I saw a John Cook Tweet showing The Climate Contrarian Guide to Managing Risk. This was my reaction.
Evidently Dana used the SkS original version in an article at The Guardian
Note: The quote by exact quote by Curry was evidently
Curry started her own blog, which is a forum for outsiders to weigh in on climate science. She sees it as democratizing the discussion.
“All we can do is be as objective as we can about the evidence and help the politicians evaluate proposed solutions,” she says. If that means doing nothing, “I can’t say myself that that isn’t the best solution.”
http://www.capradio.org/news/npr/story?storyid=213894792
I’m not sure everyone has seen the John cook original, which is
An Alarmist guide would be:
“Some Mann says its possible the earth may warm a degree or two over the next 100 years”
“Shut down all Fossil fuel plants, starve and freeze billions. I couldn’t stand that kind of termperature increase!”
If you want to make your own parody, you need to make the text short enough to fit the word balloons. My appleworks won’t let me compress, so that meant 3 short lines, max.
“Climate impacts range from moderate to catastrophic.”
“Climate impacts range from undetectable to unicorns.”
Andrew
Funny.
The precautionary principal fails the most basic cost benefit analysis, as applied to global warming.
Also, a cost benefit analysis which says that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few results in doing nothing. Because making food, fuel and energy more expensive for everybody in the world, in order to avoid a very small increase in global temperature is going to hurt more people than it helps.
A no regrets option is to go nuclear for all power generation. The cost of nuclear should come down dramatically if the world starting building thousands of nuclear power plants (using the latest safest designs). It is even possible the cost per kilowatt could be cheaper than our current power mix (over time), and so we would actually make food, fuel and energy cheaper and avoid carbon at the same time.
But it may take the climate alarmists 25 more years to get to that logical conclusion.
Our dog has fleas!
Shoot the dog! Fleas can transport plague to humans!
RickA,
Yes. Well, and my difficulty with people pulling out the ‘insurance’ analogy is that it’s both possible to over insure and under insure. I’m for doing something– in particular, I would like to see nuclear energy promoted.
But somehow the need for “insurance” is touted as obvious merely because someone predicts something bad might happen. Well…. not always. At any moment, a supervolcano somewhere in the world could erupt and kill us all: The amount we should spend on ‘insurance’ to prevent this is $0 because it wouldn’t help anyway.
In a family with one bread winner and 2 kids, the loss of the breadwinner might deprive the kids of someone whose income feeds and clothes them. And yet, its still not always obvious that the bread winner should spend much money on insurance. The balance depends on the margin they have. If the bread winner has a large nest egg, it might be wisest to just leave the kids the nest egg. If the breadwinner is very poor, it might be wiser to spend the money on extra education, shoes and food for the kids now and rely on the safetynet of welfare and food stamps and– sadly– foster care- to feed and clothe them in the event that the breadwinner actually dies. Because a good education will be what permits the kids to take care of themselves soonest.
The people who most need the insurance end up being people with sufficient incomes to have something to spare and to want to maintain a home, ability to send kids to college and so on in the event disaster strikes.
It’s just not obvious that one must take out “insurance” qua “insurance policy” for any and all risks. Some times it’s a better bet to keep the money and spend it on something else.
~shrug~ Your parody with the brownouts is good Lucia.
If I had to respond with a comic, I’d note that John’s approach is a little on the pointy haired side:
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1994-03-17/
http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lvfhiqxR4v1qz8z2ro1_500.png
I guess I don’t have much of a problem with that Curry quote.
The real problem is her main argument–that the science is more uncertain, so therefore doing nothing is more likely to be the right choice. This is illogical on its face.
Take the IPCC’s sensitivity range: 1.5 to 4.5C. Curry says it’s too uncertain. Okay, expand it by a degree in either direction: 0.5C to 5.5C. Why should we be more reluctant to act if this were the true best estimate? Sure, there is more room for a good outcome, but there is also more room for an extremely bad outcome. I don’t see how this moves the needle either way.
But of course, the uncertainty with regard to climate sensitivity is not evenly distributed. Lower values are far more unlikely than higher values—Climate sensitivity is certainly not zero or anything very close to it. So expanding the range might give us a wider estimate of 1C to 5.5C. In that case, it’s hard to see how the wider range is a reason to more strongly consider no action at all.
In fact, people who claim to be “lkukewarmers” argue for far less uncertainty in climate science than the consensus does.
And this quote by her: “We’re not going to convince China and India and other developing countries not to burn fossil fuels.” seems mighty certain for someone who espouses the importance of uncertainty.
Errm, looking at this half awake early in the morning the one about the doghouse actually made me confused as to whether this was serious or not.
Buying a new dog house would very probably be cheaper than buying insurance for years.
That’s like ‘funeral insurance’ which is basically a con on old people who would almost always be better off putting away money for their own funeral.
Boris,
I think the Curry quote is mis-represented by the SkS cartoon.
Interesting. Because I’ve heard some people insist that uncertainty increases the case for action. (Lewandowsky has said so– I ‘m pretty sure anyway.)
So, that means we now have all three positions in play: (a) uncertainty decreases need for action, (b) uncertainty doesn’t affect need for action and (c) uncertainty increases need!
This statement seem too vague to be true or false. In fact, I don’t even know what it’s supposed to mean. Lower than what value are more unlikely that higher than what other value?
Once again: I don’t know what you mean. One doesn’t just expand the stated range arbitrarily. If one has estimated something as–say– a ±95% range, that’s the range.
If you mean the range might change if we learn more, and it might be that what we learn makes us less confident then the reported range would expand. But neither you nor I know whether the range would increase on the high or low side.
But beyond that: if the shape is not symmetric, even expanding in an unsymmetric way with the lower end dropping -0.5C and the upper increasing to +1C wouldn’t necessarily mean that things are more likley to be worse. The shape of the tails matters– and if the probability distribution was “bulgy” at the low end,it would mean we were more likely to see very little warming. It’s just that no warming would be ruled out more certainly.
Mostly. Yes. Though this is partly because the ‘consensus’ consists of the collected opinions of many people. It is not necessarily the actual opinion of held by any one group. So it’s not clear that lukewarmers as a group believe there is less uncertainty that normal-warmers nor than alarmists who — at least to hear them talk– seem to present the view that the warming must be in the upper IPCC range.
“The real problem is her main argument–that the science is more uncertain, so therefore doing nothing is more likely to be the right choice. This is illogical on its face.”
Don’t think I can agree with that. The more uncertainty, the less likelihood that what we decide to do will be the right thing. The more that the Bayesian best choice will be choosing to wait and gather more information in hopes of making a better decision.
I have an impression from over there that Curry thinks so too: That the right-hand-tail is the most important issue in deciding what to do, and we more than anything else need to get a good idea of how likely the really bad outcomes are.
Anyhow, I don’t really understand the comparison to insurance and such. A house has a certain random chance of burning. Maybe you can improve your chances by fixing your electrical system or something. I doubt that more scientific study of houses is going to change the chances much; I think the actuaries have been doing this for a while. You have a one in __ chance of the house burning, and you can decide how much insurance makes sense. Same with seat belts, same with smoking. It doesn’t seem likely that the right response is, We need more study.
Whereas by climate change, I think that is a very reasonable response. We really do expect to understand this stuff better in ten years and in twenty years. That broad range of possible climate sensitivities (1.5 to 4.5! Do you know how different those are?) really does mean, We sure have a lot to learn. We really will be able to make better decisions then than now.
So…..John Cook is using this to show how crazy skeptics are?
“Hoist on his own petard” comes to mind.
But lately, SkS is diong a lot of petard hoisting. I wonder how large their inventory is?
