Climate change

[Tyler]

What irks me so much about global warming deniers who use the permanent portfolio is that they see the need for risk mitigation in their investment decisions based on the notion that one can truly never know, but when it comes to the scientific consensus on global warming they are absolutely certain that is a 100% hoax and that the dire predictions will never come to pass. Their approach towards global warming is the same as the investor who pours all of their money into one asset class.

Keeping with the financial analogy, most global warming alarmism is like the cable financial shows trying to scare you out of your money with stupid predictions based on questionable computer models and doomer porn.  It's pretty safe to ignore that stuff. 

[Jwinders]

Hear, hear! Good points all..... This is not an issue of absolute certainty, but rather one of risk mitigation. What irks me so much about global warming deniers who use the permanent portfolio is that they see the need for risk mitigation in their investment decisions based on the notion that one can truly never know, but when it comes to the scientific consensus on global warming they are absolutely certain that is a 100% hoax and that the dire predictions will never come to pass. Their approach towards global warming is the same as the investor who pours all of their money into one asset class.

Couldn't you just as easily say that Global Warming believers's approach is the same as the investor who lets 'experts' manage all their money ?  i.e. a scientist can be just as (un)trustworthy as a certified financial planner.

The discussion of risks was thoughtful and I thought it put the GW/Climate Change argument in the best light I have seen in recent memory.  It reminded me of the Nassim Taleb 'Black Swan' book which I think permanenters would probably enjoy.  But the risk of following the scientists is something we should also think about.

After working with research scientists in a not climate related field for many years I have grown cautious  about how far I am willing to trust their abilities and their impartiality.  They are very human and very fallible.  The institutions of peer review and scientific inquiry are not as robust as they would have you believe. 

i posted the Max Planck quote in the marijuana thread but i think it applies here as well. (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_Planck)
"Science advances one funeral at a time."  Herr Planck new that science was as much a social club that ran on politics as anything else like truth and honesty.

I don't think very many deniers , for lack of a better name, disagreee with the idea that pollution is probably bad and externalities should be mitigated.  But for me I draw the line at reshaping society based on prognostications that are more or less untestable by the lay person.  We may end up being wrong but I think it is not a stance based on optimism or carefree naiveté .

edit:  Looks like Tyler beat me to the punch

[Pointedstick]

I don't think very many deniers , for lack of a better name, disagreee with the idea that pollution is probably bad and externalities should be mitigated.  But for me I draw the line at reshaping society based on prognostications that are more or less untestable by the lay person.  We may end up being wrong but I think it is not a stance based on optimism or carefree naiveté .

Ooh, so well said!

[doodle]

I don't think very many deniers , for lack of a better name, disagreee with the idea that pollution is probably bad and externalities should be mitigated.  But for me I draw the line at reshaping society based on prognostications that are more or less untestable by the lay person.  We may end up being wrong but I think it is not a stance based on optimism or carefree naiveté .

Ooh, so well said!

By reshaping society...are you implying that it already isn't being shaped? Do you think that the fossil fuel dominant society and large spread out road system wasn't shaped by certain interests

I agree that pollution is bad for our health and externalities should be mitigated. One of these externalities is our planets climate which the vast overwhelming amount of scientists who study the climate seem to think is a concern.

If logical scientists like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan (both of whom have little tolerance for BS) look at the data and think that this is a concern, what makes you so quick to poo-poo it? What is their agenda?

[doodle]

Sagan always advocated scientific skeptical inquiry and the scientific method, The term scientific skepticism appears to have originated in the work of Carl Sagan, first in Contact (p. 306), and then in Billions and Billions (p. 135).It is the practice of questioning whether claims are supported by empirical research and have reproducibility, as part of a methodological norm pursuing "the extension of certified knowledge".

Carl Sagan an advocate of scientific skeptical inquiry....as well as others like Buckminster Fuller both took the issue of climate change very seriously....

Look, Im a nihilist. I ultimately don't think it matters one iota in the universe whether our planet explodes tomorrow or not. Im just frustrated by global warming deniers....its like arguing with creationists or flat earthers. At the very least I would expect people in a permanent portfolio forum to understand risk mitigation....but when it comes to this topic they are like fossil fuel zealots.

[Tyler]

Look, Im a nihilist. I ultimately don't think it matters one iota in the universe whether our planet explodes tomorrow or not. Im just frustrated by global warming deniers....its like arguing with creationists or flat earthers. At the very least I would expect people in a permanent portfolio forum to understand risk mitigation....but when it comes to this topic they are like fossil fuel zealots.

