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The Global Warming Heretic - NYTimes On Freeman Dyson

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Re: The Global Warming Heretic - NYTimes On Freeman Dyson

#71

Post by jobeirne »

robotrout wrote: post #36
Tichy wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Experts can go wrong, too - and who defines who is an expert and who isn't? Some amateurs might have read more about the issue than the self-proclaimed experts. And if non-experts are not qualified to speak, how do you justify letting them vote? Not saying democracy is perfect, but apparently there was a thought that even if people are not experts, they might be able to inform themselves sufficiently to be able to de…

I assume it's the democracy bit that is your core premise. I'm not certain which country you live in. If you're in the U.S., you're not living in a democracy, you're living in a republic. There is a strong agenda by many people to turn it into a democracy, merely by saying it is one, and that is working, but by law, it's a republic. Democracies tend to disintegrate rapidly as the populace votes themselves beer and ci…

Very frighteningly, accurately, and succinctly put.

Re: The Global Warming Heretic - NYTimes On Freeman Dyson

#72

Post by glymor »

ironsam wrote: post #60
cgranade wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not science? Better tell the computer scientists and the computational physicists... Science is, at its most basic, our attempt to understand the world. As such, science employs many different tools and approaches, including numerical modeling. In particular. numerical analysis is a very well understood field of mathematics that allows us to rigorously analyze complicated problems by using one of the most innovative…

One of the most ubiquitous and profitable types of models would be short-term weather forecasting. These are regularly wrong by several degrees, misjudging precipitation, etc, when trying to predict just 12 hours in advance. There's absolutely no point in looking at forecasts greater than three days, they're barely a guess, throw all the "accurate" equations and you want at it. [Disclaimer: I'm from the midwest - cap…

Weather and climate forecasting confront different problems.

I can't predict the behaviour of a single gas module but I can predict the behaviour of the gas as a whole as the randomness averages out.

Climate forecasting is a lot more complex a system but the daily variability, at least, averages out in the same way.

(Another analogy some people use is that we can predict that winter is colder than summer even if some days in the season aren't etc. this isn't really an argument for modeling but I suppose it's easy to grasp.)

Re: The Global Warming Heretic - NYTimes On Freeman Dyson

#73

Post by nkurz »

Alex3917 wrote: post #11
Rod wrote: post #3

Quoting the great Bertrand Russell: "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts." Interesting how so many people who know NOTHING about Science are SO sure that global warming is caused by man. Such dogma reminds me of the times of the 16th century Inquisition: no amount of evidence will ever convince the nutcase warmists that th…

"Interesting how so many people who know NOTHING about Science are SO sure that global warming is caused by man. Such dogma reminds me of the times of the 16th century Inquisition: no amount of evidence will ever convince the nutcase warmists that there MIGHT be a possibility that global warming is not caused by humans." I'm calling your BS. There are very few if any people who believe that it is impossible that glob…

"There are very few if any people who believe that it is impossible that global warming is not caused by man."

Are you saying that nobody claims that the observed global warming could not be caused by natural causes, and thus the warming must have been caused by man? For if you are claiming this, I think you are wrong.

There are definitely a few very influential people claiming that climate change can only have been caused by man: "Only anthropogenic forcing of climate, however, can explain the recent anomalous warming in the late 20th century." http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/jones2004/jones2004.html

This is from the abstract of a paper co-authored by Michael Mann, the lead author of the IPCC report on climate change.

Or am I misreading your negations as well?

Re: The Global Warming Heretic - NYTimes On Freeman Dyson

#74

Post by thaumaturgy »

FictiveEvan wrote: post #62
ruby_roo wrote: post #12

I personally feel that it is better to err on the side of caution in regards to global warming. I say "feel" because I'm just not smart enough to navigate fact from fiction on this issue anymore. There's going to be extremes on both sides, but I don't see what we have to gain by not taking better care of our planet. Even if global warming is only partially manmade, shouldn't we do what we can to minimize the effect?…

I read of an interesting thought experiment once - a way to take the moral judgment out of the anthropogenic global warming debate. Imagine that there were never fossil fuels or elevated CO2 levels. Now imagine that scientists have (somehow) determined that the sun has suddenly increased its energy output in such a way that would exactly mimic on this imaginary planet, the proposed effect of elevated CO2 on our plane…

That doesn't make sense to me. It completely sidesteps both the questions of responsibility, as well as questions about our desired environment.

I am -- or was, before my "startup" days -- an avid hiker, backpacker, etc.; to me, your thought experiment translates this way: Imagine that I was out hiking, and that I see a bunch of trash on the trail. Now imagine that the trash doesn't belong to me. Should I pick it up?

It doesn't make sense to me that, as a species with the ability to dramatically affect our environment, we should choose to not take care of it. It doesn't make sense to me that we would spoil our own living conditions.

To get back to your thought experiment: if the causes behind global warming were out of our control, but if the global warming had the potential to create an environment which we didn't want to live in, and if we had the power to counteract the changes, then I think it makes sense to do so.

As a practical matter, "massively restructuring the world economy" is also known as progress. We're certainly not going to burn coal in space.

Re: The Global Warming Heretic - NYTimes On Freeman Dyson

#75

Post by thaumaturgy »

robotrout wrote: post #54
cgranade wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given how much we spend on entertainment and other luxuries, is it really fair to say call spending money on what is likely essential to the preservation of our species "literally stealing food and medicine from people's mouths?" Hell, given what we spend on killing each other over oil and religion, how is it that spending money on understanding and dealing with climate change is stealing? In the United States alone,…

You're unhappy with the amount we spend on entertainment and the Iraq war, and would like us to divert all the money towards global warming mitigation. Perhaps we could cork some volcanoes or do some cloud seeding to induce some rainstorms to get rid of water vapor. Let's take your $600 billion that you say would make a huge difference. As we're writing the check to the cloud-seeding company, or the volcano corking c…

Seeing a comment like this on a forum like this makes me sad.

