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Comment by jacoblyles | Hacker News Reader

The Chinese leadership strikes me as pragmatic. If they thought the harm from Global Warming would be more costly than carbon emission cuts, they would make them.

But neither China nor India wants to remain poor. Any poor country is likely to benefit much more from development than the harm development will cause through additional carbon emissions (unless it's the Maldives). And neither countries' regimes can benefit from buying the votes of a green constituency with expensive projects of uncertain value. Rather, their legitimacy is strengthened by delivering increased living standards, and that is just what they intend to do.

The author is disingenuous to claim that these countries are acting in the service of of "planetary suicide", the breathless accusations of western green activists to the contrary. The Chinese leadership is well-educated. They can read the IPCC reports. They know what the likely consequences are. Planetary suicide is not among them.

Their leaders also know it's a hell of a lot better to be not-poor than poor. They think they are making a rational decision by frustrating the western green lobby's plans. And I'm pretty sure they are right. It's going to take a hell of a lot bigger bribe than $100 billion to convince them otherwise.

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The pragmatic and well educated Communist Party leaders have already been responsible for the death of over 15 million Chinese in the 1958 famine, when they muddled with nature to achieve unrealistic growth goals: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine

No doubt, the Party is pragmatic (so pragmatic it supplied Sudan with weapons during the Darfur genocide, collecting their support in Copenhagen in return). It is well aware that to maintain its control over the nation it has to keep delivering the current high growth rate. This has a lot more to do with the politicians' power than the people's quality of life.

Only they were different leaders.

Traditionally PRC had two factions. The Maoists and the rivals, let's call them the pragmatists. The Maoists were bent on communist doctrines and making great leaps. The pragmatists were more into what already works. The heads of the pragmatists were Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Shaoqi

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deng_xiaoping

The famine as you mentioned was attributed in part to Mao's radical policies, and because so Mao stepped down while Liu Shaoqi took his chair for a few years. While Liu was in power he played with capitalist policies similar to those in place today (this was the early 60s), Mao got paranoid and ousted him and Deng, and cultural revolution was launched in part to undo their popularity. Liu died in house arrest.

After Mao died in the late 70s, Deng took over and finally switched to market economy. The current line of leaders descended from his faction of pragmatists. Maoism is pretty much dead in China, a new split in the party is between the populists and the princelings, much more similiar to the dichotomy of liberals and conservatives in the west.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generations_of_Chinese_leadersh...

They are obviously different leaders (and I suppose the PRC have changed quite a bit since 1958 in any case) but my point is a more general one - "the leaders know best" is never a good assumption.

Assuming most HN readers consider themselves independent minded and skeptic towards authority it's disappointing to see the credit given here to China's leaders, who are chosen and operate mostly behind closed doors, as if they really operate with their people's best interest in mind (or even know what it is).

I wouldn't rely so blindly on any Western leader, certainly not on a leader in a closed, one party system like China's.

I don't think the OP ever implied that the leaders know the best. It was meant to be read from the viewpoint that there aren't good or bad politicians, there are only politicians making good or bad decisions.

In fact from what I've read, the current generation of Chinese leaders aren't particularly smart as people have given them credit for. Though they do seem to know that they don't know enough to be visionaries, so they take the stance of non-interference.

I can see the appeal of this kind of mentality has on HN, as I sense a lot of users here hold libertarian views.

I'm as against communism and social planning as anyone you'll meet, but refencing 1958 isn't quite correct here. Deng Xiaoping's reforms began China moving towards a modern society.

If anything, the general idea behind Copenhagen is more similar to the Cultural Revolution than walking away - it's trying to centrally plan what some people think would be a better world.

Your points are valid, and indeed 15 million deaths is the official estimate: scholarly opinions suggest the real number might have been 2 or even 3 times higher.

But perceptions of such matters become skewed by context. Given that the population of China was at the time somewhere around 6-700 million, this loss of life probably seemed marginal to the leadership of the time, and we might also remember that half a century ago the quality of information was considerably poorer; sputnik was the bleeding edge of satellite technology, and it's doubtful whether China even had computers, never mind a nationwide telephone network or even adequate roads.