Believing in something is not risk mitigation.  My risk mitigation for the alarmist warming futurists potentially being wrong is that I object to handing the global economy over to them with no oversight, and I support actionable and measurable environmental improvements we can implement today.  Imagine how much better the environment could be virtually tomorrow if we spent just half of the money we direct towards global warming "projections" on simply cleaning the rivers, reducing industrial waste and emissions, and providing sustainable agriculture for the poor. 

I tend to think like Bjorn Lomborg in that I'm a skeptical environmentalist.  Show me what we can fix at a reasonable cost (not just in terms of money, but also time and freedom) and outline how we'll be able to accurately measure the results in my lifetime to prove or disprove the efficacy of the original "fix", and I'm likely to support the cause.  There are plenty of environmental issues today I'd prioritize over trying to affect temperatures far into the future a few tenths of a degree at great cost to our quality of life.  And I'd argue that if we focused on those, we may end up addressing the warming problem in the process with far more support along the way.

[Benko]

1.  Tyler has said many things more eloquently than I, including:

"Imagine how much better the environment could be virtually tomorrow if we spent just half of the money we direct towards global warming "projections" on simply cleaning the rivers, reducing industrial waste and emissions, and providing sustainable agriculture for the poor."

and that Climate change is doomer porn which hits the nail on the head.

2.  Moda,

You were discussing risk.

There is 100% certainty that the remedies proposed will hurt many many people economically in very non-trivial ways.  I would think one would want to be really certain you were right before harming this many people.

If you don't have a model which can predict things that you are sure of i.e. if your model can't explain why there was no warming the last 15+ years, then you don't know what is going on and you should learn more until you do understand what is going on.

3.  Doodle,

Yes this country has been shaped by forces that I'm not fond of e.g. excesses of capitalism.  That does not mean I want to reshape it (any further) in ways Marx would approve of.

I don't know that any of the mistaken physicians who believe that cholesterol is the cause of heart disease are part of some group with an agenda.  They are still wrong though (IMHO).  There are

--some people making money/grant money off of global warming
--some people who know it is false and are just doing their version of "Romney never paid any taxes", "if you like your policy, you can keep it"
-- and some who probably honestly believe in climate change.

[moda0306]

Benko,

What people will be hurt so badly?

Further, one really, really hot year in 1998 (which some measurements have as the hottest... Others have 2005) doesn't mean the end of a trend.  This is more of the awful science climate change deniers bring to the table that keep this debate at the level of professional wresting.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2 ... 3/4719911/

If you're going to bash consensus findings, don't go back and cherry-pick consensus data win no context and treat strategic willful ignorance like it's intellectual curiosity.  5 minutes of research would have shown you that the earth is, indeed, warming...

[Benko]

I  Graphs list current time on left and as you go right is going back in time

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/last_100_yrs.html




Temperatures have increased by about 0.5° C over the last 100 years. Most of these increases occurred in the first 50 years of this time period.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) has also increased over the last 100 years-- from about 300 ppm to 370 ppm. Interestingly, the majority of these additions have occurred in the last 50 years, when temperature increases have been slowest.

Independent data from orbiting satelites have been continuosly m
easuring global temperatures since the 1970's and indicate that over the last 25 years there has actually been a slight decrease in overall global temperatures.
--------------------------------------------

II  another one: look at graph during time from 2000 on mean temp is not increasing. 

http://climaticresearch.blogspot.com/20 ... years.html

[doodle]

Benko,

If the data is so controversial or these few simple graphs so easily prove that global warming is an elaborate hoax, why would brilliant scientists like Buckminster Fuller, Carl Sagan, or Neil Tyson Degrasse who do not have any skin in the game and have built their careers around academic honesty and scientific skepticism have such grave concerns? Why when these highly gifted and trained scientists spend a great deal of time looking at the data before they go public with their conclusions and risk spoiling their hard earned reputations do they say it is beyond a shadow of a doubt that the planet is warming due to mans activities? In all other areas where there is scientific controversy they are the first to point it out, but here they don't? I have not taken the time to do extensive research, but I'm smart enough to know that when three brilliant men who have shown nothing but honesty throughout their careers think there is a problem, to blithely dismiss it as nonsense is sheer stupidity.