MikeR,
It’s true the insurance analogy is strained. The idea is the “monthly payment” is we cut back on fossil fuel use (and do something else– like build windmills or such like or walk down to the well to get our water or whatever). The “risk” is that sensitivity really is 5.5C or so. In which case, cutting back on the use will have staved off disaster. But if the sensitivity turns out to be 0.5C, it wouldn’t have happened anyway. So we “paid” the monthly payment, but really, it was sort of “money down the drain”.
But of course the argument is rather one sided as it seem to assume that the “monthly payment” would have been spent on frivollous luxuries like cheap hookers and crack cocaine rather than on medical research, sparing our kids time to go to school rather than carrying water up from the well or improvements in agricultural production or such like. Obviously, not using coal comes at some cost– even if that “cost” is merely that children and everyone will have to spend time doing manual labor that we otherwise might accomplish by using things like pumps and that the time spent doing this labor might detract from other pursuits– including education, research invention and such like.
Hunter–
John cook means to use his original to show how stupid contrarians are. I inserted it so you can see it.
SteveX
You were looking at my spoof of the original. And you got precisely my point. Just because there is a “risk” doesn’t mean one needs to buy insurance. Obviously, the decision to buy insurance depends on all of: the probability something occurs, the cost should it occur and the cost of the insurance.
Boris,
I don’t see why she can’t state the obvious, just because she preaches respect for uncertainty. It seems more probable to me that monkeys would fly out of my butt and establish a new world order enforcing carbon regulations than it would be for China and India and other developing countries to agree not to burn fossil fuels.
UPDATE: no, not more probable, equally probable is what I meant to say.
Mark,
I also don’t know why she can’t see more uncertainty in predicting climate than in predicting behavior of India or China.
Even though the insurance comparison is strained – does it make sense to buy flood insurance if your house is on top of a mountain?
No.
Does it make sense to pay more for the annual premium for the insurance than the value of the house being insured?
No.
It all comes down to cost benefit analysis.
It just doesn’t make sense for the United States (or any other country) to spend trillions in order to lower warming at 2100 from .6C to .5C (for example).
We still have very little idea how much of the warming since 1850 or 1950 is human caused or natural. Without nailing that down, it might be a giant waste of money to tax carbon (for example).
Risk management Re: RickA (Mar 4 15:42),
Indeed. The problem is that the uncertainty of the cost estimates of excess warming are even larger (and the estimates more overstated) than the warming probability distribution function. Then there’s the cost of mitigation compared to adaptation. That’s also wildly uncertain and understated.
As I’ve said before, everyone concentrates on the WGI report, which has the highest degree of scientific understanding and lowest uncertainty. The important reports that no one seems to look at very hard are the WGII and WGIII reports. Those are the damage and cost estimates. The literature citations get rapidly grayer as you go to WGII and then to WGIII. About the only time they’re cited is when there’s a real howler like Himalayan glaciers melting in less than 30 years compared to 300 or more.
We all seriously increase our risk of not winning the State/National Lottery if we don’t buy a ticket.
It seems perfectly OK to just not buy in to some risk.
Lucia, I understand what you were saying. But I’m trying to add that here we have an option that doesn’t exist in those other cases. There, you either buy insurance or you don’t, and it’s pretty possible to make an actuarial estimate of the value of your insurance. Here, it may well be that gathering more information is much the best choice, even if a response is needed.
Judith Curry suggests that the best option may be to do nothing. I think she knows more than anyone on this thread that the CS estimates (based on the last 2 years) is closer to 1. So to use Boris’s suggestion of adding 1 degree, she probably comes up with zero or 2 degrees. Nothing to worry about. Pack your bags, go home, and reap the rewards of minor warming over the next century.
It is even worse than the insurance example. For your house burning down there is only a downside to insure against. In the case of climate change, a modest warming and higher CO2 have net positive effects on crops, forests, and people. So you would be buying “insurance” against something that is actually beneficial. The hysteria about every little snowstorm being “extreme weather” is so out of touch with the fact that there is always some sort of extreme weather somewhere and always has been. This plays into the uncertainty and long tails of the sensitivity curves. As people become wealthier, they become more risk averse. Even though living longer they are convinced that their food is killing them and go buy organic food (a type of insurance against an invisible risk–poison). But this fear of low probability events can go beyond wasting money on organic food. Laws are passed banning all sorts of things, including sodas in NYC because of risk and these laws have costs. In Britain a single man better not even show up near a playground and fathers walking with their daughters have been arrested (try proving to a cop that a little girl is your daughter) So this tendency to ban everything that might harm and be afraid of everything is dangerous and can go haywire. Climate change is the ultimate example, where quite serious (!!) people argue that we should just shut down all power plants and don’t want to hear about solar not being “on” at night. This is the logic of the precautionary principle.
Lucia,
Thanks for showing the original. It is no less dim than your version.
When a doctor gives advice on smoking, it is based on studies that show actual pathological impacts from smoking. Houses actually burn. People actually get in car wrecks. There are no predictions made about CO2 causing problems that have proven to be accurate.
speaking of insurance, Warren Buffet just pointed out that,
“Buffett said on CNBC Monday that he hasn’t made any change in the way he calculates the likelihood of a catastrophe because of climate change.
Berkshire Hathaway Inc. owns several insurance and reinsurance funds and often has to pay significant claims when natural disasters strike.
Buffett says insuring against hurricanes in the United States has been extremely profitable in the past five years because few storms have made landfall.”
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/buffett-climate-change-not-causing-more-disasters-132738751–finance.html
So when Dr. Pielke, Jr. points this out, science advisor Holdren writes a sadly misleading attack on Pielke.
Everyone paying home owner insurance on the Gulf or Atlantic Coasts is paying for global warming hype right now.
Can anybody explain what John Cook means by the first statement?
“Climate impacts range from moderate to catastrophic”
presumably climate impacts is a neutral terms (they can be good or bad). Or is he just assuming its all bad? If we go for the first then what does moderate mean? Moderately good (i.e. the benefits out way the negatives) or neutral (risk and reward cancel out) or moderately bad (whatever that means). There seems to be a version in there that makes Curry’s response perfectly fine.
hunter
I have achieved comparable dimness. That was a goal. Whooo hooo!
Well, it’s uncertain–after all it depends on what particular effects occur at what temperature increase. But just basically–the negative cost to society of undertaking unnecessary actions are the same if CS is 1.0 deg or 0.5 deg. But it makes sense that there will be more severe effects from inaction at 5.5 deg compared to 5.0 deg.
Yeah, that came out confusing. What I meant to say was that plausible values below the IPCC range have a tighter spread that plausible values above the IPCC range. So if we expanded our uncertainty to, say 97%, we would likely add a wider range high values than low values–and thus a wider range of worse consequences. This is because there is a much harder bound for low estimates than higher ones.
But if you’re arguing for more uncertainty, you’re arguing that the calculated 95% range is too narrow.
That’s true, but Curry doesn’t seem to be making that argument.
She is saying that we can never convince China or India to stop burning fossil fuels. It is obviously possible to convince them. China, for instance, leads the world in green energy. I happen to think that China and India seem to be acting rationally now and I believe they will continue to do so. They will likely want western countries to cut emissions first, but that’s a reasonable position.
The idea that China and India will never stop burning fossil fuels is based on pure conjecture.
Boris,
Your optimism is cute. The idea that China and India will ever stop burning fossil fuels is also based on pure conjecture. Acting rationally? Sure!
Reuters story here
You can often count on China to act in their own rational self interests.
Boris (Comment #126036)
“China, for instance, leads the world in green energy.”
Wrong Boris. Don’t confuse subsidized investment in solar panel and other renewable manufactures with rates of installed and utilized renewable energy sources; particularly on the basis of renewable Megawatts per capita. China is more than willing to feed our hunger for “green”, but it is relying on coal for its own energy needs.
Boris,
To be fair, they make the appropriate pious noises on the appropriate occasions. But they are in fact ramping up their fossil fuel use, not ramping it down. They are glad to talk about quitting years down the road, so long as they can burn as they wish today.
