Global Warming Delusions
online.wsj.com
online.wsj.com
No fear mongering about a lack of action.
No fear mongering about untold damages action against GW will do to our economies (usually in reference to carbon emissions limitations & taxes).
Just so... reasonable.
Why "intellectually dishonest"? What does that even mean? If somebody argues a point that you don't agree with, it's "intellectually dishonest"?
You've already defined the game so much to your benefit, and we're playing it to your rules. When you ignore water vapor, we let you. When you ignore what everybody knows, that the climate is warming regardless of human contribution, in the endless climate cycle that's 4 billion years old, we let you. You've defined the game to be, humans are causing extra global warming (you leave out the 'extra') and we let you. We've handicapped ourselves quite severely in this 'debate', so that you'll at least play with us. That you take advantage of this handicapping with not even a "thank you" is what is intellectually dishonest.
So, this author makes the claim that there may be benefits to warmer climate. He's playing your game. He's bowing to your religion, by saying the words "warmer climate". But you're not happy. It's intellectually dishonest.
Every action has costs and benefits. Obviously there would be benefits from a warmer climate. It's intellectually dishonest for you to claim otherwise. Do they outweigh the costs? I honestly don't know. We're a global community, right? A longer growing season in the temperate latitudes vs a shorter growing season in the tropical. Does this result in more food or less? I don't know (although I suspect it does). More people running their AC in the south vs less people running their heaters in the north. Is this a power savings or a power sink? (I suspect this ones goes to you, as heating is more efficient than cooling). There's a ton of analysis that could be done here, before you know the answer to this question. For you to just say "intellectually dishonest" without considering any of it is perhaps a result of your bias.
But the thesis of the article is that the evidence of the serious consequences of global warming is quite thin. Saying that there will be benefits of global warming doesn't support that thesis; when people say the consequences of global warming will be severe, they are already taking into account the benefits.
Really? Are you sure? What people?
I'd love to read the papers (probably in economics journals, I assume) that did this analysis, as such an analysis would surely be well worth my time to read. The few economists I'm aware of discussing this, caution that it is not worth the money that GW advocates are proposing pouring down this rat hole. Do you have any papers that you can point me to?
I tend to come down on the side of action to stop possible human contribution to global warming, though. One reason is simply fear of the unknown - there might be benefits, but we're doing alright now, and that isn't really a knob I feel like needs to be tweaked just to see what happens.
But another far more important reason for me is that it seems like the actions needed to stop the possible human contribution to global warming are Good Things whether they're actually causing that particular problem or not. Spewing less crap into the air? Sounds great. More energy efficient cars/trucks/devices/appliances? Sounds great. Paying attention to energy costs expended on lighting, and as a side effect maybe getting to see stars in the sky over a city sometime? Awesome.
I always wonder about the people who say we shouldn't take action. Because it's too expensive? That seems to miss the basic observation that the economy exists to serve the wants and needs of the people within it, not the other way around - if people decide this is something they value, that they want to work on, the economics will work out. I really think its something more basic, the traditional dichotomy between the personal and the common. Or maybe it really is just a cynical response from people in a current position of comfort who see what they're doing right now as threatened by any changes that need to be made.
You say I should spend $250K to pad the walls and floor of my home with hypoallergenic 4 inch thick foam because then my kid won't get hurt when he falls. If I point out that I'd rather spend the $250K on his college, than I'm a bastard.
You say I should spend $1000 as my share of the cost to paint a picture of a snow capped mountain on the ugly building next door. Everybody in the neighborhood will benefit from having such a beautiful mural, so what is my problem with coughing up the money? I would probably just waste it on fixing the transmission and brakes on my car anyway.
It is not your resources that you are spending. It is MY resources you are spending. I choose to donate them to drilling wells for waterless villages in Africa. Who are you to tell me that I'm a bastard for wanting to do that instead of your project?
Don't give me this moralistic sermon about greedy people demanding proof of a problem before coughing up the funds to fix it, when they should just smile and give the funds because it's "a good thing anyway".
I reject this 100 times more than I reject somebody who is just too lazy to learn the true facts of the issue. Give me people honestly trying to reach an intellectual meeting of the minds any day over this sort of moralistic bullying.
Consider another example: what if we wake up tomorrow and all the computer models have vastly improved; showing in intricate detail the consequences of every ton of CO2 emitted in terms of rising temperature and sea level, changing rainfall patterns, etc., and that the economic and social costs worldwide are considerable. Assume also that the counter-anecdotes (such as those in the WSJ article) are explained by the models. Assume finally that the models show that the influence on your personal life is minimal. I'm curious as to what you'd do; would you try to decrease your emissions voluntarily, or would you support government efforts to turn things around, or would you continue as before; they are your resources to consume after all..? Would you perhaps even start trying to convince others to minimize their emissions as well, or would that fall under moralistic bullying?
