Carbon issue reduction is at least a billion-player game, with each player benefiting from the carbon reduction of others.
Hence it's not a Prisoner's Dilemma.
The only way to solve this is to impose a cost on people emitting CO2. The only way to do that is government
Fossil fuels are expensive and markets already have plenty of incentives to develop cheaper alternatives; that's why renewables are coming down in price year after year, and they'll probably be competitive in another decade provided we don't hit another recession and the economy comes humming along.
If you impose a cost on people emitting CO2, all you do is make people poorer and make it take disproportionately longer to develop renewable energies. So, you end up with more carbon in the atmosphere by the time people actually switch to renewable energy, it just takes longer to get there. So, that's not a solution. If government wants to help, it should reduce corporate taxes and redistributionary policies that redirect money from long term investments to consumption, because money spent on consumption is not spent on developing new technologies.
Government actions have worked extremely well to reduce pollution of various sorts in the past.
Government actions also have worked extremely well to cause massive pollution of various sorts in the past, to help cronies enrich themselves at the expense of taxpayers under the cover of "environmentalism", and to shield polluters from prosecution.
That's important because "basic physics" is clear, solid, and accepted science, while empirical models with fitted parameters, economic predictions, etc. are not.
Um, correct me if I'm wrong but aren't empirical observations how we test the validity of our theories.
You can take a model based on physical laws, make predictions, and compare those with reality. That's not an empirical model. That's what a "model derived from basic physics" is and it's what Manabe and Wetherald do.
An empirical model is where you take measurements, fit a graph, and then make predictions by extrapolating from that graph. Those models are not derived from "basic science", they are statistical constructs. They are very useful in areas of science where you have lots of data and independent replication, but if you use such models as part of climate models, you can't use predictions from the climate model to test its validity anymore.
The effects of methane as a greenhouse gas is basic physics. A change in albedo is basic physics. Pretending they're not, pretending that including them in models somehow invalidates the model, is misrepresenting "basic physics".
Yes, the effects of methane are basic physics, but the amount of methane being released (either anthropogenic or through feedback) is speculation. That makes the entire prediction of the model speculative.
Given what I've seen of human nature, all I can say to that is "Good!". For what it's worth, based on those figures, and assuming no other factors, the absolute worst case scenario (all recoverable and used, none sequestered or stored) would be atmospheric concentrations of about 840 ppm, leading to an increase in temperature of maybe 3.5 degrees (again, v roughly).
Yet, IPCC has scenarios of close to 1000 ppm by 2100. Getting there requires extrapolating 20th century emissions growth until 2100. That's economically completely unrealistic, because no matter what the remaining reserves may be, the cost of mining grows as we use them up, meaning demand will drop. So, 840 ppm or 1000 ppm by 2100 just isn't in the cards.
I didn't realise I'd attributed the cause at all.
It's kind of implicit in "despite all the denial, despite all the entrenched interests", factors that are only relevant to government intervention, not free markets.
In any case, I'm perfectly happy with people speculating about emissions growth, looking at worst case scenarios, building empirical models, and all that. What I object to is when speculative models, empirical models, or models making strong economic assumptions are presented as having been derived from "basic science" and (by implication) that everybody must therefore accept their conclusions and predictions.
As far as I can tell, climate change according to "basic science" combined with reasonable future emissions scenarios predicts modest warming that is within the targets that IPCC already effectively says we can live with.
Right on the number, wrong on the "not all of them recoverable". That number is the "proven reserves" of coal.
I gave the total recoverable number simply to give some perspective on the IPCC prediction of 1000 ppm under their high emission scenario. That prediction requires extrapolating 20th century carbon emission growth until 2100, which is economically utterly implausible, no matter how many additional reserves we discover.
Bottom line, however, is that the comment subject is accurate: "Runaway effect? Nope" is right on the mark. "Slow but real increase in temperature over a time scale of a century" is more like it
No, the bottom line is that people keep misrepresenting IPCC predictions as being "established science", when they are a mix of a core of "basic science", and (I quote you) "feedback loops that are much more complex and less understood", predictions about poorly understood "effects of government action", and economic forecasts that assume that by 2100 we extract and burn the equivalent of all known fossil fuel reserves. On top of that misrepresentation comes even more fear mongering by famous scientists warning of runaway greenhouse effects (examples of which I quoted).
