Look at how much money is involved. These are scraps. For example, the total funding discussed in these articles is around $100 million over nine years. In comparison, the World Wildlife Fund, a large non profit that is one of the bigger private-side advocacy groups for global warming theory, gets that much in public funding every three to four years.
And look who's doing the funding. It's mostly by the Koch brothers not Big Oil.
It's worth noting that the story doesn't actually show that ocean acidification has an effect on Pacific Northwest oysters, but rather that local, far higher acidification of a particular hatchery has such an effect.
Finally, the couple enlisted the help of Burke Hales, a biogeochemist and ocean ecologist at Oregon State University. He soon homed in on the carbon chemistry of the water. âoeMy wife sent a few samples in and Hales said someone had screwed up the samples because the [dissolved CO2 gas] level was so ridiculously high,â says Wiegardt, a fourth-generation oyster farmer. But the measurements were accurate. What the Whiskey Creek hatchery was experiencing was acidic seawater, caused by the ocean absorbing excessive amounts of CO2 from the air.
Interesting how your link forgot to mention that the area was experiencing unusually high CO2 levels that couldn't be explained by normal absorption of atmospheric CO2. I just scraped a little veneer off and whoops, there went the conclusion.
Most economic systems, including capitalism and communism, try to subvert the natural way property and ownership is handled (or lack thereof), with the belief that their way to distribute resources would yield better results for society.
That's a remarkably crappy way to describe what's going on. There's no "subversion" of what doesn't exist. You can have infrastructure that is somewhat capitalist and/or communist in nature which enables you to own and use things in ways that can't be done in the absence of that infrastructure.
That said, there's no need to try so hard in discrediting communism on religious grounds.
If you're going to attack it, then any weakness like this is fair game.
You know what else happened between 1970 and now? Increase of the labor force available to the developed world by around a factor of six to ten. When supply of something increases so dramatically, you should expect that the price paid for it does as well. This explains most of Krugman's observations. Robots aren't displacing human jobs - cheaper humans are displacing human jobs.
Now, I've read endless claims that due to technology, less people are working now than before. But when we look at what's going on, we see that such labor issues only exist in the developed world. And that a lot of that is because it's because it's so much harder to employ people and start new businesses than it used to be back in 1970. Rather than try to make their labor more competitive in the world, the developed world has turned around and made the problem worse while complaining about it and using that very problem as justification. For example, there are many direct effects that make hiring people more expensive, such as, minimum wage, shorter work week, and employer payments for various mandatory benefits.
And I see people continue to double down on this madness, for example, advocating shortening the work week even further. But that just means that people start to work more than one job to get by even to the point of getting paid "under the table" when the government regulation and taxation grows too much.
It's not just that these things aren't needed, but that their effect is opposite that which is intended.
The amount of energy currently used, if more properly distributed, may lift many people out of misery. Without any new, additional sources of energy. The US is of course a prime example of excessive energy use - 5% of the world's population using about 25% of the world's energy.
Ok, how is that an example of excessive energy use? I can see it as an example of above average energy use, but the term, "excessive" implies that it is somehow too much energy use.
All the definitions of religion that I have looked up include not only cultural factors, but also involve supernatural beliefs
For communism the classic supernatural belief is that someone has a permanent claim to ownership of something merely because they handled the object during its creation, and they can't get rid of this claim of ownership even if they want to.
I figure it'll run around $1 trillion, maybe even considerably less with our continued technology development. That leaves plenty of money for other things.
but let me just note that discount rates of future costs are pretty much artificial by nature
They are observed too. Which makes them valid.
The 1,4 % discount rate used in the Stern Report means that we count costs that occur 50 years into the future at half their value, which I and many (but certainly not all) economists think is reasonable.
I consider fraction of GDP to be more reasonable. That leads to a discount rate more like 3% at least through the end of the century (though it probably will decline as more of the world reaches modernity) and costs in 50 years are quartered not halved.
For example, an equal cost and and in 50 years by your discount rate would have in 50 years twice as much GDP to cover that cost. That means our ability to cover that cost has doubled in 50 years. In addition, paying for the cost now means that GDP declines somewhat over that time period (since money used for the cost isn't used to invest in growing more GDP).
Hansen's 1988 paper predicted a climate sensitivity of 3.4C per doubling CO2e. It has since been seen to follow 3.2C per doubling.
First, it's worth noting here that they have huge error bars on equilibrium temperature sensitivity. They also have yet to actually measure it. Thus, I don't believe you at all in this respect.
Actual observed temperature sensitivity or "transient" temperature sensitivity is around 1.3-1.8 C per doubling and I have yet to see evidence that equilibrium temperature sensitivity will be much different.
So, we've waited. We let the clock run. It agreed with the models.
So, now you will change, yes?
No, because they don't agree with the present.
As I mentioned earlier, we'll run the clock out and see what happens. If you're right, then reality itself will show me in error and that's far more solid than your assertions above.
Well, one reason might be that the last time CO2 levels were over 800 ppm there were no ice caps and sea level was over 200 feet higher than now. Admittedly that would take several thousand years to come to pass but it will be inevitable at those C02 levels.
