuroscientist whose experimental work has focused on the role of the hippocampus in learning, memory, and spatial navigation, but he is interested in several other areas of science as well, especially the study of consciousness.

    And, one might add, is quite capable of thinking like an irrational child just waking from a nightmare.
    .
    What reasonable people do is rationally evaluate risks and benefits, assigning weights to those based on the credibility of events actually happening. I fly on airplanes (22,000 miles last week), even though there is a finite risk each flight will be ‘catastrophic’, because I judge the benefits of those flights (I get to where I need to go) to greatly outweigh the risks (the plane crashes and I die). Looking only at risk is stupid. Imagining that you must make a very costly decision NOW based on very uncertain information about risk that is far in the future is doubly stupid.
    .
    That such tripe is associated with (un)Scientific American is not surprising: it is a once proud scientific publication which has been completely taken over by leftist greens.

  20. Oh, I’m sorry, silly me. My last post misses the point. It’s not that we really require a solution to the problem. It’s that the activists among us want to go down with a clear conscience.
    From WUWT’s quote of the week:

    “Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm — but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.” (T.S. Eliot)

  22. Kenneth, your points are on the mark, with the possible exception of Scientific American as it exists today. It is a news magazine with a sciency flavor, one that would rather flog an agenda than confront the state of the science.

  23. Mark Bofill (Comment #118197),

    I must respectfully disagree: the fraction has grown to much more than half since Eliot’s time.

  24. SteveF (Comment #118201)

    You’re probably right. I’m going to go try for a grant to correlate this increase to the growth of atmospheric CO2.

  25. Skaggs has exercised quite a bit of creative license (guess that’s alright for building a metaphor that “strengthens” one’s point). I’ve traveled in the southeastern corner of Utah extensively. That bridge crosses the San Juan River at Mexican Hat. And the only radio station that can be picked up is an AM station that plays Native American tribal music with an an occasional report on Indian Reservation goings-on.

  26. To play devil’s advocate. Lucia suggests Larry should be alert to warning signs. Warmists are saying the warning signs are all around us now.

    But I get the point you would expect more than just a garbled message on the radio to give you prior warning.

    Maybe Skaggs point is the science is too incoherent to make sense of?

  27. I think the real problem for Larry is defying the wishes of his better half, do you really want a small domestic on a long, monotonous desert road trip?

    My other misogynistic point was going to be whether we were to infer more or less certainty that the bridge was out because it was Sally rather than Larry who caught the message? But I won’t bother raising that!

  28. HR,

    I think the real problem for Larry is defying the wishes of his better half, do you really want a small domestic on a long, monotonous desert road trip?

    This may very well be. Possibly if we knew the back story we’d learn that Sally is always dreaming up reasons why Larry should drive more slowly . And based on the details of the story we don’t know if Larry cruising down scenic Highway 165 at a leisurely 45mph so he can take in the breath taking vistas, or pushing that minivan to the limit and doing 110mph to shorten an unendurable trip back and forth to the polygamist fringe kicked out of the main-Mormon church inlaws living in back-of-beyond Utah.

    But if the whole issue is a power trip over who gets to decide how fast they drive, it might be better if Sally and Larry go to therapy so they can learn to negotiate car speeds on long drives.

  29. lucia (Comment #118214),

    …
    But if the whole issue is a power trip over who gets to decide how fast they drive, it might be better if Sally and Larry go to therapy so they can learn to negotiate car speeds on long drives.

    Now, that’s what I call an analogy. 🙂

    Who’d be the therapist? Dr. Curry? Dr. Edwards? Does anyone know if they have any appointment slots open this fall.

  30. Your map link didn’t work. It sent me to Elsinore, UT, a long way from US 163. I think if you search on Mexican Hat, UT, you’ll find the bridge on US 163 over the San Juan River.

    Why not dial 511 and get UDOT travel info, assuming that there is cell phone service in that part of UT.

  31. So it turns out that all those people who hid in the basements after listening to the Orsen Wells version of “War of the Worlds” were the smart ones.
    Who knew.

  33. Obviously Larry has kidnapped Sally and the two kids (who he’s plied with Vallergan) ala ‘From Dusk Till Dawn’ and is heading pell mell for the collapsed Pawoopsie bridge ala ‘Thelma and Louise’. Quite logical really…

  34. Perhaps the analogy could be improved, somewhat, if he were carrying urgent supplies to the other side of the bridge. That way, he would have to make a value decision on potential lost lives for stopping if the bridge isn’t out. (Or if he slows down, the supplies will be too late)

    As written, it is only an inconvenience to slow down.

  35. Mark, 118195, regarding coal acceleration in China and India:

    Even green Germany is increasing its coal usage.

    “Germany will this year start up more coal-fired power stations than at any time in the past 20 years as the country advances a plan to exit nuclear energy by 2022.

    New coal plants with about 5,300 megawatts of capacity will start generating power this year, the Muenster-based IWR renewable energy institute said in an e-mailed statement today, citing data from the German regulator. About 1,000 megawatts of coal-fired capacity are expected to come offline, it said.

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-27/germany-to-add-most-coal-fired-plants-in-two-decades-iwr-says.html

  36. Also, Mark, the green UK is turning to backup diesel generators so the lights don’t go out when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine.