The "slow but real increase" that you refer to and that basic physics tells us about is of sufficiently small magnitude not to warrant concern or intervention: the IPCC itself says so.
Only if that mindset has anything to do with the religion, otherwise not.
Well, and that mindset does have something to do with the religion, because Islam by its own definition is related to every aspect of a person's life, i.e., totalitarian.
have, on several occasions, asked 'deniers' what would change their minds,
I have no idea why you drag "deniers" into this. The fact that temperatures are slowly increasing is obvious, as is the fact that humans are contributing to it. What we are discussing is which parts of climate change models are basic physics and which parts are not. That's important because "basic physics" is clear, solid, and accepted science, while empirical models with fitted parameters, economic predictions, etc. are not.
Well, it would be more accurate to say increased humidity can lead to increased cloud cover
Look, stop waving your hands and read the literature. The "basic physics" model is described by Manabe and Wetherald (1967), a widely accepted and respected paper. It models both water and carbon dioxide and calculates that every doubling of carbon in the atmosphere leads to a 2C increase in global average temperatures, i.e., a logarithmic dependence. It's consistent with measurements so far. When you extrapolate that to 1000 ppm, that means a temperature increase of about 2.6C.
Of course, 1000 ppm is not realistically achievable even if we wanted to reach it. I believe there is 3x10^12 t of CO2 in the atmosphere and about 1x10^12 t of known fossil fuel reserves (not all of them recoverable; I leave it to you to convert carbon to CO2).
So, that's what basic physics tells us: if we even could burn all of our fossil fuels, global average temperatures would go up maybe 2.6C, and most of that increase occurs at high latitudes. Pardon me for not panicking. You're welcome to propose more complex models, but if you assert that people should believe those more complex models because they are "basic physics", you are misrepresenting them.
last year over half of all the power generation capacity that was added, globally, was based on renewable resources. Despite all the denial, despite all the entrenched interests, we many finally be making positive steps towards dealing with the problem
You're misattributing decreases in carbon emission growth to government action. In fact, government action is the reason why carbon emissions haven't decreased faster; it's just that finally technology, markets, and economics are winning out over government obstacles.
If you read the IPCC report, you'll see what actual scientists think will happen. Smart people who study this a lot. Make honest estimates of the cost, and use any reasonable discount rate to get present value.
The IPCC report discusses discount rates (in Section 2.4.2.1), but the reasoning and policy conclusions largely ignore it.
Ever heard of the Prisoner's Dilemma? That's what we've got.
If we formulate carbon emission reduction as a two player game, no, we don't have a Prisoner's Dilemma: payoffs from carbon emission reductions are simply additive, and player interactions are repeated, extended, and involve communications.
Even if this were an instance of a Prisoner's Dilemma, you might wish for government to solve it for you, but government generally won't do that because the people constituting government play their own games with both citizens and foreign governments as adversaries. That's why it is absurd to believe that government force and compulsion will solve your Prisoner's Dilemmas for you, even if climate change was an instance of that.
Ah yes, the mandatory "If only everyone were wise and good, this wouldn't be an issue" point.
Well, it's a basic assumption of both liberalism and democracy that people are "wise and good" enough to run their own affairs, decide who to vote for, and to make their own decisions about the truth of other people's speech. Unfortunately, large parts of the American left don't believe this to be true.
Burning coal certainly does cause deaths, but preventing those deaths doesn’t necessarily save money. After all, if people die around retirement age, you don’t have to pay pensions.
And, of course, renewable energies are not necessarily any safer: solar, biofuels, hydroelectric, etc., they all have have significant environmental consequences.
Again: that has nothing to do with Islam. But the "mind set" of the people living in such environments
That’s what defines any religion: the “mind set” of its followers.
1500 years ago it was the same in Europe
Religious mass murder and war was common in Europe as little as a few centuries ago. And I wouldn’t want a European Christian from 1500 years ago, or even 200 years ago, as a neighbor or immigrant. Heck, I don’t want even most 21st century Europeans anywhere near me.
