Are you really suggesting that you can eliminate heatwaves and forest fires?
Heatwaves and forest fires have literally existed since heat and forests existed. To imagine that you can use the number of forest fires this year, or any year in the future, as a proxy for the overall state of the economy, is ludicrous - and that's assuming you can identify any sort of trend in the number of global forest fires:)
Again, there's no forest fire economic model that can hindcast back to 1918, nor forecast into 2118 with any sort of accuracy - even if you stipulate that forest fires will increase because of increased average global temperature.
From 1918 to 2018, how much economic damage can you attribute to the items on your list? Hell, just even go from 1945-2018, to cover the post-war expansion of industry, and find any reason for us to believe that we are worse off on any of the items you mentioned in 2018 than 1945. (Do me the favor and use constant dollars when making comparisons, of course - "increased costs" without factoring in inflation are a special flavor of tasty cherry picking:) )
You are extrapolating from an uncontested fact (global average temperatures will increase at a rate of 1C/century), to wild, unfounded predictions of economic doom.
Your false certainty suggests perhaps you're the sociopath without morals:)
Hrm. Wouldn't we have a wide spread pattern of heat records if the globe was warming naturally? How does this compare to say, the period from the Little Ice Age to 1940? Obviously, we had a much less robust temperature network before then to observe temperatures, but oh, I don't know, pick 1850-1932, what was the pattern of "record high" temperatures each year during that warming period?
I mean, how can you *not* have more record highs if you're naturally warming?
The problem here is that it seems like the alarmists are taking something that is *necessary* for their hypothesis, and asserting it is *sufficient* in and of itself to prove them right. It's obvious to anyone looking at it from the outside that "118 all time heat records" is not nearly sufficient to make all of the complex and grand claims that humans are causing all global climate change, and that it is going to doom us all to the nether levels of hell at some indeterminate time in the future.
Why not just make the whole argument, rather than making a very, very poor one? Is this just a victory lap, like Trump crowing about 4.1% 2Q growth? Yes, it's *consistent* with his narrative that his tax bill and deregulation is helping the economy, but isn't it true that we would observe the same thing if the underlying economics had nothing to do with his actions?
You have exactly zero credible economic models that can make any reliable predictions, much less hindcast, on a 100 year time span.
Nobody in 1918 had any idea what the world economy was going to look like in 2018 - and you have exactly zero percent chance of having a model that will accurately predict what the world economy is going to look like in 2118.
It surprises me how much zealous certainty some people have, be it deeply religious christians, or deeply devout liberals.
I think that Dilbert got it right - even if we 100% believe everything that has ever been said about a global climate model that predicts human CO2 emissions will cause increased average global temperature over every timescale, we have exactly 0 reliable economic models over any timescale.
We literally have no reason to believe that any amount of global warming will be a *bad* thing overall, by any economic metric. Anyone who pretends otherwise is extending their confidence into a realm that doesn't deserve it.
Climate scientists were not surprised when it was confirmed that CO2 lagged temperature
Okay, so CO2 is a effect of temperature, not a cause.
Glad you accept that. We've got a lot less to worry about now:)
Again, it's not an "assumption", it was predicted based on the laws of physics.
There is no law of physics that says every joule of greenhouse effect from CO2 will create 3 joules of additional greenhouse effect from H2O. That's a tunable model parameter, put in there to support an argument, not because it is self evident.
We know for a fact that other sources and sinks of CO2 will react to perturbations
Excellent. We once again agree that simply adding a source of CO2 will not flatly increase atmospheric CO2 levels. Can you agree that we don't have accurate models for those internal reactions?
Best estimates of ECS from experts and models range from 1.5 to 4.5 Celcius - a wide range, yet we can predict with high confidence that observed ECS will be somewhere in that range.
I believe the work that Curry has done has drawn that down to about 1.05 - 4.05, with a best estimate of about 1.64 (close to the low end of the prior range).
That being said, there's no reason for us to expect that ECS 1.05 is harmful, nor is there reason for us to expect ECS 4.05 is harmful.