It's very acceptable for proven causes of proven societal ills to be handled by a consensus of that society. It's not acceptable to stampede, bully, exaggerate, and mislead to cause something to happen, just because in your opinion, it would be best.
First: in some things, it is for society to decide how you spend your resources. For instance, you can't spend them on blowing up random buildings. How is limiting your emissions qualitatively different?
Second: when the fuck did I say anything about spending $250k to pad your kids walls, or $1k to buy a fucking mural? Take your hyperbole back to reddit, please.
Third: what moralistic bullying are you talking about? When I suggested it might be a cynical response from people who benefit from the current state of things? You really don't think there are people for whom that's true? I admit I probably could have picked a better phrase than "I wonder", but seriously, your response is way out of band.
Instead of both of you using hyperbole to make your points, how about one/both of you outline exactly under which circumstances the good of the many outweighs the good of the few, or the one? That might actually advance your discussion.
I also concede that the intentions of both sides are honorable. I think there are puppet masters who use environmental issues to effect trade negotiations or as cover to take more power, but the average hacker news reader, I think has honorable intentions.
The disagreement lies in what constitutes the good of the many. What was so attractive about this article for me was that the articles author attempted to open up that discussion a little more than "is it warming or isn't it".
In regards to your protest at the level of my response. My response is appropriate, but it is, indeed, non-typical. I purposely chose to take off the gloves here, rather than water down my speech because the watered down speech that is so typically used in these kinds of discussions has confused you and many others.
Just like abstraction in software, much of our society abstracts away the really important bits. Just like in software, this can be abused.
Anytime you calmly and rationally talk about adding taxes to do this program or that program, you need to remember that there are men with guns that will deprive people of their lives or their liberty unless they comply. Too often, you forget that because it's abstracted away by the system we have. I feel that such a profound imposition of your will over mine is indeed cause for less watered down speech than usually used. If that made you uncomfortable, than I'm happy about that. That was it's intent.
When you then go on to say that you want to use that awesome power regardless of whether or not the original catalyst is a valid one, because "it's a good idea", I have to do what I can to get through to you how dangerous that sort of thinking is.
Any time you calmly and rationally keep asking for more and more evidence that the toxic waste you're poisoning my kids' water and air with isn't all that bad, or is a net benefit for humanity even if my kids seem ever-the-more sickly for it you're causing irreparable harm.
I feel such a profound imposition of your will -- convince me I'm not poisoning you! -- over mine is something that doesn't deserve polite speech and I don't care if it makes you uncomfortable.
This is really the conflict that's going to play out all over the next century, regardless of how climate-change specifically plays out:
- libertarian-minded types like to think we live in a world where it's possible to swing a fist without hitting someone's face
- if that world ever really existed, it's gone now: anytime you light a fire you're blowing smoke in my face
It's the difference between the morality of the home and the morality of the bus station:
- in your home you're surrounded by walls and only people who want to be there (usually) are present, so do as you wish
- in the bus station you're cheek-by-jowl with hundreds to thousands of other people, and the only thing that makes it bearable is a shared belief in restraint
The abstraction of "your resources" is just another leaky abstraction:
- there's no platonic book of property titles; you can't really call God on the phone and confirm that "your resources" are actually "yours, to do with as you wish"
- you can't really (as an individual) exert enough force to make everyone respect your "ownership" over "your resources"; the fact that you can act as though they're unambiguously yours depends on the willingness of hundreds of millions of people to leave you and "your resources" alone
- even if everyone agrees "your resources" are yours, you -- and your resources -- are not off in some private pocket universe when you use your resources; you -- and your resources -- are embedded in the same material reality everyone else is, and every action you take -- including any use you make of your resources -- will impact other people
- it's not realistic to expect people to sit idly by if you and your use of "your resources" are harming them; since "your resources" staying "your resources" depends on everyone else being willing to leave you alone, it's not smart to use "your resources" in a way that blows smoke in their face or pisses in their drinking water
- historically people have been more willing to treat certain resource usages as "not harming them" (eg: smokestacks, dumping industrial byproducts into riverwater, etc.); this is less and less true with time, and there's no sign of a slowdown in that trend
- every time so far that a particular set of negative environmental externalities has been identified the producers of that externality have either voluntarily agreed to cut back, some kind of nominal regulation (looks good, may not actually do anything) has been imposed, or some actually-strong regulation has been put in place; it's obvious which way the wind is blowing, here
Regardless of how "climate change" pans out, this is the future:
- on the one side, people who strongly believe they're being directly harmed by actions you're taking; any calm, rational request for evidence that your actions are actually harmful is asking for them to endure more harm, and to what end? Why does your claim on "your resources" -- which ultimately depends upon their consent, as you yourself can't do squat to hold onto "your resources" should they lift that consent -- trump their well being? What justifies such self-sacrifice? Why would it ever be your place to tell me how much smoke in my face I ought to be willing to put up with?