    “Occasionally, one comes across a story so mind-blowingly unexpected and out-of-left-field that it seems hard for readers to take on board that it is true. Such is the story I first reported here last month, under the heading, “Our lights will stay on, but it’ll cost us a fortune”, about the scheme being devised by the National Grid to solve what has long been the most intractable problem created by the Government’s plan to see the best part of £110 billion spent in seven years on building tens of thousands more wind turbines – namely, how to keep our national grid “balanced” when it has to cope with all those unpredictably wild fluctuations in the speed of the wind.

    “The answer National Grid has come up with, only made possible by the latest computer technology and “cloud software”, is to hook up thousands of diesel generators, remotely controlled by the grid, to provide almost instantly available back-up for when the wind drops.”

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/10220083/We-could-soon-be-paying-billions-for-this-wind-back-up.html

  37. “Does William Skaggs really think that 99 out of 100 people would ‘know’ that it is stupid to not slow down a minivan a couple of miles ahead of a collapsed bridge?”

    The radio didn’t say where the bridge was.

  38. I guess Racehorse is of the opinion that the “Pawoopsie–static–bridge” is not suitably described so as to place it in Pawoopsie.

    As as far as what might be a better analogy, along the lines of Harold W’s suggestion, how about the family immediately stop the car and file for a government tax credit to purchase a vehicle like this…

    http://msnbcmedia1.msn.com/j/streams/2013/August/130801/6C8483915-130801-flying-car-archive-bcol2-2p.blocks_desktop_medium.jpg

  39. Nick,

    The radio didn’t say where the bridge was.

    No. But it mentioned a town and they have a map. Ordinarily, that indicates (a) where the towns are and (b) where the river is. They know they are far from the town. So…

    But beyond that: They have eyes and mini-vans have brakes. Bridges aren’t invisible. So it would even weirder to slow down for a mystery bridge in a mystery location.

  40. SciAm describes it as “Commentary invited by editors of Scientific American”

    I wonder which editor invited it, and why?

  41. Re: lucia (Aug 5 18:22),

    But beyond that: They have eyes and mini-vans have brakes. Bridges aren’t invisible.

    Maybe it was at night. I remember when a bridge on an Interstate in Connecticut, IIRC, collapsed, someone tried to flag down a car to warn them that the bridge was out. The response was an obscene gesture and moments later, dead people in the car. I could probably find the reference, if pressed, because I do remember reading the account in an actual newspaper, not the internet.

  42. Nick, the odds of a person dying from a meteor impacting the Earth is about 1 in 200 000. Analysis of the cratering of the Moon suggest that asteroids with a 1 km diameter strike Earth roughly every 300,000 years and such an impact would be at least civilocidal and most likely to be an extinction levels event.
    Our only hope to stave off extinction, for our species and for all the terrestrial megafauna, is to build space craft that can intercept large rocks, at least 0.1 AU out, and deflect them. The only way that we could support the cost of a large scale space program is for the planets GDP to rise by at least an order of magnitude.
    Long term, the only thing that can save humanity and all the planets large species is wealth. Anything that cost humanity, that slows growth and the acquisition of science and technology, threatens the whole biosphere.
    Why people are so stupid as to ignore the implications that the craters on the Moon and on the Earth, the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event and the Mahuika crater? Why do they stop humanity from becoming wealth enough to protect the Earth’s biosphere from ELE’s.
    Shame on you for your shorted-sighted, self-indulgent, blocking of humankind’s moral responsibility to our kin-species.

  43. John M
    “I guess Racehorse is of the opinion that the “Pawoopsie–static–bridge” is not suitably described so as to place it in Pawoopsie.

    As as far as what might be a better analogy, along the lines of Harold W’s suggestion, how about the family immediately stop the car and file for a government tax credit…”

    I think Sally should file for divorce.

    I’m not a fan of analogies like this. But this one seems to be effective in bringing out tribal thinking patterns. So, for example, simply pointing out that the radio didn’t say that is Racehorsing.

    (And I might note that Lucia’s pic doesn’t exactly place it in mid-town).

    The two miles was part of Larry’s rationalization. Here it is picked up as fact. Along with a dozen reasons for not simply slowing down. Falling off a bridge is bad. Slowing down is not.

  44. BTW, (un)Scientific American is controlled by….. Nature Publishing Group. Humm.. might the editorial POV at (un)Scientific American be just a little influenced by the editorial POV at Nature? I think it is a safe bet…. plenty of global warming hysteria in both publications.

  45. Follow the analogy to the logical conclusion. Based on the CAGW alarmists’ position that only stopping the increase of C02 completely can save the planet, the equivalent would be for the couple to stop the car and just stay where they were (of course they will eventually die of thirst but we can’t be to safe can we?).

  46. No. The picture doesn’t place it mid town. On the other hand, the name ‘Pawoopsie’ is fictional and in the US, distance from a town is measured from the closest edge, not the center. So, normal language usage means the Pawoopsie bridge is in the Pawoopsie– and so further away than the edge of Pawoopsie.

  47. I am disappointed to see the negative comments regarding the quality of writing at Scientific American. I personally place high value on its articles, and as a generalization, would rank it consistently better than Weekly World News, and of almost the same high caliber as National Enquirer.

