Rep Shimkus Says We Need Uncapped Carbon Emissions Because Carbon is “Plant Food”
The progressive movement is in a weird place on climate change because the steps necessary to forestall catastrophic climate change are not steps that seem especially likely to win approval in congress. The conservative movement, conversely, is in a weird place on climate change because they’re eager to attack cap-and-trade as bad for the economy, but they don’t have any alternative ideas about how to fend off disaster. Consequently, there’s a boom market in goofy rationalizations for inaction. Thus, via DDay we get this remarkable performance from Rep. John Shimkus:
SHIMKUS: It’s plant food … So if we decrease the use of carbon dioxide, are we not taking away plant food from the atmosphere? … So all our good intentions could be for naught. In fact, we could be doing just the opposite of what the people who want to save the world are saying.
It would be strange indeed if environmentalists and the world’s scientists had never considered this issue during their years of advocacy and research around this issue. And, of course, if there was no carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, that would have dire implications for the world’s plants. But even if there were no carbon dioxide emissions in 2010, that would still leave plenty of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The point about our CO2 emissions is that the rate at which fossil fuel use puts new carbon into the atmosphere greatly exceeds the rate at which plants remove it. The aim is not to eliminate the CO2 from the atmosphere but to stabilize the amount of CO2, which means curtailing emissions to a level much closer to the rate at which plants consume it. It also means minimizing the extent to which we destroy the plankton, rain forests, and other plant life that take carbon out of the air.
111 Responses to “Rep Shimkus Says We Need Uncapped Carbon Emissions Because Carbon is “Plant Food””
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March 28th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
Is it any wonder science suffered horribly under GOP rule for the past 8 years?
March 28th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
“It’s got *electrolytes*!”
March 28th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
#2 should have been the title of Matt’s post. Then he wouldn’t have had to write anything else. That’s all the refutation this argument needs.
March 28th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
Carbon starved? That guy must be an industry shill, because this planet is not carbon starved. If it were, you’d be able to pump it out like there was no tomorrow, and all the forests and everything would just gobble it up as quickly as you could put it in the atmosphere.
Is that what’s happening? As a matter of fact, indisputably, NO. Carbon levels in the atmosphere are continuing to rise, which means that the carbon sinks, like forests and plants and oceans aren’t taking this stuff up.
I know that guy testifying is comparing our current situation with that of the Cambrian, or other ages. But this is highly disingenous, in no small part because solar radiation at that time was weaker, and the entire configuration of the continents was itself much different. Part of what creates today’s climate is the arrangment of the continents, and the winds and currents this arrangement affects and blocks. We’re not supposed to have a Cambrian atmosphere, or a Cretaceous, or even an early miocene.
We’ve been in pretty much the same climatical arrangement for the last 8000 years. Monkeying with this is not one of man’s better ideas. We are not carbon starved.
March 28th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
Ah, you talk like a fag, and your shit’s all retarded.
March 28th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
Obviously Shimkus is right. After all, there were no plants until about 1800, because they had nothing to eat until people started burning coal.
March 28th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
I know that guy testifying is comparing our current situation with that of the Cambrian, or other ages.
I doubt it. After all, he’s a Republican. Unless, of course, he thinks the Cambrian Period occurred about 6 thousand years ago.
We’ve been in pretty much the same climatical arrangement for the last 8000 years. Monkeying with this is not one of man’s better ideas.
8,000 years? Monkeying? This is sounding like heresy! Become a good Republican, and learn the “science” of Intelligent Design.
March 28th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
Well, Rep. Shimkus seems to have accomplished his goal. Prior to this statement, I hadn’t heard of him. Now I have. In Republican politics, there is no such thing as bad publicity. In fact, stupidity is considered a virtue in their circles. The real issue is this: How’s Michelle Bachman going to top this? She’s held the Craziest Republican title for quite a while now. But now she has some real competition.
March 28th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
Oh, it’s hopeless. These idiots satirize themselves.
What I really love, in the clip, are the expressions of the guy to the right of the British “expert” (he tries to cover his smile with his hand, but at the end he moves the hand) and of the young guy who’s standing behind Shimkus. Their faces say it all.
No one believes any of this stuff. It’s just the intellectual equivalent of sticking fingers in your ears and going “la-la-la-I’m-not-listening.”
March 28th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Now I have. In Republican politics, there is no such thing as bad publicity. In fact, stupidity is considered a virtue in their circles.
In my circles, the last thing you’d ever want to do is come across as stupid or unknowledgeable. It does blow my mind, sometimes, to realize that that republican politicians, and even many of their followers, grew up with no such value system.
Republicanism is the crudest sort of identity politics. The goal in Republican circles is not to know more and do better. The goal is to show off your connection with the Republican talking points by spouting off stupid shit faster and sooner than your Republican peers.
March 28th, 2009 at 6:06 pm
More to the point, why does a guy with white hair and an accent calling CO2, “plant food,” earn the privilege of testifying before Congress?
http://maps.grida.no/library/files/storage/0_timeline_001.png
March 28th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
I’m not going to give up brewing beer in my basement, so the little plants can rely on me to give them all my excess CO2. Go Rainforest!
March 28th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
Also, I have heard from many global warming skeptics that the reason the Earth is warm at all is that the Sun is hot, and I do not think there have ever been any scientists or other fancy types what studied the Sun.
March 28th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
Also, Matt, your point about “even if there were no CO2 emissions in 2010…” is interesting. There’s a recent paper in PNAS considering the climate change implications of cutting global CO2 emissions to zero from their current trend at various points in the future. Suffice to say, things are already going to suck a little, but if we don’t do anything for 10 years they’ll suck a lot and if we don’t do anything for 20 or 30 years start studying up on Waterworld – http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/01/28/0812721106.abstract
March 28th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
In fact, were in not for the burning of fossil fuels, we would have a severe carbon shortage in the atmosphere, and there would be no plants.
True story.
March 28th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
It is because humans and animals exhale CO2 that you find plants following around all the time trying to soak that up. They don’t think that I see them when they hide around the corner as they are follwing me, but I do. The true Shadow People are actually plants.
March 28th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
godoggo-
You must be the kind of person who goes to a gun fight after spending fifteen minutes searching for your favorite knife.
I don’t see the intelligence or the heterosexuality in answering a serious argument with an insult that wouldn’t impress a remedial student in fifth grade.
Ted-
I know it’s probably not going to do much good for these guys, but we have to thrash people like this so folks recognize what empty, pigheaded fools these people are. We got to pin them out and cut their arguments to pieces so that nobody doubts our lack of conviction, nor our lack of good foundations for our beliefs. We must combine good snark with good facts.
March 28th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
As it happens, my wife attended that hearing. Even more interesting was Shimkus’ opening remarks, in which he stated that global warming can’t be true, because it would lead to widespread flooding, and that God had promised Noah that this would never happen again. So there, scientists!