Sure, it's the logical fallacy of appeal to authority.....but in this case it's enough for me.

[Benko]

Doodle,

As I said in prior post, why do most physicians believe cholesterol causes heart disease? I don't think there is any conspiracy there.  There is a consensus of physicians on what kind of diet is best.  Would you care to live on a low cholesterol diet with lots of grains?  It would not improve my health.

[Kshartle]

Doodle,

As I said in prior post, why do most physicians believe cholesterol causes heart disease? I don't think there is any conspiracy there.  There is a consensus of physicians on what kind of diet is best.  Would you care to live on a low cholesterol diet with lots of grains?  It would not improve my health.

Cut out the grains, they're poison. The food pyramid is a joke. It creates weak and sick people, rots teeth, drives obesity and diabetes (SP). Load up on cholesterol. I eat paleo. High-fat, high cholesterol no grains of any kind. I'm 35 and never been in this good of shape since the Army, having only been on this diet a very short time.

While you're busy ignoring the consensus or conventional wisdom on diet, please build more coal plants and do more drilling for oil so energy costs can be lower and we can afford to develop new technology to improve people's lives.

With all the savings from lower energy costs maybe the climate doom porners can donate to some organization to figure out how to clean up pollution since it's their hobby. They can even donate to a government agency to study and develop but umm......no one with half a brain would donate to a government agency for anything. You might as well pour fossil fuels on your slips of paper and light them up.


What is it the climate doom porners are actually worried about? What do you think is going to happen? This reminds me of all those idiotic predictions for decades that food production would not be able to keep pace with the growth of human population. Ummm.....if food production can't keep up then there won't be more people. Duhhh. We have more people than ever before and also more food (despite government intervention paying people to not grow crops or restricting farmland).

[moda0306]

Doodle,

As I said in prior post, why do most physicians believe cholesterol causes heart disease? I don't think there is any conspiracy there.  There is a consensus of physicians on what kind of diet is best.  Would you care to live on a low cholesterol diet with lots of grains?  It would not improve my health.

Cut out the grains, they're poison. The food pyramid is a joke. It creates weak and sick people, rots teeth, drives obesity and diabetes (SP). Load up on cholesterol. I eat paleo. High-fat, high cholesterol no grains of any kind. I'm 35 and never been in this good of shape since the Army, having only been on this diet a very short time.

While you're busy ignoring the consensus or conventional wisdom on diet, please build more coal plants and do more drilling for oil so energy costs can be lower and we can afford to develop new technology to improve people's lives.

With all the savings from lower energy costs maybe the climate doom porners can donate to some organization to figure out how to clean up pollution since it's their hobby. They can even donate to a government agency to study and develop but umm......no one with half a brain would donate to a government agency for anything. You might as well pour fossil fuels on your slips of paper and light them up.


What is it the climate doom porners are actually worried about? What do you think is going to happen? This reminds me of all those idiotic predictions for decades that food production would not be able to keep pace with the growth of human population. Ummm.....if food production can't keep up then there won't be more people. Duhhh. We have more people than ever before and also more food (despite government intervention paying people to not grow crops or restricting farmland).

It's interesting to see a NAP lecturer who has all his own doom porn predictions, flaunt not only his love for meat, (don't we all though... Yum) which is the product of the torture (usually) and killing of living beings that feel fear and pain, followed by asking people to put their own resources into reducing the effects of pollution (theft by another name) rather than asking the polluters (thieves) to do so.

Well... not really that interesting, cuz this is what makes anarcho-capitalism as flawed as any other  political or moral philosophy.

[Benko]

It's interesting to see a NAP lecturer who has all his own doom porn predictions, flaunt not only his love for meat, (don't we all though... Yum) which is the product of the torture (usually) and killing of living beings that feel fear and pain,

So you would prefer he not eat animals and impair his health?

Good intentions + not so good real world results.  Now where have I seen that before?

[Kshartle]

It's interesting to see a NAP lecturer who has all his own doom porn predictions, flaunt not only his love for meat, (don't we all though... Yum) which is the product of the torture (usually) and killing of living beings that feel fear and pain,

So you would prefer he not eat animals and impair his health?

Good intentions + not so good real world results.  Now where have I seen that before?

The authoritarian climi-nazi doom porners don't like name calling it appears. They are quick to use them against people who point out that 17.5 trillion in federal debt plus trillions in state and local as well as student loans and 100 trillion in unfunded liabilites can never be paid for and is unsustainable. The latter is obvious but it conflicts with the authoritarian idea that the economy should be controlled by sociopathic politicians through threats of violence.

