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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

#51

Post by guscost »

jfoutz wrote: post #47
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…

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 an "experimental" planet, with nearly identical climates and biodiversity and so on, and then we raised the CO2 level of the experimental planet, keeping in mind that all kinds of other inputs to the non-linear system should remain the same, like land use, fishing, other industrial activities, etc. If the experimental planet diverged significantly from the control planet, it wouldn't be solid 100% irrefutable proof but it would be far better evidence than anything we have today.

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

#52

Post by AC__ »

guscost wrote: post #43
AC__ wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should share your beliefs with the geoengineers running seeding programs creating algal blooms in the Pacific before they kill the whole fucking thing...

Well, that is what bothers me the most about this whole train wreck. If and when there are environmental issues more deserving of our attention than the CO2 thing, many anti-intellectuals are going end up dismissing them as politically motivated propaganda without even bothering to learn about them. Congratulations.

Be sure not to confuse condescension with intellectualism.

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

#53

Post by erikpukinskis »

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…

> The fact remains that current proxy studies are thoroughly insufficient as proof of any long-term trend

The notion of "proving" a future trend doesn't make sense. That's not how science works. You test a model against past data, and then people use the model to help them make decisions until we find a better model. Things are only ever proved after the fact.

> Literature like this makes me happy, because it is further evidence that the alarmists have very little material left.

That doesn't really follow. The promotion of a psychological study could be the result of alarmists running out of material as you describe, or it could just be one story in a queue of many others.

> Mercifully we may have hit the high-water mark of this generation of misanthropic environmentalist nonsense

Making generic insults at unnamed people and ideas doesn't really add anything to the conversation. Could you describe some actual nonsense that has someone's name attached to it so we could talk about it?

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

#54

Post by asgard1024 »

nabla9 wrote: post #16
asgard1024 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I disagree, the two examples (climate change and gun control) aren't that different. Both are issues of personal freedom. I actually wish they would show some blind spots of collectivist liberal anarchists (people like Chomsky), who I feel very close political sympathies to. I am (obviou…

>I actually wish they would show some blind spots of collectivist liberal anarchists The obvious blind spot is the problem caused by politicization of everyday life. Faceless authority where your value is determined by market forces and laws that come far above you may feel problematic because it's faceless and impersonal. Impersonality is also benefit. When you do your job and go home, you don't have to suck up for…

This is an interesting point. However, I am not convinced that life under "market forces" is less political than elsewhere. I would like to see some evidence.

I also think the point (and large success) of democracy is that it distributes power equally, so we simply stop wasting time on fighting for it and get the stuff done. Especially in direct democracy. So I think what you are saying only applies to "naive" (maybe even strawman) anarchism, where there are no rules, not the democratic one (that I think Chomsky admires).

> you don't have to suck up for the boss in free time and he don't care what your political views are

I am actually not sure this is true in small enterprises. I haven't worked for one, but I know one can get easily fired for voicing sympathies with unions, for instance.

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

#55

Post by ArkyBeagle »

asgard1024 wrote: post #8
_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…

> 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. I disagree, the two examples (climate change and gun control) aren't that different. Both are issues of personal freedom. I actually wish they would show some blind spots of collectivist liberal anarchists (people like Chomsky), who I feel very close political sympathies to. I am (obviou…

What Chomsky does is impeccable scholarship, but then he inevitably seems (to me!) to overreach on the conclusions. I don't know if it's blind spots or not.

As an example, I do not hold that any colonialist explanation for US involvement in Vietnam is necessary. There's an awful lot of ... circumstantial evidence to suggest that, but I don't know for a fact that anyone in the US explicitly wanted to do it for that reason - it's much more likely that simple anticommunism suffices.

After all, weren't the Chinese, in very complex ways, just wanting to "colonize" Vietnam through Ho Chi Minh?

But behind that is the message that power corrupts, and on that point, Chomsky is spot on. But I happen to think it's more about the powerful being constrained by circumstance and resources than by them simply being arbitrary. We have ample evidence of this from LBJ's White House tapes.

But that is perhaps my bias and blind spot, and maybe he's right.

Climate change is different in that cheap energy props up people who struggle economically in the US. So that's why I don't like carbon taxes as well as a solution.

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

#56

Post by guscost »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #53
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…

> The fact remains that current proxy studies are thoroughly insufficient as proof of any long-term trend The notion of "proving" a future trend doesn't make sense. That's not how science works. You test a model against past data, and then people use the model to help them make decisions until we find a better model. Things are only ever proved after the fact. > Literature like this makes me happy, because it is furt…

Science isn't about demanding legislation either.

And the entire OP is a thinly-veiled insult aimed at the authors' political opponents. That's the point I'm trying to make, although perhaps it could be made more politely.

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

#57

Post by asgard1024 »

speccy_geek wrote: post #32
asgard1024 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I disagree, the two examples (climate change and gun control) aren't that different. Both are issues of personal freedom. I actually wish they would show some blind spots of collectivist liberal anarchists (people like Chomsky), who I feel very close political sympathies to. I am (obviou…

A common liberal blind spot is the genetic basis of intelligence and other aptitudes, and the extent to which that determines life outcomes.

I consider myself liberal yet I don't agree with it, though you're right, there are many elitist liberals around. I think they are easily spotted by their opposition to direct democracy.

And I actually think we should always assume "nurture". My reasoning is when you assume "nature", that's a dead end. This is a similar argument to whether the world is knowable - assuming it is will get you further.

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

#58

Post by danharaj »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #38
danharaj wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why we're calling the USSR socialist; is it because they said they were socialist? There are plenty of dictatorial regimes that call themselves democratic republics, too. The USSR was structured like one massive corporation: Everything was owned by the government and the government bureaucracy functioned much like a corporate bureaucracy. Libertarian socialists sometimes call states like the USSR state c…

The USSR was not structured like one massive corporation. Corporation tends to seek profit; while USSR sought survival. Was bad at it, too: built millions of tanks and other military hardware that rusted without any battle, lost the cold war and tanked.

You're talking about purpose, not structure. I'll agree, the USSR's purpose was not profit, because profit does not make sense if you're trying to own everything. The USSR's goals were growth and, as a logical consequence of growth, not shrinking, i.e. survival. It failed, yes. The larger a hierarchy and its concentration of resources, leadership, and power at the pinnacle, the worse it performs. This occurs with corporations in a capitalist system as well, but since it is not a defining feature of such corporations that they must own everything, their existence is more flexible. They can merge, split, be acquired, get sold off, get refinanced, etc. In this way, the capitalists (viz. people who make their living off of property ownership) can preserve their ownership even if their power structures fail.

So the key difference between the USSR and the Liberal states in opposition to it is the notion of property. Under the USSR, all property is state property and under the Liberal states, property is the bourgeois notion of property.

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

#59

Post by [deleted] »

guscost wrote: post #56
erikpukinskis wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fact remains that current proxy studies are thoroughly insufficient as proof of any long-term trend The notion of "proving" a future trend doesn't make sense. That's not how science works. You test a model against past data, and then people use the model to help them make decisions until we find a better model. Things are only ever proved after the fact. > Literature like this makes me happy, because it is furt…

Science isn't about demanding legislation either. And the entire OP is a thinly-veiled insult aimed at the authors' political opponents. That's the point I'm trying to make, although perhaps it could be made more politely.

[deleted]

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

#60

Post by drewrv »

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…

>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.

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