- on the other side, people taking actions they've been taking in the past will want to continue taking them. Sometimes they will probably have a reasonable case for continuing to take those actions, and sometimes they won't; in any case, they're at a disadvantage:
--- direct appeals to the fact that you're using "your resources" aren't going to resonate with your accusers (even if they rouse sympathy in those who fear they're next); not only are "your resources" only "yours" until the people you're arguing with decide they aren't, but you're insisting on upholding an abstraction that's looking ever-the-more leaky
--- direct appeals to how much harm you're causing (or not) are also going to fall flat; it's not really your place to tell other people how much harm you can cause them before they have a right to complain, and so for this to work at all you need to appeal to some kind of mutually-accepted arbiter; that mutually-accepted arbiter is going to be ultimately more beholden to everyone-else-but-you (you are one, they are many)
I'd like to as much as possible preserve the notion of "your resources" and some kind of private sphere in which one can act freely (without looking over one's shoulder) but that's not going to happen if you take the abstraction for granted, and ignore the reality (what you're asking for is leeway and the presumption from other parties that you're not harming them enough for them to take action...that's an exceedingly fragile base).
On the other hand, there are people who will dump toxic waste into my groundwater and my air unless the men with guns are willing to deprive them of life or liberty for failure to cease said dumping.
And if you define a ton of arsenic as "toxic waste" I don't think anybody would argue with you about the need for protection from your neighbor's actions.
But if you define a few parts per billion, or something that has a .01% chance of causing my death from cancer, or something that the community is currently hysterical about, (such as second-hand smoke) then I think we do have a problem.
There's plenty of room for reasonable thinking in the middle of the road here. The problem is that the middle of the road keeps moving. Nobody used to care if you dumped used motor oil in your backyard. Or if you smoked in public. Or if your lawn mower spewed smoke. The goalposts keep moving. This trend cannot continue indefinitely.
There is some reasonable middle ground. In my opinion, however, we've crossed that middle ground a long time ago. Decisions about what private property rights to infringe on are not made any more based on scientific, reproducible cause-and-effect principles that have a high degree of causing me harm (And I'll stick with my .01% number for this discussion). Instead the ground keeps changing based on current politics.
Private property should not be based on political whims -- that's the whole point of the Bill of Rights: that some principles have been proven to be the bedrock of successful societies. It's no more debatable than whether 1+1=2
I can't emphasize enough that the notion of private property is critical for successful societies. It's a lesson history shows us very clearly. My ownership of something does not depend on my fellow citizens allowing me to own it. Certain principles are innate, endowed by our creator, whatever-your-favorite-language. Inviolate. It's the entire basis of western society. I'm not trying to argue at extremes again -- obviously I can't dump a ton of arsenic in my backyard. But to believe that it's natural for global health concerns to intrude more and more on personal property is to say that people are going to stop being people at some point and simply be cells performing in a larger organism. I don't see that happening any time soon. The human animal simply won't fit into the little box that you'd like them to fit into.
But, you have to be realistic:
- if you accept a libertarian notion of self-ownership, then it follows that, eg, I ought nought to have you blow smoke in my face unless i consent to it (b/c you're tampering with my property, no)?
- now, as a practical matter people agree to overlook certain things (eg: your campfire is infinitesimally smokifying my air here back in town, but it's so negligible that I ought not to care about it; very literally the stress of worrying about it is worse for me than your smoke is)
- it'd be nice if you can adopt a universal standard for when your (infinitesimal) actions are something I have to ignore
- but unless you already have that agreement you're back into coercing people; it does seem useful to you, I'm sure, to think that "since I've scientifically shown that my blowing smoke in your face doesn't actually harm you, so I'm going to keep doing it", but now you're not that far removed intellectually from eg eminent domain "I've demonstrated that demolishing your home in order to finish this expressway is manifestly for the economic benefit of the entire city -- including you -- so even though normally I'd like to respect your property rights in this patch of land today I say 'tough luck!'"
- this is why the boundaries of private property are always ultimately a political problem: usually people are looking out for their own interest, as they choose to define it; to get someone to deliberately sacrifice their own perceived self-interest requires either force or politics; force works but is undesirable and doesn't scale, either, so you're left with politics
This is where the folk libertarianism (along with any naive or simplistic approach to being pro-property-rights) is going to flounder in the new century, if present trends continue:
- you can't pretend your actions "don't effect other people until they do"; the reality is that "your actions effect everyone else, but sometimes (usually, even) everyone else agrees to pretend as if they don't"
- you look like a hypocrite if you on the one hand want to maintain absolute say over how you use your own resources but on the other hand want to force other people to accept your decisions about which uses of their property (their bodies, their air, etc.) they need to just man up and take; you also look stupid if you can't see this point
- you also look politically and rhetorically dumb when you speak casually about what risk-of-harm to others you're comfortable ignoring (and would expect other people to ignore); it's rather obvious that, eg, DanielBMarkham is fine with, say, some action of his having a .001% odds of giving his neighor's kid asthma (picking at random) -- DanielBMarkham is not his neighbor's kid, after all -- but step outside the space of just "thinking in words" and you'll see why that's not a winning pose (it's made worse by the way that risk-of-harm is low-and-diffuse but harm is typically severe-and-concentrated).