Hey, if that’s what we’re talking about, sign me up! I’d be glad to campaign to reduce fossil fuel use years down the road if you guys will agree that we can burn baby burn in the meantime, increasing our fossil fuel energy use and consumption.
This globe is rather interesting as far as how we stop emissions
http://meme-meme.org/image/66208610298
This globe is rather interesting as far as how we stop emissions
http://meme-meme.org/image/66208610298
“The idea that China and India will ever stop burning fossil fuels is also based on pure conjecture.”
Exactly! Uncertainty!
Okay Boris. Judith Curry isn’t allowed to express anything except mathematical truisms and identities because she warns us that we don’t pay enough attention to the uncertainties in climate science. You run and go tell her.
Lucia, The dimness your parody of Cook’s cartoon succeeded in highlighting(?) was as dim as Cook’s dimness. Perhaps Cook has been contriving results with certain faux researchers too long to realize the level of dimness he is achieving.
Insurance exists to compensate people for financial losses.
Nothing the AGW community is trying to force the public square into accepting would compensate people for financial losses. And in fact it is accurate to point out that many of the proposed solutions actually make things worse for people.
The argument that maybe sensitivity really is 5 or 10 degrees C/doubling so we should ‘act now’ has always been rather silly. Bjorn Lomborg dealt with this in impressive detail in the Skeptical Environmentalist what seems like a long time ago. Even if sensivity is high, it is way cheaper and involves far less human misery to adapt rather than radically restrict fossil fuel use.
Given that with each passing day it is increasingly unlikely that the high end scenarios for sensitivity are correct, the case for imposing a political-economic-environmental carbon-restriction regime with a 100% chance of economic and humanitarian disaster is weak and getting weaker.
China and India will never restrict fossil fuel use if the alternative is massive economic disruption and widespread increase in poverty even if that seems like short term thinking to those who bring their own grocery bags to Whole Foods.
No elected government anywhere else in the world is going to impose the requisite restrictions unless and until everybody else does so and nobody is going to do it on the basis of a scary ‘maybe’ from the Hockey Team and their email pen pals.
The ‘act now’ crowd is also rapidly p*ssing away any remaining credibility with utterly bogus ‘extreme weather’ attributions so the list of other overblown downside events in the case of rapid warming are starting to getting the level of credence they deserve.
Malaria-ridden drowning polar bears floating past the few skyscrapers still visible in submerged Manhattan in between weekly Cat 6 hurricanes … hey, it could still happen, so we should Act Now! That ship has sailed, got stuck in the ice and sank way down to where the hidden heat is stored.
George,
Bravo, sir! I agree with your points as well, but it was your way with words that prompted my praise.
George Tobin: +1
This is just wrong. Look up what has happened when temps go up 5 deg C. This is why you find politicized skeptics so interested in minimizing the future warming. If we knew that CS was 5 deg C (or actually even something like 2.5 deg C) the obvious best choice would be to act to prevent it.
You should be more skeptical of your belief in what foreign nations will do.
So all bad effects are overblown and everything will be peachy? What happened to uncertainty?
“If we knew that CS was 5 deg C (or actually even something like 2.5 deg C) the obvious best choice would be to act to prevent it.” Huh? 2.5 degrees? Obvious?
“If we knew that CS was 5 deg C”
If we knew who was going to win the NCAA Hoops Tourney, we could make some $$$.
Andrew
C’mon Boris. Quit being a Merchant of Doubt. China’s NDRC approved the mining of another 100 million tonnes of coal, it’s clear what China’s going to do.
Boris the Matador! Ole! to each missed point.
1.
Is this a reference to some climate porn scenario in an IPCC summary? Or a reference to the sheer horror of the end of the most recent ice age?
I was born in Florida. I live in the now-frozen tundra of the Mid-Atlantic states. A few degree boost looks pretty good to me about now.
2. The claim that mitigation is preferable to adaptation (“This is just wrong.”) is going to require something more than that assertion.
3. Any goober who attributes any specific weather event (especially cold) to man-made, carbon-caused climate change is an idiot and/or a charlatan, an assertion that carries no uncertainty.
4. As for an international Kumbaya moment when we all dump fossil fuels at the same time even if it means economic disaster and mass deaths, I think you need to recognize that there is a difference between uncertainty and delusion.
Re: Boris (Mar 5 10:58),
No, you look it up and provide the citations. You’re the one that’s claiming it would be disastrous.
Also, define to a reasonable extent how it would be possible to prevent CO2 from doubling in the next hundred years, how much it would cost and what we would have to give up to spend those resources on mitigation. That must also include the human costs of probably leaving the undeveloped world to continue to be at risk from the current level of severe weather events and the possibility of a massive drop in the standard of living of the rest of the world. Releasing a virus the kills 90% of the population is not a valid option.
The cost of a kWh of electricity in Germany is three times what it is in the US. Who do you think that affects the most? I’ll give you a clue, it’s not the one percenters (and I don’t meant the motorcycle clubs).
Only people named George get to make assertions?
In any case, just peruse the literature. You can say it’s wrong and it’s “climate porn” or whatever political catchphrase you think will get you patted on the back. That’s fine. But then you just prove my point that you are the one who isn’t considering “uncertainty.”
haha, of course, no uncertainty in the effects of reducing fossil fuel burning either. “Mass deaths[!]” Who’s the alarmist now?
Boris:
Ole!
Re: George Tobin (Mar 5 12:26),
Boris is apparently unfamiliar with the concept of freezing to death.
DeWitt,
If we were to make a list of “Boris is unfamiliar with…..”
well.
AR5.
This is uncertain too, of course. Stern had a best figure of 2% of GWP (with uncertainties, obv.) Not acting would be the equivalent of 5% of GWP each–and possibly as much as 15-20%. Note these estimates include lower values of CS, so if we KNEW the true value to be 5C, mitigation would be far cheaper–snap decision.
A massive drop in the world’s standard of living is not a realistic outcome for mitigation even under the highest cost scenarios.
That statement is very odd, but it is true.
There are variety of ways to structure carbon taxes so that they don’t fall on the lower class.
Great point. I’m sure nobody studying global warming ever took that into account. Quite the discovery, sir.
Boris,
I think the uncertainty counter you’ve got going is a fun gambit. That said, I think the main weakness is that a reader has to accept ‘uncertainty’ about just about everything in order to agree with you, which leaves one feeling silly if not stupid. I think if you could refine the approach to get around that you’d have a horse to ride there.
(update: also, you’ve got to refine it so the discussion doesn’t end with everybody doing this:
You sure about that?!?)
Re: Boris (Mar 5 13:13),
Saying AR5 is not a citation. If’ you’ve actually read it yourself, you should cite chapter and verse and the citations and their sources to justify their numbers.
The Stern report is a bad joke. To get those numbers requires a near zero discount rate on the capital investment. While current interest rates are near zero, No one expects that to last.
That’s a non-sequiter to the original comment which was on actual, today electricity prices, not some pie in the sky bye and bye carbon tax.
Boris:
The phrase “climate porn” was coined by Mick Hulme who is a climate scientist formerly at East Anglia who does not believe that scary exaggerations about the effects of climate change are (a) consistent with a scientific perspective and (b) counterproductive as a way to bring about long term social and political agreement and policy changes. Denialist scum!
So, even the highest possible cost of implementation won’t have a major adverse economic impact. Who knew? That’s really good news. My congratulations to whoever selected your meds.
Boris,
Without some massive and highly unlikely breakthroughs in energy storage and generation by wind and solar, the cost of renewable energy will continue to be higher than fossil fuel based energy. Only if the cost of renewable energy was the same as fossil energy would it not have an effect on standard of living. In other words requiring the use of renewable energy instead of fossil fuel will make it more costly to heat your house and leave you less to spend on other things, or live in a colder house. I think any rational person would call that a reduction in the standard of living. And that’s just heating your house. The cost of energy is a factor in pretty much everything.