  48. Nick,

    Slowing down is not.

    With two kids in the car? Who might need to go to the bathroom? Eat? Just get fidgetty and start pinching each other?

    I would think unnecessarily extending the time in the car would be very, very bad!

  49. Nick writes “The radio didn’t say where the bridge was.”

    I think you can assume it was mostly somewhere downstream cant you 😉

  50. lucia, I saw your comment before you edited it to change “bride” to “bridge.” I liked it more the other way

  51. Greg Craven has other videos? I could only remember watching the one, and watching more than that would be slightly less preferable to root canal surgery on perfectly healthy teeth. But I was thinking about his “most terrifying” video.

    The reason I raise it is because the car example – which is a terrible analogy, for all the reasons you point out – is an attempt at the same thing. It is arguing that even if we accept that global warming may not turn out to be too bad, we should take action on the basis of the worst case, because that outcome is extremely bad. The argument is essentially an attempt to justify application of the precautionary principle.

    So the actual argument they are trying to make is quite bad too, but even that is hidden behind an analogy which is a train wreck (or maybe I should say car crash?), which just confuses the point that they are trying to make. You know when climate scientists moan that they struggle to communicate with the public, and must do better than they have been doing? This should be a prime example of “how not to do communication”. IOW, they aren’t getting any better at it.

  52. So, normal language usage means the Pawoopsie bridge is in the Pawoopsie– and so further away than the edge of Pawoopsie.

    Nah – something like a bridge will often be named for reasons other than the name of the local area or city. For example, Pawoopsie could be a small town with the same name as the river, so the bridge could be a long way from the town, but also named for the river.

    All irrelavant anyway – the fact that he can stop when he sees the bridge is out overrides any other consideration.

    I guess Nick would assume that you must never drive if the radio isn’t working, on the basis that you may be missing warnings about bridge failures!

  53. “All irrelavant anyway – the fact that he can stop when he sees the bridge is out overrides any other consideration.”

    Here is an account of the collapse of a bridge in Hobart, 1975. A ship hit a support and brought down a span. It was night, and not clear. No cars were on it at the time, but four subsequently drove over the edge – all five people were killed. There’s an account from a lady who was with husband driving and two kids in the back. They did indeed slow down, but still ended up teetering on the edge, with front wheels in the air.

  55. Very happy to see that Nick only had to go back 38 years to find an anecdote supporting the nutty story. Bravo, sir.

    Here’s what’s really scary – a google search for bridge collapse yields 44.6 million results. Apparently this is an epidemic, and worse than we thought! Bridges need to be banned, pronto. 😉

  56. Nick the account reads “”As we approached, it was a foggy night…there was no lights on the bridge at the time. We just thought there was an accident. We slowed down to about 40 km/h and I’m peering out the window, desperately looking to see the car…what was happening on the bridge. We couldn’t see anything but we kept on travelling. The next thing, I said to Frank, “The bridge is gone!” And he just applied the brakes and we just sat there swinging.”

    And I live here and yes the fog can be exceptionally thick on the river. So as far as your example goes…they didn’t have any idea the bridge was out and they could barely see and had already slowed down because of that fact alone.

    The span that fell was just over the crest when heading away from town and would be very hard to see at the best of times.

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/vk7ben/6839903193/

  58. Nick Stokes

    Sylvia Manley: “As we approached, it was a foggy night…there was no lights on the bridge at the time.

    Note:
    (1) The SciAm article specifically indicates they are driving in the desert. I think as an Australian, you are familiar with deserts and are aware that they are very rarely foggy.

    (2) that my article does specifically discuss fog– as do my comments. (i.e. “Does William Skaggs think Larry’s minivan is ‘hurtling’ at break neck speed through those mysteriously dense vision obscuring fogs that frequently materialize in the Utah desert making the bridge invisible? “)

    In fact, above I wrote above ““Do not outrun your headlights”. as something that should be added to the list. But this rule holds whether or not a bridge is out. If some Australians do not follow the rule that they should not drive fast in the fog does not mean that Sally and Larry should slow down on a perfectly fine clear day in the desert merely because they hear a radio report telling them a bridge is out. If it’s foggy and you can’t see ahead, you should slow down and driving faster than visibility dictates because you could hit things like (a) other cars (b) hit coyotes (who love foggy nights in the desert), (c) hit people, (d) run off the road when it turns and so on. The bridge would just be one of the zillions of hazards, and the fact that you heard it might be out on the radio is pretty darn irrelevant to one’s decision.
    “

  59. Rule 126 UK Highwaycode

    Stopping Distances. Drive at a speed that will allow you to stop well within the distance you can see to be clear. You should

    leave enough space between you and the vehicle in front so that you can pull up safely if it suddenly slows down or stops. The safe rule is never to get closer than the overall stopping distance (see Typical Stopping Distances diagram, shown below)
    allow at least a two-second gap between you and the vehicle in front on roads carrying faster-moving traffic and in tunnels where visibility is reduced. The gap should be at least doubled on wet roads and increased still further on icy roads
    remember, large vehicles and motorcycles need a greater distance to stop. If driving a large vehicle in a tunnel, you should allow a four-second gap between you and the vehicle in front.