What I'm trying to drive home is that everything you've said is valid, but you're not going to change minds with that argument (at most you'll make people aware of a particular danger if you carry something to its logical extreme).
I think the best long-term approach is to focus more on design and infrastructure (eg: intelligent garbage processing, products designed from start-to-finish to neatly decompose into recyclable components -- this is called "reverse logistics", fyi) rather than trying to directly win the political war over where the lines ought to be drawn.
If you can get to where people can continue doing what they do now but with far less externality production, then you will easily be able to keep the lines drawn mostly where you'd want them to be (at least for most actors).
The issue here is that to get to where it's safe to be mindless again is not going to happen promptly (if at all) without some kind of directed regulatory push; that is not only nontrivial -- and dangerous -- but also unlikely barring some other political shifts.
Both prongs of this discussion have serious flaws. If you try to act only pragmatically (convincing your fellow citizen that a little chaos is necessary for the growth of the larger state) then progress, or the state of the argument, is completely dependent on your powers of persuasion and the current fight/mindset of your fellow citizen. That fails over time because creating limits are discussed at a much higher ratio than reducing them. I'd have to have a persuasive power of about 100:1 in order just to maintain the status quo.
If, as I do, you believe there are some fundamental biological principles at play, then it really doesn't matter anyway. Either the principles are being respected or they are not. And sadly yes, I think it probably comes down to some sort of happy mathematical ratio. However, as you point out, arguing on principles in a society that is fear and risk-obsessed is a non-starter. And it's a really difficult argument to make that, while ten million people may blow smoke in other people's face, the loss of their freedom to move and act naturally is a greater loss than the hundred million who are annoyed with second-hand smoke (I am not a smoker, btw). But at the end of the day the better argument wins. That's just reality.
I think you're overestimating the extent to which there are any natural principles that'll set in and show their hand; they're out there, but most human behavior that actually bumps into them gets corrected pretty fast, all things considered (a few decades, usually, between discovery and adaptation).
For most of the debates of interest there aren't really principles you can fall back on, and even if you do there's a big "so what?", because principles do not in and of themselves supply a valuation.
Let's stick with secondhand smoke.
Let's assume it comes out that, eg, using much-more-definitive science than anything we currently have on the matter that there's a non-zero but seemingly negligible increase in risk of lung cancer from second-hand smoke (say: above some level of exposure your risk of lung cancer becomes 0.0002% instead of .0001%).
This seems compelling, but at the end of the day it doesn't really help you resolve the issue of "secondhand smoke regulation" (without the backing of some state to dictate the resolution).
It might be irrational, say, for the consensus opinion to be that secondhand smoke is worth banning even though other, unbanned activities have higher risks, but so what? The point of "owning" something is being able to do what you like with it without having to justify those actions to others; matters of fact can make certain conversations more likely to go one way instead of another but they ultimately are just dead facts on the table.
An extreme example is something like trying to build an apartment complex over an indian burial ground; it's a pure battle of aesthetics that can't be won by reason alone.
The "second-hand smoking" issue is only superficially different: it seems like there's more of a scientific aspect (does second-hand smoking actually cause harm?) but those facts only serve to inform the parties; without some agreement on underlying outlooks (how to interpret those facts) the facts don't do anything.
One of the commonest forms of self-delusion in internet political arguing is to (unconsciously) assume enough about "the other side's" core beliefs and assumptions that for them to disagree with the conclusions you've drawn would be irrational; this isn't usually an intentional mistake, it just arises from a failure to conceptualize other people's outlooks as differing from your own in any fundamental way.
What I see this century holding is (sadly) a huge flux in underlying outlooks; even when there are principles they depend on pragmatics to accomplish anything, and failing to deal with that flux will lead to sucking at pragmatics.
I'm out, it's been a pleasant sunday.
By violating underlying principles I do NOT believe that some kind of ultimate catastrophe will ensue. This is an optimization problem and I simply believe there are natural asymptotes. My view of the future is one in which we define "abnormal deviation" down to the point where we're all just homogenized drones. In my darkest days I don't see mankind evolving into some kind of space-faring, trans-human supermen. I see mankind turning into large lumps of homogeneous sacks of fluid mindlessly plugged into a vast brain-masturbatory internet. It's the long, slow, slide to stagnation. I'm not concerned with the end of the world: I'm concerned with the end of chaotic, creative expansion. Without underlying principles that's where we're headed. Private property and the ensuing rights to do things that might annoy my neighbors if they lived 5 feet away is the cause of all kinds of goodness.