He’s from a district with a lot of coal mines and miners. Money and voters speak.
March 28th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
Stephen Daugherty: godoggo’s just quoting from the great study of future human behavior, or perhaps it’s a close analysis of Republican ideology 2001-present, frequently quoted here, “Idiocracy.”
March 28th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
@17: your irony detector failed you with godoggo’s comment. It’s a quote from Idiocracy. As was #2.
March 28th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
Stephen Daugherty, you may consider godoggo and his ilk to be morons, but Sarah Palin considers them to be her base.
Politics is becoming class warfare only instead of the “haves” and “have nots”, it’s the “knows” and the “know nothings”. The GOP has sewn up the “dumb as rocks” vote. George W. was their king.
March 28th, 2009 at 6:32 pm
From the 2006 movie Idiocracy:
March 28th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
So what this guy is essentially saying is that putting more carbon dioxide into the environment stimulates plants to work harder, thus stimulating the environment. So more carbon dioxide will mean less carbon dioxide.
So in other words, this guy is the environmental equivalent of Paul Krugman; he’s a Keynesian environmentalist.
I find it odd that you can pick apart the logical flaws in this sort of argument when it comes to environmental issues, but buy the argument hook, line, and sinker whenever it comes to the economy.
March 28th, 2009 at 6:57 pm
You’ve all demonstrated your talent with snark in this thread, but that Rep. Shimkus quote above doesn’t sound to far off from the view of one of the world’s greatest living physicists, Freeman Dyson. From an article about Dyson in Tomorrow’s NY Times (my take):
March 28th, 2009 at 6:59 pm
Yes, that should have been “too” instead of “to”.
March 28th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
I also cannot help but note that a lot of people here seem to enjoy Idiocracy, and consider it a critique of anti-intellectualism (which to them means the conservatives), but they don’t seem to comprehend that the actual message of the movie is one of eugenics. The world in Idiocracy did not become stupid because of ideology, but because of dysgenic breeding. It says so right in the opening of the movie.
To be fair, Joe Bauers (the lead of the movie) makes the same mistake, not realizing why people are so stupid (he suggests that they need to “read a book” and change thier ideology).
March 28th, 2009 at 7:11 pm
Glaivester: You do know that not science does not run on metaphors, right? I mean, I can claim that steam occurs when water gets hot because the water becomes angry and tries to run away from the flames, but that doesn’t change the fact that this argument is retarded. The same is just as true of your claim that “CO2 emissions is like Keynsianism therefore it is wonderful”.
DaveinHackensack: Freeman Dyson is not a biologist. More to the point, he is also WRONG. It’s not like he is the first person to have thought of this idea. It has been tested repeatedly under various different conditions, for various different plants, from simple lab experiments to experiments in real forests (with lost of plastic sheeting and such) and the bottom line is that this simply is not the case; the increased growth is negligible. This is, let’s face it, hardly a surprise, because there are plenty of other nutrients limiting the growth of plants, most obviously nitrogen and phosphorous. When farmers want to grow more corn, what do they put on their fields? Powder containing nitrogen and phosphorous, not ground up coal dust.
March 28th, 2009 at 7:11 pm
Mmmmm…this shit sandwich is so delicious!
I want another one. Mmmmmmm.
March 28th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
Glaivester: No, I got that Idiocracy’s plot device is eugenics, and it was weak and unimaginative, but once you get past the intro, thankfully that doesn’t come up again. Although, eugenecist or not, the different types at the beginning are still family, particularly the football player.
March 28th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
“DaveinHackensack: Freeman Dyson is not a biologist.”
No, he’s just an off-the-charts genius who happens to be well-versed in biology (and has written at least one book on the subject). Interestingly, he believes that one of the flaws with current global warming dogma is that it doesn’t give enough emphasis to biology. From the NY Times Magazine article:
March 28th, 2009 at 7:32 pm
What a weird typo. I meant “are still funny”. Though I guess in a sense they are “family”.
March 28th, 2009 at 7:34 pm
Freeman Dyson: Proponent of a vast, irreversible experiment whereby we attempt to change the earth’s climate from what has supported human life for thousands of years. Because hey, forget all those other off the charts smart people who think it might be a disaster, I think there is a small chance it could be great!
There are far more “off the charts geniuses” who are terrified at the prospect of global climate change.
March 28th, 2009 at 7:36 pm
@DaveinHackensack: Science doesn’t work by celebrity endorsement. What matters is the process of testing hypotheses, and it’s a process that gets carried out by the scientific community as a whole.
In any case, the problem with Dyson’s remark is more human than scientific. CO2 may well have been higher at times in the past. Temperatures were also higher. All well and good, in principle; those conditions are perfectly consistent with “the evolution of life.”
But it has a really good chance of sucking for the several billion homo sapiens who will happen to be occupying the planet over the next hundred years. They’ll have to deal with the consequences of rapidly changing rainfall patterns, dying forests, and rising sea levels. Come back 10,000 years from now, though, and it may all be fine.
March 28th, 2009 at 7:47 pm
DaveinHackensack: Yeah, I know all about Freeman Dyson’s work in QED — and unlike you I actually understand it. So freaking what?
Do you deny my points regarding the fact that EXPERIMENTS HAVE ALREADY BEEN DONE on this subject? Do you deny my points that it is nitrogen and phosphorous that limit plant growth today, not CO2?
Sure, sure, we can all imagine some magical future where genetically engineered plants solve all our problems. Heck, while we’re about it, why not imagine a future where genetically engineered humans are no longer complete fuckwits? But it seems somewhat premature to base all our hopes for the future on something we’re not sure exists. It seems even stranger for the party that spouts Dyson’s line to be exactly the same party that generally opposes scientific research — the party of creationism, no stem cells research, and cutting scientific budgets.
March 28th, 2009 at 8:11 pm
Did he mention that carbon is “organic”?
March 28th, 2009 at 8:11 pm
The budgets for anti-fuckwits research programs appear to have been slashed over the past decade or so.
March 28th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
Matt, you’re burying the lede on this one. That’s Viscount Monckton testifying, a premier example of what DTM accurately described as some scientist/engineer from a different field who has a pet theory they like.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/an_open_letter_from_the_viscou_1.html
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/07/once-more-unto-the-bray/
March 28th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
Then there are those of us who think that there’s no impending disaster, and that the misguided efforts to force catastrophic economic changes on us will do a lot of harm. But hey, we only listen to people who disagree with noted climate scientist Al Gore, and his lackey, noted climate scientist James Hansen
March 28th, 2009 at 8:26 pm
Dyson’s views on global warming have the same credibility as, say, Shockley’s views on genetics or Barkley’s views on anything that’s not basketball. Expertise isn’t as portable as many would like to believe, and the belief in its portability is just a highbrow manifestation of our culture’s obsession with celebrity.
