Originally Posted by Child of Socrates

It isn't just global warming. The same disputes have taken place here over evolutionary theory. This leads me to believe that there is a general lack of understanding of how science works.

There are classic conflicts between the various world views. My world view is scientific first, legal / political second, religious a distant third. I am not surprised to see them stacked in any other order. If someone believes at Priority One that every word of the Bible is true in a literal sense, and science is a lower priority than religion, then said person has to reject that part of science which conflicts with the Bible.

Which means when I talk about cosmic rays being associated with galactic arms, and the effect cycling every 130,000,000 plus or minus 25,000,000 years, I must automatically be spouting nonsense. The world was created, what was that date? Somewhere around 6000 BC? If one is deep down dead certain at the center core of one's world view that anything that allegedly happened before 6000 BC didn't happen, than anyone talking about scientific theories on long term climate change or evolution has to be wrong. The scientists are just deluded. Bonzo. Tin foil hat time. There is quite an field of study in discrediting the existence of prehistoric time.

I don't know if that is the problem with any of the denialist contributors here. The 6000 BC effect isn't the only way people with religious values might have built defense mechanisms protecting their world views from evidence gathered by scientists. I expect it with evolution debates. That's just a classic world view clash. I didn't consider how the same problem might apply to climate theory. Some people are just used to throwing away all evidence that conflicts with their faith. That would include a lot of the data that I've been posting graphs on this last week. None of it could be taken seriously if you take the Bible really seriously.

This will all be driven by money.

I live in a small house (bought at 1x income), with reduced heating and cooling costs. My lighting is almost entirely flourescent. My commute time is 22-27 minutes, and bus service is within easy walking distance. I drive a small car, and the next one will be a hybrid. I can walk to groceries (long one), shopping, pharmacy, library, and the bank.

All because I'm cheap. The story of the next turning will be of society being forced to follow suit.

The environmental damage will have been done, unfortunately, and not just by the US. Look at India and China. Living with the aftermath will be part of the next saeculum.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

And what action will then be recommended? To do nothing for now.

Another strawman (or the same one -- just can't keep him down!

The action that most skeptics recommend is expending energy on inquiry and increasing our understanding to the point that we have a meaningful grasp of the situation and can make more fully-informed decisions.

Please note that the continuous appeals to 'consensus' fly directly in the face of that.

Nobody knows the costs either.

Another good thing to put some effort into understanding. How can you do a cost/benefit without having a reasonable mode of approximating the costs? For the bulk of the anthropogenic GW crowd, the costs are simply assumed away in favor of their presumeв benefit of being able to -- through their changing of the way their neighbors are allowed to live their lives -- control the climate in a relatively coherent fashion. A nice trick, if they can pull it off; but even if we ignore the political side, it's hardly settled that the benefits they seek are any more real than the costs that we can imagine.

The skeptics choice of action says Cost > Benefit.

or maybe you're not strawmanning, and just don't understand what the word 'skepticism' means? It means that the skeptics are not convinced that (to use your algorithm) Cost < Benefit. Or, may I propose the following:

Cost ? Benefit

Understand the position better now?

Originally Posted by Justin '77

The action that most skeptics recommend is expending energy on inquiry and increasing our understanding to the point that we have a meaningful grasp of the situation and can make more fully-informed decisions.

But in all honesty, Justin, that's disingenuous. I can't address all skeptics, of course, but in your case particularly the motivations are quite different from a lack of information sufficient to make a decision. It's not uncertainty about what the costs and benefits MAY be, but your own certainty (and fear) of what certain costs WILL be (rightly or wrongly):

For the bulk of the anthropogenic GW crowd, the costs are simply assumed away in favor of their presumeв benefit of being able to -- through their changing of the way their neighbors are allowed to live their lives

Bingo.

The cost so loathed is that others may be able to forcibly change the way you live your life. And THIS is why you oppose the idea. It has nothing to do with skepticism.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

The cost so loathed is that others may be able to forcibly change the way you live your life. And THIS is why you oppose the idea. It has nothing to do with skepticism.

Frankly, no. The political angle is separate from the scientific one (and I appreciate Arkham's reminder to that effect).

Even were I a proponent of making people do things at gunpoint, I would still hesitate to take hasty action on a basis so scientifically-weak as the one currently under anthropogenic GW. After all, if I wanted to make people do things, I'd want to make sure that they were being made to do the right things. And at that level of control, I'd have to say that the bar for what constitutes a good enough answer is pretty high.