I'll also note that ECS doesn't relate to emissions, it relates to eventual atmospheric CO2 concentration - after all of the reactions of sources and sinks are factored in.
The funny thing here is that alarmists imply that the high level of uncertainty means we know that the central conceit, that human CO2 emissions are the dominant factor in atmospheric CO2 levels, is true. That is an open question, and one that can only be addressed scientifically if we put together a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement.
I'm agreeing with you as hard as I can - there are definitely things we could have done in the early 1900s that could have helped, like making sure the archduke ferdinand was better protected, or killing Ancel Keys in the womb before he was able to promulgate his low-fat hypothesis into our dietary advice:).
But all things considered, besides a few side trips into massive wars and socialist genocides of hundreds of millions of people, I think we've been moving in the right direction for the past 100 years. I mean, as much as I hate jihadis, and love the idea of eradicating them from the planet, they did less harm than either Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot. The twin towers falling was much more symbolic than it was absolutely devastating...and our oversized response to it, while perfectly understandable from a visceral and even an example setting perspective, is arguably a misjudgment of absolute risk.
By the same token, I think our fascination with 1C/century warming, while understandable from a visceral level, and maybe even justifiable in terms of say, driving efficiency, is much more symbolic than say, the evils of socialism and collapse of economies the size of venezuela.
So, I'm sitting in 1918. We know about CO2, and about the potential impact it has on global average temperatures.
Do I jump on the natural petroleum bandwagon, and create the miracles of the industrial age and technology, or do I insist that we don't jump out of that plane, and just keep on going with our horse and buggies?:)
I agree, uncertainty can definitely look like wishful thinking - but can you see how your certainty can be seen in the same light?
If you want to take a proper libertarian stance, that's fine as long as the fossil fuel industry is ready to pay for the damage caused by storms made worse
Yeah, except for the fact that the butterfly effect blows that all out of the water - can't sue a butterfly on the other side of the planet:)
I guess I would imagine it this way - pretend it takes 200 trillion to reduce emissions. And pretend that we discover a CO2 extraction process in 2075 that only costs 200 billion, to get back to 350ppm. Does it really make sense to start spending the 200 trillion now?
Given the wild impact of technology from 1918 to 2018, I have no idea what we can expect from 2018 to 2118 - and to pretend that today, we could have any rational idea of what the *right* thing to do is, just seems like hubris.
I mean, really, think about just how many billion people we can support today because of natural petroleum and the haber process - we've made life *incredibly* better, even in shithole countries, over the past 100 years. CO2 issues seem like a rounding error in comparison.
But without subsidies is apples to oranges unless we dump the many direct and indirect subsidies fossil fuels enjoy as well.
Well, I'd avoid counting standard corporate tax deductions available to any industry (depreciation, etc), and I think once you take that away, natural petroleum gets effectively $0/kWh of subsidy. I'd be happy if the $/kWh of subsidy was kept equal, although the best world would be $0/kWh.
I don't recommend a crash conversion, but rather encouraging a transition over a decade or two
If you can beat natural petroleum on the open market, both in terms of price and reliability, there's no need to encourage anything - human greed will do the job for you. Both solar and wind have serious price and reliability problems, but that doesn't mean they can't figure things out eventually. For those who want to invest in companies taking that risk, that's great, but redistributing our wealth to make investments seems like a poor idea to outsource to the government.
Here's the basic truth - we setup systems of incentives, and it will encourage behavior. Setup enough government subsidies, and Elon Musk will create a company to take advantage of it. Create a reliable, stable source of energy that is cheaper than the alternatives, without any subsidies, and every venture capitalist will want a piece of that pie.
No central government 5 year plan ever worked, and no centrally planned initiative has any hope of dealing with the complexities of economies of free individuals. The thought that some infinitely wise technocrats could possibly map out a perfect system of incentives to get to their end goal of replacing 90% of the world's energy in 10 or even 20 years doesn't pass the giggle test.
In 1918, you had to take a kick to the crotch to get 1 million.
In 2018, now you're trying to avoid the crotch kick, and still get the 1 million.