Now this doesn't absolve them of responsibility, but nor do I think that such deadly economic calculus is limited to their adoption of communism. A century prior, when Britain was the leading global superpower, a famine wiped out the Irish potato crop for several years running (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Irish_Potato_Famine). The English government, which ruled there at the time, did nothing much about it, even though it could easily have been alleviated thanks to the proximity and availability of grain and other foodstuffs - indeed food exports from Ireland to England actually increased, because the native population were too poor to buy as crops had failed. The population collapsed, with about 1-1.5 million deaths (out of a population of only 8 million) and a similar number for emigration (which is why there are so many people of Irish descent in the US and Australia). Of course, in the context of the whole British Empire, this did not seem like such a significant number, and the government of the day viewed it as an embarrassment rather than a tragedy, to the extent of asking other countries not to bother sending food aid and attempting to blockade some that did so anyway.

Now at the time Britain was a limited democracy by today's standards and practiced mercantilism rather than a true market economy, and knowledge of agriculture and economics was basic; but the scope and severity of the problem was well understood, as recorded in parliamentary debates. It's a sad fact that having the basics of modern democracy and economic freedom do not inoculate any government from presiding over or contributing to monstrous levels of suffering in a misguided assessment of where its interests lie.

When we critique Marx and his intellectual heirs, as I agree we should, it's worth bearing in mind that he and his contemporaries had abundant reason to believe that capitalism was a morally bankrupt economic philosophy.

> The pragmatic and well educated Communist Party leaders

Well, you can hardly call first generation of communist revolutionists educated. Most of them know shit about economy or industry. However, the generation after open & reform can be called pragmatic & educated

Obviously they didn't need their support in Copenhagen to get what they wanted.

Unfortunately short-sighted pragmatism could mean the death of us all.

The Chinese are acting pragmatically/rationally and in their own short term self interest. If all nations do the same catastrophic climate change is unavoidable, this is the Tragedy of the commons [1]. The negotiations are about setting aside individual nations self interests in order to avoid disaster.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

I'm curious why you believe catastrophic climate change is unavoidable. Even accepting the "consensus" position, the amount of warming the world will face is not exactly life threatening.

Go read an actual IPCC report rather than breathless press releases by greenpeace.

Catastrophic for many, not for all. In particular island nations, and nations already susceptible to drought.

That's not a tragedy of the commons, it's a simple externality. It might be readily solvable simply by moving those people who are affected.

For example, consider the Maldives, with 300,000 people making about $5k/year. Relocating every person in the Maldives to the US would probably be cheaper than most climate change solutions. This would also quadruple the standard of living of the average Maldivian, provided their income increases to the US poverty line.

I agree with your sentiments but not your facts.

> For example, consider the Maldives, with 300,000 people making about $5k/year.

The sea level of the Maldives fell by more than 20cm since the 70ies. If the worst of the IPCC predictions come to pass, then the Maldives will still be better of in 2100 than in 1970.

Here is a reference - but you can find many more using Google:

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2...

Assuming their population has stayed the same and that they haven't built anything on lower lying land since then.

They will also probably be much richer and able to afford ambitious engineering projects. 100 years from now, Bangladeshis are expected to be as rich as the modern Dutch.

That's a great idea! Forced relocations always work out well, just ask the Native Americans. We really appreciated being moved across the country and forced to live in reservations.

We should definitely use that as the solution to climate change.

You're right, letting people drown is a much better solution.

Have you been to the maldives? I live in a particularly beautiful part of the US (Sarasota, FL) and I can say without question that moving to the Maldives would increase my standard of living.

You're right that it would increase their incomes. But standard of living is much more than income...

If that is true, why not move there? Or are you a masochist?

Activation barriers. Cutting ties to where you currently are may be sufficiently painful that moving isn't worth it, even if the end result is an increased standard of living.