March 28th, 2009 at 8:26 pm
Glaivester: You do know that not science does not run on metaphors, right? I mean, I can claim that steam occurs when water gets hot because the water becomes angry and tries to run away from the flames, but that doesn’t change the fact that this argument is retarded. The same is just as true of your claim that “CO2 emissions is like Keynsianism therefore it is wonderful”.
Actually, I was saying just the opposite, that Keynesianism is stupid, because it asserts that consumption for its own sake (i.e. even consumption that does not satisfy a need, such as digging holes and filling them back in) increases production and therefore the standard of living.
March 28th, 2009 at 8:37 pm
Ted-
There was no reference to the movie, and I’ve never seen it, so I took the man’s words at face value.
March 28th, 2009 at 9:45 pm
Suffice to say, things are already going to suck a little, but if we don’t do anything for 10 years they’ll suck a lot and if we don’t do anything for 20 or 30 years start studying up on Waterworld – http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/01/28/0812721106.abstract
Suffice to say, you’re full of shit. What the paper actually argues is that if the atmospheric CO2 concentration reaches a certain level, AND certain assumptions about the relationship between CO2 concentration and temperature increase are correct, AND certain other assumptions about the relationship between temperature increase and sea level rise are correct, then sea rise MAY, “eventually,” after a thousand years, reach a whopping……2 meters. My God, it’s a global emergency!
March 28th, 2009 at 9:46 pm
Ah, I see I’ve anticipated Hackysack, reliable purveyor of semi-digested shite.
As Max Planck noted:
I’m reminded of eminent emeritus geology professors in the sixties who had trouble with plate tectonics. Of course, the difference between plate tectonics and modern climate science (or evolutionary biology) is that it was mostly an in-house argument, even though Bobby Jindal probably thinks that volcanoes happen when God eats jambalaya.
March 28th, 2009 at 9:58 pm
DTM,
One of my favorite things about the climate change debate is denialists who fixate on some scientist/engineer from a different field who has a pet theory they like.
One of my favorite things about the climate change debate is alarmists who dismiss any view that conflicts with their faith-based conclusions. Dyson’s major criticism is that computer models of climate are not reliable and are inadequate for predicting climate change.
March 28th, 2009 at 10:06 pm
I’m reminded of eminent emeritus geology professors in the sixties who had trouble with plate tectonics.
Really? When I read James Hansen, I’m reminded of Paul Ehrlich and the Club of Rome.
March 28th, 2009 at 10:07 pm
“I also cannot help but note that a lot of people here seem to enjoy Idiocracy, and consider it a critique of anti-intellectualism (which to them means the conservatives), but they don’t seem to comprehend that the actual message of the movie is one of eugenics. The world in Idiocracy did not become stupid because of ideology, but because of dysgenic breeding. It says so right in the opening of the movie.”
Um, I think people here clearly understand the premise of the movie. The point isn’t that an ideology makes people stupid, it’s that stupider people are more succeptible to a particular ideology. That said, there doesn’t seem to actually be anything “conservative” about the society portrayed in “Idiocracy”; it’s more uberliberalism (in the free market sense) than anything. It’s not that we are equating anti-intellectualism with conservatism; clearly there are conservatives who base their beliefs on intellectual arguments. The problem is that these particular conservatives aren’t displaying such intellectual rigor.
March 28th, 2009 at 10:24 pm
“DaveinHackensack: Yeah, I know all about Freeman Dyson’s work in QED — and unlike you I actually understand it.”
This is funny. You’re arguing from authority because you believe you are smarter than me, in the same thread where you’re totally dismissive of a man who is orders of magnitude smarter than either one of us. Are you self-aware enough to realize how ridiculous your behavior here is?
“Do you deny my points regarding the fact that EXPERIMENTS HAVE ALREADY BEEN DONE on this subject?”
I can neither confirm nor deny them since I didn’t even read that far into your post. Once you claimed in all-caps that one of the world’s greatest living scientists was simply “WRONG” I sort of lost interest in what you had to say.
March 28th, 2009 at 10:41 pm
@48: Science doesn’t work on the model of celebrity endorsement.
Handley wasn’t “arguing from authority.” He was asking you to engage with the substance of Dyson’s argument — specifically, the assumption that plant growth can easily scale up to adapt to increased CO2 levels.
You, by contrast, aren’t offering much of an argument besides an appeal to the authority of a particular 87-year-old man who is “one of the world’s greatest living scientists.”
March 28th, 2009 at 10:42 pm
Maynard Handley, 27, you are simply wrong. Increased CO2 does help plants, else why do greenhouses increase CO2 levels to around 1200 ppm. And your remark about coal dust, if not facetious, is just highly ignorant.
As far as ‘fending off disaster’ goes, our true problem is going to be adapting to cooling when the alarmists have us expensively and dangerously wrong-footed into mitigating warming that isn’t happening. The globe is no longer warming, it is cooling and will be for 20-100 years, thanks to the cooling effect of the La Nina dominate Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and depending on the near term future behaviour of the sun, which is hibernating now, and giving hints about entering a Grand Minimum. If we are cooling fairly long term, then the mimimum warming effect that CO2 has and the moderate fertilizing effect CO2 has will warm and feed the teeming billions.
Increased CO2 in the atmosphere and oceans will increase the rate at which the sun acts with the biosphere to virtually permanently sequester carbon. In other words, the estimates for how long it will take increased CO2 to be removed from the carbon cycle have been higher than will actually be the case.
Check the thermometers, UAH, RSS, and the Argos oceanic bouys. We are cooling, which means that the role of CO2 in climate has been exaggerated, the demonization of CO2 is incorrect, and the policies to encumber carbon are misguided. Stop this madness before the likes of Gore and Hansen have stampeded the ‘Maddened Crowd’ over a cliff. The effects of the holocaust of unnecessarily expensive energy on the poor people of the earth cannot be avoided by those in so-called developed nations. You are asking for trouble which you can easily avoid. Why are you doing that? Why not examine the temperature record and use your thinking organ instead?
=====================================================
March 28th, 2009 at 10:43 pm
pardon me — double-checking, I believe Dyson is actually 86.
March 28th, 2009 at 10:53 pm
@ kim: Oh my god, why didn’t I think of that? Before we run around alleging global warming, we should “check the thermometers”!
That’s what I call thinking outside the box.
So let’s see . . .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png
Huh. That’s odd. Gettin warmer.
March 28th, 2009 at 11:07 pm
Huh. That’s odd. Gettin warmer.
Yes, according to that graph, it’s been “gettin warmer” since about the mid-70s. But look again. It was also “gettin warmer” between about 1910 and 1945. Then over the following 30 years, although there was significant short-term fluctuation, the overall trend was cooling. The five-year average temp of the mid-40s wasn’t reached again until the late 70s.
Gee, maybe this climate change business is rather more complicated and hard to predict than you seem to think.
