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Denying Problems When We Don’t Like the Solutions

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Re: Denying Problems When We Don’t Like the Solutions

#61

Post by rorykoehler »

guscost wrote: post #37

Time to spend some karma. Literature like this makes me happy, because it is further evidence that the alarmists have very little material left. Mercifully we may have hit the high-water mark of this generation of misanthropic environmentalist nonsense and can now enjoy several decades of joking about it. The "Recursive Fury" paper[0] was probably the actual high-water mark, and this looks like pretty much the same t…

I just want to live in a clean, healthy, diverse and vibrant environment regardless of any climate science. It's unfortunate that your standards are so low when it comes to pollution, the mass extinction human activity creates and the general destruction of the planets ancient ecosystems but seeing as you don't really care it would be wise to get out of the way of the people who do.

Re: Denying Problems When We Don’t Like the Solutions

#62

Post by jfoutz »

guscost wrote: post #51
jfoutz wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have the models really changed that much in 35 years though? This one has all the highlights, radiation balance, 1D and 3D modeling, climate sensitivity, the main feedbacks (water vapor, lapse rate, clouds, ice- and vegetation albedo); solar and volcanic forcing; and ocean heat uptake. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/213/4511/957 They predict about half a degree C, and that seems to be holding up. More interesting…

This may come down to our individual philosophies, but I'm far more interested in what would convince you that a model is wrong . It's a Popperian sentiment, which may be considered quaint these days, but I rarely hear any kind of answer. Anyway, I don't think we are talking about even close to the same meaning of "complex", but one possible situation that would help convince me is if we had a "control" planet, and a…

No, i'm with you. Falsification is a huge deal.

As far as "complex" goes, i'm thinking of the old strange attractor. I don't know if it'll rain on sept 19 2016, but i think it's safe to say there will be 3 inches of rain next september. If we refine our understanding and language, there's a nice probability density function for quantity of rain over the month of sept 2016. Not much probability around 0, not much beyond 6, but a big lump right there at 3.

I outright reject the "no model is possible" argument. If nothing else, it's that way because god wills it. Some folks argue weather is related to frequency of gay sex. I'm confident the above paper outperforms that model.

The nice thing about the above model is it is testable. we know historical variation around the prediction. We can make a prediction based on increasing CO2, then increase it, and see how our prediction plays out. (edit and we did, and the model was pretty good, but earth actually got warmer faster than the paper predicted http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/04/evalua...)

So, anyway, weather works "somehow" and we can make forecasts. Although it's never been tested, i'm pretty sure Pat Robertson is wrong and it's not gay sex driven.

So, i still dont' get why it's not settled. The best models we have are refinements of the above paper. Is there some other model that gives better answerers?

Re: Denying Problems When We Don’t Like the Solutions

#63

Post by asgard1024 »

guscost wrote: post #37

Time to spend some karma. Literature like this makes me happy, because it is further evidence that the alarmists have very little material left. Mercifully we may have hit the high-water mark of this generation of misanthropic environmentalist nonsense and can now enjoy several decades of joking about it. The "Recursive Fury" paper[0] was probably the actual high-water mark, and this looks like pretty much the same t…

> I remain astonished that supposedly educated people could ever believe otherwise

Let me take a stab at this:

> thoroughly insufficient as proof of any long-term trend we can expect to continue in a non-linear system as complex as the global climate

Sometimes, non-linearity doesn't really matter. Human body is complex system, we don't fully understand it, but you wouldn't stand in front of a car that runs 100kph. Because then we just know what is going to happen, from perfectly linear Newton's law.

In the 1950s, Plass did some equilibrium calculations of climate sensitivity to CO2. I think he came with a value around 2 degrees. Modern consensus is 3. This all happened despite decades of research, involving all sorts of additional non-linearities. What does that tell you? He was right in the ballpark, and he actually had a decent model!

Just as we cannot say what injuries you end up with in the first example, we cannot easily say what will happen to the Earth. But we are very certain it will heat up (and roughly how much). Unless of course humans on the Earth react non-linearly and decide not to emit more CO2, just like person in front of a car can somewhat non-linearly jump to the side.

Re: Denying Problems When We Don’t Like the Solutions

#64

Post by PavlovsCat »

guscost wrote: post #37

Time to spend some karma. Literature like this makes me happy, because it is further evidence that the alarmists have very little material left. Mercifully we may have hit the high-water mark of this generation of misanthropic environmentalist nonsense and can now enjoy several decades of joking about it. The "Recursive Fury" paper[0] was probably the actual high-water mark, and this looks like pretty much the same t…

> misanthropic environmentalist nonsense

You're confusing hating cancer cells with hating all cells. Not everybody takes and exploits and degrades everything as a matter of course. A bunch of people do, and a whole lot don't stand up to them. If we don't destroy our environment it's not because we cared or payed attention, but just because we're lucky, once again. This doesn't do for me. That's all. What other people of "my generation" think is not my concern either.