I don't think that's the offer on the table. I think that our technology acceleration from 1918 to 2018 is *directly* related to the incredibly low absolute cost of natural petroleum energy - and to think that we can get the same benefit by crippling our energy costs, by making them absolutely costlier, is to misunderstand the choice at hand.
Now, if you can do wind, solar, or nuclear, without any subsidies, and provide cheap, reliable electricity 24/7 without mining a bunch of rare metals in batteries, then great! Maybe you can get the 1 million without the crotch kick! But if in order to avoid the crotch kick, you need to cut your balls off, that's not so good:)
Actually, I'm quite sure we will see technology changes.
And you don't think that the technology changes of 2018 to 2118 will make our worries about another 1C of warming completely irrelevant?
You've already seen that 1918 to 2018 that any measurable cost of 1C warming was completely overwhelmed by the technology changes during that period.
Sincerely, trying to understand your position - do you really believe that the technology changes of the next 100 years will be less impressive than the technology changes of the past 100 years?
Do you think there will be no significant technology changes from 2018 to 2118?:)
Seriously, the idea that we've hit some sort of stable state of technology that we can extrapolate out to 2118 is *really* silly. You might have been able to make the case from 1200AD to 1300AD was predictable, or maybe even 1500AD to 1600AD, but given the speed of change in technology from 1900AD to 2000AD, can we really be so bold as to declare we know what 2100AD is going to look like?
Well, past results do not guarantee future performance and all that, but your assertion of costs outweighing benefits just isn't persuasive given the observed history.
Literally, from 1918 to 2018, over a hundred years, we've got 1C of warming, and grand expansion of humanity and the biosphere. Now you're asserting that if we see another 1C of warming from 2018 to 2118, we're going to see some sort of grand contraction of humanity and the biosphere.
Of course, I know lots of evangelicals who believe in Revelations and the coming apocalypse, but it's never been persuasive enough for me to become a believer:)
That's you trying to be fancy with language, it doesn't fundamantally alter the hypothesis.
Okay, let me try non-fancy language for you:
Does more CO2 from a single source make temperature around the world go up, or does more temperature around the world make CO2 go up?
Moving the goalposts.
No, that's just the scientific method:) You can't just have a tunable model with 20-degrees of freedom, and continually tune it to match observations - ad hoc special pleadings (sorry for the fancy language) are a sign of weakness, not strength.
Climate models fail all the time. Even the tuned ones will have runs that fail to match observations. They fail to accurately predict, or even accurately hindcast known data, all the time. The essential question when observing these failures is this:
1) is the model flawed 2) is the data flawed
If you've determined that the model is flawed, and you've got 20-degrees of freedom to tune it, it is nigh impossible to diagnose exactly which part of the model is flawed, but your breakdown is this:
1) model parameters are flawed 2) model algorithms are flawed
So far, the excuse has always been #1 (oh, we just need to tune these three arbitrary co-efficients, and things are fine). The problem is that essentially makes #2 unfalsifiable (it can always be rescued by tuning the side parameters, rather than the central conceit).
My guess is this will be difficult for you to read as well, and I apologize in advance. Communicating clearly without using academic vocabulary can be a challenge.
You literally took a multivariate equation (well being on a number of axes, including number of storms per decade), and narrowed it down to a single variable (number of storms per decade), and then presented a false dichotomy (either you like more storms per decade, or you hate more storms per decade).
Whether we start at 1918 and go to 2018, or start at 2018 and go to 2118, there's no reason to believe that the benefits of natural petroleum will not outweigh the costs. From 1918, we know this is true through observation. From 2018, this might be a bit more fuzzy, but it is so in both directions - nobody in 1918 could have made accurate economic predictions for 2018, and there's no rational person who assumes we can write an economic model in 2018 that will accurately represent 2118.
My goalposts start at 1918, and end at 2018. They include all the costs and benefits of natural petroleum during that time.
Similarly, assuming CO2 will probably have the effects predicted by laws of physics and observed in the paleoclimate record is the smart thing to do.