Plus, given the choice, I prefer to live among people who have a more, rather than a less rational approach; and it's hard not to see the surge of consensus-based "science" as a move in the wrong direction. So vocal skepticism on the science side scratches that itch for me, too.

Ogres are like onions, you know.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

Well that's not ever going to happen by itself because there is no money in it. The folks who would make this happen (like me) like to get paid, you know.

Where's the money in open-source software? (It's a rhetorical question. I know some money is made selling technical support and whatnot, but nobody gets rich at it.) Personal computers and the internet created a gift economy in software. What will happen when gene sequencers (or fabbers, for that matter) become as accessible?

Since the 1980's some academic work has been done on enzymatic hydrolysis of the sugar polymers instead of the dilute acid technology developed in WW II. There has been little serious commerical effort as there is no certainty that there will ever be any money to be made with any alternate fuel. Without a favorable political environment that creates a value for environmental or geopolitical (i.e. not from the ME) advantages of one fuel or another over oil, there could never be any money in the field.

That's interesting and all, but then I see something like this and I wonder.

Originally Posted by Child of Socrates

I know you don't like Big Programs.

But you do have big ideas (and I use the lower case deliberately and as a compliment ).

Are you saying that a collection of microapplications would do at least as well at solving the problem, if not better, than one macroapplication?

What's the most important single cell in your body?

Originally Posted by Child of Socrates

Tell me how you've seen threats to freedom of speech or thought on this thread. I'm not talking about disagreements; I'm not talking about arguments or discussions of differences about what's causing global warming; I'm talking about threats.

Who's being threatened, and how?

I assume you vote. If you do, that makes you a threat, because you can -- at least in theory -- impose your will on me via the political process. Democracy makes you a petty tyrant and gives terrible weight to your every action and belief. Democracies are both uncivil and unstable for this very reason. (Historically, every single democracy, no matter how you define the term, has ended in civil war and/or dictatorship.) When the 49% wake up to the fact that they can be expropriated at any moment by the 51%, and that the balance can change without warning, politics becomes a matter of survival, and every facet of life becomes politicized.

Originally Posted by Child of Socrates

I've heard rumors of these types of Greens, but have yet to see any real evidence that they exist. I'm talking about the ones who supposedly believe that humanity is a cancer upon the earth and it would be no great loss if we all died out.

Where are they?

Zerzan comes to mind. He goes so far as to assert that abstract, symbolic thought is the root of human evil, and that we would have been better off never evolving language.

Originally Posted by salsabob

Mike, I might have missed this. If I did, just refer me to the proper post.

What about CO2 sequestering in the ground? Is it a promising viable solution should we move toward e-vehicles and their greater dependency on stationary coal-fired e-power generation?

If you don't believe global warming is a problem, then why would you go to the expense of sequestering it? My point was if business as usual wrt to CO2 emissions is combined with rising oil prices because of demand growth/peak oil then the logical solution would be to shift to coal for power plants and to use natural gas for transportation (after conversion to gasoline).

I don't think this is going to happen because if Justin's points are the best they can do, they are going to lose the debate.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

I understand, but we'd be facing much in the way of lifestyle constriction if we did that. I think the pressure to develop more advanced sources of energy along with improved efficiency will be high once the effects of the peak are felt.

Natural gas currently produces about 20% of US electricity. Generation efficiency is higher with gas (nearly 60%) that with anything else, capital requrements are small and it clean burning (except for CO2). This is why most new plants over the last 30 years have been gas-fired.

Peak oil (also means peak gas a few years later) means gas prices rise well beyond coal prices. The only place where substitution of abundant coal for increasingly scarce gas can easily be made is in electric power generation. Natural gas prices have already risen and the substitution of coal for gas in new plants is already being considered. I point out a plan to build a large number of conventional coal plants in Texas right now. This is the wave of the future under a business as usual paradigm.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

]The action that most skeptics recommend is expending energy on inquiry and increasing our understanding to the point that we have a meaningful grasp of the situation and can make more fully-informed decisions.

This is what I said, do nothing while additional information is gathered and revisit later.

Another good thing to put some effort into understanding. How can you do a cost/benefit without having a reasonable mode of approximating the costs?

You can't.

For the bulk of the anthropogenic GW crowd, the costs are simply assumed away in favor of their presumeв benefit of being able to -- through their changing of the way their neighbors are allowed to live their lives --

The costs are assumed to be less than the benefits. The other side assumes the opposite.

it's hardly settled that the benefits they seek are any more real than the costs that we can imagine. or maybe you're not strawmanning, and just don't understand what the word 'skepticism' means? It means that the skeptics are not convinced that (to use your algorithm) Cost < Benefit.