March 28th, 2009 at 11:26 pm
Dude, what the graph shows is that since 1880 it has gotten about 0.7 C warmer.
The change you’d like to argue about between 1945 and 1970 is about 0.1 C, which is not larger than the typical year to year fluctuation. It’s dwarfed by the rest of the data.
But look — I’ll happily grant your point, which is that this is a tricky business, and it’s hard to predict exactly what happens next.
What we do know is that it’s gotten significantly warmer over the last century. And lately, glaciers have been melting. Arctic sea ice has been shrinking.
I’d say that gives us very solid reason for concern. And the range of predictions that international scientific organizations currently offer is not reassuring: it runs from disruptive warming to profoundly catastrophic warming.
When you look at that range of possibilities, it seems to me the obviously prudent course might be to stop increasing the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. Especially since this is not a system that turns on a dime. You can’t wait for the disaster to begin before shifting into reverse.
March 28th, 2009 at 11:30 pm
The problem is that these particular conservatives aren’t displaying such intellectual rigor.
Can’t deny that. When they chose John Friggin’ McCain instead of Ron Paul, they showed how stupid they were.
March 28th, 2009 at 11:42 pm
Ted, 52. Well, Ted, I didn’t even bother to follow your link, because Wikipedia is unfortunately corrupted by the editing of the alarmist William Connolley. Skeptical data and opinions are not allowed to stay there. Nonetheless, I’m guessing that you are looking at Hansen’s GISS surface temperature series, which, of the five main temperature series, is the only one that doesn’t show global cooling over the last four years. Many people think GISS has intractable problems with data collection and many others think that the algorithms by which Hansen adjusts temperatures are invalid. Did you know that he adjusts historical temperatures downward in many cases?
The ocean has a heat content much greater than the atmosphere so what the ocean is doing is much more important than the atmospheric temperatures. The climate is the continuation of the ocean by other means. Josh Willis’s Argos buoys, all 3000 of them, are measuring ocean temperatures to a depth of 6,000 feet, and they show slight ocean cooling since 2005. The two tropospheric satellite temperature series, UAH and RSS, use competing algorithms on the same microwave data, and they agree that the troposphere has been cooling, also since about 2005. Hadcru, the British surface temperature series, also shows cooling, but to a lesser degree, and its methods are not revealed. Hansen’s GISS, the most likely surface series to be corrupted, also uses cryptic methods, and probably, adulterated data.
Charles, 53, has it right. The cycles he is talking about are for the alternate cooling and warming phases of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, which is the globe’s single greatest climate determinant. The PDO was in an El Nino dominant warming phase during the last quarter of the last century, at which time CO2 levels were rising, showing correlation, but not causation between rising CO2 and rising temperature. Now the PDO has flipped to its La Nina dominant cooling phase, and global temperatures are falling while CO2 continues to rise. This ‘popular delusion’, this ‘madness of the crowd’ that CO2 caused the temperature rise last century is simply the grandest example ever of the ‘Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc’ fallacy ever.
And Dyson is absolutely correct about the inadequacy of the global climate models. Their prediction of 0.2 degree Centigrade temperature rise per decade has been disconfirmed at the 95% confidence level in only eight short years. This is stunning, and ought to cause the modelers to re-examine their assumptions, as good and honest scientists would. Their error is in assuming a large positive feedback of water vapor to the initial forcing of CO2. The models also poorly parameterize convection and clouds.
We need a new paradigm, folks. The old one, that CO2=AGW is failing, and should no longer inform policy.
=====================================
March 28th, 2009 at 11:49 pm
Ted, 55. You disprove your own point. The earth has been warming ever since we emerged from the Little Ice Age a couple of hundred years ago and it was doing so before CO2 started rising. The temperature curve for the last hundred years also follows the cycling of the PDO much more closely than it follows the CO2 curve.
The big question, the important one, is whether or not the present cooling is just from the cooling phase of the PDO, in which case warming will return in another 20-30 years, or whether the sun’s present somewhat unusual behaviour is presaging another Grand Solar Minimum, in which case we may cool dramatically for a hundred years or so, another ‘Little Ice Age’. Even the finest solar physicists don’t know the answer to that little problem, but pay attention, and you can learn as they do.
Remember, a mind is like a parachute, and those of Hansen and Gore are wrapped up tight in a little fallacious bundle, and they are plummeting to their doom. You don’t have to follow them; you’ve a little ripcord called your brain and your senses. Use them to good effect.
============================================
March 28th, 2009 at 11:50 pm
Ted,
Dude, what the graph shows is that since 1880 it has gotten about 0.7 C warmer.
Dude, that doesn’t alter the fact that for 30 years in the second half of the 20th century, it got colder, not warmer. For all you know, we could be at the start of another 30-year cooling period now. Or a 50-year cooling period. Or an even longer one than that. Or we could enter such a long-term cooling period at any time in the future. Climate science simply isn’t advanced enough to allow for confident predictions of future climate, even in the absence of other unknowns that confound such predictions (future rates of economic growth, future rates of population growth, furture breakthroughs in energy technology, etc.)
When you look at that range of possibilities, it seems to me the obviously prudent course might be to stop increasing the level of CO2 in the atmosphere.
That would seem obviously prudent to me also, if it could be done without significant cost. But it can’t. Even just stabilizing our CO2 emissions, let alone reducing them, would impose significant economic costs. It is not at all clear that the benefits of such a policy from reducing the risk of future warming would exceed those costs.
March 28th, 2009 at 11:55 pm
Kim, you’re articulate and you offer specific claims, which I appreciate.
I don’t think your argument is remotely valid, however.
The basic fallacy I see in your argument is what statisticians call “endpoint bias.” The most glaring example of this comes on several occasions when you observe that cooling has been happening “since 2005″(!) I don’t dispute the claim. But it’s not a significant claim. Look at the amount of short-term fluctuation in the data, and ask yourself how much weight we should give to trends measured over a period of five to ten years.
Your argument about the PDO is a slightly scaled-up version of the same fallacy. I grant that there are decade-scale fluctuations in global temperature. The scientific consensus, however, is that we’ve seen warming on a larger scale, and over a longer timespan, than those fluctuations could explain.
It seems very likely that global climate models will turn out to be unreliable — in one direction or another. But given the changes we’ve already observed, the potential unreliability of our models does not make me feel more confident that it’s a good idea to keep increasing the level of CO2 in the atmosphere.
March 29th, 2009 at 12:04 am
Kim, 59. We’re looking at observed warming. Arctic sea ice has visibly shrunk. Glaciers have retreated. Temperatures have increased.
You’re pointing to the last couple of data points on the graph and saying “aha! we might be entering an era of cooling!”
Well, maybe. I hope so.
But I don’t see a trend of the scale, or duration, that would give me any confidence.