There is no doubt that CO2 in the atmosphere behaves in ways predicted by the laws of physics. The difficulty is when you assume that CO2's further interactions with say, water vapor, create a tripling effect of heat retention, or when you assume that all other sources and sinks of CO2 do not react to perturbations (say, like plant growth). None of those effects have reliable models, and given their stochastic nature, may never have reliable runs even if they are 100% accurate (that is to say, small differences in the input criteria may yield wildly varying results, making the predictive utility of even a perfectly written physical model essentially zero).
The effect observed in the paleoclimate record is tricky, because the paleoclimate record is much lower resolution, and actually shows us that CO2 levels *lag* temperature changes, rather than lead them. This is contra to the hypothesis of AGW.
The challenge is this - if the observations can be explained by three-thousand competing hypotheses, how do you figure out which one is true? They must somehow be excluded, through an argument of implications, or through differing falsification criteria.
Thus far, all observations in the modern era are consistent with the null hypothesis of natural climate change.
you might recall a little rain shower they had a little while ago that left them swimming for their lives. Do you believe they would like to see more or less such events in the future?
You're turning a multivariate equation into a single variable equation. Do you believe they would be willing to see less of those events, if it required them to return to the technology and lifestyle of 1918? Or do you believe that they would be willing to see more of those events, and live in the technological golden age of 2018?
It is prima facie evident that 2018 is better than 1918. Anyone who would prefer the world of 1918 is deluded or lying, or perhaps really really racist and looking to see Birth of a Nation in the white house again.
There is no reason to believe that 2118, even with another 1C of warming, would be worse than 2018.
The lack of certain observations excludes all hypotheses except one? How does a lack of observations exclude these hypotheses exactly?
Well, taken as a mickey mouse example, "all swans are white", means any observation of a non-white swan excludes the hypothesis. The *lack* of any non-white swans observed (after looking really hard for them), clearly excludes competing hypotheses like "there are black swans" or "there are brown swans", or any of the varied hypotheses of that sort.
In the case of AGW, the obvious ones you'd have to exclude are solar influence, ocean heat influence - but the larger "natural climate change" is particularly difficult to exclude. Thus far, no observations of weather or climate have ever been inconsistent with the null hypothesis of natural climate change. Ever.
A few highly successful predictions from climate scientists don't prove AGW either, but neither can you show it's "not science" by claiming it isn't falsifiable, when it most obviously is.
Being naively falsifiable is not the same has having a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis. Yes, if humans don't exist, that would falsify AGW - but the mere existence of humans doesn't mean AGW must be true (nor does it even imply it).
Of the two requirements for the scientific method, it is absolutely correct to say that #2 is the hardest and most difficult to understand:
1) a list of observations that would invalidate your hypothesis;
2) an argument that the lack of these observations would exclude all other hypotheses, including the null.
Or the null hypothesis is that CO2 doesn't affect the climate.
Well, to be more specific, you could make the question "is CO2 a cause, or an effect of climate"?
It does not have models that predict better than random. Physics does.
But again, the predictive value of a model better than random does *not* make something scientific. You could simply be getting lucky:)
If the climate didn't match the prediction, that would falsify the model.
Okay, so you have 27 models, with hundreds of runs each. All of them assume that CO2 drives temperature. 15 of them have predictions that fail. Have we falsified the central conceit that CO2 drives temperature?
So, let's be clear "model" is a poor proxy for "hypothesis", especially when they have multiple degrees of freedom for tuning parameters.
If the prediction turns out incorrec then your model was flawed.
Or the data was flawed. But what part of the model was flawed?
If you had 20 out of 20 people who read that horoscope say "wow, that matched me perfectly!", it wouldn't validate the source of that prediction. We'll call that scenario 1:
"correct model prediction, incorrect model"
You can also have the converse, where due to bad data input, your otherwise perfect model fails to make a prediction. We'll call that scenario 2:
"incorrect model prediction, correct model"
Of course, you can derive two more (correct prediction/correct model, incorrect prediction/incorrect model).
The whole point of falsifiability is that it allows us to discern between these cases - when you *don't* have falsifiability, the ambiguity is wicked.