Of course it is hardly settled. That's the whole point of the debate. Your call for 'increasing our understanding to the point that we have a meaningful grasp of the situation and can make more fully-informed decisions" is naive in the extreme. This can never happen, as it will always be possible to assert (as you have) that unknown factors are responsible for warming.

There are three possible approaches to address GW now: (1) business as usual (2) low-cost action on CO2 emissions (3) high-cost action on CO2 emission.

Temperatures either (1) will continue to rise throughout this century or (2) they will not.

Here are the possibilities as I see them:

If approach 1 is taken and outcome 1 occurs at some point a consensus will develop that GW has to be addressed. Approach 2 will no longer be feasible and we will get 3.

If approach 1 is taken, outcome 2 occurs, the poltical battle is won by the Left and we get 3.

If approach 1 is taken, outcome 2 occurs and the poltical battle is won by the Right and we get endless wars and financial turmoil--but at least the climate will be OK.

None of the outcomes we get from continuing business as usual are attractive. Hence I support doing (2) now.

Originally Posted by Arkham '80

That's interesting and all, but then I see something like this and I wonder.

There's no money is that either. It is not going to be possible to manufacture a fuel that is cost competitive with petroleum that Nature has already manufactured.

What they are doing is using algae as a emissions control technology that generates process credits in the form of saleable sidestreams.

Now, with a carbon tax on emissions, removing CO2 from the emisisons generates revenue (tax savings). The algae eat the CO2 and make money doing so. They convert the CO2 into oils and other biomass. The oil is transesterified into biodiesel, and sold. The defatted algae could be dried and sold as high protein animal feed.

For the technology to be a winner, the carbon tax has to be high enough to generate revenues that cover the high cost of capital for an installation like this.

Research like this is a bet that the GW skeptics are going to lose.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

Somewhere around 6000 BC?

October 22, 4004 BC

Engineering is how.

Politics, all too often, is how not.

Gee, I don't think Stalin himself would've put it any differently. Hey, we can't let a silly Constitution, Supreme Court or the "Deniers" get in our way of gettin' it done this time around!

Originally Posted by Mikebert

Of course it is hardly settled. That's the whole point of the debate. Your call for 'increasing our understanding to the point that we have a meaningful grasp of the situation and can make more fully-informed decisions" is naive in the extreme. This can never happen, as it will always be possible to assert (as you have) that unknown factors are responsible for warming.

I suppose in the extreme, true. But I'm not really positing unknown factors so much as known factors that are not being taken into account. And really, at a minimum, I would think that a model should at least demonstrate itself to have some degree of predictive power at all before it is allowed to form the basis of predictions. That's just basic common sense. That is, you test models -- put them up against data sets other than those from which their forcing variables were curve-fit. And see how well they describe actual behavior. Models at present are really good at spitting back out the data that was used to make them. But that's not really very useful when it comes to understanding.

The penchant for models-as-a-mode-of-learning strikes me as one of the most poignant examples of a society worshiping its tools.

There are three possible approaches to address GW now: (1) business as usual (2) low-cost action on CO2 emissions (3) high-cost action on CO2 emission.

You present a false dilemma (trilemma?). The set of possible approaches (now that we've left the realm of science -- again -- in favor of the political) is not bounded. And further, mono-topical approaches such as those you describe are hardly ever a part of the set of reals. Life does not break down into rigidly-defined subsets of topics. It's hard for me to tell for sure, but I think what you are doing is oversimplifying.


As for your version of Pascal's wager, frankly, the original was more convincing. And just as fallacious.

Originally Posted by The Rani

Sigh. This is getting old. One last time.

I wasn't the only one to sense an authoritarian tone to these posts. Maybe Bob (and others) might want to acknowlege that they need to lighten the hell up. If you don't like that, and want to hurl more insults in my direction, go for it. Since I'm not to be taken seriously anyway, I don't know why you people care what I think one way or the other.

The people who saw authoritarianism in those posts were mistaken.

If KIA was one of those folks, the irony is that he calls himself a "libertarian" when he has openly stated his support for the Bush agenda. None of the libertarians here (on the right or left) think he's one of us (at least as far as I know).