If one has offspring, and they have offspring and so on, the gain from moving is indefinitely large and overwhelms any activation barrier. This suggests a new alternative: the poster is either barren or doesn't care about the standard of living of his offspring.

You left out a few possibilities:

-The poster hadn't considered that argument

-The poster doesn't want to have kids

-The poster will have a finite number of descendants

-The poster's concern for the standard of living of his distant descendants diminish according to distance (for instance, he probably cares a great deal for his children and a similar amount for his grandchildren, but by the time you're talking great-great-grandchildren his empathy has diminished significantly)

-The poster's descendants will not want share his fondness for the Maldives

-The poster's descendants will move away from the Maldives for other reasons

I'm sure you can think of a half dozen other alternatives if you think for a minute.

1. If the poster can consider 'activation costs', he most certainly can consider the benefits for his kids. Billions of people have radically altered their lives for the benefit of their kids, it's not some remarkably difficult task.

2. Same as barren.

3. Impossible to know, and under any plausible reckoning of improvement, insufficient to make activation costs predominate.

4. Same as doesn't care.

5. Unlikely; goes against millennia of empirical evidence that people love where they live (nowadays we call that 'patriotism')

6. A fully general counterargument (http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Fully_general_counterargument). You can use that to argue against anything: 'You should move away from North Korea', 'Why, my descendants might move away into it for other reasons!'; 'You shouldn't move away from North Korea, then', 'Why, my descendants might then move away elsewhere for other reasons!'

3 (finite number of descendants): "Impossible to know" perhaps--but the possibility of having few or no descendants will factor into the expected value of "number of descendants resident in the Maldives".

5 (his children may not be fond of the Maldives): You just argued that children are likely to have a fondness for wherever they are born. If true, this invalidates the argument for moving at all: whether his descendants love the Maldives or America will make for no gain at all.

6. (children may move away from Maldives): Actually, given the limited economic and educational opportunities of the Maldives, there's likely to be a fairly high probability of one's children moving. Once we use this probability to work out an EV for "number of descendants resident in the Maldives", or even apply the probability recursively to work out a proportion of descendants resident in the Maldives over an infinite number of generations, your infinity argument is pretty well refuted.

> If the poster can consider 'activation costs'

What makes you think people consciously consider it? Most of them just say "I don't feel like moving", or "I'm too lazy". Also, you missed the point of the "fully general counterargument". The point is that if your descendants find it better to be somewhere else later - well, they're fully capable of moving themselves.

You missed the possibility that moving there would increase his standard of living, but would not do the same for his kids. There could be no good college there, for instance - and if he already did college, this would not be a problem for him. But for his offspring, it could be a significant issue.

Why should a changed climate result in worse droughts in places that are susceptible to drought? Might it not lead to more rain in some drought-stricken places and less rain in some rainy places?

Didn't you mention being a physicist? I'm surprised you would assume that increasing the energy in a largely-closed complex system would tend towards greater equilibrium rather than exacerbating nonlinearities.

> Why should a changed climate result in worse droughts in places that are susceptible to drought?

"Theoretical and climate model studies suggest that, in a climate that is warming due to increasing greenhouse gases, a greater increase is expected in extreme precipitation, as compared to the mean. Hence, anthropogenic influence may be easier to detect in extreme precipitation than in the mean. This is because extreme precipitation is controlled by the availability of water vapour, while mean precipitation is controlled by the ability of the atmosphere to radiate long-wave energy (released as latent heat by condensation) to space, and the latter is restricted by increasing greenhouse gases." --- http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/technical-papers/ccw/chapter2.pdf

> Might it not lead to more rain in some drought-stricken places and less rain in some rainy places?

Yes, in fact some IPCC analysis suggests that North America will see e.g., increased crop variety and yields by 2080, and also e.g., a 40% decrease in Texan farmers' net income and more agricultural disease.

But although climate change isn't uniformly and strictly bad news, it is likely that some places will see catastrophic effects and that in aggregate the changes will be more problematic than beneficial for humans.