Which is exactly why I find the "extreme catastrophic consequences are possible!" argument unpersuasive.
Just within the past 100 years, we've had about 1C of warming. There is no clear indication that 1918 was better than 2018, on *any* measure. In fact, I'd argue that in almost every measure of well being of the biosphere, things have gotten *better*.
Falsifiability is the most basic criteria for the scientific method.
And yes, M-theory is "sciencey", but until they have a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis, it's simply navel gazing, like economics, or other social sciences:)
Slashdot Mirror
Are you really suggesting that you can eliminate heatwaves and forest fires?
Heatwaves and forest fires have literally existed since heat and forests existed. To imagine that you can use the number of forest fires this year, or any year in the future, as a proxy for the overall state of the economy, is ludicrous - and that's assuming you can identify any sort of trend in the number of global forest fires :)
Again, there's no forest fire economic model that can hindcast back to 1918, nor forecast into 2118 with any sort of accuracy - even if you stipulate that forest fires will increase because of increased average global temperature.
From 1918 to 2018, how much economic damage can you attribute to the items on your list? Hell, just even go from 1945-2018, to cover the post-war expansion of industry, and find any reason for us to believe that we are worse off on any of the items you mentioned in 2018 than 1945. (Do me the favor and use constant dollars when making comparisons, of course - "increased costs" without factoring in inflation are a special flavor of tasty cherry picking :) )
You are extrapolating from an uncontested fact (global average temperatures will increase at a rate of 1C/century), to wild, unfounded predictions of economic doom.
Your false certainty suggests perhaps you're the sociopath without morals :)
Hrm. Wouldn't we have a wide spread pattern of heat records if the globe was warming naturally? How does this compare to say, the period from the Little Ice Age to 1940? Obviously, we had a much less robust temperature network before then to observe temperatures, but oh, I don't know, pick 1850-1932, what was the pattern of "record high" temperatures each year during that warming period?
I mean, how can you *not* have more record highs if you're naturally warming?
The problem here is that it seems like the alarmists are taking something that is *necessary* for their hypothesis, and asserting it is *sufficient* in and of itself to prove them right. It's obvious to anyone looking at it from the outside that "118 all time heat records" is not nearly sufficient to make all of the complex and grand claims that humans are causing all global climate change, and that it is going to doom us all to the nether levels of hell at some indeterminate time in the future.
Why not just make the whole argument, rather than making a very, very poor one? Is this just a victory lap, like Trump crowing about 4.1% 2Q growth? Yes, it's *consistent* with his narrative that his tax bill and deregulation is helping the economy, but isn't it true that we would observe the same thing if the underlying economics had nothing to do with his actions?
You have exactly zero credible economic models that can make any reliable predictions, much less hindcast, on a 100 year time span.
Nobody in 1918 had any idea what the world economy was going to look like in 2018 - and you have exactly zero percent chance of having a model that will accurately predict what the world economy is going to look like in 2118.
It surprises me how much zealous certainty some people have, be it deeply religious christians, or deeply devout liberals.
I think that Dilbert got it right - even if we 100% believe everything that has ever been said about a global climate model that predicts human CO2 emissions will cause increased average global temperature over every timescale, we have exactly 0 reliable economic models over any timescale.
We literally have no reason to believe that any amount of global warming will be a *bad* thing overall, by any economic metric. Anyone who pretends otherwise is extending their confidence into a realm that doesn't deserve it.
Sounds like a crime was committed.
Sounds like maybe someone should be prosecuted.
Was a police report filed? Has someone been jailed?
I'm calling shenanigans until we git a pic of someone in cuffs.
Okay, so CO2 is a effect of temperature, not a cause.
Glad you accept that. We've got a lot less to worry about now :)
There is no law of physics that says every joule of greenhouse effect from CO2 will create 3 joules of additional greenhouse effect from H2O. That's a tunable model parameter, put in there to support an argument, not because it is self evident.
Excellent. We once again agree that simply adding a source of CO2 will not flatly increase atmospheric CO2 levels. Can you agree that we don't have accurate models for those internal reactions?
