Climate change

[mikeh]

I quite agree that we — whoever "we" is — should focus on what we can control, if there is a need for control. I'm not sure there's a need, even though a need is apparently "obvious" to some. I'm also not sure how much "we" can control, considering that none of any "we" I can identify is Emperor of Earth.

Let me ask you this: whose opinion on this matter should actually count? Yours, being ignorant on the topic (assuming you are no more than a reasonably well-read lay person), or the consensus opinion of the vast majority of those with extensive academic expertise and many years of dedicated study?

 

Do you ask your bus driver, your accountant, your daycare provider for medical advice or do you ask your doctor?

 

That is what is so bewildering about people like you. Intelligent but clinging to the notion that your unqualified skepticism should offset the warnings of those who actually know the subject.

 

The fact that YOU personally don't know any of the answers is no reason to reject the advice of those who do. Your attitude is a classic denier stance dressed up not as denial but as 'healthy skepticism'. It is innately dishonest since if we were discussing a field in which you had expertise, you would probably insist that your opinion counted more than the opinions of those with no expertise.

[nige1]

Ad hominem attacks are unpleasant, for sure. But how else does one deal with a dishonest poster? Everyone makes mistakes, and almost all of the posters here readily acknowledge mistakes when the mistakes are pointed out. Indeed, one of the main reasons for posting opinions clearly is to learn when one's opinions are wrong, to be able to correct them. Alucard (and lukewarm formerly) does not argue honestly, so why should he be treated as if he does?

IMO few posters acknowledge mistakes that are pointed out to them. Some believe they're right and sometimes they are. In a discussion group, we should confine criticism to disputing alleged facts and refuting arguments. Echoing PassedOut's favorite quotation

The growth of wisdom may be gauged exactly by the diminution of ill temper.

[Winstonm]

Denial seems to me to be first and foremost a position based on political ideology, i.e., faith-based, and as such does not respond to factual observations.

[Daniel1960]

I'm not aware of anyone who insists that the warming "has all been manmade," but you might be right. Have you any references to back you up?

 

The manmade portion of the warming is the portion that we can control, hence the focus.

Yes. These characters, with whom I have had several arguments in the past, not only conclude that the warming is all manmade, but that natural contributions are cooling the Earth, leading them to claim that mankind has cause more than 100% of the warming. Unfortunately, many people follow this site.

 

http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=57

 

On the other side, you have these clowns claiming that manmade emissions of carbon dioxide are cooling the Earth.

 

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/06/physicist-cooling-effect-of-co2-is-100x.html

[mike777]

Again guys manmade pollution or global warming is natural. To separate the two is not science. To say we cannot influence natural factors that effect global warming is not science. Man is fully nature, what man creates or destroys is fully nature and natural. The debate is not whether we will try and bend nature to mankind's will but how much,how fast and what are the costs involved.

 

In this forum the debate seems to be millions if not billions of humans are going to die from global climate change if we do not impose huge costs on our economy. They are going to die soon. If you wont impose those huge costs today you don't care about people.

 

Al seems to say the science does not say this. But I don't think Al is against clean air and drinking water. I don't think Al is against imposing costs to clean the air and water at the very least.

 

then people quote nonsense such as 97% as if science is a popularity contest or experts never get the science wrong. Doctors get stuff wrong all the time just look at smoking or transfat, experts are wrong all the time.

 

One way to look at the burden of evidence is what the detractors say, they will uncover the worst of the scholar's argument. Is there basically zero evidence that the opposite of the thesis is remotely right?

 

I think one common mistake made is mistaking evidence of no harm for no evidence of harm. The first principle of iatrogenics is as follows: we do not need evidence of harm to claim a drug or climate change or an unnatural via positive procedure is dangerous. Harm is in the future, not in the narrowly defined past.

[mikeh]

 

 

then people quote nonsense such as 97% as if science is a popularity contest or experts never get the science wrong. Doctors get stuff wrong all the time just look at smoking or transfat, experts are wrong all the time.

No....people like you who take nuggets of information as if they show the whole story are (usually) 'wrong all the time'

 

There were some studies done by some unethical scientists that misrepresented the safety of smoking, but even amongst the industry funded studies there were findings that smoking was extremely dangerous in the long term, and addictive. The real problem was the executives who, despite what their experts were telling them, lied.\

 

In the meantime, a number of experts for years argued precisely that: and eventually the truth came out.

