Gyroscopic Investing

........ To my mind what is needed by all sides is for a totally fresh set of people from a totally different background to meticulously reexamine the predictions for catastrophic climate change. The issue is not whether climate scientists are any less reliable than any other scientists; the issue is that in this case the stakes are so high that a totally extraordinary belt and braces level of assessment is needed. As a general rule, when assessing scientific findings, people working in the same scientific field are those most able to spot weaknesses that would simply be overlooked by outsiders. What is more, it would be an extremely arduous task to review some scientific work in an unfamiliar field, so people working in the same field are used by journal editors for scrutinizing scientific work. That peer review process however does little to allay the main concern of climate change skeptics.  Their concern is that the field of climate science as a whole has a political agenda or at the very least a worrying level of group think. We need a one-off rigorous investigation expressly designed to be entirely robust against any such danger.

I think it would be perfectly feasible to apply a process of “outsider review”? as a second safety net for this extraordinary case. The expense and effort would be trivial considering the context. It would be vital to keep the focus very tightly on examining the veracity of the key underpinnings behind the predictions of catastrophic consequences from burning all known recoverable fossil fuel reserves. Perhaps the ideal starting point would be a “global all stars”? paper submitted specifically for this purpose, by the climate science field, laying out their best evidence for such a prediction. The team of reviewers could be assembled by a search committee chaired by prominent climate change skeptics (eg perhaps the Koch brothers, Vaclav Klaus and Nigel Lawson). If that search committee had any sense (and I trust they would) they would recruit a team of people who -whilst perhaps being totally unfamiliar with climate science- nevertheless had the capability to get up to speed and do the necessary work over the course of a year of extremely intense full time work. Perhaps the team would be made up from geologists, physicists and chemists from the petrochemical and mining industries along with mathematicians and software engineers previously working in quantitative finance or whatever. By all means they could all be screened by the search committee as having political inclinations that garnered the trust of the skeptics. Salaries and compensation to employers for leaves of absence could be on a pay what it takes basis........

Pointedstick wrote: The problem for me is not acknowledging climate change. Of course the climate is changing; it's always changing. There was global warming thousands of years ago that turned the fertile crescent into a desert, and an ice age during the middle ages that caused a five-year winter. The climate is wacky.

Are we changing the climate with our fossil fuel emissions? Possibly. Probably, even. But will we ever, EVER change our ways and radically re-organize the entire global economy to stop burning fossil fuels? Not in your life. It's a utopian pipe dream. 0% chance of success. This is what I find so maddening about most people worried about human-caused climate change: the general inability to comprehend that if indeed we caused it, that there's no way in hell we're going to stop. The realistic course of action is to prepare for the consequences, not try to stave off what a lot of scientists are already saying is inevitable, assuming the predictive models are correct.

He continues to restate facts after they have been shown to be wrong. For example, he maintains that volcanoes produce more carbon dioxide than human activity. The US Geological Survey (USGS) reports that human beings produce 130 times as much CO2 as volcanoes.

Jones took up my charge and asked Plimer whether he stood by his claim that volcanoes produce more CO2 than all the world's cars and industries.

Plimer replied "I'm very heartened that a journalist is correcting me on my geology", then launched into a disquisition on how I know nothing about science. Both of us pressed him to answer the question. So Plimer said that neither of us had read his book. We both replied that we had and pressed him again.

Plimer tried to argue that the US Geological Survey only measured emissions from terrestrial volcanoes – not from submarine volcanoes. Jones, who had plainly done his homework, pointed out that a UK journalist (I think he was referring to the Guardian's James Randerson) had gone back to the USGS and asked them whether or not submarine volcanoes were included in its calculations. They were.

Plimer went off at a tangent, starting to list the numbers and kinds of submarine volcanoes. This, I soon found, was a characteristic tactic: when faced with a tricky situation, he starts throwing out random facts. I pointed out that he had been told many times that the USGS figures include submarine volcanoes: he was making a claim on national television that he should know is wrong.

doodle wrote:
I think the most workable solution is a simple carbon tax. Even if not from a climate standpoint, emitting pollution into a shared resource should have an associated cost. I don't see how any freedom loving person could object to paying a penalty to pollute.

stone wrote: Mountaineer, there is something about that here, http://www.theguardian.com/environment/ ... ge-monbiot

He continues to restate facts after they have been shown to be wrong. For example, he maintains that volcanoes produce more carbon dioxide than human activity. The US Geological Survey (USGS) reports that human beings produce 130 times as much CO2 as volcanoes.

Jones took up my charge and asked Plimer whether he stood by his claim that volcanoes produce more CO2 than all the world's cars and industries.

Plimer replied "I'm very heartened that a journalist is correcting me on my geology", then launched into a disquisition on how I know nothing about science. Both of us pressed him to answer the question. So Plimer said that neither of us had read his book. We both replied that we had and pressed him again.

Plimer tried to argue that the US Geological Survey only measured emissions from terrestrial volcanoes – not from submarine volcanoes. Jones, who had plainly done his homework, pointed out that a UK journalist (I think he was referring to the Guardian's James Randerson) had gone back to the USGS and asked them whether or not submarine volcanoes were included in its calculations. They were.