I believe the work that Curry has done has drawn that down to about 1.05 - 4.05, with a best estimate of about 1.64 (close to the low end of the prior range).
That being said, there's no reason for us to expect that ECS 1.05 is harmful, nor is there reason for us to expect ECS 4.05 is harmful.
I'll also note that ECS doesn't relate to emissions, it relates to eventual atmospheric CO2 concentration - after all of the reactions of sources and sinks are factored in.
The funny thing here is that alarmists imply that the high level of uncertainty means we know that the central conceit, that human CO2 emissions are the dominant factor in atmospheric CO2 levels, is true. That is an open question, and one that can only be addressed scientifically if we put together a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement.
I'm agreeing with you as hard as I can - there are definitely things we could have done in the early 1900s that could have helped, like making sure the archduke ferdinand was better protected, or killing Ancel Keys in the womb before he was able to promulgate his low-fat hypothesis into our dietary advice :).
But all things considered, besides a few side trips into massive wars and socialist genocides of hundreds of millions of people, I think we've been moving in the right direction for the past 100 years. I mean, as much as I hate jihadis, and love the idea of eradicating them from the planet, they did less harm than either Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot. The twin towers falling was much more symbolic than it was absolutely devastating...and our oversized response to it, while perfectly understandable from a visceral and even an example setting perspective, is arguably a misjudgment of absolute risk.
By the same token, I think our fascination with 1C/century warming, while understandable from a visceral level, and maybe even justifiable in terms of say, driving efficiency, is much more symbolic than say, the evils of socialism and collapse of economies the size of venezuela.
So, I'm sitting in 1918. We know about CO2, and about the potential impact it has on global average temperatures.
Do I jump on the natural petroleum bandwagon, and create the miracles of the industrial age and technology, or do I insist that we don't jump out of that plane, and just keep on going with our horse and buggies? :)
I agree, uncertainty can definitely look like wishful thinking - but can you see how your certainty can be seen in the same light?
Yeah, except for the fact that the butterfly effect blows that all out of the water - can't sue a butterfly on the other side of the planet :)
I guess I would imagine it this way - pretend it takes 200 trillion to reduce emissions. And pretend that we discover a CO2 extraction process in 2075 that only costs 200 billion, to get back to 350ppm. Does it really make sense to start spending the 200 trillion now?
Given the wild impact of technology from 1918 to 2018, I have no idea what we can expect from 2018 to 2118 - and to pretend that today, we could have any rational idea of what the *right* thing to do is, just seems like hubris.
I mean, really, think about just how many billion people we can support today because of natural petroleum and the haber process - we've made life *incredibly* better, even in shithole countries, over the past 100 years. CO2 issues seem like a rounding error in comparison.
Well, I'd avoid counting standard corporate tax deductions available to any industry (depreciation, etc), and I think once you take that away, natural petroleum gets effectively $0/kWh of subsidy. I'd be happy if the $/kWh of subsidy was kept equal, although the best world would be $0/kWh.
If you can beat natural petroleum on the open market, both in terms of price and reliability, there's no need to encourage anything - human greed will do the job for you. Both solar and wind have serious price and reliability problems, but that doesn't mean they can't figure things out eventually. For those who want to invest in companies taking that risk, that's great, but redistributing our wealth to make investments seems like a poor idea to outsource to the government.
Here's the basic truth - we setup systems of incentives, and it will encourage behavior. Setup enough government subsidies, and Elon Musk will create a company to take advantage of it. Create a reliable, stable source of energy that is cheaper than the alternatives, without any subsidies, and every venture capitalist will want a piece of that pie.
No central government 5 year plan ever worked, and no centrally planned initiative has any hope of dealing with the complexities of economies of free individuals. The thought that some infinitely wise technocrats could possibly map out a perfect system of incentives to get to their end goal of replacing 90% of the world's energy in 10 or even 20 years doesn't pass the giggle test.
In 1918, you had to take a kick to the crotch to get 1 million.
In 2018, now you're trying to avoid the crotch kick, and still get the 1 million.
