Global Warming Delusions

Here's an opinion on the sea level rise

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"

Yeah thanks for downvoting an actual suggestion among all the hot air.

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.

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).

Oh, agreed -- I'd like to see the notion of "private property" well protected moving forward. I just think the way its strongest advocates operate is going to do much more harm than good (in, eg, the same way the Republicans slagging every last Democratic policy proposal with "that's socialism" is doing plenty to make socialism look harmless and appealing in the modern era).

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.

I'm going to also pick on this:

- 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.