March 29th, 2009 at 12:09 am
DTM cites the infamously excitable climate change alarmist Joe Fromm as an “expert” in climate science, after just calling Dyson, preposterously, “some scientist/engineer from a different field who has a pet theory.” Fromm has no recognized expertise in climate science. His critique of Dyson is a series of strawmen. He attributes to Dyson statements Dyson did not make, and then attacks those made-up statements. DTM ought to try reading and analyzing his own sources.
March 29th, 2009 at 12:25 am
I don’t understand how climate-change denialists can argue so passionately about the authority of person X or professor Y, while giving no credence at all to the authority of the scientific community as a whole.
Scientists are not divided on this issue. There’s an international and interdisciplinary consensus.
What it boils down to is this: when people don’t want to acknowledge something, they’ll always find a reason to look the other way.
Fortunately, this issue may soon be in the hands of the EPA. The question I’d like Matt to address is this: what’s the likelihood that the EPA may be able to act more forcefully than Congress itself? Because I have zero confidence that Congress can take the necessary action.
March 29th, 2009 at 12:38 am
Ted 61, you have a good point but it is unpersuasive in this discussion. I grant you that the present cooling is short term, but it acquires its meaning from the fact that it co-incides with the PDO, and presages another 20-30 years of cooling. The correlation of temperature with the phases of the PDO is much higher than the correlation of temperatures with the CO2 level. In a very recent article, Tsonis, with a theory of ‘Synchronized Chaos’ explains all the temperature variations of the last century by the coupling and decoupling of natural cycles.
And you are still missing the point that the globe has been warming for a couple of centuries while CO2 has only been significantly rising for the last half century? Why was the globe warming? A good question, one not answered by CO2. In other words, the science is not settled. Not to the point we should hang dramatic policy changes upon it.
I don’t worry much about rising CO2 levels, because I think CO2 is a minimal climate determinant, and also for the fertilizing reason I mentioned previously, which is also Shimkus’s point. I believe that by the time the globe starts warming again we will have figured out the actual effect of CO2 on climate, and can regulate it then, if we need to do so. Furthermore, it is only a matter of time before hydrocarbons are priced out of the energy market. Those hydrocarbon bonds were much to lovingly formed to merely crack them for the energy contained within them. We need them for structure to house and clothe the teeming billions, and to package their ’stuff’.
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March 29th, 2009 at 12:46 am
Ted, 62, Arctic Sea Ice extent has been rising, on a seasonally adjusted basis for the last year and a half, consistent with the cooling globe. Antarctic ice, continental and sea based has also been rising lately. Again, look at the correlation between the phases of the PDO and the temperature, and look at Tsonis’s article. Prepare to be reassured that we are cooling for at least two decades. The sun, now that’s the wild card.
And 65. The consensus that CO2 is causing dangerous warming of the climate is collapsing. Scientists differ dramatically and harshly about how ’settled’ the science is. Most journalists, and most politicians still buy the alarmist argument, but the public is also growing skeptical.
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March 29th, 2009 at 12:51 am
Ted, also 65. The EPA is making a tragic policy mistake. You are correct that Congress will probably not pass Cap and Trade this year. The Republicans, of course(why do I say ‘of course’) are against it, but enough Democrats are hearing from their constituents that it will be blocked. The EPA’s mistake is draconian enough that it will provoke a backlash, and perhaps, an honest discussion of policy. We can but hope.
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March 29th, 2009 at 12:51 am
Kim, again with all due respect: sheer statistical correlation should not be the goal here. I’m willing to believe that temps correlate more *tightly* with oscillations like the PDO than they do with CO2 levels. For one thing, the PDO is itself an observed climatic oscillation, whereas CO2 produces climatic effects only indirectly. You’d expect there to be a greater “lag time” with a factor of that sort.
What’s worrisome is the scale and duration of the change, which don’t seem to fit the PDO.
I think you have a better point when you say that it’s gotten significantly warmer since the end of the Little Ice Age. So obviously CO2 can’t be the only factor at work. I don’t know the data here, and I don’t know what the consensus of climate scientists is about it. I’ll have to go educate myself.
May I ask why you don’t find the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change credible?
About hydrocarbons being too pricey for us to suffocate ourselves with them: I hope you’re right. If it was just oil at issue, I’d feel better. But coal is pretty abundant. I suspect there’s still enough coal in the ground for us to make a royal mess of things.
March 29th, 2009 at 12:51 am
Whereas it’s always just assumed that economic science is advanced enough to allow for confident predictions of future economies, enough for conservatives to claim that any steps taken to reduce carbon emission will invariably torpedo global economic growth.
Despite the fact that one of the worst recessions in decades seems to have completely snuck up on the community of economists, these guys who can’t even predict the stock market a week from now are taken as prophetic when it comes to the potential future costs of carbon emission reduction.
March 29th, 2009 at 1:05 am
May I also point out that the IPCC report of 2007, which concludes that most of the observed warming over the last 50 years has been anthropogenic, was endorsed by
the American Association for the Advancement of Science,
the International Council of Academies of Engineering and Technological Sciences, the European Science Foundation, the International Geophysical Union, the American Statistical Association, and so on and so on . . .
March 29th, 2009 at 1:06 am
Chet, 71. Oh, please. If you raise the cost of energy it well retard economic progress. If you encumber carbon, it will raise the cost of energy. If you encumber carbon unnecessarily, in response to a false paradigm, you will be making an expensive and dangerous policy mistake. Think about it. Please, for your own sake as well as mine.
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March 29th, 2009 at 1:22 am
@73: Ageed. Encumbering carbon will raise the cost of energy, at least over the short term — and possibly over the medium or long term. You don’t have to have an economics Ph.D to see that.
At some point you just have to weigh the perceived risks of inaction against the perceived costs of action.
Here’s, to me, an additional decisive consideration: If the international scientific organizations are all wrong, and it’s actually going to get cooler — why then, we’ll have increased the price of energy needlessly for 5-10 years. When we realize our mistake we can change the policy back.
If the international scientific organizations are right, and the climate-change denialists are wrong, then it’s quite possible that we’ll hit a tipping point where we’re no longer able to reverse a long-term process entailing desertification, drought, catastrophic forest fires, and even rising sea levels. In that case we could be looking at substantially increased human suffering for as much as a century.
Given that calculus, I’m happy to take the risk that the international scientific organizations will turn out to be wrong. I hope they are.
March 29th, 2009 at 1:29 am
Economics may be the dismal science, but it is not utterly miasmic.
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March 29th, 2009 at 1:41 am
Ted, 74. You are arguing the Precautionary Principle, which is a Paeon to Ignorance. I might also apply the Precautionary Principle to avoid the real perils of mistaken and expensive policy decisions.
The catastrophic ‘tipping points’, by which Gore and Hansen have exhorted the ignorant into action, are fantastical. They are the products of deluded minds. They are, simply, propaganda.