I don't think that's the offer on the table. I think that our technology acceleration from 1918 to 2018 is *directly* related to the incredibly low absolute cost of natural petroleum energy - and to think that we can get the same benefit by crippling our energy costs, by making them absolutely costlier, is to misunderstand the choice at hand.
Now, if you can do wind, solar, or nuclear, without any subsidies, and provide cheap, reliable electricity 24/7 without mining a bunch of rare metals in batteries, then great! Maybe you can get the 1 million without the crotch kick! But if in order to avoid the crotch kick, you need to cut your balls off, that's not so good :)
And you don't think that the technology changes of 2018 to 2118 will make our worries about another 1C of warming completely irrelevant?
You've already seen that 1918 to 2018 that any measurable cost of 1C warming was completely overwhelmed by the technology changes during that period.
Sincerely, trying to understand your position - do you really believe that the technology changes of the next 100 years will be less impressive than the technology changes of the past 100 years?
Do you think there will be no significant technology changes from 2018 to 2118? :)
Seriously, the idea that we've hit some sort of stable state of technology that we can extrapolate out to 2118 is *really* silly. You might have been able to make the case from 1200AD to 1300AD was predictable, or maybe even 1500AD to 1600AD, but given the speed of change in technology from 1900AD to 2000AD, can we really be so bold as to declare we know what 2100AD is going to look like?
Well, past results do not guarantee future performance and all that, but your assertion of costs outweighing benefits just isn't persuasive given the observed history.
Literally, from 1918 to 2018, over a hundred years, we've got 1C of warming, and grand expansion of humanity and the biosphere. Now you're asserting that if we see another 1C of warming from 2018 to 2118, we're going to see some sort of grand contraction of humanity and the biosphere.
Of course, I know lots of evangelicals who believe in Revelations and the coming apocalypse, but it's never been persuasive enough for me to become a believer :)
Okay, let me try non-fancy language for you:
Does more CO2 from a single source make temperature around the world go up, or does more temperature around the world make CO2 go up?
No, that's just the scientific method :) You can't just have a tunable model with 20-degrees of freedom, and continually tune it to match observations - ad hoc special pleadings (sorry for the fancy language) are a sign of weakness, not strength.
Climate models fail all the time. Even the tuned ones will have runs that fail to match observations. They fail to accurately predict, or even accurately hindcast known data, all the time. The essential question when observing these failures is this:
1) is the model flawed
2) is the data flawed
If you've determined that the model is flawed, and you've got 20-degrees of freedom to tune it, it is nigh impossible to diagnose exactly which part of the model is flawed, but your breakdown is this:
1) model parameters are flawed
2) model algorithms are flawed
So far, the excuse has always been #1 (oh, we just need to tune these three arbitrary co-efficients, and things are fine). The problem is that essentially makes #2 unfalsifiable (it can always be rescued by tuning the side parameters, rather than the central conceit).
My guess is this will be difficult for you to read as well, and I apologize in advance. Communicating clearly without using academic vocabulary can be a challenge.
I'm going to call projection on this one.
You literally took a multivariate equation (well being on a number of axes, including number of storms per decade), and narrowed it down to a single variable (number of storms per decade), and then presented a false dichotomy (either you like more storms per decade, or you hate more storms per decade).
Whether we start at 1918 and go to 2018, or start at 2018 and go to 2118, there's no reason to believe that the benefits of natural petroleum will not outweigh the costs. From 1918, we know this is true through observation. From 2018, this might be a bit more fuzzy, but it is so in both directions - nobody in 1918 could have made accurate economic predictions for 2018, and there's no rational person who assumes we can write an economic model in 2018 that will accurately represent 2118.
My goalposts start at 1918, and end at 2018. They include all the costs and benefits of natural petroleum during that time.
There is no doubt that CO2 in the atmosphere behaves in ways predicted by the laws of physics. The difficulty is when you assume that CO2's further interactions with say, water vapor, create a tripling effect of heat retention, or when you assume that all other sources and sinks of CO2 do not react to perturbations (say, like plant growth). None of those effects have reliable models, and given their stochastic nature, may never have reliable runs even if they are 100% accurate (that is to say, small differences in the input criteria may yield wildly varying results, making the predictive utility of even a perfectly written physical model essentially zero).
