Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately, by deciding to be "neutral" on the issue, you're exactly where the climate change deniers want you to be. The deniers don't have to be proven correct to prevent action on climate change, they just have to put out enough FUD to create doubt.
There is no need to ascribe malice to those that disagree with you about climate change issues. Reasonable people can disagree, especially on an issue that is complex and depends on predictions about future conditions.
Facts about global warming that you should keep for yourself
31–39 of 39 posts
Re: Facts about global warming that you should keep for yourself
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Despite all the green efforts, CO2 output from using fossil fuel still grows. Western economies barely, if at all, made a dent in their fossil fuel consumptions. Upcoming economies like China use more and more fossil fuels. I think its fair to say that we are nowhere near having a solution to reduce global CO2 output.
Then blame it on the economy gas use fell(or at least growth fell) significantly with the recession.
Re: Facts about global warming that you should keep for yourself
#33I always find it troubling when someone with a computer science background assumes that their knowledge naturally transfers to something like climate science. Climate science is about probability and huge multi-factor models - and most importantly - models that change as new knowledge and data appear. It's just my opinion, but that seems to me to be the opposite of what most computer scientists are taught. Obviously…
On the subject, be a little careful equating probabilistic models and statistical models. At least in my experience, "statistical models" generally describes statistical fits to past data. Think of a polynomial whose parameters are chosen by least-squares fit to previous observations. These fits can be used to interpolate or extrapolate (to the future, or to different combinations of inputs). However, they don't encode any domain knowledge, and they can be extremely brittle when pushed outside the regimes from which they were derived.
Most climate models, on the other hand, are deterministic, physics-based models. Some of the sub-models may have statistical fits in them, but the modeling is largely driven by some conceptual framework of how the physics drive the dynamic system (e.g., expressing conservation of mass and energy, and how spatial differences drive transport).
Those deterministic climate models can be driven probabilistically-- meaning the uncertain inputs and parameters can be sampled from distributions of likely values. Aggregating all the results gives a probabilistic prediction. A lot of climate reports take this one step further, and aggregate results across multiple models. Most computer scientists will immediately "get" this part, even if they don't understand all the physics represented in the individual packages.
Re: Facts about global warming that you should keep for yourself
#34Global warming is one of those topics I've always withheld judgement on because it's such a huge topic that, even ignoring politics, it seems very hard to get a solid understanding of the science.
That's true - but when there's risk of something, you need to buy insurance. Alt. energy, geo-enginnering, and small CO2 taxes are all ways of hedging that we should deploy in some combination. We can't say "don't know, therefore do nothing".
Do we also need to actively "buy insurance" against meteor impacts?
Re: Facts about global warming that you should keep for yourself
#35I always find it troubling when someone with a computer science background assumes that their knowledge naturally transfers to something like climate science. Climate science is about probability and huge multi-factor models - and most importantly - models that change as new knowledge and data appear. It's just my opinion, but that seems to me to be the opposite of what most computer scientists are taught. Obviously…
I agree that knowledge of computer science doesn't transfer directly to climate science. However, there's a lot about computer science that may help understand how climate models yield probabilistic outcomes (Monte Carlo, anyone?). On the subject, be a little careful equating probabilistic models and statistical models. At least in my experience, "statistical models" generally describes statistical fits to past data.…
I have a degree in computer science, and most of my training consisted of solving problems where there was a single outcome - e.g. "does the compiler work?" When I moved into financial modeling, I really had to shift from the idea of one answer to the idea that the real world is exceptionally complex and difficult to model. I had to get comfortable with the idea that I might have an idea of the outcome based on a model, but, as you point out, this is probabilistic outcome.
I found this article to have all the marking of someone with a similar background trying out a different profession without understanding probabilistic modeling, and, as you rightly point out, not understanding the deterministic portion of the models - the domain knowledge.
Moreover, I think he expresses doubt in any model that doesn't turn out the right answer 100% of the time - to me, not understanding the complexity of the systems that are being modeled and definitely not understanding that it is, as the name "climate science" implies, science - you experiment, you gain new knowledge from new data, etc.