Again, since you hope the so-called consensus about global warming is wrong, then re-assure yourself by pursuing some skeptical literature. Laurence Solomon, a Canadian journalist has a fine series on skeptical scientists. Christopher Booker and Melanie Phillips, in England, write persuasively about skeptics. Anthony Watts, at his blog Watts Up With That, produces a potpourri of topics which often generate fascinating discussions. Steve McIntyre’s climateaudit.org rigourously audits the studies used by the IPCC. Roger Pielke, Sr., a strong believer in anthropogenic microclimate changes, has a well-rounded climate science blog, climatesci.org and his son has a policy oriented blog called Prometheus. You have nothing to lose but your fears, and, heh, your ignorance.
Really, lose this CO2 delusion, and devote your energy to the real environmental problems we have. It’s not as if there are a dearth of them. We cannot afford to waste effort on a chimera.
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This is not to say that climate does not have tipping points. What I mean is that the proven effect of CO2 is too small to get us to any such points.
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March 29th, 2009 at 1:51 am
Ted, 72. This is an argument to authority. That is not fallacious when your authorities are correct, but it is fallacious when they are wrong. And science doesn’t move by consensus. When Einstein was presented with a letter from hundreds of scientists arguing that his theories were wrong he responded with something to the effect of ‘Why so many? It only takes one to prove me wrong’.
Your point is not senseless, however. How is it that so many are so wrong about the CO2=AGW paradigm? Well, part of it was the fallacy that I mentioned earlier, the coincidence of the temperature curve with the rise of CO2 which showed a close correlation during the last quarter of the last century. However, before and after that time period the two curves to not correlate.
Another explanation has to do with the concept of mass delusions, the madness of crowds. Hansen fastened onto his beliefs, I believe in good faith, two to three decades ago and he has trumpeted them during a time of rising temperatures. Though he started with good intentions, he has not paid sufficient attention to the road signs since, and he is leading us all to Hell. His models still don’t have global predictive skill and twenty years ago he claimed that they had regional predictive skill. He’s just wrong, and Mother Nature is demonstrating that more convincingly every day.
I’ll try to avoid mentioning the role of journalists, who like to push dramatic stories, and the role of politicians, who like to accrue power to themselves. Oops, it just slipped out. Sometimes, I can’t help myself.
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March 29th, 2009 at 1:57 am
Thanks for the reading suggestions. But you didn’t say anything to address the difference in the *duration* of the risks we confront.
If you’re right, and it’s getting colder, we’ll realize that rather quickly. The cost of unnecessary action — several years of reduced productivity.
If the international scientific organizations are right, we’re facing the risk of a longer term problem. Note that they don’t have to be right about the “tipping-point” or “feedback” hypotheses in particular. Everyone agrees that climate doesn’t turn on a dime. If CO2 is a significant cause of warming, and we continue to increase its concentration, we’re facing the risk of a *long* period of substantial disruption, with crop failures, refugees, etc.
Given the different time frames we’re looking at, it would make sense to start changing energy policy now — even if the scholarly consensus were less robust than it is.
March 29th, 2009 at 2:05 am
Another way of putting the same point: it’s a heck of a lot easier to *reverse* a mistake about the relative pricing of energy options . . .
than it would be to *reverse* climate change.
Yes, this is the Precautionary Principle. Which is a paean to ignorance. But you keep pointing out that there’s a lot we don’t yet understand about the climate. In which case, it presumably behooves us to take the more cautious path.
March 29th, 2009 at 2:09 am
Hmmm, Ted, I missed #70.
The report of the IPCC is by a small group of dedicated alarmist scientists. The scientific conclusions are written by a group of fewer than 50 and the Summary for Policymakers, by fewer than a dozen. It is a political document, rather than a scientific one. Interestingly, even Pachauri, the head of the IPCC has publicly wondered if someone hasn’t gotten their sums wrong, and even more interestingly, he has supported the building of coal-fired electricity plants in India.
I don’t really get your points about statistics and the PDO. Look at the correlations, look at Tsonis’s article, and watch the temperature series as they continue to cool.
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March 29th, 2009 at 2:11 am
I enjoy how #76 misspells the pretentious word “paean”. It sums up the whole posting in less than a single word!
March 29th, 2009 at 2:16 am
Ted, 78. You are still arguing the Precautionary Principle. I can turn it just as validly to avoiding the harmful consequences of policy action. You seem to minimize those consequences, but they will not be trivial for the poor of this earth.
Again, with a cooling earth, and a good rationale for believing it will continue to cool for another 20 years, then it is pretty clear that the role of CO2 in climate has been exaggerated. So why should we embark on policy which is so mistaken, and in particular, policy which may not be as easy to reverse as you seem to think?
I would agree with your point about the Precautionary Principle if we were continuing to warm as the models predicted, and if I didn’t have a better climate theory. But we are cooling, and we have an excellent rationale for it in the flipping of the PDO to its cooling phase.
It’s time to rethink. I believe you are capable of that. You have been quite sensible.
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March 29th, 2009 at 2:22 am
Folks, Michael Tobis, perhaps sock-puppeted at #81, is an eminent alarmist climate scientist. He has much to offer this discussion. Why does he confine himself to being a spelling policeman, and even more wondrously, why is he so magnificently wrong?
Check the dictionary, Michael. And check the thermometers, too. We are cooling, folks; for how long even kim doesn’t know.
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March 29th, 2009 at 2:27 am
Good night all, I’ll let Michael Tobis have the floor. Perhaps he can convince you, but remember, you are autonomous; you can check this stuff out for yourself. Bon voyage.
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March 29th, 2009 at 2:54 am
Never too old to learn. Paeon and paean are both in the dictionary, both from the same Greek root, but the meaning I intended is spelled as Michael Tobis claims. That may be the only thing he can find I’m wrong about.
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March 29th, 2009 at 7:53 am
On the other hand, if you’re someone who is willing to ignore a 120-year trend any time you can get two data points to line up in a different direction, it makes perfect sense that you would interpret scientific debate in a similarly aspirational fashion. All you need is one dissenting voice — or data point!
Incidentally, the monthly average arctic sea ice cover last month was the 4th lowest Feb. since satellite recording began. The other three lowest were all in the last five years. Not much of a recent cooling trend.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
March 29th, 2009 at 9:13 am
What’s most amusing on this thread is the notion held by global warming deniers here that James Hanson is the only climatologist in the world predicting global warming and that the rest of the climatological community is in disagreement. Of course, the opposite is true, the overwhelming majority of the expertise in the area agrees with Dr. Hanson and it is the deniers who are in the small minority.
However, relative to Prof. Dyson, it should be remembered that even the most distinguished scientists can go off the rails. As examples, consider the following.
1. Linus Pauling: This distinguished scientist, a Nobel Laureate in chemistry, in the absence of even a shred of evidence, insisted to the day he died that large doses of vitamin C could cure cancer.