    If you have to stop in a tunnel, leave at least a 5-metre gap between you and the vehicle in front.

    https://www.gov.uk/general-rules-all-drivers-riders-103-to-158/control-of-the-vehicle-117-to-126

  60. The Mianus River Bridge collapse in 1983 was the incident I referred to above. I now suspect the account of a rude gesture was an urban legend as it refers to a car with three occupants and the actual car that didn’t react in time to a warning from another motorist only had one occupant.

    There’s a link to a video in the Wikipedia article that shows the gap in the bridge completely blocked by stopped vehicles. By the time something like that is reported on the radio, there would be road blocks in place at the incident.

  61. TTTM,
    Your link says:
    “The ‘Bridgewater Jerry’ is a fog which occasionally affects the Bridgewater–Hobart area. At night, in cooler months, cold air drains down the mountains of southern Tasmania as katabatic winds and collects in the Derwent Valley.”
    But this was midsummer – Jan 5. She says it was foggy, but it’s a high bridge and she can see the water. As I recall, fog was not mentioned as a factor in the collision.

  62. Nick–
    Who cares what the factor in the collision between the boat and the bridge was? The woman in the car on the bridge says she was leaning out the window to see the road. Her husband, the driver only hit the brakes after she– a passenger leaning out of a window told him the bridge was gone. That means he the driver was relying on a passenger to navigate for him. So in her story, his is driving virtually blind. This is stupid.

    Here is the full quote

    Sylvia Manley: “As we approached, it was a foggy night…there was no lights on the bridge at the time. We just thought there was an accident. We slowed down to about 40 km/h and I’m peering out the window, desperately looking to see the car…what was happening on the bridge. We couldn’t see anything but we kept on travelling. The next thing, I said to Frank, “The bridge is gone!” And he just applied the brakes and we just sat there swinging.[3] As we sat there, we couldn’t see anything in the water. All we could see was a big whirlpool of water and apparently the boat was sinking. So with that, we undid the car door and I hopped out.”[4]

    Frank Manley: “[Sylvia] said “The white line, the white line’s gone. Stop!” I just hit the brakes and I said “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t stop.” And next thing we just hung off the gap…when I swung the door open, I could see, more or less, see the water…and I just swung meself towards the back of the car and grabbed the headrest like that to pull myself around.[4] There’s a big automatic transmission pan underneath [the car] – that’s what it balanced on.”[3]

    So, her report isn’t she could see the water clearly. She could see it “more or less”. That construction suggests she couldn’t see it well. As for her assessement of visibility on the bridge “We couldn’t see anything”.

    Of course this is all casual construction– as people ordinarily use language. But it’s clear that visibility on the bridge was very poor– and they were moving ahead even though her husband the driver could not see. They had adopted the strategy of having a passenger lean out the window and convey directions.

    As for any suggestion that if the boat was not blinded by fog the bridge survace couldn’t be blinded by fot: Nonesense. Ever heard of virga? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virga I first saw some in Richland, WA. Fog and clouds can be heavier aloft, and this could also make visibility along the bridge worse than between the bridge and the water surface. Moreover, visibility during foggy periods can be intermittent.

  63. Perhaps William failed to mention Larry is in a self-piloting Google car and will fail to see the Utah road patrol, the barricades, the backed up traffic, the looky-lou shutter bugs, the tourons looking for toilets and fast food, and all the other natural wonders of Utah. Or it is just another example of a writer guilty of spontification (see definition at WUWT).

    /snark

  64. Lucia,
    Here is an account of an eyewitness who watched the accident from his home in Montagu Bay. He then took his boat to help in the rescue. He mentions no difficulty in seeing.

  65. Nick it gets cool enough in summer for the fog on occasion. In this case it was foggy.

    Fog is mentioned in her near miss for driving off the downed span of the bridge. She’s quite explicit. She says “As we approached, it was a foggy night”

    Fog may or may have been a factor in the initial collision by the Lake Illawarra but at any rate its irrelevant to the analogy/example you were making.

  66. Nick writes “Here is an account of an eyewitness who watched the accident from his home in Montagu Bay. He then took his boat to help in the rescue. He mentions no difficulty in seeing.”

    The Bridgewater Jerry is a strange beast. Take a look at the first photo in the link I gave above. The fog can be very highly localised.

  68. For simpletons like me who apparently run analogy processing on 8 bit processors under CP/M, what does the discussion about whether or not people could see in the analogytext have to do with the plaintext?

    To illustrate, supposing the first car to smash was a blue Buick and the driver recently had his shirt dry cleaned; does that have something to do with global warming? I’m not following.

  69. Nick, unlike your Montagu Bay incident, whatever the problem is—we know the state police are aware of it.

    So collapsed bridge = lots of flashing lights and probably a detour before you reach the bridge. Probably better to proceed with your eyes open (caution isn’t always just slowing down too much aka getting rear ended), rather no text your office while driving towards the scene and remain otherwise alert.

    I’d suggest a somewhat better analogy would be a freight train.. they take a long while to stop once they get moving. CO2 that has a hundreds-of-years half-life is a bit more like that, than something that you’ve been prewarned about so that you can brake really quickly to avoid.