Do you seriously want me to copy and paste all this stuff? Just go to Wikipedia.
Certainty if you don’t think there are ethical obligations toward future generations, you might disagree with Stern. Also, the Stern Review underestimates climate impacts.
There are a variety of ways to structure energy prices so that increases don’t fall on the lower class.
Oh no!
BUZZ! Sorry, thank for you playing.
You were doing fine, but now not only will you not support your own claims, but you direct your reader to wikipedia?
It won’t do.
Dewitt,
Absolutely. It’s so fundamental to just about everything that it’s hard to catalog. Electricity = refrigeration = supermarkets, food getting to those who need it unspoilt. Fossil fuels = transportation = getting anything anywhere , etc etc, I think it’d be an awfully long list.
Re: Boris (Mar 5 14:38),
There are these wonderful things called hyperlinks so you don’t have to cut and paste an entire article. Do you see that the word ‘hyperlink’ above is in boldface type and underlined? Put your cursor on the word and left click. Magically, the Wikipedia article on Hyperlinks will appear in your browser. This is the type of thing for which Wikipedia is useful, not as a secondary reference to AR5.
If you don’t want to do the formatting that links a word or phrase to a URL, you can just put your mouse cursor in the address box of your browser that is displaying the page of interest, right click and select copy, then paste that into your post. It’s really simple.
By the way, your reference to AR5 is not valid anyway. The report of WGII, which deals with the consequences of warming, is not available yet. Which proves that, as I suspected, you haven’t even tried to look at it.
There’s no better source to copy and paste into an undergraduate research paper, from what I’ve been told. Is your strategy here to pretend the research doesn’t exist?
AR4 then or are we going to still–still–keep pretending the research doesn’t exist?
I’m going to ignore the bit about what a great source the wikipedia is.
Not at all. But if you’re not going to adhere to the ubiquitous convention that he who puts the argument forward supports it, then you’re just hand waving. Seriously, you get to make whatever point you want by claiming AR5 supports it, but you can’t be bothered to show where buried in all that mess it supports you, the reader has to do that. Seriously?
Boris, AR5 clearly says you’re wrong. Go look it up, it’s in there somewhere.
Boris: You claimed that “Look up what has happened when temps go up 5 deg C.” as in past tense, ok, let’s look. When temps went up at the end of the last ice age, life thrived and human civilization began.
If you mean look what AR5 says WILL happen then you are in the realm of unverified unproveable forecasts. I have published on this topic http://www.ncasi.org/Downloads/Download.ashx?id=9268 and the projections of catastrophe tend to be based on simplistic equilibrium bioclimatic zone assumptions as well as assuming farmers aren’t smart enough to change their seed source or crop with weather changes.
Oh. Maybe I misunderstood you Boris, I’m sorry. Are we still just sort of looking at the …choreography, I guess, of your arguments, so to speak? Sort of like saying and then I’d argue this? If so, sure that’s a different matter. I’d readily concede that you could find support for damages at 5C if you tried, if we’re just discussing the argument without actually arguing it.
Wikipedia is a great resource. They have these thinks called citations.
What on Earth are you talking about? If you don’t know what has happened in the past in climate 5 degrees higher, then you should probably look that up. It’s not like this is controversial. If you don’t know what the range of possible effects are for global warming, then look it up. This is stuff people discuss all the time and pretending like I need to support myself when I say “look at the evidence” is just odd behavior. It”s like you guys have no understanding of the evidence at all and it’s very strange you would demand citations for things you should know if you think that that mitigation is a waste of time. How can you make a judgement on mitigation if you are this ignorant of the issues. It boggles the mind.
Fine. We’ll play it this way.
George, Mark DEMANDS a citation for your claim:
Mark Bofill:
That’s odd. AR5 is telling me you’re both wrong. You can’t look it up, though, you have to smoke peyote and mediate. [I like the spot 36.88203, -111.52138].
Sorry about your brain if you actually try this though.
Oh see, we ~are~ arguing the point.
Boris.
Puh-Leeze.
If I go and cite a portion of AR4 which does not support your specific argument, you can claim I’m not citing the portion you had in mind. It’s not reasonable. If you can’t cite a specific reference to support your own claim, you are hand waving.
Bring me a stone. No, not that stone.
Re: Carrick (Mar 5 15:52),
Nice view. Kind of high up to be eating (not smoking according to Wikipedia anyway) peyote though. Google Earth is fun.
Okay Boris, maybe this is the easiest way to resolve this.
Claim: AR4 doesn’t say what will happen if temps go up 5C.
Disprove me.
(Edit, better phrasing of the claim: AR4 doesn’t support your argument. Disprove me. It’s an easy slam dunk, all you have to do is cite some evidence from it that supports your argument.)
Boris:
I went to wikipedia as you suggested:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interglacial
“The preceding interglacial optimum occurred during the Late Pleistocene Eemian Stage, 131–114 ka.” It looks about 5-6C warmer than today and it says the ocean was around 8 meters higher than today.
It says “During the Eemian the climatic optimum took place during pollen zone E4 in the type area (city of Amersfoort, Netherlands). Here this zone is characterized by the expansion of Quercus (Oak), Corylus (Hazel), Taxus, Ulmus (Elm), Fraxinus (Ash), Carpinus (Hornbeam), and Picea (Spruce).” Pollen zone E4 is birch forest.
It really doesn’t sound that bad to me Boris.
Boris:
Here is some more description of Europe during the Eemian – from:
On page 10 of http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1173&context=usgsstaffpub it says that “Tall mixed hardwood forests with a closed canopy covered much of Europe during MIS 5e.”
Again – it really sounds quite pleasant to me Boris.
Are you sure 5C warmer than present is really going to be so bad globally?
Gosh, you know what, never mind.
My entire life and I’ve never seen such a thing. Somebody making an argument who won’t bother to actually make their argument, and who thinks it’s perfectly reasonable.
My 10 year old knows better than that. Sheesh.
Craig:
So are you predicting another civilization will arise?
You’re not being fair to George. At least give him a chance to support his statement.
As long as your current sea level is > 8m. Exactly 8m might be pretty sweet.
Lucia,
Is there a way to show captions for what the climate alarmist would say in each of Cook’s little panels?
The answer to each presented claim of risk would be the same:
“Reduce CO2.”
“Small chance of my house burning?” “Reduce CO2.”
“Doc says smoking increases my risk of getting cancer”. “Reduce CO2.”
“Its unlikely I’ll be in an accident.” “Reduce CO2.”
I think that sums up the situation pretty well.
hunter
Do you mean could someone do something to create a pop-up of what someone might say if… that would activate if someone moused over? Maybe.
Lucia
Lucia,
You are very creative indeed. I was only thinking of changing the static captions. But something dynamic as you are thinking of is possibly even better.
Craig,
Thanks for the link. I’m looking forward to reading it after I get the kids down.
Lucia,
“if someone moused over”
.
The evolution of language is interesting indeed.
Craig,
Interesting paper. I get the gist, although I’m not educated enough in bioclimatic models to even qualify as a novice. From my ignorant perspective I will say it wouldn’t surprise me at all if you’re absolutely right and SDM’s are leading us to bogus conclusions about species getting wiped out due to climate change. It always seemed counter intuitive to me that all (or most) species should be that fragile. Thanks!
Boris:
You probably have a signed, dog-eared copy of the Stern Report next to your Michael Mann shrine at home. So the opinions of any real economists might be disturbing. Reader discretion is advised,
Start with Tol who has a meta study of the estimates of the social costs of carbon here.