"because principles do not in and of themselves supply a valuation"
I think they can. I think you right to speak is greater than my desire not to be annoyed by you -- unless I have no way to get away from you, in which case my right of self-ownership trumps your right to speak. Principles give us all kinds of relative valuations. Our entire system of western justice is based on the idea that principles have relative merit to one another.
"An extreme example is something like trying to build an apartment complex over an indian burial ground; it's a pure battle of aesthetics that can't be won by reason alone."
Once again we're having the pragmatic versus principles discussion. I say I shouldn't have to justify actions if they are based on principle. Do I have to justify my freedom of speech every time I post on the internet? Of course not. It's a given. Likewise many uses of private property were a given 50 years ago but are not any more. Pragmatically those who make good political arguments in a decayed democracy win more rights than others. Practically decayed democracies do not optimally support their citizens or grow and change adequately to adapt to new circumstances. The more I have to argue to get the same freedoms I had 50 years ago, the more time and energy I am spending just to have the same potential people had naturally before. It's a good observation on your part. It's just incomplete.
Thanks for the thread. Now back to work!
- I can't emphasize enough that the notion of private property is critical for successful societies. It's a lesson history shows us very clearly.
In case it's not clear: I agree.
- My ownership of something does not depend on my fellow citizens allowing me to own it.
This is where a failure to distinguish between abstraction and reality can be harmful. "It'd be awesome if my ownership of something didn't depend on my fellow citizens allowing me to own it" is true. But pick anything:
- can you defend "your" property against a coordinated assault of more than a handful of your fellow citizens? If not, it's "yours" up until a handful (or more) of your fellow citizens decide it's theirs
- you may say: but then the police or the courts step in. But then: what if the police don't care that you think it's yours? same question with the courts: what if they don't care?
Generally you can rely on the police and the courts, b/c they're embedded in a very wide web of "consent" (they may not care at all about your particular ownership claims, but they're enmeshed in a broader network of incentives to respect ownership claims which makes them unlikely to actively deny your claims).
- Certain principles are innate, endowed by our creator, whatever-your-favorite-language. Inviolate. It's the entire basis of western society.
Again agreed -- that is the basis of society. But since there is no actual creator to appeal to, your particular rights are inviolate up to the point anyone decides to try violating them. This isn't just a nitpick, it's important -- cf next.
- But to believe that it's natural for global health concerns to intrude more and more on personal property is to say that people are going to stop being people at some point and simply be cells performing in a larger organism.
I think you're missing what happens when there's just "more people". People will not stop being people, but how people behave when they're crowded together (subway station, train station, apartment complex) is different from how people behave when they're pretty well isolated (at home, camping, etc.).
In the same way that strong private property protections are a bedrock of western civilization, you can throw in "decent behavior in public"; we don't throw chamberpots out the window and we look askance at the noisy and smelly in crowded public settings...and westerners generally are terrified by images of the crowded Indian or Asian urban environment.
Even if you stick to garden-variety "negative rights" language, being in public "inverts" the dynamic:
- out on a farm in the boonies, any restrictions on your behavior seems unnatural and invasive (with good reason: who else is around)
- out in a crowded public place, to have any semblance of "freedom from" unwanted actions from other people involves praying that the other people aren't uncouth assholes; it starts looking very attractive to insist on adopting -- and violently enforcing, if need be -- some code of behavior in public
Even if you're still out on a farm somewhere, the outlook and expectations of everyone else will be increasingly "urban" with the corresponding assumption that you're being the inconsiderate ass (by acting with insufficient concern for your neighbors)...just like the dude with the loud boombox is being an ass -- making the judgment that his pleasure in hearing his tunes outweighs everyone else's annoyance -- not some kind of principled hero standing up for personal freedom.
That's the way the wind is blowing; there are countervailing trends (momentum gaining for eg gay rights and drug legalization show the populous has some inherent interest in not being unduly restricted in one's personal freedoms) but for issues of "health" or general wellbeing I can't see a trend reversal in the cards yet.
And so this is why the property rights resting on the consent of everyone else is important, not just a nit:
- since the boundaries of personal property are always and everywhere ultimately a political thing, you have to win at the political side, too
- the world of the future is crowded and urban, with the corresponding difference of outlook (behavior restrictions are necessary in crowds to maintain some semblance of freedom; not indicating that you understand that makes you look unhinged to native urbanites, even if they can't articulate it)
- my prediction is that that pro-property rights types in the usa will lose the game, hard, if they fail to address the political side, and to win at the political side they need to deal with reality, not simply insist that their particular abstractions are best
- I don't see that happening any time soon. The human animal simply won't fit into the little box that you'd like them to fit into.
Eh, I hate boxes and being in boxes, but I see nothing stepping in to check present trends and as present trends continue everyone's going to be in a box (whose walls are your neighbors, and your neighbors' neighbors, etc.) like it or not; trying to win the pro-property-rights argument by insisting you aren't actually in a box is just going to help lose the game.