Why would a climate model assume growth of carbon emissions? What has that to do with modeling climate?
Well they do. And it should be pretty obvious why: if you want to predict temperatures in 2050 or 2100, you need to model atmospheric carbon concentrations between now and then, and those depend on carbon emissions and their growth. That’s kind of the whole point of these kinds of models after all.
False understanding of economics. If $5 that you spend means that 10,000,000 people each save 0.005 cents (for a total savings of $500), then no, the solution wouldn't be "already widely implemented"-- even if you are one of those 10,000,000 people.
You continue to fabricate data. Thanks for illustrating how dishonest you people are.
That's the generic problem when a cost is something that can be attributed to specific individuals, but the savings are distributed. You should have learned that in basic economics 101.
Oh, I did: like the distributed costs from federal taxation and the concentrated benefits when Democrats hand that money to Solyndra and Steyer.
The highest food producing areas of Western North America in California, which by and large rely upon water from systems that are slowly but surely being effected by less and less rainfall on the mountains of West Coast
We have seen that that claim is false: overall, California's water systems will receive more, not less, water due to climate change. Your statement and fear mongering was false and based on an incorrect understanding of climate change.
As for the rest of your posting, I suggest you do some background reading because you operate under additional incorrect assumptions.
So, if that basic physics was all there was to the science, we clearly wouldn't have to worry about carbon emissions at all.
You write:
That's not true. Again: all of the current models already incorporate the effect you notice.
Correct. And in addition to that, they also incorporate a lot of assumptions for which there is little solid evidence.
A model that is composed of two parts, one part being sound physics, one part being highly speculative, ends up making highly speculative predictions overall. And that's what climate models do.
In other words incoming sunlight is barely filtered by CO2 at all, it's the light that's reflected from Earth that's 'trapped' by the CO2 in the atmosphere.
Correct. And that heat trapping effect, the greenhouse effect, is nearly saturated already. Hence, if the greenhouse effect is all there is, large increases in CO2 concentrations only lead to small temperature increases (the dependence of temperature on CO2 concentrations is logarithmic).
Increased CO2 --> Increased temperature --> Increased evaporation --> Increased temperature (due to water vapour also trapping heat) --> Increased evaporation...
Even CO2 and water vapor wouldn't be sufficient cause for concern. Note that water vapor, like CO2, has a logarithmic relationship between temperature and concentration. Furthermore, water vapor leads to increased cloud cover, which provides negative feedback.
Pretty basic, if you ask me.
Simplistic would be a better description. In fact, to get serious climate change out of the models, climate models tend to replace "basic physics" with empirical short-term relations between carbon concentrations and temperature and assume unbounded exponential growth of carbon emissions, both wildly unrealistic assumptions.
Hollywood is doomed and they know it. Computer graphics and AI is going to replace most acting, animation, and sets. It's probably going to replace a lot of screenwriting too. What does that leave? You might say that viewers might not want to identify with virtual characters, but why not? What does Hollywood have to offer in terms of real humans? A bunch of sex-obsessed, vain, self-absorbed jerks with eating disorders and skeletons in the closet. Do you want to identify with any of the actors you see on screen as people?
Hollywood is going down the same drain as journalism. Like journalists, they are going to be kicking and screaming all the way, and like journalists, they think they can hold on to power by allying with powerful political elites. But it's not going to work: the outcome is pretty much inevitable. And society will be better off for it.
Neither acting nor journalism should ever have achieved the kind of obscene power and influence that they had in the 20th century.
The greenhouse effect is established science. Its basic physics than can be demonstrated in a laboratory. Adding more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere makes the greenhouse effect stronger.
True, but the effects are diminishing with increasing concentrations. That's because CO2 acts like an optical filter, and most of the radiation is already absorbed. So, if that basic physics was all there was to the science, we clearly wouldn't have to worry about carbon emissions at all.