The only way you can justify pricing adjustments or equivalent methods that actually reduce fossil fuel use by the amount necessary to stabilize at 550 ppm is if you use a low to zero discount rate to accommodate an assumption of uncertainty of catastrophe and a price for carbon many times that which would be justified by a fixed 2-3 degree assumed sensitivity.
Nobody else seems to join Stern out on that limb. See, Nordhaus as to why that methodology is inherently stupid.
If you do make the it-really-could-be-catastrophic assumption, then the enormous social cost of carbon reflected in the price of fossil fuels exceeds what the poorer people in poorer nations can pay. As that price increases, people on the bottom rungs are the first to go under. That is what grounds my assertion that this policy approach would be life-shortening for very many people.
But hey, I forgot about magical instant energy source replacement, first world subsidies for the fuel nobody will be allowed to buy and the infinite wisdom and resourcefulness of global, national and local government agencies that vast numbers of people would become completely dependent upon. What could go possibly go wrong?
The IPCC list of mitigation options in AR4 taken together don’t reach the stabilization goal. So reduction of fossil fuel use to get to 1990 levels (or what is it… 3/4 of 2007 levels?) is required. To impose that in a growing world where a lot of people expect to have the same or a better standard of living is an enormous economic hit and a political nonstarter. The breezy assurance that this will cost only 1% of global GDP (Stern) is a crock. The massive carbon fuel price increase alone is probably 5 or 6% and then there is the uncertainty of broader adverse economic effects.
In short, Boris, the only way adaptation is not the better option (and this obviously does not preclude doable mitigation being in the mix that you and I would likely readily endorse) is if a catastrophe scenario is plausible. It ain’t.
Craig Loehle (Comment #)
Craig:
Your article relied on data, observation and other science stuff but violated the everybody-knows rule that all climate change impacts are negative so it must be wrong. Sorry, Craig. I should also check to see if the journal editor has been fired yet. I will email Phil Jones and Michael Mann about that–then delete it from the send box as always.
Alarmists have a cartoonish static view of the world. Animals and plants will die (and are already dying) because of the inherent lack of adaptability in living things.
Millions of humans will drown in coastal regions because they are not swift enough to adapt to a sea level rise measured in mm/yr. Farmers will keep planting the same crops despite shrinking yields because they won’t be smart enough to adapt (and there are no GM seed salesmen in their region). AGW will also cause people to forget how to build dams or irrigation canals so many will simultaneously die from drought and floods.
I hope there are great minds ready to save us from all this. Maybe Boris knows some.
DeWitt:
Actually peyote can be smoked or eaten.
That location is Horseshoe Bend on the Colorado River. One of the more picturesque places on the Earth, IMO. Google does a great job on it these days.
The easiest way to show an alternate caption would be to split each panel into separate images then assign them alt texts with the alternate captions.
More dynamic methods exist, but they’d require using something like Javascript events.
DeWitt,
“Which proves that, as I suspected, you haven’t even tried to look at it.”
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Yes, but you forget personal sensitivities, quasi-religious beliefs, and political inclinations always trump references to publications. So the fact that Boris references a non-existent document only reflects his certainty that AR5 WGII will support him. You also forget that within the publications WGII will cite, personal sensitivities, quasi-religious beliefs, and political inclinations usually trump reasoned analysis. WGI is arguably about science. WGII and WGIII are touchy-feely political rubbish.
Fine, let’s start there:
Okay, so: you’re wrong. And moreover, you’re really, really wrong because the social cost of carbon would be much, much higher if we KNEW that sensitivity was 5K.
Shall we?
Again, even more action would be warranted if sensitivity were known to be high. Again, surprise, you are very wrong.
The lack of self-awareness in the statement is breathtaking. It’s almost like you’ve convinced yourself that the literature supports your position rather than mine–but in the next post you’ll complain about the corruption in the literature and that skeptical papers don’t get published. So odd.
George,
I agree with you. No sooner than I mention this though and my opposition agrees and gleefully explains that we’d have to be careful to ensure the poor are protected via government policies, I.E. massive wealth redistribution. I’m sure that’s not news to you. But suddenly, at that point the discussion has become entirely political. And I’ve yet to actually ever make the slightest bit of measurable progress in a discussion with somebody who’s got their heart set on socialism.
So any policy that might hurt the poor is unacceptable. And any policy that might help the poor is unacceptable.
You do not sound like a serious person.
Boris,
“The lack of self-awareness in the statement is breathtaking. ”
.
Funny, that is what I would say is your problem. I am not a ‘skeptic’ at all, at least not WRT GHG driven warming. I think the published literature supports a most likely equilibrium sensitivity close to 2C per doubling or a bit less, and a transient sensitivity near 1.3 to 1.4C per doubling. Which I note are inside the AR5 WGI ranges.
.
Where I am a ‘skeptic’ is with the credibility of much higher sensitivity (3C or more per doubling). Empirical data simply do not support those higher estimates… only obviously wrong model projections and “ice age” simulations…. er, mostly by those same obviously wrong models. The ‘catastrophic’ sensitivities are of such low probability that basing public policy on those sensitivity values is not only crazy, it is hugely wasteful and immoral, since that waste of capital ensures prolonged poverty and misery for the world’s poorest.
.
I am even more skeptical of projections of the consequences of warming (like the comical projections of 1-2 meter sea level rise by 2100), which always remind me more of the scary stories I used to hear around a campfire as a kid than serious technical studies. They are ridiculous, and IMO 100% driven by a green political agenda. All touchy-feely nonsense, designed to do nothing more than instill fear in the public. Too bad you believe such rubbish.
Boris, could you not wave your hands in my face? I’m trying to have a discussion here. Go play with your DS or something.
This latest gaffe on Boris’s part, referencing an as yet non-existent publication, reminded me a bit of the Peter Gleick controversy, where Gleick—at that point, head of the AGU ethics committee–published a critical review of a book that it was clear he had never read.
Well at least in Gleick’s case, the book exists. 😀
This reference of Boris’s also begs the question what the MLA style requirements are for non-existent publications.
Going on with making claims from reports you’ve never read , has anybody had a chance to read Nic Lewis’s latest contribution yet? It’s got a forward by Judith Curry, doubt that will help her stock any wrt the faithful.
I understand Stephen Sherwood hasn’t read it but that didn’t stop him from bloviating about it in the Guardian. I guess Boris is just following tried and true climate science methods, and we should either cut him more slack, or climate science less slack. You choose.
You are choosing to ignore the empirical data that show high sensitivity (3C+) is possible. It’s okay to say it’s wrong, but it’s odd to pretend it doesn’t exist at all.
You can be skeptical of all of this stuff. I don’t really care. but pretending that “personal sensitivities, quasi-religious beliefs, and political inclinations always trump references to publications.” is pure nonsense.
I never made any claim except the literature on impacts existed. You’re way too smart to argue that 5C of warming won’t have bad consequences according to the published research. Or are you?
Boris,
“pretending that “personal sensitivities, quasi-religious beliefs, and political inclinations always trump references to publications.†is pure nonsense.”
.
There is no pretending involved. It is a rational conclusion based on observation of behavior among the faithful, including yours. Consider: drowning polar bears, West Side highway under water, most of the tropics uninhabitable, the Amazon disappearing, more and stronger hurricanes, more and stronger tornadoes, mass starvation, more malaria, more acne, wars over water, dissolving clam shells, catastrophic methane releases, etc. etc. etc. 100% rubbish scare stories. If I were you, I would be ashamed to align myself with a politically motivated terror campaign.
“100% rubbish scare stories.”
Uncertainty!
Now there’s a betting possibility, CO2 emissions in 2015. It’s a little far off as the numbers won’t be known until well into 2016 and possibly later. I bet on a 5% increase from 2014 absent a global economic collapse.