But we have lots of examples of private property with a lack of government support. The early history of the United States was almost completely without lots of local civic support of private property rights, yet private property rights worked just fine. In absence of the government, I have the duty and obligation to protect both my private property rights and those of others. I could go on, but we can all agree that private property exists quite well without government support. Take a look at criminal activity and ownership, or ownership of explored lands during the Age of Exploration. (Now you can argue that the natives weren't given much private property rights, but that begins to diffuse the entire discussion. Let's stipulate that once people owned or took possession of things, they mostly held on to them just fine)
In the same way that strong private property protections are a bedrock of western civilization, you can throw in "decent behavior in public"
Not really. "Decent behavior in public" is only relevant in regards to how it relates to private property. We always get back to private property. And yes, we threw chamberpots out the windows for a long time and civilization went along just fine.
People are free to think of me as an inconsiderate ass. I welcome their disdain. That's the entire idea -- others' opinion of my behavior should be non-relevant to my life as much as humanly possible.
I think you're confusing a couple of things here. I am not trying to "win the pro-property-rights argument" I'm not a politician. I'm not a good orator. I'm not especially good at persuasion. I'm simply pointing out that private property rights are the bedrock of modern societies. This exists with or without my consent, support, influence, or whatever else.
You seem to be rambling around a bit, or perhaps I've done a poor job at reading your post.
There is an interesting inverse relationship between population density and available freedom of ownership. I can't own a loud dog if 200 people live within 50 feet of me, yet owning one on a farm is non-controversial.This doesn't mean that the basic amount of freedom required by the individual for a healthy and dynamic society changes, it just means that compromises have to be made. That's my point: saying it's relative and political and all of that is somewhat true in application, but the underlying principle has hard limits somewhere and with a constant drift towards less freedom we are bound to overrun it -- if we haven't already.
My thesis is basically this:
- the urban experience is going to be the normal human experience (if not already, in the future)
- in the urban environment, it's natural to accept general restrictions on behavior, b/c without such restrictions your freedom-of-action becomes more constrained
- the politics are reversed from the underlying assumptions of heartland americans and folk political theorists: instead of restrictions on action being tragic necessities to deal with a handful of extreme edge cases (like dumping 1 ton of arsenic), restrictions on action become the necessary prerequisite of freedom (they provide the personal space that allows those actions)
- the consequence of this is that restriction and regulation will be seen as sensible and normal on the part of the majority
- this actually matters, because whatever private property you think you have you ultimately have on account of societal consensus; to see this in action, consider what happens when two societies intersect...property rights recognized within one are not always recognized within the other (the native americans, the kulaks, the barbarians in rome, etc.)
- or, shorter: private property rights are the bedrock of modern societies, but their exact contours -- what they permit and deny -- are not fixed, and are always ultimately a political issue
- once things are a political issue, whether or not you're thought of ass an ass starts to matter, as political issues are matters of public taste
That's pretty much it, not sure we disagree much.
Responding with crazy talk to arguments I never made isn't really a great way to get through to me how dangerous a sort of thinking that I never thought is.
"Global warming doesn't matter except to the extent that it will affect life -- ours and that of all living things on Earth. And contrary to the latest news, the evidence that global warming will have serious effects on life is thin. Most evidence suggests the contrary."
As you go through each of his paragraphs, do you really feel like he has taken the best conceptual arguments for the seriousness of the consequences of global warming and shown that the evidence for these scenarios is thin? He hasn't. Rather, his thesis is supported with straw men about the particulars of mockingbirds and vikings.
My main point though was that the reasoning that the guy was using, a single example of anecdotal evidence, made me a little uncomfortable. Aside from that I think the other points he made were thoughtful.
In my view, the global warming "debate" ultimately comes down to three core questions:
1. How large is the effect of global warming?
2. What effect will this have on the planet and its inhabitants?
3. What is the correct, proportional, response?
As you get further down the question becomes broader, more complex and more difficult to answer as it's reliant on the answers to the ones above.
One extreme is that the effect will be huge, it will have a devastating effect and threaten the human race, and so the proportional response is to focus and invest an almost infinite amount of resource on global warming as a threat. The other extreme is that the effect is marginal, it will do little to change the planet, therefore few-to-no resources should be dedicated to it.
But there's actually a huge, largely forgotten, middle ground. What if the effect is quite large, but the effect is largely changing worldwide weather cycles, so the best investment is to attempt to limit against further climate change and divert resources towards the humanitarian aspect and industrial projects to mitigate the problems instead, while watching and re-evaluating how these things progress to get a better picture of the true scale of the problem? This seems the pragmatic 'solution' that the real word politicians are trying to take, but you don't hear much about it compared to the more extreme viewpoints, not least because it doesn't make for as good headlines as 'the destruction of the world'.
The author expressed some very clear ideas. Are you trying to suppress them?