In order to conclude that there is any significant danger from greenhouse gases, you have to run climate models that make various assumptions about positive feedback loops; those feedback loops are not "basic physics", can't be "demonstrated in a laboratory", and are largely speculative and unproven at this point. You also have to assume that there are no additional negative feedback loops to counteract the effects, again something we don't know.
It's dishonest for you and others to conflate the basic physics of the greenhouse effect with the speculative models involving assumptions about feedback that are used to argue for the need to reduce carbon emissions.
plus the relatively gradual nature of the changes allowed life more time to adapt. The present day greenhouse gas increases are much more abrupt compared with what's been observed in the past,
There is no way of determining how rapid changes were in the past, the record isn't detailed enough, so that statement has no scientific basis.
What we do know is that mammals and primates thrived at much higher CO2 concentrations than today, and that the climate was generally milder and wetter. So if you want to argue that high carbon concentrations are a problem, you need to address that issue as well, and you need to address it better than through fabrications ("more abrupt") and handwaving ("allowed life more time to adapt"), because that is neither scientific nor rational.
Lucky then that climate change causes increased evaporation and probably overall increased precipitation.
The highest food producing areas of Western North America in California, which by and large rely upon water from systems that are slowly but surely being effected by less and less rainfall on the mountains of West Coast
Slashdot Mirror
Hence it's not a Prisoner's Dilemma.
Fossil fuels are expensive and markets already have plenty of incentives to develop cheaper alternatives; that's why renewables are coming down in price year after year, and they'll probably be competitive in another decade provided we don't hit another recession and the economy comes humming along.
If you impose a cost on people emitting CO2, all you do is make people poorer and make it take disproportionately longer to develop renewable energies. So, you end up with more carbon in the atmosphere by the time people actually switch to renewable energy, it just takes longer to get there. So, that's not a solution. If government wants to help, it should reduce corporate taxes and redistributionary policies that redirect money from long term investments to consumption, because money spent on consumption is not spent on developing new technologies.
Government actions also have worked extremely well to cause massive pollution of various sorts in the past, to help cronies enrich themselves at the expense of taxpayers under the cover of "environmentalism", and to shield polluters from prosecution.
You can take a model based on physical laws, make predictions, and compare those with reality. That's not an empirical model. That's what a "model derived from basic physics" is and it's what Manabe and Wetherald do.
An empirical model is where you take measurements, fit a graph, and then make predictions by extrapolating from that graph. Those models are not derived from "basic science", they are statistical constructs. They are very useful in areas of science where you have lots of data and independent replication, but if you use such models as part of climate models, you can't use predictions from the climate model to test its validity anymore.
Yes, the effects of methane are basic physics, but the amount of methane being released (either anthropogenic or through feedback) is speculation. That makes the entire prediction of the model speculative.
Yet, IPCC has scenarios of close to 1000 ppm by 2100. Getting there requires extrapolating 20th century emissions growth until 2100. That's economically completely unrealistic, because no matter what the remaining reserves may be, the cost of mining grows as we use them up, meaning demand will drop. So, 840 ppm or 1000 ppm by 2100 just isn't in the cards.
It's kind of implicit in "despite all the denial, despite all the entrenched interests", factors that are only relevant to government intervention, not free markets.
In any case, I'm perfectly happy with people speculating about emissions growth, looking at worst case scenarios, building empirical models, and all that. What I object to is when speculative models, empirical models, or models making strong economic assumptions are presented as having been derived from "basic science" and (by implication) that everybody must therefore accept their conclusions and predictions.
As far as I can tell, climate change according to "basic science" combined with reasonable future emissions scenarios predicts modest warming that is within the targets that IPCC already effectively says we can live with.
I gave the total recoverable number simply to give some perspective on the IPCC prediction of 1000 ppm under their high emission scenario. That prediction requires extrapolating 20th century carbon emission growth until 2100, which is economically utterly implausible, no matter how many additional reserves we discover.
No, the bottom line is that people keep misrepresenting IPCC predictions as being "established science", when they are a mix of a core of "basic science", and (I quote you) "feedback loops that are much more complex and less understood", predictions about poorly understood "effects of government action", and economic forecasts that assume that by 2100 we extract and burn the equivalent of all known fossil fuel reserves. On top of that misrepresentation comes even more fear mongering by famous scientists warning of runaway greenhouse effects (examples of which I quoted).