NAP does not extend to animals and I've never even whispered that idea. *Please no one take that as carte blanc to torture puppies on the front lawn* I realize how confusing that first statement can be for some .

[Kshartle]

followed by asking people to put their own resources into reducing the effects of pollution (theft by another name) rather than asking the polluters (thieves) to do so.

I'm ok with you asking them. What you actually want is a group of authoritarian angelic sociopathic politicians to arm and instruct the jackboots to prevent people from generating energy and products that make our lives better.

When I see the smog from the cities in China I shed a tear of joy for the people there. They have come out of the dark ages and entered the industrial age where they now can enjoy modern conveinces and a higher standard of living. If only their benevolent masters would stop printing up so many slips of paper to sop up execess USD and subsidize the welfare recipiants here they would really be gaining wealth. With that excess wealth maybe they could improve their smokestacks to generate less polution/waste.

[Kshartle]

It's interesting to see a NAP lecturer who has all his own doom porn predictions, flaunt not only his love for meat, (don't we all though... Yum) which is the product of the torture (usually) and killing of living beings that feel fear and pain,

So you would prefer he not eat animals and impair his health?

Good intentions + not so good real world results.  Now where have I seen that before?

There's a road paved with good intentions. Perhaps you walked down it once before..........

[doodle]

Moda,

I wouldn't try to look for a logical consistency in the positions Kshartle takes. He is a walking contradiction. 

Id like to start a business manufacturing widgets next to Kshartle's house so I could watch him shed tears of joy when I dump my industrial waste into his front yard as he sings me many praises about how much "progress" I am bringing to humanity.

[Kshartle]

Moda,

I wouldn't try to look for a logical consistency in the positions Kshartle takes. He is a walking contradiction. 

Id like to start a business manufacturing widgets next to Kshartle's house so I could watch him shed tears of joy when I dump my industrial waste into his front yard as he sings me many praises about how much "progress" I am bringing to humanity.

At least you don't exaggerate. It's amazing I can even walk with these contradicting legs of mine, always headed in different directions.

I think consistency of argument is definately a virtue unless your arguments are consistently wrong. For example, when climi-nazi doom poorners percieve a problem they call it out as a nail and of course, we always need a hammer to solve the problem of a nail.

I would definitely advise against building widgets, I don't think you'll find much of a market for them. You might have more luck selling the industrial waste.

[Kshartle]

Does anyone know where water levels are rising?

Here are two anecdotes:

My grandparents live right on Lake Superior in MI. When I was a boy they had a very short one-section dock. It now streches about 4 times farther. They've had to add on many times and the lake is down to levels not seen in 80+ years.

I live a mile from the Gulf of Mexico and have done so for ten years. The water level hasn't risen in ten years. We had 4 hurricanes hit in close succession ten years ago (NS3 will remember). I remember hearing that global warming contributed to this generationally bad season. We haven't had one hit here since as far as I can remember. No doubt this ten year drought of hurricanes is also due to global warming.

I realize those are personal anecdotes, I'm just wondering where the water levels are rising.

I know Venice has issues. I visited it a few years ago. My understanding is it's because the city is slowly sinking though.

[Pointedstick]

Believing in something is not risk mitigation.  My risk mitigation for the alarmist warming futurists potentially being wrong is that I object to handing the global economy over to them with no oversight, and I support actionable and measurable environmental improvements we can implement today.  Imagine how much better the environment could be virtually tomorrow if we spent just half of the money we direct towards global warming "projections" on simply cleaning the rivers, reducing industrial waste and emissions, and providing sustainable agriculture for the poor. 

I tend to think like Bjorn Lomborg in that I'm a skeptical environmentalist.  Show me what we can fix at a reasonable cost (not just in terms of money, but also time and freedom) and outline how we'll be able to accurately measure the results in my lifetime to prove or disprove the efficacy of the original "fix", and I'm likely to support the cause.  There are plenty of environmental issues today I'd prioritize over trying to affect temperatures far into the future a few tenths of a degree at great cost to our quality of life.  And I'd argue that if we focused on those, we may end up addressing the warming problem in the process with far more support along the way.