Re: Denying Problems When We Don’t Like the Solutions

#65

Post by guscost »

drewrv wrote: post #60
guscost wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may come down to our individual philosophies, but I'm far more interested in what would convince you that a model is wrong . It's a Popperian sentiment, which may be considered quaint these days, but I rarely hear any kind of answer. Anyway, I don't think we are talking about even close to the same meaning of "complex", but one possible situation that would help convince me is if we had a "control" planet, and a…

>one possible situation that would help convince me is if we had a "control" planet So on this one issue it's impossible for you to be convinced.

Not at all, there could be plenty of other evidence, I just can't imagine what it would be. Other than some kind of control planet, or maybe a complete overturning of nonlinear dynamics and/or chaos theory maybe.

Of course, if the ocean was engulfing whole communities faster than people could run uphill, or people were choking on CO2, I'd probably be a whole lot less rational about it and say "let's throw things at the wall to see what sticks."

But so far, and after reading what I figure are among the strongest arguments out there, it still looks like your typical doomsday story dressed up as science.

Re: Denying Problems When We Don’t Like the Solutions

#66

Post by nostrademons »

_yosefk wrote: post #5

It's nice that they used examples of problems denied by supporters of more than a single political party. I think we all do that. (Go programmers are less likely to acknowledge problems solved by generics as real, C++ programmers are less likely to acknowledge problems solved by garbage collection and boundary checking as real, Python programmers are less likely to acknowledge problems solved by static typing as real…

The causation may work the other way. Go programmers may be Go programmers because problems caused by generics aren't common for them. Python programmers might be using Python because they're working in a domain where static typing causes more problems than it solves.

Similarly, many people may choose their political party because the issues the party ignores just aren't that important to them.

That's pretty much what making a values trade-off is: accepting some problems as normal and unfixable because the fix, in your eyes, isn't worth the trouble it causes.

Re: Denying Problems When We Don’t Like the Solutions

#67

Post by tikhonj »

In the past I've felt that arguing "X is not a problem" is sometimes a proxy for "we should not solve X" because it's taken as axiomatic that if X is a problem it should be solved. (And the solution, of course, usually involves compulsory rules enforced by the government or some administrative body.)

I wonder if it goes in the other direction too: people exaggerate problems and evidence if they like the proposed solution. Not even for personal gain, but for emotional reasons. (So not somebody exaggerating the threat of terrorism to consciously expand their power or sell detectors but unconsciously because of patriotism or a desire to get the terrorists.)

Re: Denying Problems When We Don’t Like the Solutions

#68

Post by asgard1024 »

Asbostos wrote: post #41
asgard1024 wrote: post #10

I was almost sure that is going to be about climate change. It reminds me of: http://www.thenation.com/article/capitalism-vs-climate/ Even though the article proposes something (green energy as opportunity for capitalism), I think there is a huge problem with climate change for free market proponents, and deeply inside they know it. I don't see how the issue, which is "the fossil fuels have to stay in the ground", ca…

I notice in a lot of writing about climate change that people tend to try to convince the reader that it exists, both you and the article's authors mentioned the lot of scientific evidence. It makes it sound like permanent argument mode. It also helps us forget that there's no reliable scientific evidence and certainly no consensus about what, if any, harm climate change will do to us and if it does, whether we'll ha…

> whether we'll have time to adapt

I wish you were right. Unfortunately, the very same vocal people (for example former Czech president Vaclav Klaus) who proclaimed that "adaptation is not a problem" now cry a river when there is a couple thousands refugees at the border from regions that are in war, probably due to drought, probably due to global warming.

> Maybe we don't actually have to leave all the oil in the ground afterall and a few extra degrees turns out to be not much of a problem.

We can always burn it. I don't see how we lose anything by leaving it there.

Re: Denying Problems When We Don’t Like the Solutions

#69

Post by nitrogen »

guscost wrote: post #65
drewrv wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>one possible situation that would help convince me is if we had a "control" planet So on this one issue it's impossible for you to be convinced.

Not at all, there could be plenty of other evidence, I just can't imagine what it would be. Other than some kind of control planet, or maybe a complete overturning of nonlinear dynamics and/or chaos theory maybe. Of course, if the ocean was engulfing whole communities faster than people could run uphill, or people were choking on CO2, I'd probably be a whole lot less rational about it and say "let's throw things at t…

Okay, ignore warming if you like. We still need to stop producing so much CO2 because it's acidifying the oceans and destroying ecosystems we depend on for food.

Re: Denying Problems When We Don’t Like the Solutions

#70

Post by paulsutter »

guscost wrote: post #37

Time to spend some karma. Literature like this makes me happy, because it is further evidence that the alarmists have very little material left. Mercifully we may have hit the high-water mark of this generation of misanthropic environmentalist nonsense and can now enjoy several decades of joking about it. The "Recursive Fury" paper[0] was probably the actual high-water mark, and this looks like pretty much the same t…

So Guscost, when you net it all out, what do you think is the probability that continuing use of carbon fuels will cause a significant climate problem? 10%? 30%? 0.01%? 0?

I don't understand these arguments that global warming is "true" (100% likely) or "false" (0% likely). Because those probabilities are nonsensical.

Reasonable people might assign anywhere from 10% to 90% to that. Even if a person thinks it's 30% likely, that person might still find it prudent to take steps to avoid it. Or maybe not. But at least they have some thought process behind their viewpoint.

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