The "slow but real increase" that you refer to and that basic physics tells us about is of sufficiently small magnitude not to warrant concern or intervention: the IPCC itself says so.
Well, and that mindset does have something to do with the religion, because Islam by its own definition is related to every aspect of a person's life, i.e., totalitarian.
I have no idea why you drag "deniers" into this. The fact that temperatures are slowly increasing is obvious, as is the fact that humans are contributing to it. What we are discussing is which parts of climate change models are basic physics and which parts are not. That's important because "basic physics" is clear, solid, and accepted science, while empirical models with fitted parameters, economic predictions, etc. are not.
Look, stop waving your hands and read the literature. The "basic physics" model is described by Manabe and Wetherald (1967), a widely accepted and respected paper. It models both water and carbon dioxide and calculates that every doubling of carbon in the atmosphere leads to a 2C increase in global average temperatures, i.e., a logarithmic dependence. It's consistent with measurements so far. When you extrapolate that to 1000 ppm, that means a temperature increase of about 2.6C.
Of course, 1000 ppm is not realistically achievable even if we wanted to reach it. I believe there is 3x10^12 t of CO2 in the atmosphere and about 1x10^12 t of known fossil fuel reserves (not all of them recoverable; I leave it to you to convert carbon to CO2).
So, that's what basic physics tells us: if we even could burn all of our fossil fuels, global average temperatures would go up maybe 2.6C, and most of that increase occurs at high latitudes. Pardon me for not panicking. You're welcome to propose more complex models, but if you assert that people should believe those more complex models because they are "basic physics", you are misrepresenting them.
You're misattributing decreases in carbon emission growth to government action. In fact, government action is the reason why carbon emissions haven't decreased faster; it's just that finally technology, markets, and economics are winning out over government obstacles.
The IPCC report discusses discount rates (in Section 2.4.2.1), but the reasoning and policy conclusions largely ignore it.
If we formulate carbon emission reduction as a two player game, no, we don't have a Prisoner's Dilemma: payoffs from carbon emission reductions are simply additive, and player interactions are repeated, extended, and involve communications.
Even if this were an instance of a Prisoner's Dilemma, you might wish for government to solve it for you, but government generally won't do that because the people constituting government play their own games with both citizens and foreign governments as adversaries. That's why it is absurd to believe that government force and compulsion will solve your Prisoner's Dilemmas for you, even if climate change was an instance of that.
Lung cancer is quick and deadly.
Well, the "don't consume, don't spend their money on vacations" is a good part.
Yet, you claimed with utter certainty that getting rid of coal would "save billions, probably trillions".
Well, it's a basic assumption of both liberalism and democracy that people are "wise and good" enough to run their own affairs, decide who to vote for, and to make their own decisions about the truth of other people's speech. Unfortunately, large parts of the American left don't believe this to be true.
I.e., you continue to fabricate data.
Correct. That’s why economists apply discounting to future costs.
At 7% discounting (stock market returns), you should spend less than $1 in order to save $1000 in a hundred years.
At a more conservative 3% discounting, you should spend at most $5 in order to save $100 in a hundred years.
Climate change activists argue as if the discounting rate should be 0%, which is clearly wrong.
Burning coal certainly does cause deaths, but preventing those deaths doesn’t necessarily save money. After all, if people die around retirement age, you don’t have to pay pensions.
And, of course, renewable energies are not necessarily any safer: solar, biofuels, hydroelectric, etc., they all have have significant environmental consequences.
I guess that settles it! Your beliefs are correct therefore facts that contradict your beliefs must be incorrect!
That’s what defines any religion: the “mind set” of its followers.
Religious mass murder and war was common in Europe as little as a few centuries ago. And I wouldn’t want a European Christian from 1500 years ago, or even 200 years ago, as a neighbor or immigrant. Heck, I don’t want even most 21st century Europeans anywhere near me.