By the way, the 14% reduction in emissions in Nordhaus comes from a carbon tax of $35 per ton of carbon on top of the selling price. That’s compared to the Stern Review’s recommendation of $350 per ton of carbon. Neither is actually going to happen. As far as I can tell, the DICE model that Nordhaus uses assumes the IPCC climate sensitivity of 3C/doubling atmospheric CO2, the WGII estimates of impact and the WGIII estimates of mitigation costs. The WGII and WGIII reports are primarily political documents and thus overestimate impacts and underestimate mitigation costs.
For a more rational view, try reading Pielke, Jr., The Climate Fix.
RE:
Boris (Comment #126184)
March 6th, 2014 at 9:46 am
“You are choosing to ignore the empirical data that show high sensitivity (3C+) is possible. It’s okay to say it’s wrong, but it’s odd to pretend it doesn’t exist at all.”
***********************************************
Boris,
It is also possible that we have missed a big piece of the climate puzzle and there will be no warming by 2100 in spite of ever increasing CO2. The probabilities are pretty low for both but we must agree that it is possible, however remote. Currently there is very little empirical data to strongly support either position.
Boris:
Then
One of these claims is not like the other.
I haven’t argued either way.
Have you read this article by R. Pyndick?
http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/jel.51.3.860
Do we know the “social cost of carbon” with any precision or do the integrated assessment models (IAMs) tell us nothing except the political inclinations of the modellers?
I was struck by his conclusion that:
“You might think that some input choices are more reasonable or defensible than others, but no, “reasonable” is very much in the eye of the modeler. Thus these models can be used to obtain almost any result one desires.”
—–
Climate Change Policy: What Do the Models Tell Us?
Article Citation
Pindyck, Robert S. 2013. “Climate Change Policy: What Do the Models Tell Us?” Journal of Economic Literature, 51(3): 860-72.
DOI: 10.1257/jel.51.3.860
Abstract
Very little. A plethora of integrated assessment models (IAMs) have been constructed and used to estimate the social cost of carbon (SCC) and evaluate alternative abatement policies. These models have crucial flaws that make them close to useless as tools for policy analysis: certain inputs (e.g., the discount rate) are arbitrary, but have huge effects on the SCC estimates the models produce; the models’ descriptions of the impact of climate change are completely ad hoc, with no theoretical or empirical foundation; and the models can tell us nothing about the most important driver of the SCC, the possibility of a catastrophic climate outcome. IAM-based analyses of climate policy create a perception of knowledge and precision, but that perception is illusory and misleading.
AR5 exists–although not in final form. You don’t seem to have a point. No skeptic ever argues that CS is high but it will be a good thing, so it’s really bizarre to see it presented here and you falling all over yourself to distract from the argument. Odd again.
Way to take a stand.
Thank you for acknowledging, at least, that these things exist. I disagree that they are primarily political, but in any case if Nordhaus assumed 5C warming the costs would be much higher. Even assuming the WGII and WGIII reports are wildly off, we still have a cause for action–remember even with a known warming the effects will still be uncertain.
Carrick,
Don’t bother. I made the same mistake. Boris isn’t here to actually discuss anything, he’s here to annoy you by sticking his fingers in his ears and pretend he can’t hear you.
“Boris isn’t here to actually discuss anything, he’s here to annoy you by sticking his fingers in his ears and pretend he can’t hear you.”
He’s been doing that for years. Makes one wonder what value he sees in doing it. Maybe someday, when this charade is over, he’ll tell us.
Andrew
Mark,
” sticking his fingers in his ears and pretend he can’t hear you.”
.
I don’t think he is pretending. He wants action, drastic action, and now, not later. Think GM crop protests writ large. It is not a rational argument, it is a belief that any human driven change will be very bad.
Boris:
It’s not a stand. I don’t think anybody really knows what would happen if the average temperature of the Earth warmed by 5°C.
Mark, I was just struck by the irony that Boris’s academic standards allowed him to reference a non-existent publication(a draft doesn’t qualify for a publication, otherwise, I have about 3x more publications that I can report on my vita), and noted the parallels for that within the community he obviously identifies with.
I’d still be curious what people thought about Nic Lewis’s treatise on climate sensitivity though.
Again the link: Oversensitive: How The IPCC hid the Good News on Global Warming
Re: SteveF (Mar 6 11:42),
It’s more than that. He also seems to think that resources are unlimited so that there are no real costs to taking immediate action, so no tradeoffs. Or if there are costs, you can arrange it so that only the rich have to pay them and that there will be no unpleasant consequences from that either.
A rough calculation says that a $35/tonC tax would amount to about $0.095/gallon of gasoline. That’s supposed to cause a 14% reduction in emissions? I don’t think so. I suspect that the elasticity of energy demand is nowhere near as high in the real world as it is in the DICE model.
Carrick,
I’ve read it. I haven’t had a chance to think it through or check its claims. Is it so that Foster and Gregory 2006 didn’t suffer from using priors whereas the other papers did? Dunno, I gotta check. Was there anything else wrong with it? Did AR4 misrepresent it? so on.
Mostly I was struck by how readable it was. 🙂
Mark, I admit I’ve only gotten part way through it. We’re dealing with getting “good” uncertainty limits in some work we’re writing up for publication.
I have to say it’s a pleasure working with my colleagues, who take this very seriously, and aren’t happy with getting answers that allow them to wave off experimental uncertainty. Definitely a refreshing change of pace from some of the dodgy arguments I’ve seen here.
Thought this paragraph was great:
[bold mine of course]
There’s also a new interview for Nic. He and SteveF are on the same playbook:
I don’t agree that this means “natural internal variability” is necessarily smaller. It means that forced natural variability is smaller, it says nothing about unforced variability, which complex systems also exhibit.
In college, there was a guy in the dorm who had a germ phobic disorder. If he was coming up the stairs and we were coming down, he would turn around and go back out. He would shower for an hour. In this case, it was an illness, but many of the alarmists act similarly fearful of their own shadow, like mothers who won’t let their children play outside even in a safe neighborhood and people who carry hand sanitizer around all the time. If you ask if they would have preferred to live in the 1700s when much of Europe starved repeatedly due to cold weather (which affected much of European history including the French revolution), they simply won’t answer. Personally, I am sure glad the LIA ended. The idea that 1) any change in the climate is bad and 2) all extreme weather is a new phenomenon are both at root a narcissistic view of the world, that it should not change or be disruptive because that is displeasing to me personally.
DeWitt,
” I suspect that the elasticity of energy demand is nowhere near as high in the real world as it is in the DICE model.”
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Agreed. In addition, supply is MORE price sensitive in the real world. Which is primarily why supply has expanded rapidly over the past 5 years, constraining price in spite of increasing demand.
Boris:
Read more carefully.
Tol says that greenhouse reduction is cost justified at what he believes to be the actual social cost which assumes modest sensitivity. Mitigation with better technology, low-hanging fruit etc is just fine with me. Social costs at $20 per ton is pennies a gallon if translated into taxes/costs assessed at the pump or modest consumer technology mandates.
But reductions on the scale necessary to accommodate the fantasy levels of sensitivity and uncertainty (Stern & Boris) are not justified because they are simply not affordable. (You read that part of the Tol article, right, Boris?) So if climate sensitivity is low (even if social costs are obviously overstated) and mitigations can be effected at reasonable cost, that’s OK with me though I suspect that the estimate of social costs relies on some pessimistic assumptions which makes the difference between adaptation and mitigation almost moot.
Given that government will insert itself as the conduit, the likelihood of efficient application of dedicated resources toward mitigation is near zero which means all near-ties go to adaptation.
Also, grasp that Nordhaus and Tol do not challenge the assumptions that underlay the calculation of social cost of the Climate Science Insider Cult estimates of sensitivity and calculate costs accordingly. The passage you cite from Nordhaus was not a recommendation or conclusion but the results of one model run when you use a model more conventional in its assumptions than the idiot Stern Review. It was used as a contrast with zero discount $400+ per ton social costs.