    CO2 build up isn’t so much like a bridge that collapsed as it is e.g. entering a questionable set of tracks at possibly too high of speed… it’s gonna be an interesting ride if the warning given by overly distraught and possibly unreliable witnesses about track conditions are correct.

  70. Well that isn’t readable on this tablet but at any rate its entirely irrelevant. The analogy you were making was from the drivers perspective and she said it was foggy and that’s a large part of why they nearly went over the edge. Not seeing it coming and not knowing it was there.

  71. Nick:

    But Tim, he saw the cars falling from the bridge. From at least several hundred metres away.

    You apparently aren’t familiar with river fog.

    One direction has greater visibility than the other.

    Mark:

    To illustrate, supposing the first car to smash was a blue Buick and the driver recently had his shirt dry cleaned; does that have something to do with global warming? I’m not following.

    You forgot to mention whether the shirt was plaid or not. A person with 16-bit processors wouldn’t have left that out.

  72. DeWitt, from your link, while the primary cause of death was the bridge collapse, it was the poor quality of the inspections that lead to it. A more proper analogy here is “bad science leading to a bad outcome”.

    People entered the bridge thinking it had been properly inspected and thinking it was safe. Not at all the scenario the SciAm person was conjuring up.

  73. It is interesting how quickly people are willing to abandon logic and reason to further their beliefs. Why just this week we are seeing all-time record low August temps in SoCal so I guess global warming missed a spot <8^)

  74. Nick

    He mentions no difficulty in seeing.

    So what? He also doesn’t say, “It was clear as a bell, with not a scrap of fog in sight and those people on the top of the bridge who claimed it was foggy must have been smoking crack.”

    And as I noted before (and you can see if you google maps of fog around that bridge or have merely ever experienced fog in your life) fog can be patchy bot horizontally and vertically. It could be foggy on the bridge deck but less foggy at water level. That is a very common pattern!

    There is no reason to believe driver and his wife who report it was so foggy she was hanging out the window to help the drive navigate are incorrectly reporting fog.

  75. Carrick

    I’d suggest a somewhat better analogy would be a freight train..

    A freight train would make a better analogy. They have trouble stopping.

  76. I’m going to spoil the fun and go for the middle road (pun intended and NOT the safest option for Larry).

    It seems foolish not to take any notice of the new information and it’s equally foolish to simply panic and hit the brakes because you imagine an approaching catastrophy. A rational response seems in order and that would be the problem with the analogy. A rational approach would recognize all the certainties in the science and would leave multiple policy options. I’m probably a climate sceptic but I have to recognize that the worst case scenarios are a possibility but I also see the damage that taking a low carbon option is going to do globally and into the future. I also believe the science isn’t settled and the IPCC projections have a health dose of wishful thinking in them.

    I think the best analogy here is that the poor quality radio signal represents the weaknesses in climate science. Better certainty on what is in store for us would make Larry’s, Sally’s and everybody’s decision making easier

  77. “I think the best analogy here is that the poor quality radio signal represents the weaknesses in climate science.”

    Well, it’s just limited knowledge, for whatever reason, The analogy is contrasting the “slow down so we can respond in time if needed” approach with “I’ll slow down when there is proof”.

  78. Re: Nick Stokes (Aug 6 15:54),

    And precisely how are we supposed to ‘slow down’? Carbon emissions are going to increase for decades based on the rate of construction of coal fired power plants in China and Germany to replace nuclear generating capacity. The UK is talking about installing lots of diesel generators to back up intermittent wind energy.

    The analogy is horrible because reducing the speed of the car when you’re miles away from the bridge is just stupid. Stopping would be even worse. Taking a different route might make sense if there were a different route, but I don’t see one on the map, nor do I see one that would actually work with regard to carbon emissions. We can’t simply turn around and go backwards.

  79. Nick – to be fair, haven’t we (by “we” I mean pretty much everyone except India and China) already slowed down? What are the CO2 emissions rates for the US, Europe, and Australia lately compared to a decade or two ago? I know there are more countries, but these sermons always seem to be aimed at the key constituencies who *need to cut back NOW* in order to save us from an alledged tipping point.

    In keeping with the analogy, it seems that those who are most concerned for our collective future don’t want to just institute a national speed limit of, say, 5 KM/Hr but to enforce a governor be installed on every vehicle on the road. For our safety, of course. Can you see where that might piss off the occasional Utah or Montana, or (name your location) citizen who lives 60 miles from town, and happens to be connected by a relatively straight, flat, lightly travelled road?

    And bringing it back to the climate, can you see why a 0.17C anomaly reported a week ago on the satellite record may be reason for raised eyebrows given the “ZOMG GLOBAL WARMING, TIPPING POINT, WE’RE GOING TO BOIL AND DROWN IN ACID SEAS, BLARRRGH!!!!” (h/t Boris) cries for the last few decades?

    Just curious, thanks.

  80. TerryMN,
    ” it seems that those who are most concerned for our collective future don’t want to just institute a national speed limit of, say, 5 KM/Hr…”

    When this Tasman Bridge disaster happened, fairly close to home for me, I was in the USA. Then there was a national speed limit, from Pres Ford, of 55 mph, to save fuel. It’s not unprecedented.