The effect observed in the paleoclimate record is tricky, because the paleoclimate record is much lower resolution, and actually shows us that CO2 levels *lag* temperature changes, rather than lead them. This is contra to the hypothesis of AGW.
The challenge is this - if the observations can be explained by three-thousand competing hypotheses, how do you figure out which one is true? They must somehow be excluded, through an argument of implications, or through differing falsification criteria.
Thus far, all observations in the modern era are consistent with the null hypothesis of natural climate change.
You're turning a multivariate equation into a single variable equation. Do you believe they would be willing to see less of those events, if it required them to return to the technology and lifestyle of 1918? Or do you believe that they would be willing to see more of those events, and live in the technological golden age of 2018?
It is prima facie evident that 2018 is better than 1918. Anyone who would prefer the world of 1918 is deluded or lying, or perhaps really really racist and looking to see Birth of a Nation in the white house again.
There is no reason to believe that 2118, even with another 1C of warming, would be worse than 2018.
Well, taken as a mickey mouse example, "all swans are white", means any observation of a non-white swan excludes the hypothesis. The *lack* of any non-white swans observed (after looking really hard for them), clearly excludes competing hypotheses like "there are black swans" or "there are brown swans", or any of the varied hypotheses of that sort.
In the case of AGW, the obvious ones you'd have to exclude are solar influence, ocean heat influence - but the larger "natural climate change" is particularly difficult to exclude. Thus far, no observations of weather or climate have ever been inconsistent with the null hypothesis of natural climate change. Ever.
Being naively falsifiable is not the same has having a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis. Yes, if humans don't exist, that would falsify AGW - but the mere existence of humans doesn't mean AGW must be true (nor does it even imply it).
Of the two requirements for the scientific method, it is absolutely correct to say that #2 is the hardest and most difficult to understand:
1) a list of observations that would invalidate your hypothesis;
2) an argument that the lack of these observations would exclude all other hypotheses, including the null.
For further reference: http://stephenjaygould.org/ctr...
Are there more people in costal Texas in 2018 than 1918?
Are those people healthier by any measure? Living longer? More prosperous?
Has the foliage greened? Is there more biomass?
More personally, would you rather live in costal Texas in 2018, or in 1918, and *why*?
Well, to be more specific, you could make the question "is CO2 a cause, or an effect of climate"?
But again, the predictive value of a model better than random does *not* make something scientific. You could simply be getting lucky :)
Okay, so you have 27 models, with hundreds of runs each. All of them assume that CO2 drives temperature. 15 of them have predictions that fail. Have we falsified the central conceit that CO2 drives temperature?
So, let's be clear "model" is a poor proxy for "hypothesis", especially when they have multiple degrees of freedom for tuning parameters.
Or the data was flawed. But what part of the model was flawed?
I'm agreeing with you as hard as I can :)
If you had 20 out of 20 people who read that horoscope say "wow, that matched me perfectly!", it wouldn't validate the source of that prediction. We'll call that scenario 1:
"correct model prediction, incorrect model"
You can also have the converse, where due to bad data input, your otherwise perfect model fails to make a prediction. We'll call that scenario 2:
"incorrect model prediction, correct model"
Of course, you can derive two more (correct prediction/correct model, incorrect prediction/incorrect model).
The whole point of falsifiability is that it allows us to discern between these cases - when you *don't* have falsifiability, the ambiguity is wicked.
Which is exactly why I find the "extreme catastrophic consequences are possible!" argument unpersuasive.
Just within the past 100 years, we've had about 1C of warming. There is no clear indication that 1918 was better than 2018, on *any* measure. In fact, I'd argue that in almost every measure of well being of the biosphere, things have gotten *better*.
Falsifiability is the most basic criteria for the scientific method.
And yes, M-theory is "sciencey", but until they have a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis, it's simply navel gazing, like economics, or other social sciences :)