I thought you would grasp the point of the article about the effect of dramatic differences in working assumptions and the need for more robust analysis of sensitivity figures.
Also, if you re-read Tol, the trend among economists is toward lower carbon social costs. And given that the IPCC cannot sustain the “maybe as high as 4.5 or 6.0” crapola much longer and given that less biased impact cost assessments will increasingly be permitted to emerge, the economic case for mandated, large scale, present and near future carbon fuel reductions is falling apart.
Carrick,
I’m trying to get my head around the distinction.
Unforced variability; the system wanders because it’s complex?
Forced variability: the system reacts to changes in forcings across a certain range?
Great. Uncertainty. That’s fine, I guess. But the bad things that are possible–the sea level rise, increased floods, increased droughts–those are all possible. And worse, because you are uncertain, after all.
Mark Bofill: “I’m trying to get my head around the distinction.”
Forced variability – response due to variation in forcing, e.g. volcanic aerosols, solar.
Unforced variability – self-organized but chaotic processes, e.g. ENSO, PDO.
At least that’s what I think Carrick means.
The real question is how much warming can realistically occur. You look at this looking at realistic CO2 projections and climate models that are capable of explaining the preponderance of observations.
I think 5°C from pre-industrial is truthfully off the books. It would have profound ramifications if the Earth got close to that temperature though, IMO, but I think it’s a sci-fi scenario.
Even with more moderate scenarios, I certainly hope we’re as good as adapting as we think we are.
HaroldW,
Thank you.
HaroldW, pretty much.
Unforced variability just describes internal variability in a system that is not associated with any measurable forcings. If you have a system that has multiple stability points, then natural variability can cause it to drift between these.
An example of this is an environment which favors C4 plants (which intern more CO2, but also thrive in lower atmospheric CO2 concentrations) to an environment which favors C3 plants (interns less CO2, and thrives at the prehistoric average for atmospheric CO2 concentration).
Most complex systems with memory also have long-term persistence in their internal variability. This is described as “1-f^n” noise, meaning that if you took a spectrum of this variability, you’d see a 1/f^n slope in the power spectrum.
If you make the observational period long enough, eventually you’ll resolve the so-called “source region’, and the increase in noise as you decrease the frequency (or increase the period) stops happening… it flattens out, then below this region the fluctuations go to zero.
Anyway, as long as the measurement period short is enough so that the source region isn’t resolved (this is not desirable but not always avoidable), one of the consequences of the 1/f^n noise is you get a growing variance with increase observation time.
What this means practically is if your source region is say 1000 years, then looking at “only” 100 years is going to significantly underestimate the amount of natural variability present in your system.
Natural unforced variability is the dragon in the living room here, since it is likely impossible to predict. A given climate sensitivity with a larger unforced variability is a bigger problem than a high climate sensitivity with a smaller unforced variability.
One thing I should add is, unlike some other types of uncertainty (e.g., model error), natural variability is a quantifiable uncertainty. Thus you can plan for the extremes (just like weather), even if you can’t forecast it very far ahead of time.
Boris,
I find this argument morally reprehensible. The undeveloped world is already subject to floods, droughts and the consequences of other severe weather events. The idea of spending money that might cause the frequency of these events to not increase or increase at a slightly lower rate while spending nothing on adaptation to what’s already happening is disgusting. The roof top solar power arrays and Tesla battery packs should be going to Sub-Saharan Africa or Bangladesh, not Silicon Valley. Then there’s clean water and many, many other things that are needed now, not 100 years in the future.
In behavior modification terms, the rewards of climate change mitigation are positive (maybe), uncertain and future while the costs of mitigation are negative, immediate and certain. That’s a very hard sell politically and something that isn’t going to get a lot of attention other than lip service in the real world. Most people won’t even save as much as they should for retirement. They buy bigger houses instead, foolishly thinking that they are somehow investments instead of shelter.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #126226) ah but that’s the problem: the rewards for driving a Prius and putting solar panels on your house are immediate moral superiority and smugness, whereas no one sees or cares much if you help people in Africa get clean water.
Ironically, international development agencies are trying to prevent power plants from being built in the developing world (just awful), but china doesn’t need their money and just goes ahead.
Re: Craig Loehle (Mar 6 16:02),
There was a hilarious South Park episode on exactly that, the driving a Prius part anyway, Season 10, episode 2: Smug Alert! It’s available on line.
Craig Loehle,
“the rewards for driving a Prius and putting solar panels on your house are immediate moral superiority and smugness, whereas no one sees or cares much if you help people in Africa get clean water.”
.
Yes, and that is also why so many of the arguments supporting mitigation over all else border on immoral. Fortunately, I have no need for self-satisfied eco-smugness, so I continue to support the simple but desperately needed things like clean water, education, and basic health care for the poorest of the poor. Other desperately needed things, like development of a power grid for those without access to power, are being blocked by eco-imbicels like Mr. Obama; the only way to resolve that problem is at the voting booth.
Next time a climate scientist links to SKS as a reply to a question regarding climate science (gavin, mike M, etc on twitter) someone should post this: https://twitter.com/dana1981/status/441755496781860864
@DeWitt Payne (Comment #126226)
“The undeveloped world is already subject to floods, droughts and the consequences of other severe weather events. The idea of spending money that might cause the frequency of these events to not increase or increase at a slightly lower rate while spending nothing on adaptation to what’s already happening is disgusting.”
+1
We see a first world corollary in this:
The unprotected Jersey shore for tropical storm Sandy, and the on going flooding in SW England. Both acts of government negligence were fueled in no small part by AGW driven policies that predicted less flooding and led to complacency (at best).
What is the meaning of Curry’s statement?
Is she saying that doing nothing might be the best solution, or that people might conclude that doing nothing is probably not the best solution but if she gave objective advice people might conclude it is?
MikeN,
The full quote is
This would have been embedded in a full interview. But I’m pretty sure what she is saying is that
If after being as objective as we can about the evidence, it turns out the best of all proposed solutions is to do nothing, then she wouldn’t be able, of her own accord, to say that is not the best solution.
To some extent this is rather obvious. Given the way “if” works in a sentences, alternative would be
If after being as objective as we can about the evidence, it turns out the best of all proposed solutions is to do nothing, then she can– of her own accord– some how insist we don something despite the fact that objective evaluation of the evidence shows that doing nothing would be best.
Note that the structure of the sentence tells us Judy’s estimate of the likelihood that objective evaluation of the evidence would suggest the best solution is “do nothing”. She is merely explaining that if objective evaluation of the evidence says “do X”, then she has no reason to say “do anything other than X”.
The interview seems to be jumping around between topics so it’s hard to tell what is being contrasted. The part about helping politicians evaluate solutions and all the talk of uncertainty in the interview. I understood it as,’I shouldn’t push people towards a policy. I have to to be objective. If after being as objective as we can about the evidence, it turns out the result is politicians do nothing, I can’t say myself that that isn’t the best solution.â€
The interpretation being given strikes me as uncontroversial and a tautology. If an objective view of the evidence says do nothing, then doing nothing is a good policy. Alarmists would obviously dispute the if part.
MikeN, your interpretation is correct. Judith Curry’s statement is unremarkable. It’s just poorly phrased. All she said is if evaluating the evidence shows doing nothing is the best solution, she won’t say otherwise.
The correct response to that is, “Duh?” The only way that statement wouldn’t be true is if Curry was willing to disregard what evidence shows. I suppose some people might be willing to do that, but I doubt anyone would admit such in an interview.
Brandon, that’s why I am wondering if we are misinterpreting it.
The other suggestion I give is ,”I think we should do X, but providing an objective view of the evidence would give those skeptics enough ammunition to prevent X from passing, and therefore some think we should instead present a biased view that ignores uncertainty. I think we should be unbiased, even if that leads to doing nothing.’