    But I think the issue is not who emitted what last year, but what we are going to do with the teratons of carbon still in the ground. Burning it would have a big effect. Not burning requires a long process to reach agreement, and there’s no sign of a serious start. We had a good chance with Kyoto, when China and India used very little fuel, and by being prepared to cut back, we could have agreed on mutual restraint. Now it will be harder.

  81. Thanks Nick – a few things: I think the issue very much *is* who emitted last year, especially if I’m the one who has to pay for my/our declining emissions, when India and China can smile and go on with their ways. I also think it is pretty clear that the Carter presidency and policies, including but not limited to the 55 MPH mandate, have combined to have history view him as one of, if not *the* worst president in American history.

    I’m interested to know both who you mean by “we” WRT Kyoto, and whether you (and I suppose, hell, the whole “we” you’re speaking for) honestly believe that either India or China would have foregone prosperity for millions of their citizens today to agree to or abide by an international pledge to forestall a 100-year-out predicted crisis while those millions were living in poverty…

  83. To continue:

    The Kyoto Treaty was classic mercantilism. It was designed to punish the US economy. But we refused to play. Ironically enough, only the US and the UK came even close to achieving the Kyoto goals. The UK did it because they switched from coal to North Sea gas. The US did it by exporting manufacturing to Asia.

  84. “But we refused to play. Ironically enough, only the US and the UK came even close to achieving the Kyoto goals.”

    This is completely muddled. By negotiating, we can make restraint mutual, and all gain something. This way, the downside was suffered and nothing was achieved.

  85. TerryMN,
    ” I also think it is pretty clear that the Carter presidency and policies, including but not limited to the 55 MPH mandate”

    There was no Carter presidency in 1975, but there was a 55 mph mandate.

  86. Nick,

    By negotiating, we can make restraint mutual, and all gain something

    Can we make restraint mutual?
    I admit that might be some people’s hope or goal. That’s not the same as saying that the goal is feasible or that we “can” achieve it.

  87. Re: Nick Stokes (Aug 6 18:21),

    By negotiating, we can make restraint mutual, and all gain something.

    There was no negotiation nor was there restraint by anyone after the treaty was signed. The US Senate made it stunningly clear what might have been acceptable and what definitely wasn’t. The US ‘negotiating’ team led by Al Gore, ignored reality, made no serious attempt to get the treaty modified and the result was a foregone conclusion. It was very reminiscent of the failure to ratify the League of Nations treaty by the US. Blaming the failure of any nation to achieve the goals of the Kyoto Treaty on the US is simply nugatory ( I love that word).

    IMO, Woodrow Wilson was hands down the worst President of the twentieth century. Carter pales into insignificance by comparison.

    Oh, and it was Nixon that imposed a national speed limit later codified by Congress. According to Wikipedia:

    The United States Department of Transportation’s Office of Driver Research found total fuel savings to be 1% and that “independent studies” found a 0.5% savings

  88. Re: lucia (Aug 6 18:27),

    Can we make restraint mutual?

    As I said, the actual goal of the Kyoto Treaty was to weaken the US. The US, unlike any other nation, was not allowed to count reforestation as a reduction in CO2 emissions. The other parties to the treaty had no intention, in my opinion, to restrain themselves. And sure enough, they didn’t.

  89. lucia (Comment #118307)
    August 6th, 2013 at 6:27 pm
    …
    Can we make restraint mutual?
    I admit that might be some people’s hope or goal. That’s not the same as saying that the goal is feasible or that we “can” achieve it.

    Thanks Lucia. I was tempted to say this as well, but sometimes I feel like a broken record and just shut myself off for sanity’s sake. I have yet to read any credible plan by anyone for mitigation that doesn’t in essence boil down to do our part and hope everybody else does too. Which makes me wonder why anybody takes talk of mitigation seriously in the first place.
    If CAGW is in our near future, IMO we’d best focus on adaptation. It seems to me this is a goal we could much more realistically hope to achieve.

  90. Nick,

    We had a good chance with Kyoto, when China and India used very little fuel, and by being prepared to cut back, we could have agreed on mutual restraint. Now it will be harder.