First, economics isn't a zero-sum game. You could waste that check away on destroying a country and impoverishing millions due to the threat of imaginary weapons, or you could build something.

For a long time I thought wind farms were surely wasteful forms of energy. I thought about all of the energy required to manufacture them, install them, and maintain them, and compared that -- in my mind -- against all of the idle wind generators that I saw at farms like the Altamont and whatever huge one there is down in southern California.

Then I got some real numbers, and it turns out that I was pretty dramatically wrong: wind energy actually provides an even better energy-return-on-investment than nuclear energy.

So, potentially, that $600 billion could be spent building cheaper forms of energy generation using existing technology, and developing new technology, and now you've just made a steep initial investment that will pay returns for the rest of our society's existence.

That, to me, sounds like one heck of a good deal. And it's good for the environment too.

[1]: http://www.eoearth.org/article/Energy_return_on_investment_(...

Re: The Global Warming Heretic - NYTimes On Freeman Dyson

#76

Post by thaumaturgy »

jacoblyles wrote: post #50
ruby_roo wrote: post #12

I personally feel that it is better to err on the side of caution in regards to global warming. I say "feel" because I'm just not smart enough to navigate fact from fiction on this issue anymore. There's going to be extremes on both sides, but I don't see what we have to gain by not taking better care of our planet. Even if global warming is only partially manmade, shouldn't we do what we can to minimize the effect?…

Rational decision making always involves assessing the (probable) costs and benefits of potential actions. If the potential benefit is small and uncertain, and the cost is large and certain, it probably makes sense to wait and collect more information. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/bjorn_lomborg_sets_global... http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/CCC%20Home%20Page.aspx

A friend and I once carried several large pieces of trash out of a wilderness area. We were sore, and tired, and our packs were heavy, and we were eager to go home and shower and eat some junk food.

I'm glad we didn't make a rational decision.

Re: The Global Warming Heretic - NYTimes On Freeman Dyson

#77

Post by thaumaturgy »

robotrout wrote: post #69
samas wrote: post #56

Unless I am mistaken, acidification of the oceans has been demonstrated. So has the loss of large volumes of fresh water stored in glaciers, as well as the loss of coastal land as sea level rises. Natural systems are fragile, and we continue to poke and push them, with damages (for example, loss of biodiversity) that are not clearly obvious and that are in many cases simply irreparable. I won't belabor this point, al…

With all due respect, I could have cut and pasted your post from any global warming website. I note this is your first comment on this group. Did you come just for this topic? In this utopia you describe, you neglect to explain what miraculous devices will produce this infinite energy supply. I think that's an important point that you left out. If you're wrong on that point, then we've hurt people for nothing, right?…

With all due respect, I could have cut and pasted your post from any global warming denial website.

The bulk of what I read on water vapor stated that although the process was so far poorly understood, most scientists (for the moment) believe that increased water vapor is an amplifying side-effect, not a primary cause, of climate change. Basically, that increased temperatures lead to an increase in water vapor due to the evaporation of ice, small lakes, and rivers, and that in turn further drives climate change.

I see that most of your comments in this thread fly in the face of what most climate scientists believe to be happening.

Re: The Global Warming Heretic - NYTimes On Freeman Dyson

#78

Post by tome »

galactus wrote: post #47

Lets be honest, the REAL problem here with the idea of global warming caused by humans is that it can not simply be solved by the market. This possibility seems to make hardcore libertarians so uncomfortable that they can only hope no such problem exist.

This is an incredibly astute point, and shows great awareness of human factors. I'm very pleased to see it on hacker news.

Re: The Global Warming Heretic - NYTimes On Freeman Dyson

#79

Post by eds »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #74
FictiveEvan wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read of an interesting thought experiment once - a way to take the moral judgment out of the anthropogenic global warming debate. Imagine that there were never fossil fuels or elevated CO2 levels. Now imagine that scientists have (somehow) determined that the sun has suddenly increased its energy output in such a way that would exactly mimic on this imaginary planet, the proposed effect of elevated CO2 on our plane…

That doesn't make sense to me. It completely sidesteps both the questions of responsibility, as well as questions about our desired environment. I am -- or was, before my "startup" days -- an avid hiker, backpacker, etc.; to me, your thought experiment translates this way: Imagine that I was out hiking, and that I see a bunch of trash on the trail. Now imagine that the trash doesn't belong to me. Should I pick it up?…

"As a practical matter, 'massively restructuring the world economy' is also known as progress."

Except that the next three words were "by central decree."

Re: The Global Warming Heretic - NYTimes On Freeman Dyson

#80

Post by dejb »

jacoblyles wrote: post #55

The use of the word "heretic" is telling. This issue has long since taken on the overtone of a religious debate rather than a scientific one. I don't think someone should be considered a "heretic" when he has on his side an MIT climate physicist, a former director of climate science at NASA, a Nobel physicist, IPCC participants, and hundreds of other relevant intellectuals. Whoever said "the debate on Global Warming…

Yes it is telling of the way the journalist hoped to frame the story. A good way to spice up an otherwise ordinary story. Better than 'Aged Physicist disagrees with dominant theory'. I'd call it a piece of disingenuous hack work but it worked so well I have to admire it.
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