 

As for the 97%, only an idiot would argue that when 97% of a large community of experts....actual, real, live people with doctorates and experience and credentials, and peer-reviewed publications....express a view on the subject-matter in which they are expert, the preponderance of opinion is meaningless.......you have watched too much Fox news, Mike....'experts are wrong all the time' is the 'rationalization' of people who don't understand what they are discussing.

[mike777]

No....people like you who take nuggets of information as if they show the whole story are (usually) 'wrong all the time'

 

There were some studies done by some unethical scientists that misrepresented the safety of smoking, but even amongst the industry funded studies there were findings that smoking was extremely dangerous in the long term, and addictive. The real problem was the executives who, despite what their experts were telling them, lied.\

 

In the meantime, a number of experts for years argued precisely that: and eventually the truth came out.

 

As for the 97%, only an idiot would argue that when 97% of a large community of experts....actual, real, live people with doctorates and experience and credentials, and peer-reviewed publications....express a view on the subject-matter in which they are expert, the preponderance of opinion is meaningless.......you have watched too much Fox news, Mike....'experts are wrong all the time' is the 'rationalization' of people who don't understand what they are discussing.

 

MikeH , please quote my posts in full and don't take only a nugget and then attack me.

You in fact are only taking nuggets of information on smoking and trans fat and the history of science and experts.

 

In fact I never said 97% of their views are meaningless, this is your spin, not mine.

I said science is not a popularity contest. Quoting that 97% number over and over again is not science, it is a crude shortcut.

 

I did not mention fox news you did.

 

You clearly do not know the history of the science done on smoking or trans fat and doctors. You only mention a small, very small part of that history. In fact you can go across the history of time and find experts are wrong, you actually can find experts who have been wrong across the history of time. New evidence opens them to admit mistakes and move on. As Winston puts it new observations.

 

Then you attack me

 

One way to look at the burden of evidence is what the detractors say, they will uncover the worst of the scholar's argument. Is there basically zero evidence that the opposite of the thesis is remotely right?

 

I think one common mistake made is mistaking evidence of no harm for no evidence of harm. The first principle of iatrogenics is as follows: we do not need evidence of harm to claim a drug or climate change or an unnatural via positive procedure is dangerous. Harm is in the future, not in the narrowly defined past.

[Daniel1960]

No....people like you who take nuggets of information as if they show the whole story are (usually) 'wrong all the time'

 

There were some studies done by some unethical scientists that misrepresented the safety of smoking, but even amongst the industry funded studies there were findings that smoking was extremely dangerous in the long term, and addictive. The real problem was the executives who, despite what their experts were telling them, lied.\

 

In the meantime, a number of experts for years argued precisely that: and eventually the truth came out.

 

As for the 97%, only an idiot would argue that when 97% of a large community of experts....actual, real, live people with doctorates and experience and credentials, and peer-reviewed publications....express a view on the subject-matter in which they are expert, the preponderance of opinion is meaningless.......you have watched too much Fox news, Mike....'experts are wrong all the time' is the 'rationalization' of people who don't understand what they are discussing.

To you even know to what the 97% you quote refers? That is the percentage of climate scientists who believe that the Earth has warmed - all causes included. I do not think many people here are arguing that the planet has not warmed over the past two centuries. You seem to be making the fallacious jump from 97% believing that the globe has warmed to 97% believing that mankind is causing global warming. Others make the same mistake, including my friends at the aforementioned website. The percentage of scientists believing the latter is much lower.

 

Various news agencies and websites are highly biased in their reports on this subject. Accusing others of being misinformed, based on slanted news coverage, may require a little self-reflection.

[hrothgar]

 

You clearly do not know the history of the science done on smoking or trans fat and doctors. You only mention a small, very small part of that history.

 

For christ's sakes. Many of the best known climate skeptic lobbying groups grew out of organizations that played the precise same role supporting big tobacco.

(The Heartland Institute is the protypical example, but there are plenty of others)

 

This is a well documented fact.

[mike777]

Of course and that is only a part of the history of the science of smoking and trans fat. I have stated the agency problem many times when people quote studies.

[mike777]

FWiw Here is my simple ecological policy. Many of these ideas are taken from various sources.

