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Comment by _delirium | Hacker News Reader

This article is a bit high on polemics and low on science for my tastes (unsurprising since it's a WSJ editorial, but still). Is there a more sober whitepaper version that spends less time explaining that CO2 is colorless (true but irrelevant) and talking about the ominous drumbeats of their opponents, and more time on their thesis? Not just a rhetorical question; it seems like they might have a defensible thesis, especially about the cost/benefit profile, but it's hard to tell as presented.

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You will find most arguments for and against global warming a bit high on polemics, and a bit low on science. Asking whether or not the earth will be warmer in 100 years is about as fruitless as asking whether or not it will rain in 100 days. The earth has warmed and cooled dramatically long before human existence, and will continue to in spite of us. Our CO2 output is only one of many factors in a very difficult to compute equation of thermodynamics. Keep in mind, its not just activity on earth, but the state of the sun that largely determines temperature, and both are very complex systems that are virtually impossible to model accurately.

Downvote this if you agree with me. :)

I should add that in spite of what anyone's stance might be, we should still reduce our dependence on coal and fossil fuels for a number of reasons.

Agreed.

A curious question that immediately popped in my head was: would it be ethical to use the fear of the public for disruption by global warming (whether it's true or not)? This fear could be used for good purposes, such as trying to increase funding for fusion. (I mean, good graces, it'll be at least 2033 before DEMO becomes productive!)

Understandably, I'd prefer all people to be scientifically (and 'engineerically') literate on these issues and be able to make good decisions for the good reasons. However, I'm also realistic enough to see that this probably won't be happening anytime soon.

(Also, on a more personal note: no, I would not consider this ethical.)

No. A scientist most be known to say the truth and only the truth otherwise the public wont believe them when they tell them something that they cant possibly tell is true or not.

That's probably the role of politicians or activists, not scientists directly.

The problem is that while science is content to sit and collect data, people need to decide what to do, and can't afford wait to see how it turns out. We don't know if anything bad is going to happen, but we should be prepared for the possibility.

People like the WSJ op-ed writer might as well be telling people not to save for retirement or carry insurance. You might die young, so why waste money on a 401k. You might never get in a car accident, or get sick, or have your house be flooded. So why waste money on insurance?

"I'll only use this power for good, it's ok."

The problem with that line of thinking is that there's no monopoly on such abuses. Once the "good guys" do it then what's to stop the "bad guys" from using the same power. And now that you no longer have the backing of truth on your side how do you prove to the public that you are in the right?

How is this any different from the police planting evidence on someone they KNOW, but cannot prove, is guilty?

I am not sure that is a meaningful position -- it would require that there is an alternative to coal and fossil fuels (other than neuclear).

Certainly you can use wind or solar but they are not realistic because they are too limited and too costly for our current and future needs. There are bunch of other technologies that might one day make the cut, but what will you change to until they (may) become available?

This is where a market based system comes a bit short. Fossil fuel prices are going to continue rising. As they rise, they'll put pressure on everything. They are a pillar of our modern economy. Our ability to do large scale investment and infrastructure change is reliant on our ability to redirect the outputs of our economy, and abundant energy.

In other words, the best time to invest in new massive sources of wind and solar is when you still have cheap fossil fuels, not when your economy is staggering from oil shocks, and your cost of construction has risen by like 20% due to energy costs.

Please don't automatically assume the market is falling short here. Many governments including our own play a huge part in manipulating the price of fuels.

I actually agree with you...at present, we do not have any great alternatives (on the basis of cost-effectiveness) - although nuclear energy is an up-and-coming candidate. However, I do think we should at least reduce foreign dependence on energy - it complicates our relationships, twists our political motives, and enriches countries with questionable motives. By some estimates, we have enough natural gas under native soil to make up for foreign oil several times over, only environmental regulations prevent tapping many of these resources.

Sure, but that's not terribly relevant to CO2 production in the 21st century. The big issue will be the maturation of developing economies (China, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brazil, etc.) Even if the existing developed world drops their carbon emissions to zero tomorrow that won't drastically effect worldwide carbon emissions over the next hundred years. We need technologies that are not only suitable for developed nations but also for nations still in the process of bootstrapping themselves into industrialization.

You don't have to model the solar contribution to temperature, you can measure it.

We have in fact been measuring total solar irradiance (TSI) for a few decades now. See http://acrim.jpl.nasa.gov/ for the newest version of the instrument.

It's hard to paste the time series together from multiple instruments; not all of them work the same way, and there are discontinuities (TSI has to be measured from space, and you have to schedule launches to obtain overlap between the time series of successive instruments).

Someone wrote a long article about it, citing most of the experts in the area (http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/VariableSun/variab...). (Confession: I have not read the article carefully; it seems about right.)

The current thinking is that there's no way that TSI increases can explain the warming we have measured of the Earth. The TSI changes are just not large enough.

***

In fact, here's a nice recent summary of the big picture regarding remote sensing of climate variables:

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GlobalWarming/

It's no exaggeration to say this contains infinitely more usable information than the OP.

Check out http://climateaudit.org/. He has obtained lots of data and caught bad data which exaggerates global warming.

Here is the William Nordhaus paper referenced: http://nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/documents/Nordhaus_Copenhagen_...

As far as I can tell, that was the only point in the article that wasn't vague, irrelevant, an outright falsehood, or an appeal to weasel words.

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