2. Peter Duesberg: This distinguished medical researcher, who was nominated for a Nobel Prize in medicine for his work on retroviruses, continues to insist, in the face of overwhelming evidence, that HIV does not cause AIDS (which is something of a concession as he used to insist the the HIV virus didn’t exist).
3. Brian Josephson: This distinguished physicist, a Nobel Laureate in physics, insists that cold fusion, PK, and ESP are real phenomena, in the total absence of evidence.
4. J. Allen Hynek: This distinguished astronomer, former president of the American Astronomical Society, insisted to the day he died that UFOs were craft from outer space and that alien abductions were real phenomena, in the total absence any any credible evidence.
5. Fred Singer: This reputable physicist, although less distinguished then the preceding 4 examples, has, in addition to denying global warming, denied the link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer, and CFCs as a cause of ozone depletion.
March 29th, 2009 at 9:51 am
In actual news, the Obama administration is inviting the leaders of 16 large economies + the UN Secretary-General to a summit next month that seems designed as a kind of pre-meeting meeting for the next round of international negotiations on climate change.
Again, the question I’d like to see this blog address is a question about the different roles likely to be played by different pressure points. Congress is one actor. The EPA is another (though I’m not sure how capable they are of putting a price on carbon). And international negotiation — it would appear to me — is another place where pressure can be applied.
The Senate has to ratify treaties. But, I believe, it can’t amend them. And if the choice is to ratify an int’l solution or let the EPA pursue unilateral CO2 disarmament, it seems possible that even the Senate might be brought to see reason. So the likely strategy for action, I would assume, is to squeeze Congress between the EPA on one side and the UN on the other. While generating as large a popular movement as we can to keep the Overton window open.
March 29th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Continuing SLC’s entertaining list:
6. Kary Mullis: this Nobel laureate who discovered how to amplify DNA with PCR believes OJ Simpson was innocent, and offered to introduce Simpson to his ex-girlfriend. Also, he’s an AIDS denialist, climate denialist, and believes he’s discovered astral planes.
7. Fred Seitz: this former president of the National Academy of Sciences argued that global warming science was inconclusive and secondhand smoke was risk-free. Prior to this, his tobacco industry clients are on record with: “Dr. Seitz is quite elderly and not sufficiently rational to offer advice.”
8. James Watson: the discoverer of DNA got old, lost the few remaining inhibitions he had, and started spouting off on the (nonexistent) hormonal link between obesity and happiness, and the (also unproven and almost certainly nonexistent) link between IQ and race.
March 29th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
Re Theo
Relative to James Watson, we might add:
9. William Shockley: Nobel Prize winning physicist (he invented the transistor) who, like Dr. Watson became convinced that African descended Americans were genetically less intelligent then Caucasian Americans. He once sent me copies of articles he had written on the subject and the scientific incompetence of those articles was mind blowing. It is hard to imagine how someone with so distinguished a scientific reputation could produce such utter crap.
March 29th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
How will a lowered fossil-fuel produced CO2 level affect the production of soylent green?
March 29th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
I was amused by Yglesias’s phrasing to the effect that progressives and conservatives are “in a weird place” on the climate change issue. Another way of phrasing this is: “The GHG-reducing steps I would like to see are not politically popular.” Personally, I would like to see this country adopt the metric system — I really believe it would be a net positive for the country, even counting transition costs — and I could say that conservatives and progressives are “in a weird place” with respect to the looming metric system issue. But that would be an odd thing to say.
March 29th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
@ 1:
Please quantify and prove this assertion:
“Science suffered horribly under GOP rule for the past 8 years.”
Define “suffer horribly” and then quantify it, compared to time periods before – and presidencies before.
Since you can’t do that, please STFU. Thanks.
March 29th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
Re Chris
Mr. Chris Mooney has already done that in his book, “The Rethuglican War on Science.”
March 29th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
No one wants to raise the cost of “energy.” We don’t even want to raise the cost of carbon-sourced energy.
We simply want the price of carbon-based energy to reflect its actual cost. All we’re talking about is the end of a social subsidy for carbon-based energy.
March 29th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
DTM,
For the curious, Romm’s particular expertise is with respect to clean energy technologies.
As I said, Romm has no recognized expertise in climate science.
By the way, I checked, and every quote Romm attributed to Dyson did in fact appear in the linked source
As I said, Romm attributes to Dyson statements Dyson did not make, and then attacks those made-up statements. DTM ought to try reading and analyzing his own sources.
March 29th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
chet,
Whereas it’s always just assumed that economic science is advanced enough to allow for confident predictions of future economies, enough for conservatives to claim that any steps taken to reduce carbon emission will invariably torpedo global economic growth.
I don’t know who these unnamed “conservatives” are supposed to be. If you seriously think we could make large-scale reductions in carbon emissions without incurring a large economic cost, please explain how you think this could be done.
This article in today’s New York Times discusses the costs of producing electricity from energy sources with lower carbon emissions. Natural gas and nuclear are about 35% more expensive than coal. Wind is more than 50% more expensive than coal. Solar thermal is nearly three times as expensive as coal.
March 29th, 2009 at 6:41 pm
SLC,
What’s most amusing on this thread is the notion held by global warming deniers here that James Hanson is the only climatologist in the world predicting global warming and that the rest of the climatological community is in disagreement.
No, what’s most amusing is that you obviously don’t even know which claims Dyson disputes. He does not dispute that anthropogenic warming is real and that it may increase in the future. Perhaps you ought to try, you know, actually READING the articles about Dyson’s views before you try criticizing them.
March 29th, 2009 at 6:44 pm
chet,
We simply want the price of carbon-based energy to reflect its actual cost.
Really? What is its “actual” cost? How do you know?
March 29th, 2009 at 6:51 pm
Chuckles using the same logic about environmental externalities that Bush used for the cost of the Iraq War.
We don’t know exactly what the number is. So let’s put down “zero.”
March 29th, 2009 at 6:54 pm
Mixner, too, thinks that magic technology (details TBD) will save him and his sad existence.
Unfortunately, it has not saved him from having his ass handed to him in a paper bag.
March 29th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
Consistently. Why do you think he has to keep using different handles?
March 29th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
We don’t know exactly what the number is.
I didn’t say the number had to be “exact,” Chuckles. Give us your ballpark number, and explain how you arrived at it.
March 29th, 2009 at 6:57 pm
You’re not fooling anyone, ‘joe from Lowell’.
March 29th, 2009 at 7:10 pm
Of course there will be a cost. There will also be a gain. Why is the cost assumed to outpace the gain? There was a cost to move from horsedrawn carriages to automobiles, but the benefits outweighed the costs and the economy grew as a result.
Why is it assumed that clean energy production wouldn’t be a growth industry? Why is it assumed that raising the price of one kind of energy would be a drain on economic growth?
Answer – because it is advantageous to conservatives and climate change denialists to make these unstated assumptions.