I live in Chihuahua Mexico. Definitely the amount of rain has increased in the last 2 or 3 years here. This is great news of the local economy. I figure it is like a lottery. If you already have a bad weather, it is more like for it to become better. On the global scale we may loose, but in the local scale some regions will be better of and some will be worse.

awi didn't claim that catastrophe is unavoidable. In fact, the implication is that catastrophic consequences of anthropogenic climate change can be mitigated by international cooperation.

Some actual IPCC reports are available from [1] and [2]. They describe observations of "The atmospheric concentration of CO2 and CH4 in 2005 exceeds by far the natural range of the last 650,000 years," "wide-spread melting of ice margins [...] with implications for sea level rise," and increased frequency of extreme precipitation events. They predict "irreversible changes in climate and ocean chemistry" and "rapid and large changes of the statistics of extreme events."

Droughts, floods, cyclones, and ecological disruptions all threaten human life. The IPCC data and reports suggest that these and other adverse events have increased in frequency and severity, that human activity had a causal role, that things will probably get worse, and that our future behavior matters.

Not that someone's death is the only possible justification for international cooperation in limiting pollution.

[1] http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_da... [2] http://www.ipcc.ch/presentations_and_speeches/presentations_...

I know, and even if we don't cooperate, most of the consequences of climate change are not catastrophic. I'm aware of much of what the IPCC claims. Note that by "catastrophic", I mean "causing major harm to human civilization".

I don't consider requiring a few million people to relocate 100 meters inland over 100 years (or stay put and build landfill) to be catastrophic. Nor do I consider a few more hurricanes to be catastrophic -- we handle hurricanes adequately, and as our economy grows, handling them will become even cheaper (relative to our wealth). Caribbean nations will handle them adequately as well once they become richer.

Al Gore's and Greenpeace's dire predictions of the death of humanity are simply way outside the scientific consensus.

Incidentally, the response of climate to CO2 is logarithmic -- i.e., if doubling CO2 increases climate by 1 degree, then an eight-fold increase in CO2 will increase climate by 3 degrees (not 8). (This is all to leading order, of course.) Big increases are only marginally worse than small ones.

the response of climate to CO2 is logarithmic

Reference? I don't see how that can be the case at all. The basic physics of radiation balance have no logarithms, and the naive expectation would be that the amount of escaping radiation depend exponentially on the CO2 column density.

Go play with an online MODTRAN simulator: http://geoflop.uchicago.edu/forecast/docs/Projects/modtran.o... (If you want to know the simulated temperature change, adjust "Ground T offset" to restore "Iout" to its original value.)

You are referring to Beer's law, which describes radiation transmission at a single wavelength. However consider its meaning for the broad absorption band of CO2, whose graph is the shape of a wide lump with low shoulders. For parts of the band above some threshold, exponential absorption will have eliminated almost all the radiation, and further increase in concentration will not change this: you cannot go below zero. Parts of the band below that threshold will absorb very little radiation, and increasing the concentration will change this very little: double almost zero is still almost zero. Concentration change only makes a practical difference at the edges of the band, and the CO2 band's shoulders are so steep that even drastic concentration changes only make for small growth in the width of the total absorption band.

P.S. MODTRAN assumes a nonmoving atmosphere, so its temperature predictions are not to be believed. The actual atmosphere experiences stronger vertical convection as ground temperature rises, which in turn produces secondary effects on vegetation, evaporation, and clouds that affects temperature. Predicting the net effect on temperature requires an accurate biological/meteorological simulation. And those are mighty thin on the ground.

P.P.S. Convection effects are why greenhouses actually get hot: the glass obstructs natural convection from cooling the ground. Calling radiation effects the "greenhouse effect" is scientific fraud.

Ah, the band centers are optically thick. I guess that makes sense. Thanks for pointing that out.

Newsflash: nations are not going to set aside their interests for each other. End of story.

All the carbon will be burnt -- count on it. Plan accordingly.