Well they do. And it should be pretty obvious why: if you want to predict temperatures in 2050 or 2100, you need to model atmospheric carbon concentrations between now and then, and those depend on carbon emissions and their growth. That’s kind of the whole point of these kinds of models after all.
You continue to fabricate data. Thanks for illustrating how dishonest you people are.
Oh, I did: like the distributed costs from federal taxation and the concentrated benefits when Democrats hand that money to Solyndra and Steyer.
You made a specific claim:
We have seen that that claim is false: overall, California's water systems will receive more, not less, water due to climate change. Your statement and fear mongering was false and based on an incorrect understanding of climate change.
As for the rest of your posting, I suggest you do some background reading because you operate under additional incorrect assumptions.
Nothing you have said contradicts my statement:
You write:
Correct. And in addition to that, they also incorporate a lot of assumptions for which there is little solid evidence.
A model that is composed of two parts, one part being sound physics, one part being highly speculative, ends up making highly speculative predictions overall. And that's what climate models do.
Correct. And that heat trapping effect, the greenhouse effect, is nearly saturated already. Hence, if the greenhouse effect is all there is, large increases in CO2 concentrations only lead to small temperature increases (the dependence of temperature on CO2 concentrations is logarithmic).
Even CO2 and water vapor wouldn't be sufficient cause for concern. Note that water vapor, like CO2, has a logarithmic relationship between temperature and concentration. Furthermore, water vapor leads to increased cloud cover, which provides negative feedback.
Simplistic would be a better description. In fact, to get serious climate change out of the models, climate models tend to replace "basic physics" with empirical short-term relations between carbon concentrations and temperature and assume unbounded exponential growth of carbon emissions, both wildly unrealistic assumptions.
Hollywood is doomed and they know it. Computer graphics and AI is going to replace most acting, animation, and sets. It's probably going to replace a lot of screenwriting too. What does that leave? You might say that viewers might not want to identify with virtual characters, but why not? What does Hollywood have to offer in terms of real humans? A bunch of sex-obsessed, vain, self-absorbed jerks with eating disorders and skeletons in the closet. Do you want to identify with any of the actors you see on screen as people?
Hollywood is going down the same drain as journalism. Like journalists, they are going to be kicking and screaming all the way, and like journalists, they think they can hold on to power by allying with powerful political elites. But it's not going to work: the outcome is pretty much inevitable. And society will be better off for it.
Neither acting nor journalism should ever have achieved the kind of obscene power and influence that they had in the 20th century.
True, but the effects are diminishing with increasing concentrations. That's because CO2 acts like an optical filter, and most of the radiation is already absorbed. So, if that basic physics was all there was to the science, we clearly wouldn't have to worry about carbon emissions at all.
In order to conclude that there is any significant danger from greenhouse gases, you have to run climate models that make various assumptions about positive feedback loops; those feedback loops are not "basic physics", can't be "demonstrated in a laboratory", and are largely speculative and unproven at this point. You also have to assume that there are no additional negative feedback loops to counteract the effects, again something we don't know.
It's dishonest for you and others to conflate the basic physics of the greenhouse effect with the speculative models involving assumptions about feedback that are used to argue for the need to reduce carbon emissions.
There is no way of determining how rapid changes were in the past, the record isn't detailed enough, so that statement has no scientific basis.
What we do know is that mammals and primates thrived at much higher CO2 concentrations than today, and that the climate was generally milder and wetter. So if you want to argue that high carbon concentrations are a problem, you need to address that issue as well, and you need to address it better than through fabrications ("more abrupt") and handwaving ("allowed life more time to adapt"), because that is neither scientific nor rational.
FUD about climate change comes from many supposedly authoritative sources:
Stephen Hawking: Earth Could Turn Into Hothouse Planet Like Venus
NASA scientist warns of runaway global warming
Lucky then that climate change causes increased evaporation and probably overall increased precipitation.
And, again, good thing that climate change is here to help.
The effects of government power have also been demonstrated conclusively.
Between the two, I'll take 1000 ppm CO2 any day.
You can win any argument by fabricating numbers.
No, renewables do not "save $500 in other ways" for every "$5/year added to a bill". If they did, they would already be widely adopted.