 

We know that fossil fuels are harmful in a nonlinear way. The harm is necessarily concave (if a little bit of it is devoid of harm, a lot can cause climatic disturbances). While on epistemological grounds, because of opacity, we do not need to believe in anthropogenic climate change in order to be ecologically conservative, we can put these convexity effects to use producing a risk management rule for pollution.

 

Simply, just as with size, split your sources of pollution among many natural sources. The harm from polluting with ten different sources is smaller than the equivalent pollution from a single source.*

 

*(Volatility and uncertainty are equivalent. Accordingly, note that the fragile is harmed by an increase in uncertainty.)

 

Taleb

[hrothgar]

FWiw Here is my simple ecological policy. Many of these ideas are taken from various sources.

 

We know that fossil fuels are harmful in a nonlinear way. The harm is necessarily concave (if a little bit of it is devoid of harm, a lot can cause climatic disturbances). While on epistemological grounds, because of opacity, we do not need to believe in anthropogenic climate change in order to be ecologically conservative, we can put these convexity effects to use producing a risk management rule for pollution.

 

Simply, just as with size, split your sources of pollution among many natural sources. The harm from polluting with ten different sources is smaller than the equivalent pollution from a single source.*

 

*(Volatility and uncertainty are equivalent. Accordingly, note that the fragile is harmed by an increase in uncertainty.)

 

Remarkable that you can throw around all these high falutin words without every introducing the term "externality" or recognizing the fact that if all of your pollution sources are producing the same pollutant (namely carbon) than all your talk about convexity is a big misdirection.

[PassedOut]

Remarkable that you can throw around all these high falutin words, without every introducing the term "externality", not recognize the fact that if all of your pollution sources are producing the same pollutant (namely carbon) than all your talk about convexity is a big misdirection.

That's what happens when you pull an isolated quote from page 287 of Taleb's book, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder.

[mikeh]

To you even know to what the 97% you quote refers? That is the percentage of climate scientists who believe that the Earth has warmed - all causes included. I do not think many people here are arguing that the planet has not warmed over the past two centuries. You seem to be making the fallacious jump from 97% believing that the globe has warmed to 97% believing that mankind is causing global warming. Others make the same mistake, including my friends at the aforementioned website. The percentage of scientists believing the latter is much lower.

 

Various news agencies and websites are highly biased in their reports on this subject. Accusing others of being misinformed, based on slanted news coverage, may require a little self-reflection.

I do not think, have never thought, and find it weird that you think I thought that 97% of climate scientists think that all global warming is human-made. I was criticizing the ultra-lunatic fringe who say that none of it is. I suspect that you and I are largely ad idem on the topic, so I have trouble understanding why you keep criticizing me for things you presumably think I wrote when I didn't :D

 

There is room for and, as far as I can tell, need for a real debate about climate change, but the debate is about how to deal with it, not whether it exists or whether human activity contributes to it. That's where, as I understand it, the 97% figure comes from (and I will readily admit that since I got that number from various media sources, it isn't clear precisely how the number was generated, who is included in the sample who arguably ought not to have been and who was excluded who arguably ought to be included. The 97% figure is merely a shorthand way of saying 'by far the majority')

[hrothgar]

That's what happens when you pull an isolated quote from page 287 of Taleb's book, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder.

 

Thanks for the reference. FWIW, here's a more representative quote from Taleb

 

Climate Change. I am hyper-conservative ecologically (meaning super-Green). My position on the climate is to avoid releasing pollutants in the atmosphere, on the basis of ignorance, regardless of current expert opinion (climate experts, like banking risk managers, have failed us in the past in foreseeing long term damages and I cannot accept certainty in a certain class of nonlinear models). This is an extension of my general idea that one does not need rationalization with the use of complicated models (by fallible experts) to the edict: "do not disturb a complex system" since we do not know the consequences of our actions owing to complicated causal webs.

 

“Perhaps the worst of this story,” Mr. Taleb added, “is the fan mail I’ve been getting from right-wing anti-environmentalists.”

[mike777]

Yes, thanks, many of these ideas as I have often stated in this forum come from Taleb, thanks for the further quotes.

 

I think this is a great book an important book.

 

Many of his ideas indeed come from other sources as I noted.

[hrothgar]

Yes, thanks, many of these ideas as I have often stated in this forum come from Taleb, thanks for the further quotes.

 

I think this is a great book an important book.

 

Many of his ideas indeed come from other sources as I noted.