    Wow, you really are confused. Nobody lived up to Kyoto. Nobody! Are you suggesting that had the USA signed Kyoto (and reduced its economic growth as a result) China and India would not have continued to rapidly increase fossil fuel usage? An argument can be made that substitution of (a lot of!) nuclear power plants for coal powered plants, in China and elsewhere, would have a measurable impact on total CO2 emissions, but going from signing Kyoto to China investing heavily in nuclear power is a fantasy. In the mean time, the wild-eyed delusional German Greens have succeeded in eliminating Germany’s nuclear power, and greatly increased German CO2 emissions, now and in the future. Are you really so naive as to believe Kyoto would have materially impacted these things? (Not a rhetorical question.) Really nick, you seem to be not even thinking about the ways that CO2 emissions can actually be reduced.
    .
    If you want to have a serious discussion about ways to reduce CO2 emissions, let’s not focus on Kyoto. Let’s instead focus on a) how we can reduce the cost of nuclear power by 30-40%, so that it is economically competitive with coal and natural gas, b) how to negotiate strong controls on nuclear weapons proliferation, and c) how to throw the nutty greens who oppose nuclear power under the bus ASAP.
    .
    The truth is: there are lots of good reasons to not burn reduced carbon for its energy content (for example, it is much more valuable as a raw material feedstock). Yet smart people like you, who seem honestly concerned about the extent of GHG driven warming, choose always to frame the issues in a way that takes practical solutions (like 10-20 times greater global use of nuclear power) off the negotiating table. If you are in fact even 10% as concerned about future warming as you seem to be, then you should be beating up on the nut-cake greens who consistently block solutions which would actually make a difference, not criticizing skeptics who mostly say a) that warming will likely be much less than the GCMs project, b) that the consequences of what warming takes place are unlikely to be catastrophic, and c) that substitution of solar and wind for fossil fuels is both economically impractical and foolish. Have you the courage to step up and start Paul_K’s adult conversation on energy? (This is most definitely NOT a rhetorical question.)
    .
    BTW Nick, I spent a couple of days last week at the University of Adelaide dept of geology. They told me that Australia has enormous reserves of uranium and thorium… enough for hundreds of years of usage, at any conceivable rate of global consumption. Expanded nuclear power would seem a great economic opportunity for Australia.

  91. Nick
    “We had a good chance with Kyoto, when China and India used very little fuel”

    It’s almost as if the poverty in China and India that was implicate in their low energy consumption was a good thing? A 1/4 of a billion middle class Indians is something to celebrate and it’s going to take lots more energy to help lift the remaining poor. When you talk about lifting our foot off the accelerator you have to really contemplate what that means for the future of children born in rural India.

    What else will we live to lament? All Africans getting 3 square meals a day? Think of the carbon footprint for that!

  92. As Mark Bofill (Comment #118195) said, the strange denial by campaigners to acknowledge China’s steady and continual development is becoming *the* definition of denial – I mean, every time I see a chin stroking alarmist intone that “well, actually China’s renewable installation is x times bigger than yadda” I just think to myself Wow! these guys really don’t believe their alleged underlying CO2 concern, they actually seem to show more desire to leverage climate in parochial political power plays.

    It seems clear that the alarmists are more intent in bullying on the back seat whilst leaving the Chinese driver vaguely annoyed at the implicit petty triviality of the noise made there, what does that really say about the strength of their concern? 😉

  93. Considering that the incident was broadcast, wouldn’t the driver just slow down when he saw the police road block and the line of stranded vehicles.

  94. SteveF,
    “Wow, you really are confused. Nobody lived up to Kyoto. Nobody! Are you suggesting that had the USA signed Kyoto (and reduced its economic growth as a result) China and India would not have continued to rapidly increase fossil fuel usage?”

    Not true!. A lot of European countries did very well. France and Germany met their targets. And this was, IMHO, rather heroic, because of the partial membership. It’s like voluntarily paying taxes when you don’t have to and others don’t.

    If Kyoto had been fully observed, would China and India have observed limits? Well, famously, they didn’t have any, because their per capita historic use was so low. And it still is. I don’t think the West can expect restraint there when per capita use here is still at least three times greater.

    But we would have a framework for cooperating when things get worse. We may still get one, because China and India will probably suffer more from AGW than we will, and they can work that out. It just takes longer.

    And DeWitt
    “There was no negotiation nor was there restraint by anyone after the treaty was signed. The US Senate made it stunningly clear what might have been acceptable and what definitely wasn’t. “
    No, see above – there weas restraint. Nor was the Senate clear. It ratified, with a 2/3 majority, the UNFCCC treaty that Pres Bush presented to it. This was what Kyoto sought to put into effect.

  95. SteveF,
    “BTW Nick, I spent a couple of days last week at the University of Adelaide dept of geology. They told me that Australia has enormous reserves of uranium and thorium… enough for hundreds of years of usage, at any conceivable rate of global consumption. Expanded nuclear power would seem a great economic opportunity for Australia.”

    It has been noticed. If fact, I was surprised on looking up to see that we’ve dropped back to third place as exporter. We were #1 for many years. Rum Jungle was mined in the ’50s.

    In fact, thorium was a big deal here in early postwar years. In 1960 I saw, at the end of a long and bumpy road, a closed thorium mine at Mt Painter. They had ore but no market. Here is the local thorium story. We have a big mineral sands industry, which can produce thorium as well.

  96. Nick,
    And now that the nut-cake greens have forced Germany to increase CO2 emissions, how are they doing? How will they do in the future? OK, so you don’t want to address the issues of practical energy supply. I can’t say I am surprised, but still, too bad.

  97. Nick:

    Not true!. A lot of European countries did very well. France and Germany met their targets. And this was, IMHO, rather heroic, because of the partial membership. It’s like voluntarily paying taxes when you don’t have to and others don’t.

    Actually Germany met its goals primarily by conversion of inefficient former-East Germany coal-powered electric plants. So it wasn’t exactly a heroic effort.

    France met its goals by converting to nuclear energy. SteveF should be happy with that success story.

    If Kyoto had been fully observed, would China and India have observed limits? Well, famously, they didn’t have any, because their per capita historic use was so low.

    Or put another way, their per capita GDP was very low. As they increased their economic productivity, CO2 emissions per capita, which behaves as a proxy for economic activity, followed suit.