March 29th, 2009 at 7:32 pm
chet,
Of course there will be a cost. There will also be a gain.
You don’t know either that there would be a gain, or that even if there were it would be large enough to offet the cost.
Why is the cost assumed to outpace the gain?
I’m not “assuming” that. You really need to address actual claims from actual, named sources, instead of hiding behind this passive-voice “why is it assumed” nonsense, and unsubstantatiated attributions of “assumptions” to unidentified “conservatives.”
Why is it assumed that clean energy production wouldn’t be a growth industry?
I’m not assuming that, either. And it’s irrelevant to the cost-benefit issue, anyway. Even if clean energy production were a “growth industry,” that doesn’t mean the benefits of “clean energy” would outweigh its costs.
Why is it assumed that raising the price of one kind of energy would be a drain on economic growth?
I’m not assuming that, either. There is overwhelming evidence that a large-scale shift to “cleaner” energy sources would impose large economic costs. See the NY Times piece I just linked to.
March 29th, 2009 at 8:28 pm
Indeed, so the economics are a wash, apparently. On the other had we have a pretty good idea of what unchecked global warming is liable to cost in non-economic terms – flooded coastal cities, global famine, etc.
Again, if nothing is known about the economics – why pretend otherwise? Why say “we’ll drag down the economy” when, in fact, we don’t know how the economy will react to a push for cleaner energy?
Well, I know why, but you don’t seem to want to hear it.
March 29th, 2009 at 9:39 pm
I don’t know if MY gets a bonus or brownie points when there’s lots of comments, but if so, getting people het up about climate stuff looks like a money machine
March 29th, 2009 at 10:32 pm
chet,
Indeed, so the economics are a wash, apparently.
How you get from “We don’t know whether the gain, if any, would be enough to offset the cost” to “The economics are a wash,” I have no idea. Is English a foreign language to you?
On the other had we have a pretty good idea of what unchecked global warming is liable to cost in non-economic terms – flooded coastal cities, global famine, etc.
No, we have no idea what “unchecked global warming” would cost, in part because we don’t know how much warming would occur, in part because we don’t know the nature and magnitude of all of the effects of a given amount of warming, and in part because we don’t know how to assign a reliable monetary cost or benefit to each effect.
Again, if nothing is known about the economics – why pretend otherwise?
I didn’t say “nothing” is known about the economics. I said, and you agreed, that there would be a cost to a large-scale reduction in carbon emissions.
March 29th, 2009 at 10:33 pm
I long ago figured out that Mixner is a masochist.
I long ago figured out that Trixie is an ignorant fool.
March 29th, 2009 at 11:08 pm
@ 95 -
I don’t think that cuts it, to be honest. Defining “science” narrowly as a something that only the government has purview over is simple at best, foolish at worst.
Science is a pretty wide field. I mean, it includes everything from physics, chemistry, nuclear work…even acoustics. I don’t see “Rethuglicans” attacking that. I am impressed with Mooney’s title, though…I am sure the “war” he’s describing was one statists like yourself were ready to enlist in.
I am sure those on the left are completely innocent and never attack science – oh wait – No nukes in the 80s – and we haven’t even talked about “frankenfood.” Good thing only one side is political in this “war”.
While I am sure Mooney writes a good screed and details some of the excesses of the Bush Administration, there’s nothing like your alarmist tone (Science suffered!) to get the inmates riled up. So, again I ask you – please quantify the suffering. If not, please, I dare ask you, STFU.
March 29th, 2009 at 11:44 pm
Re: #83
If only blogging popularity were eminence… (sigh) but thanks for the kind words, anyway.
It doesn’t seem as if weighing in on Shimkus is necessary. He has done all the weighing in as might be necessary all by himself.
More generally, I haven’t seen any evidence that the earth is cooling that wasn’t desperate cherry-picking by policy delay advocates. I don’t think Tsonis’s work means what you think it means. I do mention his work in passing here: http://is.gd/o1Sr .
Despite the common and unfortunate name “global warming” I don’t think temperature is even the issue. The issue is massive first order disruption of climate patterns.
I don’t think the Precautionary Principle is a useful decision making tool; it certainly has nothing to do with science or a scientific way of thinking about things.
Nevertheless, I think we need a carbon policy that drives emissions to essentially zero, and the sooner we have one, the less damage the whole process will entail. I don’t claim that green jobs will magically cost nothing and I don’t invoke some voodoo earth worship. The situation is because we are monkeying with key controls of the earth system so badly that we won’t be able to support the world’s population, and that way lies very big, nasty, mean problems.
This is not about precaution anymore, we’re well past that point and are already doing damage. This is about not being total idiots.
March 30th, 2009 at 12:42 am
@114: The summary reference to “cherry-picking” says a lot. What it illustrates, more than anything, I think, is the different sorts of argument that count as acceptable in science and in political discourse.
In science, the assumption is that it’s not okay to treat evidence selectively. You’re supposed to *try* to account for all the evidence.
In political discourse, I’m afraid, the de facto assumption seems to be that it’s fair to pick up whatever data point happens to be handy and throw it at your opponent, while (of course) ignoring and evading the data points they throw at you.
George Will’s recent column was an excellent instance of what happens when you take the norms of political discourse and apply them to science. Will may have thought he was just “spinning” — which is more or less what he gets paid for — but he was spinning a topic where “spin” counts as culpable distortion.
March 30th, 2009 at 7:26 am
Re Charles
Mr. Charles apparently has a reading comprehension problem. He repeats a quote from me and then brings up Freeman Dyson. The quote, of course, has nothing to do with Dyson. If Mr. Charles is in some doubt as to the accuracy of that quote, I would refer him to the first comment by James Robertson, which is nothing but a personal attack on James Hanson and Al Gore and is empty of content. As for Prof. Dyson, his criticism has to do with climate modeling. The fact that Prof. Dyson made significant contributions to Quantum Field Theory in no way, shape, form, or regard makes him an expert on climate modeling, any more then Prof. Paulings contributions to chemistry make him an expert on vitamin C or cancer.
Re Chris
How about the Rethuglican war on evolutionary biology? We need only point out folks like Dr. Don McLeroy, chairman of the State Board of Education in Texas, who, along with his Rethuglican colleagues therein, is attempting to force schools in Texas to teach young earth creationism in science classes, which is not only a war on biology but also on geology and physics, both of which indicate a 4.5 billion year old earth, not a 10,000 year old earth as Dr. McLeroy insists.
March 30th, 2009 at 5:36 pm
Last time I checked the plants weren’t hungry but either thirsty or too busy getting chopped up.
The planet is fine, the people are f*%@ed.
April 16th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
Badly need your help. Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousand of miles and all the years you have lived.
I am from Mongolia and now study English, please tell me right I wrote the following sentence: “Cheap ticket discount airfare airline flight international low lowest travel.”
Thanks for the help
, Carol.