Yes, I do. What is it that makes an article espousing a middle-of-the-road position on global warming reasonable, but an article that espouses taking immediate action to enact a carbon cap unreasonable?
Or are we expected to believe that the best course of action is the one that seems reasonable, whatever that means.
I also remember that back in the days I studied Physics, it was widely accepted that computers can't predict the weather more than a couple of weeks in advance due to the chaotic nature of the fluid dynamics equations. If you can't predict reliably more than two weeks in advance, I doubt you can predict 20 years into the future. This is pseudo-science, and while scientists know there's an awful lot of uncertainty in it, these "results" are communicated to the general public as though they were absolute truths, which is nauseatingly unethical, not to mention dishonest.
All in all: I think it's time to take a deep breath, let one's head cool off and analyze the problem scientifically. Fostering fear is dangerous and counter-productive. A massive stampede usually eliminates anything in its path... and that's no solution.
Regarding the weather question, this is a valid concern. There's of course a difference between predicting the weather, meaning the exact temperature and precipitation on certain days, and predicting climate, meaning mean quantities over the scale of years. It's true that for a chaotic system, it's difficult to predict the exact state of the system far in advance unless you have extremely good models and information of the current state. However, predicting the mean of a distribution is usually far easier. To what extent is this a problem with current weather models? I'm not an expert enough to know, but I'd suspect it has been tested.
If only the IPCC didn't have a political agenda...
"Some colleagues who share some of my doubts argue that the only way to get our society to change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe, and that therefore it is all right and even necessary for scientists to exaggerate." Talk about a vague attack. It does not even say they actually exaggerate only some people feel it might be a good idea.
Whenever I hear someone discussing an issue like global worming without using any data I dismiss them. We could probably cut our emissions in half over 20 years with a with a CO2 tax around 1 cent per gallon of gas. Suggesting the only way to deal with the problem is wrecking our economy is just as insane as suggesting global worming is going to end life on earth. However, sounding like your taking the middle road does not make your analysis correct.
There are many problems the author unfortunately omits. Arctic sea shelves collapse? The ocean rises and millions if not billions may be displaced. How's that for an anecdote.
The problem with GW right now is it's a political football. The left wants to paint the right as irresponsible so they make catastrophic predictions. The right wants to paint the left as alarmist so they deny it outright.
As far as I can tell this article, in a very HN way, is just trying to lead people who have bought the hysteria back into a rational mindset by showing the reader another side exists.
The author is right on that it isn't the end of the world, per se, but he dodges the question of what small changes will do to our civilizations, by framing the problem on a geological scale.
As somebody who has personally worked on wheat farms in Texas and in Alberta, (these two places, as you may know, have a wide temperature variation between them) I have to say the science behind this statement seems already empirically refuted.
I would submit to you that any extra wheat production you may see in the central US is due to topographical (it's flat), nutritional (good soil), and cultural (daddy was a wheat farmer) influences, more than any propensity of wheat for that exact temperature, as evidenced by the successful wheat farming americans and canadians from Texas to central Alberta)
Remember, it is a 2.5 degree global temperature shift being discussed, not a 2.5 degree shift in Canada's temperatures. Water vapor is a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO2 is, so the effect of more CO2 is much less pronounced in the lower latitudes. From what I have heard, a 2.5 degree shift in global temperature average caused by increased CO2 would translate into a much larger shift in e.g. Canada's temperatures.
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/4632/major-wheat-growing-re...
Different varieties of wheat are adapted to different conditions and some are more productive than others. Ultimately, wheat is still a plant and it still needs water and sun to grow. The climate models suggest that as temperature goes up, midwest droughts will get worse. Natural systems are not orthogonal. A rise in temperature will cause more rainfall in some areas and less rainfall in others.
While we're at it... as you said, wheat is not too finicky. Corn? More finicky. Wonder what will happen to corn. It needs hot, humid summers with just the right amount of rain and sun. When you look at the map from the link, it is pretty apparent there is a big hole in the middle of the "wheat" belt. Hmm I wonder what we grow there? ;)
I wonder where, if at all, that hole is going to move if we have a drier midwest as the admittedly crude climate models predict. And I wonder how a change in climate will impact the current wheat growing regions in terms of rainfall.
That said, if you're curious, my problem with GW has always been the focus on the cause and not the effect. I don't have a problem with us trying to do everything we can not to change Earth's enviornment. In general I think it's a good idea for humans to make as little an impact on nature as we can in going about our day.
But at the same time it's a proven fact that our planet makes dramatic shifts in it's climate even without our influence (Ice Age for example). So the reality is climate change is coming whether we cause it or not.
Beyond that GW is not proven beyond a doubt so if it happens not to be true we'll have spent all our time trying to stop causing something that we were never causing in the first place.
So basically my opinion on GW has always been that, since we know climate change is coming no matter what, humanity should work on preparing itself for climate change's effects regardless of who or what causes it.