The Chinese leadership, like the leadership of every country, is a band of old men. Old men who know they won't be around to see the worst consequences of global warming, but consider that they might well be around long enough to hang from lampposts should the gravy train of economic growth shudder to a halt.

Culturally the Chinese seem to care a lot more about their children, you can see this in their ruling class by how many well connected sons are running various enterprises. And culturally I see no reason they'd buy into the West's Malthusian tradition, which goes back to 200 AD (sic).

So as noted, they (or their staff) can read the IPCC reports, read the ClimateGate emails and code, etc. etc. and do what's right for their country.

Heck, they're not watermelons, e.g. green on outside, red on the inside. They're unabashedly red all the way through, they don't need environmentalism as a stealth path to "socialism", they've got their own version of the real thing!

Culturally the Chinese seem to care a lot more about their children, you can see this in their ruling class by how many well connected sons are running various enterprises

There's a word for that: nepotism.

I don't see any reason for all cultures to have a negative view of nepotism. Were I a parent, I'd certainly try to provide the best possible platform for my children on which to build their careers. I see nepotism as wrong only when it comes at too great a cost to the company or country in which it is practiced, or violates laws or company policies.

The reason nepotism is so despised in the west is because we still remember how it worked the last time we tried it -- aristocracy is just the extreme version of nepotism.

There is nothing wrong in trying to provide for your child as well as you can, but (s)he shouldn't end in a leadership position just because of his pedigree. Nepotism is generally one of the opposites of meritocracy.

The Chinese old men seem to have a much longer planning horizon than the leaders of our own country, who only look to the next election cycle (2, 4, or 6 years).

Uh,

* Yes, this kind of thing often comes down to "real politic".

* No, we shouldn't be happy to let it just stand as that.

I'll give you that the exact result of continuing unlimited production of hydrocarbons is unknown. The "Green Lobby" has ill-served itself by framing things as 'we know global warming will happen' rather than "do you want to risk eating your own industrial shit for longer than necessary?'. "Planetary Suicide" is indeed an almost meaningless term. Tremendous environmental impact with a negative, say terminal, impact for millions of people is concrete and likely. Desertification advances as quickly in China as anywhere.

The Chinese leadership is far-sighted and near-sighted according to their historical origins and material interests. You know about the Cultural Revolution?

Edit: And the particular strategy "the West" have taken certainly has made the bed they are lying in as much as China has. Again, does that mean we should be happy with this situation?

You make some very good points, the only thing I'd add is that for the Chinese leadership choosing between the two extremes is easy. Millions dead due to a nasty environment?

They're living that now and can deal with it a lot easier than they could deal with the hundreds of millions who'd die if they did what the goo-goos in the West asked them to do.

> They're living that now and can deal with it a lot easier than they could deal with the hundreds of millions who'd die if they did what the goo-goos in the West asked them to do.

I'm curious. How are hundreds of millions going to die if the Chinese agreed to the treaty?

The people at the margin, the ones who are barely making do, will be pushed over the edge by the total program of the goo-goos (I'm not talking about just this treaty, which was only going to be a good second step at best).

Look, there's no way to implement the "decarbonization" of industrial society without killing off billions of poor people. It's one thing for the wealthy nations to impoverish themselves, we've got reserves we can draw on. Those living on a dollar or two a day ... not so much.

Realpolitik

By similar token, George Bush and Co. were also pragmatic in dealing with global warming issues.

So was the Senate during the Clinton Administration when they preemptively voted down Kyoto with 97 against.

So was the ^Republican Senate...

Fixed that.

All that means is that they were able to ensure that the vote got scheduled. By my count 41 Democrats nonetheless voted for it (after looking it up I see that it was 95-0, with 1 Republican and 4 Democrats not voting).

It's also worth noting that with a 60 vote (or votes with) Democratic majority cap and trade is getting exactly nowhere in the current Senate.

There's a lot of game theory in the Senate.

It's not a secret ballot with a gag order.

So if you're a senator, it makes no sense to make a risky vote on a bill that you know has no chance to pass.