I very strongly agree with Tyler, and would also add that while individuals can mitigate risk, societies cannot. I don't mean this in the pedantic anarcho-capitalist sense that society doesn't really exist, but more that society is a collective group that we have no control over. If I want to mitigate financial risk, I implement the PP. I don't worry about all the people out with un-hedged financial risks that could hurt me--wave of foreclosures bringing down my property value, wave of bankruptcies reducing real wealth available to me, student loans crushing an entire generation, causing them to become socialist. These are collective risks that "society"could mitigate... but that's just not the way societies work. Societies do what their members do. If you want a society to "mitigate risk," you have to get its members to do it.

If you look at the most successful global environmental campaigns, it should be pretty obvious that all of them involved fixing existing, clearly noticeable problems. Acid rain, hole in the ozone layer, deforestation, whale depopulation; all of them were clearly fixable with a fix that's verifiable (less acid rain, smaller hole in the ozone layer, stabilization of forest sizes, more whales, etc).

The problem with global warming as a problem is that it's not really noticeable yet. Instead, we have to get people to tell us what it's supposedly responsible for. This is an extremely weak motivator. It will simply have to get worse before it gets better if people are to take notice and gin up the personal and political wills to change things.

[moda0306]

But Tyler isn't talking about what an individual should concentrate on.

He's saying that the science is bunk and our government shouldn't push the issue.

This is the equivalent of macro vs microeconomics. Closed systems vs open systems.

And keep in mind all these other environmental issues are absolutely valid on the local, state and often federal level, but 1) they're usually most obvious to the same libs pushing for climate change legislation, and 2) they're not mutually exclusive to international climate change externality recognition.

[Kshartle]

society is a collective group that we have no control over.

Authoritarian climi-nazi doom porners will disagree on this point. They are correct and will be all too happy to prove it. The other "Dear Leader" in N. Korea proves it on a daily basis.

[Kshartle]

The problem with global warming as a problem is that it's not really noticeable yet. Instead, we have to get people to tell us what it's supposedly responsible for. This is an extremely weak motivator. It will simply have to get worse before it gets better if people are to take notice and gin up the personal and political wills to change things.

What if it doesn't get worse? If the problem with the problem is that it's not noticable is it a problem?

If it's a problem that it's not a noticeable problem is it a problem if it never gets worse and becomes a noticable problem?

[doodle]

Does anyone know where water levels are rising?

Here are two anecdotes:

My grandparents live right on Lake Superior in MI. When I was a boy they had a very short one-section dock. It now streches about 4 times farther. They've had to add on many times and the lake is down to levels not seen in 80+ years.

I live a mile from the Gulf of Mexico and have done so for ten years. The water level hasn't risen in ten years. We had 4 hurricanes hit in close succession ten years ago (NS3 will remember). I remember hearing that global warming contributed to this generationally bad season. We haven't had one hit here since as far as I can remember. No doubt this ten year drought of hurricanes is also due to global warming.

I realize those are personal anecdotes, I'm just wondering where the water levels are rising.

I know Venice has issues. I visited it a few years ago. My understanding is it's because the city is slowly sinking though.

Good lord you are clueless. I would love to watch you debate a climate scientist. It would be like me stepping into the ring with Mike Tyson during his prime. Do you go out there with a ruler in the mornings and check the level of the water?

Current sea level rise is about 3 mm/year worldwide. According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), "this is a significantly larger rate than the sea-level rise averaged over the last several thousand years", and the rate may be increasing.

From NOAA: http://stateofthecoast.noaa.gov/vulnera ... hreat.html

Local sea level change, which is of more direct concern to coastal communities, is a combination of the rise in sea level and the change in land elevation.  Some areas of the country, such as areas within Alaska, are actually experiencing a lowering of local sea level due to regional uplift of land caused by the retreat of glaciers. Put simply, the land is rising faster than the sea level. In contrast, areas along the Gulf of Mexico coast are experiencing land subsidence at varying rates, accelerating the rate of seal level rise

So in fact the sea level in the Gulf of Mexico is rising contrary to your homely scientific measurements that you conduct as you walk along the beach.

Look, I dont care if the entire human race is extinguished or goes on to dominate the entire universe. What is frustrating is your complete innability to look at the facts and acknowledge that their is a very likely relationship between human activity and global warming. That is what is frustrating to me. I dont care about the effects of this....I just wish you would take off your stupid conspiracy theory jut job blinders and recognize that there is a very real possibility that sending 29 gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year has some effect on our planets climate.