Brandon: ” I suppose some people might be willing to do that [disregard what the evidence shows], but I doubt anyone would admit such in an interview.”
You may well be correct that nobody will admit directly that disregarding evidence is what they are willing to do. But some may take a prejudicial view of the evidence such that they will always claim that the evidence dictates policy X.
Ah yes, the precautionary principle. Lets see, how does this work — its very likely that Saddam Hussein has chemical weapons, therefore the precautionary principle says we should invade Iraq to prevent him from giving those weapons to terrorists. What could possibly go wrong?
The problem with the precautionary principle is that it is a sort of one sided game theory. It assumes that actions aimed at avoiding a bad outcome will always have a positive outcome. In this case, it assumes that the certain misery created by pursuing Pol Pot-style agrarianism to avoid warming will always be better than the consequences of warming — even when we can’t say with certainty how much warming we could expect.
mpaul (Comment #126346) exactly. What the precautionary principle misses is that all of us all the time make gambles with the future in which we can not guarantee the outcome. We must choose a college major. When graduated, we must choose a job from those available and willing to hire us. We must choose a spouse or stay single. Each choice means that some options for preventing future catastrophe are no longer available to us. When we choose a spouse, how do we know that they might not go crazy or commit a crime sometime in the future? Given that chance, we should all stay single. If we have kids, maybe they will not turn out perfectly. Better not have them. If I get a job, maybe I will be trapped there and hate it and hit my boss and go to jail–better stay in mom’s basement. That is where it takes you.
It seems the precautionary principle is misused and misrepresented almost every time it is mentioned. The precautionary principle does not say we must take action to oppose any risk we perceive. It doesn’t say anything like that. All the precautionary principle says is when determining the likelihood of outcomes, we should begin by assuming the least favorable.
It’s just a matter of determining who has the burden of proof. It says the person who claims something is “safe” has the burden of proof, not the one who claims it is “dangerous.” There’s nothing particularly remarkable or bad about that. Even if you don’t agree with it, it’s pretty reasonable.
The problem is people abuse the principle. That’s happened so much nowadays “precautionary principle” is mostly interpreted as what’s known as the “strong precautionary principle,” which is what people above have referred to. I guess if that trend it continues long enough, the original meaning of “precautionary principle” will just be discarded.
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Anyway, if the original precautionary principle had been applied to the invasion of Iraq, it’d have been quickly determined the invasion plan was a bad idea. The plan was a bad one, and it would never have survived serious critical analysis. It was only by applying the bastardized version of the precautionary principle the invasion was justified.
(This isn’t to say an invasion of Iraq was bad in and of itself. It’s possible a different invasion plan would have been more successful, and as such, it might have been a good idea under any version of the precautionary principle.)
Brandon Shollenberger:
I would say that the precautionary principle is simply the inversion of the burden of proof. Rather than assigning regulators with a burden of proof of likely risk of harm before taking action against a particular economic activity, economic actors must prove an absence of risk before undertaking the activity.
The trick is deciding whose level of risk prevails because disproving speculative concerns of high impact / very low probability to the satisfaction of those with an interest in not being persuaded is virtually impossible.
It is well-disguised ecofascism. It is reducible to the proposition that politically-connected elites can impose their aesthetic sensibilities as a de facto legal standard and the rest of us assume the burden of proof and must seek permission if our undertakings are inconsistent with those sensibilities. We can’t act unless happily risk-averse activists say so.
There are many ways to innocuously state the Precautionary Principle but the reality in application is always the same.
DeWitt:
I agree, though I’m not aware of many people that hold that position.
This is a strange statement. You could say it about the sandwich you ate for lunch or the MRI you got last year.
Stick a roof top solar array in a Sub Saharan village and they have a source of energy. Add a Tesla battery pack and they have a method of storing that energy. Energy saves lives.
If DeWitt sent them his sandwich it would be stale and mouldy when it got there. Sending them a MRI would pointless unless they had a more reliable source of energy than the solar array and Tesla battery.
DeWitt has several solid points here.
Alternative energy makes the most sense in places that lack infrastructure. I can expand on that, but it should be obvious why, at least for people who don’t routinely substitute snark for deliberate and carefully considered thought.
Those of us who have our eyes open have been aware of the issues with a burgeoning third-world population, such as the increase in populations in flood prone areas near rivers and oceans.
The cutting down of trees to build homes contributes to this too. On mountain sides, it means the water makes it to the tributaries more quickly, leading to larger scale flooding. For shore lines, removal of mangrove and cyprus swamps removes a very important impediment to tidal surges and tsunamis.
The problem with blaming CO2 on all of the worlds problems is there are other variables such as world population that have a high correlation with CO2 concentration but are not directly causally linked to CO2. This makes it easy to find all sorts of “bad things” that look like they correlate with CO2, but where you really have a spurious correlation present.
Thus increase in damage and mortality from flooding doesn’t necessarily mean that CO2 is causing enough additional rainfall, but rather a consequence of uncontrolled population growth. Pinning all of our hopes for reducing suffering in these groups on CO2 reduction is fruitless at best, at worst immoral.
Brandon:
Which is quite analogous to the current situation. Nearly everyone agrees that, in the long term, we need to find alternatives to fossil fuels. Technology and free market incentives can certainly achieve such an objective over a 50 to 100 year time horizon. The precautionary principle is being used to justify a rush to action. The Alarmists are, in effect, arguing that we need to act immediately and not worry about the consequences of such action because, no matter how bad the consequences of action, they will be better than the results of slower, more deliberate action. In my experience, such approaches rarely turn out well.
I see very little evidence that a rush to action will serve any purpose other than to advance the political agenda of certain groups.
How do you prove something is safe? Answer: you can’t. It’s like the cliche about drugs: safe, effective, cheap; pick two. Actually, you can probably leave off cheap and just pick one. Drug trials aren’t about proving safety, they’re about proving that the effectiveness of the treatment is better than what’s currently available and the risks are no worse, not that there are no risks.
Btw, have you ever noticed that the list of possible side effects of any drug always include constipation and diarrhea?
DeWitt,
“Btw, have you ever noticed that the list of possible side effects of any drug always include constipation and diarrhea?”
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Yes. Excitability, depression, and thoughts of suicide are also usually on every list of side effects. Mater of fact, based on the published warnings of side effects, the illness often appears much better than the cure. 😉
mpaul, agreed.
Another thing I think is analogous is I think the main reason the invasion of Iraq was so rushed is there was worry if it didn’t happen quickly, it wouldn’t happen at all. I think a lot of people want to start fighting global warming now because they see the call for slower, more deliberate action as just a way of doing nothing.
Iraq is in many ways a poor analog for anything to do with AGW.
The invasion went well and accomplished its goals quickly. The occupation was disastrously managed and nearly gave back the early success until it was modified.
AGW policies have never done as promised. CO2 is still increasing.
AGW claims have not been put under the level of scrutiny that the Iraq policy was put, which should give people pause to think a bit.
University of Houston just had some faux conference on AGW, which its organizers changed from a debate about AGW into a discussion about the problems it is causing.
And the organizers claim- apparently sincerely- that they had no agenda but could find no academics to question the impacts portion. Since there are professors at UH who have written extensively from the skeptical pov, this conference was in a sense a swindle of the sponsor’s money. In the AGW believer universe, opinion makers seem capable of pushing through obviously untrue assertions with apparent sincerity.
This discussion is usually very irritating because AGW proponents will immediately point to speculative impact studies as “evidence” of the costs of warming, while ignoring all historical evidence that mild warming is almost certainly a net positive.
Part of Colin Powell’s presentation was determined to be based on a paper written by a grad student. Roger Pielke Jr revealed that the AR4 evidence on hurricanes was based on the work of a grad student who prepared the input for the Munich Re conference, rather than the output of the conference.