And it might come quite suddenly whether we cause it or not. And it might do the opposite of what we expect.
Looking back through the geologic record, the climate has done all sorts of interesting things -- all without our help.
As a general observation not connected to the parent, the use of cellular automata techniques in modeling is really very much in its infancy. I'm really surprised that posters to a hacker board wouldn't already know that.
You don't believe in the concept of insurance, do you?
Botkin says "We are told that the melting of the arctic ice will be a disaster." Then he seems to be trying to refute this passage by saying that a warmer climate worked out great for the vikings. He doesn't attempt any sort of analysis of what the real-world effects of change in sea-level would be.
Botkin may have something worth saying, but he needs an editor to help him focus in on clearly stating and backing up the points that he wants to make.
All I can get from this is that he wants people to stop the panic because, hey, there might be some benefits from a warmer climate.
There are two sides to this debate, but the two sides are not similar. One is the scientific consensus of the world's climate scientists, represented in the IPCC reports. The other side is a loose collection of crackpots, dissidents, and astroturfing energy companies. One side has been correct about every major point of contention for the last decade; the other side has been wrong about every major point over the same period.
Rationality and alarm are not mutually exclusive; and the suggestion that those thinkers who are alarmed at the probable consequences of global warming are in the grip of "hysteria" is just name-calling. A more documentable ad-hominem is that the climate change deniers are in the employ of the energy companies:
http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/ExxonMobil-GlobalWa...
If GW is true, this probably requires regulation, complex interventionist policies etc. The things that the left wants. So the left believes & the right doesn't. Or it thinks that it is natural or inevitable or not so bad.
I think this is an example of how ideology can become a belief in policies rather then principles.
You should know that even the most computationally challenged "climate modelers" don't claim this will happen quickly. It would happen over a period of many, many, many, many years. The city would simply vacate what it had to, as it had to, and add levies where it made economic sense to do so. It won't be a tidal wave that just appears on the horizon.
>the most computationally challenged "climate modelers" don't claim this will happen quickly
The most crazy/aggressive models from the 1970's said we would lose half the Arctic sea ice by 2050. We hit that point two years ago. If multiple sea shelves collapse, it will indeed come as a tidal wave. We don't know what will happen but we don't have the luxury to be confident that nothing will surprise us.
Come on guys. Why do you say these things? It's literally 5 seconds away in a new browser tab. http://www.dailytech.com/Sea+Ice+Ends+Year+at+Same+Level+as+...
I paid careful attention and put together personal regulations: I must eat breakfast, I must eat lunch, I must eat dinner.
By that evening I was 1 pound lighter than my target weight. I was still a bit worried, but felt comforted to know I had averted a disaster of catastrophic proportions.
"I was still a bit worried, but felt comforted to know I had averted a disaster of catastrophic proportions."
Um, in your own metaphor you would most likely be dead.
The fourth quarter report of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) clarified we have indeed hit the 50% in a third of the time of the most aggressive estimates. The sea ice that has come back is not the same as what was there before: it's the very thin product of a single season.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/06/basic-geology-part-3-s...
"The main reason why sea level rises is because the equilibrium between glacial ice and temperature is out of balance, and has been for the last 20,000 years."
"Note that from 15,000 years ago to 8,000 years ago, sea level rose about 14mm/year - which is more than four times faster than the current rise rate of 3.3mm/year"
I read Collapse, by Jared Diamond - the same kind of level-headedness (or more). Despite the title and the subject of the book there is no panic, only clear analysis. And guess which threat he considers by far the worst? Yup, deforestation. Pretty much everything by Jared Diamond is a good read, btw.
"Global warming" is a catch-phrase for the changing environment (setting aside momentarily the always exciting argument over the cause). It is probably inevitable until Earth is more robust.
In fact, look at the history of the 20th century. Lots of wars between countries that believed in trade and countries that did not believe in trade: this is called the Cold War. After this we started getting wars between countries that were part of the global trading community and countries that weren't, over issues that would largely go away or be resolved peaceably if those countries joined the global trading community.
This is called "globalization", and it's what all those anarchists tend to start riots about every time the larger countries want to have a conference about it.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/11/031104063957.ht...
No one seems to know about this, but it's a far more probable -- even extremely likely threat -- given what we know right now.
Also: http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/news/2008/03/peter_...
Absolutely
Even if the necessary relocation of many people happened in an orderly fashion the cost would be huge. Imagine cost of abandoning most of a significant city because the climate could no longer support the population.
Have you even read the article??
Why not just focus on dirty water and smelly air? That is reason enough, in my opinion, to be responsible and forward thinking about the environment.
harbin, china, for example, used to experience 4~5 foot snow storms every winter. you'd open the door and there'd be a wall of snow. these days you're lucky to see a foot. some locals will say it's global warming--which it may be--but northern china has also undergone extensive deforestation in the last 60 years. you'd expect changes in precipitation if you cut down 75% of the tree cover.