    The US has also become more efficient in terms of CO2 emissions per dollar GDP, so even with a growing population (unlike Europe which has of course stagnated), our peak CO2 production was 2005, and it’s been dropping since.

    My favored way to look at the energy sector is in terms of emission intensity. A lot of economic shifts over time can be understood in terms of this, and the changes in energy profile over time of the various countries.

    Economic market forces have been historically the primary reason that the US net emission intensity has been reducing. With the recent (entirely non-democratically imposed) regulations on coal power, expect the shift to accelerate.

    Given the health issues for people who mine coal, and the ecological damage to the ecology in regions where coal is mined, I for one cheer this. (And quirk an eye at the naivety of people who advocate for coal while denouncing wind energy, erroneously, as bird cuisinarts.)

  98. If they are that worried about “climate change” then they shouldn’t even be driving a car.

  99. Nick,

    But we would have a framework for cooperating when things get worse. We may still get one, because China and India will probably suffer more from AGW than we will, and they can work that out. It just takes longer.

    I agree with you here. When (if) things become obviously worse, at that time we may see the will to decarbonise manifest. I think the odds of us seeing it before this are extremely low.

  100. Unfortunately, Sci Am went populist (and stupid) about 8-10 years ago. A sad decline in the journalistic integrity of a magazine I used to enjoy although it appears to have had the intended effect of boosting sales and revenues. Personally, I cut my 20+ year old subscription after getting fed up with the uncritical articles from the soft “sciences” and CAGW boosterism. I still get e-mails with their highlight headlines but the stupidity in them keeps me from even contemplating renewing my subscription or even venturing to their website.

  101. So Larry stops the car two miles short of the bridge because of Sally’s incessant nagging and they all die of thirst in the desert because they had intended to restock at the convenience store up ahead.

    Oh well, that just means more iced-tea for the unpanicky travelers. But hey, they did it for the children.

  102. Mark Bofill,
    ” When (if) things become obviously worse, at that time we may see the will to decarbonise manifest.”
    .
    I am not sure what you mean by “obviously worse”. If there are observable impacts, and these impacts are perceived as harmful, then yes, the global will to decarbonize will increase. But I think that is unlikely any time in the next ~30-40 years, because the warming (my SWAG is 0.1C per decade give or take a bit) will not bring any terrible harm, and because there will be benefits as well as harms from warming. Prudence might dictate a gradual conversion to nuclear power so that the upper range of future warming is reduced, but that strikes me as unlikely because policy option have been hijacked by the nutty greens who will accept only solar and wind in place of fossil fuels. In ‘climate science’, the ‘perfect’ is always the enemy of the ‘possible’.

  103. Steve,

    I’m not sure what I mean either. Food chain collapse due to ocean acidification? Sudden massive flooding due to glacier collapse? I’m the wrong guy to ask, I don’t really buy any of it.
    In essence I agree with you. I was merely trying to find some common ground with Nick.

  104. lucia (Comment #118220)
    August 5th, 2013 at 4:25 pm
    “Sorry about the map link….
    https://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&tab=ll
    Enter “mexican hat, UT”.”

    I’ve been to Mexican Hat. The bridge is visible from a considerable distance, but it is downhill. Crossing the bridge South Bound involves a hard left turn which means even if it is their the mini-van will need to slow to 30 MPH.

    it’s questionable whether anyone in a mini-van with children would ever drive Highway 163. Valley of the Gods involves traversing a 17 mile gravel road with considerable washouts…something like a scene from a Chevy Chase family vacation movie. The scenery is stunning but children will not appreciate it and a vehicle with a ore substantial suspension (like a jeep) would be more appropriate.

    Moki Dugout offers stunning views are well, but traversing a gravel road with hairpin turns and no guardrails is not something a nervous nelly spouse with children would tolerate.

    So the moral of the story is that the couple in the Mini-van has no idea where they are or where they are going. If they are on Highway 163 it was a mistake and the husband is an idiot that can’t follow directions.

    If they are getting any radio station at all is is probably a bounce from a far away place. Mexican hat is the biggest town in the area and it definitely doesn’t have a radio station…it doesn’t even have a traffic light.

  106. Poor analogy. If the bridge is collapsed, the question is whether to turn around or not. Slowing down miles in advance is irrelevant. On the other hand, collapsed bridges just might be invisible, especially at night. People drive with the assumption that the road ahead is actually there, because it usually is. So with a warning, slowing down and paying attention might be a good idea. The analogy to climate change fails because there is no such credible or even semi-credible warning of *imminent* catastrophe.

    In the words of William Skaggs: “A skeptic need not believe that we must immediately destroy the world’s economy by shutting down our use of fossil fuels — it would be just as stupid for Larry Jones to jam down the brakes in the middle of the freeway as to do nothing — but even a skeptic must see that prudence calls for slowing down, getting as much information as we can, and making contingency plans.” There is no shortage of information gathering; there is no shortage of policy planning. There are even attempts to slow down. So where’s the problem?

  107. I don’t know if anyone has pointed this out because I have not read all the comments, but this analogy would be closer to GW if there was actually no bridge out and Sally was a lying wench about the issue.

    Andrew

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