 

Wanda: Oh, right! To call you stupid would be an insult to stupid people! I've known sheep that could outwit you. I've worn dresses with higher IQs. But you think you're an intellectual, don't you, ape?

 

Otto West: Apes don't read philosophy.

 

Wanda: Yes they do, Otto. They just don't understand it.

[ArtK78]

Did anyone see a recent episode of The Newsroom on HBO in which one of the upper administrators of the EPA is interviewed live on the air and says that the climate apocalypse is a done deal and that a person has already been born who will die as a result of the effects of climate change. When pressed on what could be done to avoid disaster, he says that reducing carbon emissions and other moves in that direction would have been a fine idea 20 or 30 years ago, but it was now too late.

 

I wonder how close that gloomy picture is to the truth.

[mike777]

Did anyone see a recent episode of The Newsroom on HBO in which one of the upper administrators of the EPA is interviewed live on the air and says that the climate apocalypse is a done deal and that a person has already been born who will die as a result of the effects of climate change. When pressed on what could be done to avoid disaster, he says that reducing carbon emissions and other moves in that direction would have been a fine idea 20 or 30 years ago, but it was now too late.

 

I wonder how close that gloomy picture is to the truth.

 

Ya I discussed this a few days ago. cute tv show.

post 1998

[ArtK78]

Wanda: Oh, right! To call you stupid would be an insult to stupid people! I've known sheep that could outwit you. I've worn dresses with higher IQs. But you think you're an intellectual, don't you, ape?

 

Otto West: Apes don't read philosophy.

 

Wanda: Yes they do, Otto. They just don't understand it.

I find these comments amusing, but they really don't add anything to the discussion. I hope you enjoyed putting them out there. I am sure Mike was very happy to see them.

[hrothgar]

I find these comments amusing, but they really don't add anything to the discussion. I hope you enjoyed putting them out there. I am sure Mike was very happy to see them.

 

I am obliquing pointing out that Mike's attempts to portray himself as an intellectual by blindly providing out of context quotes from individuals like Taleb doesn't fool people

[mike777]

I hardly think that quote is out of context. In fact is in full context regarding ecological policy. In fact I stated it was not idea I came up with. It is in agreement and context with the other quotes people have provided. That is an unfair attack.

 

If somehow or someway I gave the impression this is MY own original policy, and not from various sources, I apologize.

[ArtK78]

I am obliquing pointing out that Mike's attempts to portray himself as an intellectual by blindly providing out of context quotes from individuals like Taleb doesn't fool people

I would leave it to the "people" to work that out for themselves.

[PassedOut]

Yes. These characters, with whom I have had several arguments in the past, not only conclude that the warming is all manmade, but that natural contributions are cooling the Earth, leading them to claim that mankind has cause more than 100% of the warming. Unfortunately, many people follow this site.

 

http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=57

 

On the other side, you have these clowns claiming that manmade emissions of carbon dioxide are cooling the Earth.

 

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/06/physicist-cooling-effect-of-co2-is-100x.html

Thanks for the links. Interesting stuff.

[nige1]

There were some studies done by some unethical scientists that misrepresented the safety of smoking, but even amongst the industry funded studies there were findings that smoking was extremely dangerous in the long term, and addictive. The real problem was the executives who, despite what their experts were telling them, lied. In the meantime, a number of experts for years argued precisely that: and eventually the truth came out.

Most doctors smoked and doctors appeared in early adverts for cigarettes. They honestly believed smoking was beneficial.

About 60 years ago, removing tonsils and adenoids was all the rage. Then hysterectomies were rife. Surgeons genuinely believed in the operation -- the operation was common among surgeons' wives.

Even in the face of seemingly overwhelming evidence, most of us are capable of amazing feats of rationalization. For example, I guess that some who are genuinely concerned about climate change, still drive cars, pave their gardens, etc...

As for the 97%, only an idiot would argue that when 97% of a large community of experts....actual, real, live people with doctorates and experience and credentials, and peer-reviewed publications....express a view on the subject-matter in which they are expert, the preponderance of opinion is meaningless.......you have watched too much Fox news, Mike....'experts are wrong all the time' is the 'rationalization' of people who don't understand what they are discussing.

Nobody claimed that majority opinion is "meaningless" or "experts are wrong all the time". More pathetic casualties in an army of strawmen.