I thought Bob was very clear. I read his post carefully, within the context of this particular discussion and many, many others we've had here. He is not a fan of the autocratic agenda. Neither is he 100% libertarian.

Unfortunately, it seems to me that any hint of governmental involvement in dealing with social problems sends some of our more anarchical folks into a tizzy; hence, the Hitler references and the "serfdom" comments that crop up.

Do we need to reevaluate the individual's relationship to government? Absolutely. Do we need to decentralize government and return more power to local authorities? I think in some cases, we do. Can we realistically eliminate any kind of government from our lives? I seriously doubt it.

I believe in personal responsibility, but I also believe we have an obligation to help each other out when we can, and to be proactive whenever possible. If we can mitigate the course or the results of global warming, I think we must do so. And I think many of us are already doing so on an individual basis, even the ones who rail against the government.

I'm just asking you not to read sinister intentions into statements where there may not be any in that person's mind, and to ask for clarification without resorting to inflammatory statements.

Originally Posted by Arkham '80

What's the most important single cell in your body?

Oh, boy. After last night (beyond what happened on this board), this question sounds very Zen to me right now.

Right now, it would be that brain cell that would provide me with an answer to your question.

Originally Posted by Arkham '80

I assume you vote. If you do, that makes you a threat, because you can -- at least in theory -- impose your will on me via the political process. Democracy makes you a petty tyrant and gives terrible weight to your every action and belief. Democracies are both uncivil and unstable for this very reason. (Historically, every single democracy, no matter how you define the term, has ended in civil war and/or dictatorship.) When the 49% wake up to the fact that they can be expropriated at any moment by the 51%, and that the balance can change without warning, politics becomes a matter of survival, and every facet of life becomes politicized.

I am told, time and again, that I live in a republic, where the rights of the minority are taken into consideration.

I don't believe that I am a threat to you in any realistic scenario. We don't live in the same municipality or the same state, so any votes I would cast would have minimal effect upon you at best, and those would only be for federal offices (and politics being what they are, the interest of Wisconsin politicians in Florida would seem negligible).

I have no objection to what you do for a living (I have told you on several occasions that I admire what you do. You appear to care about your fellow man to a great extent, and you look beyond the day-to-day trials and at least make an attempt to see the big picture. You appear to be causing no harm to others. I see no threat from you. So why see one in me?

Originally Posted by Child of Socrates

Oh, boy. After last night (beyond what happened on this board), this question sounds very Zen to me right now.

What happened last night?

Originally Posted by Arkham '80

Zerzan comes to mind. He goes so far as to assert that abstract, symbolic thought is the root of human evil, and that we would have been better off never evolving language.

I presume he uses those tools of evil in forming his assertions. He shouldn't be publishing or yakking on the radio if he really believes this stuff. He shouldn't even have a name. He should just be an image that crosses my field of vision from time to time. When he's out of sensory range, he no longer exists.

Yeah, that's kooky stuff.

Originally Posted by The Wonkette

What happened last night?

A drawn-out discussion of family finances that lasted until 1:30 AM.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

That is, you test models -- put them up against data sets other than those from which their forcing variables were curve-fit. And see how well they describe actual behavior. Models at present are really good at spitting back out the data that was used to make them. But that's not really very useful when it comes to understanding.

Now I would say the models have been tested. Back in the 1980's I was a skeptic. I figured if we were right then temperatures would not continue to rise and the whole issue would turn out to be a tempest in a teapot. On the other hand if temperatures continue to rise I would have to re-evaluate.

Well I have and I'm not a skeptic any longer. Until I started discussing the issue with skeptics a month or so ago, I never realized just how strong the case of human-generated climate change is. You in particular have been quite convincing that human-generated climate change is real.

You present a false dilemma (trilemma?). The set of possible approaches (now that we've left the realm of science -- again -- in favor of the political) is not bounded.

Sure it is when you present it as A and not A.

OK, everybody can stop arguing. (Had to try)

Average global temps are going up, for whatever reason.

There will be consequences.

People will have to change thier fucking ways, whether they like it or not- and they will not change until they are fucking forced to. We call it a 4T.

Everyone will bitch like hell.

There. I feel better now.

Originally Posted by Pink Splice

OK, everybody can stop arguing. (Had to try)

Average global temps are going up, for whatever reason.

There will be consequences.

People will have to change thier fucking ways, whether they like it or not- and they will not change until they are fucking forced to. We call it a 4T.

Everyone will bitch like hell.

There. I feel better now.

Sorry, Wally.

Like your summary, BTW.