About Cap And Trade...

Frankly, the bill is an atrocious gift to investment bankers that will make billions in this new market.

But lets ignore that. Let's talk about why a 60-democrat senate cannot pass this or other Progressive legislation.

Here it is: The country has gotten more liberal in the last 10 years. But it's not 60% liberal. Not even close.

Democratic gains have been easy gains, politically speaking. The party ran conservative Dems in conservative districts. All in all I'd rather have a conservative dem than a liberal republican -- at least a conservative dem will contribute to the Democrats having control over committees and procedure.

But what I really want -- and what I think this country needs -- is a progressive. Democratic, Green, Indy, whatever. But, a progressive.

Everybody acts like Democrats should be able to pass progressive legislation just because there's 60 Dems in the Senate. Count the number of Progressives.

The work that needs to be done -- the activism and organization -- is to promote the progressive agenda at the grassroots level. We need to attack on all fronts to move the country left, the same way the Conservative trio of the Reagan Admin, Think Tanks, and new Media (including direct mail and, say, Rush Limbaugh) moved the country right in the 80's and 90's.

Cap and trade is "is an atrocious gift to investment bankers that will make billions in this new market." Indeed, and who will then share the wealth with those in the government who will continue to allow that. Much better than a carbon tax, the possibilities for graft are endless.

The biggest danger by far in "environmentalism" is when big business combines with the Greens, e.g. it's no accident that the CFC ban resulted in a change from long out of patent refrigerants to new proprietary ones (or so I've read).

BTW, are you sure the country has gone left? A bit over 30% self-identify as conservative, a bit over 20% as liberal, the last time I checked. Yeah, there was a general revulsion over 21st century Republican excesses and failures, but that's not the same time. Firing a Republican Congress is not necessarily the same thing as electing a Democratic one.

As for your program ... I can't honestly say I wish you luck, but you do have your work cut out for you. Clinton convinced the nation that trusting Democrats was not insane (we could take a vacation from history (foreign policy) and he did alright with economic policy, especially after 1994, and then there's "ending welfare as we know it", which has already been mostly reversed). Team Obama and the Congressional leadership are ruining that, and under an at least partly false Progressive banner.

Is it also possible that slightly higher temperatures and more rainfall could be less of a negative in China? There are a lot cold areas there that could become more fertile. The bigger problem in Beijing is simply the air quality, I felt the need to wear a mask. The direct perceptibility of that phenomena is more likely to drive action on air pollution.

no, one of the major problems in China is drought and heat. Beijing suffers from both of them and each year the desert is moving closer to Beijing and the sandstorms are getting worse. Increasing global warming will also make the situation worse in China.

[Citation Needed]

Define "planetary suicide." I'm sure that the Chinese leadership isn't too concerned because their patch of Earth is well-positioned to whatever chaos will ensue. I'm sure the sub-Saharan nations, Australia and perhaps even the Indian subcontinent would beg to differ though.

A two degree centigrade difference, real or imagined, wouldn't be a big deal to a modernized China, nor would it be a big deal to those of us living in North America.

What's more is that China is blessed with regards to natural defenses. These same natural defenses also lead to isolation. The Chinese paid dearly for their relative isolation in the 19th and 20th centuries. But if all havoc were to break out in the rest of the world, then they'd do comparatively well in their present state.

It's all just politics, plain and simple.

The problem with a 2C warming is that it won't just cause everywhere to become two degrees warmer. It will mean a massive upset in weather patterns and large areas of land that are currently arable becoming barren, along with a lot of fertile or inhabited land becoming flooded.

What are your favorite references to back up those predictions? Couldn't there also be currently barren areas that become arable?

The IPCC 4th Assessment Report is a good starting place. http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_ipcc_f...

"They know what the likely consequences are. Planetary suicide is not among them."

And you know that because...?

s/cuts/democracy?

I think they are being pragmatic, but that you're being too dismissive of the potential costs if this strategy has long-term negative repercussions.

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