Plimer went off at a tangent, starting to list the numbers and kinds of submarine volcanoes. This, I soon found, was a characteristic tactic: when faced with a tricky situation, he starts throwing out random facts. I pointed out that he had been told many times that the USGS figures include submarine volcanoes: he was making a claim on national television that he should know is wrong.

Mountaineer wrote:

doodle wrote:
I think the most workable solution is a simple carbon tax. Even if not from a climate standpoint, emitting pollution into a shared resource should have an associated cost. I don't see how any freedom loving person could object to paying a penalty to pollute.

How do you propose that gasseous emissions from both ends of animals (domestic, wild, humans) should be taxed and revenues collected?  Methane is a significant "greenhouse" gas and animals exhale quite a lot of CO2. 

... Mountaineer

Mountaineer wrote:

doodle wrote:
I think the most workable solution is a simple carbon tax. Even if not from a climate standpoint, emitting pollution into a shared resource should have an associated cost. I don't see how any freedom loving person could object to paying a penalty to pollute.

How do you propose that gasseous emissions from both ends of animals (domestic, wild, humans) should be taxed and revenues collected?  Methane is a significant "greenhouse" gas and animals exhale quite a lot of CO2. 

... Mountaineer

stone wrote: I totally agree that a 2oC rise in global temperature is probably inevitable and probably fine. So far we have raised atmospheric CO2 concentrations by 40% and the (moderate) effects from doing that will become apparent in coming decades and we will be able to adapt to them. That isn't the issue.

The issue is burning our remaining fossil fuels and raising atmospheric CO2 8x current levels. 40% and 1000% are totally different ball parks. A 2oC rise and a 20oC.

Are you saying that politically it would be too awkward to try and avoid a 20oC rise? It is going to be fairly awkward having billions of people migrating to polar regions. Abandoning existing cities and farmland etc etc. London, New York, Singapore being left to the floodwater.

stone wrote: Perhaps all it would take would be say a carbon tax of say $100 per barrel of oil equivalent, levied on all fossil fuels as they were taken out of the ground (on oil, coal, tar, gas whatever based on the carbon content). That would then no longer leave fossil fuels as the no brainer option and so would create profitable investment opportunities for energy companies using renewables and energy conservation.

Pointedstick wrote:

stone wrote: Perhaps all it would take would be say a carbon tax of say $100 per barrel of oil equivalent, levied on all fossil fuels as they were taken out of the ground (on oil, coal, tar, gas whatever based on the carbon content). That would then no longer leave fossil fuels as the no brainer option and so would create profitable investment opportunities for energy companies using renewables and energy conservation.

When I hear things like this, I wonder where all the liberal compassion went. Such a tax would absolutely CRUSH the poor. Think about it. Who is the most likely to live in an inefficient house and need to commute long distances? The poor. Who is least able to absorb the increased prices of fossil fuels? The poor. Who is least able to conduct energy audits and switch to more efficient products and dwellings that may have a long-term payback? The poor.

stone wrote: Pointed stick, in Europe we have to pay twice as much for food due to import tariffs. Why is that different from paying a carbon tariff?

stone wrote: Pointed Stick, the geological record concurs with models that each doubling in the atmospheric CO2 causes a 3 oC temperature rise. We know that reported recoverable reserves of fossil fuels are enough to cause an 8x increase in atmospheric CO2.

Also exxon mobil spend $100M dollars per day on prospecting for more reserves.

stone wrote: Pointed Stick, over geological time, plate tectonics cause volcanic activity to be much more in some periods than others. That releases more CO2 from limestone back into the atmosphere. That increase in CO2 and the resulting temperature change can be seen in the geological record. The Eocene had temperatures 20 oC higher than today and had matching CO2 levels. Mammals were around then. We would be able to survive on Earth.

The only efficiency of renewables is that they avoid climate change. It will always be cheaper to dig up and burn coal until almost all of it is burnt.

stone wrote: Mountaineer, I only think fossil fuel carbon should be taxed.

Pointedstick wrote:

stone wrote: Pointed Stick, the geological record concurs with models that each doubling in the atmospheric CO2 causes a 3 oC temperature rise. We know that reported recoverable reserves of fossil fuels are enough to cause an 8x increase in atmospheric CO2.

Also exxon mobil spend $100M dollars per day on prospecting for more reserves.

I think I understand what you're saying here. Even though the geological record shows that dumping carbon into the atmosphere can happen without humans doing it, it also gives us a (hypothesized) causal relationship. So independent of the "natural" cycle of temperatures rising and falling, any carbon we add moves the midpoint upwards.

Assuming this is totally true, you have still not demonstrated how the political process could feasibly be used on a global level to address this problem. You Europeans may be willing to suffer higher prices when your rulers deem it in your own interests, but we Americans are not, by and large (unless we're tricked into it through subtle policies that increase prices while purporting to lower them or something). And I'm willing to bet that the Chinese and Indians won't, either. If Australia and the US tax carbon, the Chinese will find their own domestic sources, or maybe invade Russia and take their oilfields. They might. The USA and UK has done the same to other countries. Why wouldn't the Chinese?