Re: Facts about global warming that you should keep for yourself
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the bigger thing to pull from that quote centers on the word "prediction". The IPCC FAR didn't really make any predictions. Instead, it made a series of projections (twelve of them, to be precise) based on running various sets of hypothetical parameters through a climate model. Some of those projections were based on very pessimistic scenarios (very high CO2 sensitivity, very high future CO2 emissions). They…
Well, he used the same numbers that the IPCC FAR report's "Policymaker's Summary" section chose to use, which repeatedly uses the term "is predicted" (admittedly, qualified with "based on current model results" or specific scenarios.) The explicit purpose of that section was to suggest possible policy options based on a set of long-term events stated to be found _with certainty_ (their words) by the working group tha…
Again, cherry-picking things out of context does not a compelling argument make. Unless the people you're trying to compel can be trusted to not check your sources too carefully.
And of course the corollary to that is, if the topic is controversial you should always thoroughly fact-check your sources.
(Speaking of, I couldn't find the phrase "with certainty" in either of the three FAR policymakers summaries. . . perhaps you meant "with confidence"? Regardless, it's skirting the edge of dishonesty to use the phrase "their words" to describe something that isn't their words.)
Re: Facts about global warming that you should keep for yourself
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's true - but when there's risk of something, you need to buy insurance. Alt. energy, geo-enginnering, and small CO2 taxes are all ways of hedging that we should deploy in some combination. We can't say "don't know, therefore do nothing".
There's also a risk we'll have another ice age. Global warming might be considered insurance against that eventuality. Whatever the perfectly optimum average planetary temperature for human life is, it is exceedingly unlikely that it was achieved in 1990. (And actually seems pretty likely that it's a fair bit warmer than now.) Do we also need to actively "buy insurance" against meteor impacts?
The risk for very bad global warming problems (mass despeciation or crop loss, etc. in 100 years) even at 10% is a really bad consequence that requires some form of insurance.
The risk for rock impact in 100 years is about 0.0002%, and we've got people tracking a ton of near earth objects and even some NASA work on how to deflect them. That's probably about $20M in insurance - probably too low, but yes we should care about these things.
Re: Facts about global warming that you should keep for yourself
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's also a risk we'll have another ice age. Global warming might be considered insurance against that eventuality. Whatever the perfectly optimum average planetary temperature for human life is, it is exceedingly unlikely that it was achieved in 1990. (And actually seems pretty likely that it's a fair bit warmer than now.) Do we also need to actively "buy insurance" against meteor impacts?
We, as a society, are really bad a planning for these things collective/non-pressing problems, and the data being hard to come by just adds to this. Your thinking is pragmatic only in a short term sense. Do you really need fire insurance? Only 1:1000 homes ever burn - I guess not then... The risk for very bad global warming problems (mass despeciation or crop loss, etc. in 100 years) even at 10% is a really bad conse…
There are an infinite number of potential threats that aren't hurting us now but that we can imagine might hurt our grandkids. Only some of them will actually turn out to be a serious problem. Spending trillions or even billions of dollars of resources combatting any one such threat reduces their potential ability to address all the others.
There's nothing wrong with caring about things like global warming, but there's quite a lot wrong with trying to "fix" it now. To put it in programming terms: "Premature optimization is the root of all evil."
Re: Facts about global warming that you should keep for yourself
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
We, as a society, are really bad a planning for these things collective/non-pressing problems, and the data being hard to come by just adds to this. Your thinking is pragmatic only in a short term sense. Do you really need fire insurance? Only 1:1000 homes ever burn - I guess not then... The risk for very bad global warming problems (mass despeciation or crop loss, etc. in 100 years) even at 10% is a really bad conse…
It's possible to spend too much on "insurance" and we almost certainly do that when it comes to climate. The general scientific consensus is that the next half-century of warming generally makes humanity better off . So this risk you presumably think we need to be actively trying to mitigate - as opposed to just doing the sort of stuff we do for asteroids - is predicated on the idea that current trends continue for a…
I agree that it's overhyped, but the question here in on the margin. If we could take the insurance payment and put it towards alt./nuclear energy research we'd be killing a few birds.
I don't see how our economy would be crippled by the "insurance" even at $1T in debt funding (remember how big TARP and the Treasury's loans were). Currently, we're putting far far more than this into overspend on the military ($1.5T/year) - which is defending resource and shipping interests far more than anything else. Couldn't we just solve those problems with similar funding?