Ok, so why is that particularly bad? It's a slow rise in sea level because it happens over a long period of time. Easy for humanity to adapt to it. And at the end, you have a new continent, Antarctica to colonize.
It's already reached the point where it's disrupting oyster growers in my state.
I doubt you or anyone else has even the least bit of evidence for that.
We just don't know but I think it's better to be safe than sorry.
Yet, you're only "safe than sorry" in one direction and not other directions. Impairing our civilization will cause problems as well.
For a more complete listing of the possible effects you can read the IPCC Working Group II reports
These are damaged goods. IPCC reports have been used before to exaggerate AGW, its harm, and understate the costs of AGW mitigation. I consider it just a very well funded propaganda source at this point.
Instead, if we do nothing, I think we'll be lucky after the dust settles, if most of the world will still be able to feed itself. But don't worry, evil corporations and greed will be blamed for any resulting starvation and such, not the failure of feet-dragging politicians and voters to prevent a long-predicted tragedy.
See? It works both ways.
No, I don't see that. You left out the preceding question "Why hasn't it happened already, if it's so wonderful?" IMHO we're going with the better option now despite the AGW alarmism and all the big money back that.
And have you actually looked at what is predicted in the "long-predicted tragedy"? Slight increase in sea level. Slight increase in storm intensity. Slight increases in ocean acidity. But there could be "tipping points"!
of which at least three melt-throughs are in bedrock evidenced by drilling samples
If that had happened, we'd see a huge steam release from the core hitting ground water as well as the water piled on top of the core. In other words, there'd be a lot more heat there than there actually was. But we didn't see that. What is more likely is that your alleged drilling samples don't even remotely suggest what you claim.
You could now, but probably not if you wait for a runaway positive feedback to happen.
I'm pretty sure I can get that money to stretch out. For example, what positive feedback are you thinking of? Massive methane release? Small airplanes dropping flares greatly reduce the impact of that. I could be flying them for the next millennium for maybe a few tens of millions of dollars a year.
Develop and subsidize lighter albedo roadways. Iron seeding of the Pacific. Fighting fires in northern Canada which blow soot across Greenland. Putting out coal mine fires throughout the world.
Then you get to the big projects like putting up a vast solar shade in the L1 Sun-Earth Lagrange point or dumping enough ice on the Antarctica continent for the next millennium to counter sea level rise. I think those are quite feasible on my budget.
But I don't think AGW is that serious that one really needs to do much about it even over the next millennium. I would much rather just invest that money in normal businesses.
You however, choose to substitute your own opinions for the summary of the published science presented in these reports.
My opinion is just as "scientific". Let us keep in mind that the IPCC has long shown various unscientific biases in favor of presenting AGW in a more alarming light. And I see you don't have any defense for RazzleFrog's original use of the word, "fact".
If we ask "What kinds of freedom in space does the skepticism of Arendt and Ballard place in question?" the answer would seem to be "Any conception of freedom which undermines our shared sense of vulnerability." What they point to is an appreciation that our human vulnerabilities are among those things which help to bind us together with others who share
"a life like our own".
Their kind of skepticism cannot then be answered by appeal to the removal of vulnerabilities but the latter is precisely what they find threatening. Any promise of freedoms which encroaches too far upon our shared vulnerabilities, which promises too much, will then also risk removing the basis for a specifically human sense of community.
This is from page 10. He's discussing ideas from a couple of philosophers (one, Hannah Arendt gets mentioned favorably in his Moon mining ethics paper) shared vulnerability yields a basis for a "specifically human sense of community". While he yearns for a better basis, he states that he thinks no "viable substitute" exists.
Well, let's look at historical examples of this in application. The German Nazis of the late 1930s were experts at this task, creating shared threats against mostly imaginary dangers such as Jews or Communists, which they used to build said "specifically human sense of community" and start a world war and various democide programs that killed many tens of millions of people.
So I'm not very impressed by such an ethics concern given how it's been used in the past. Maybe shared vulnerability is not that viable after all? I would suggest that if there really needs to be anything shared (and I don't see that there does), then shared goals are more worthy and ennobling than shared vulnerabilities.
But this is the sort of argument from the person who thinks they have ethical arguments against non-existing stripping mining of the Moon.
I mean I think the Arctic is just as beautiful as the moon. Are you saying that if there's an energy source there we should wreck it because you like plastic bottles?
Well, if there's something valuable there, I'm good with moderate levels of wrecking. We seem to be able to manage that. As to the Moon, one of the great ironies of this ethics article is that we probably wouldn't be able to notice complete mining of the lunar surface unless we happened to be there. Overturning the top couple of meters of lunar surface isn't really going to look all that different to us on Earth.
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Look at how much money is involved. These are scraps. For example, the total funding discussed in these articles is around $100 million over nine years. In comparison, the World Wildlife Fund, a large non profit that is one of the bigger private-side advocacy groups for global warming theory, gets that much in public funding every three to four years.
And look who's doing the funding. It's mostly by the Koch brothers not Big Oil.
Finally, the couple enlisted the help of Burke Hales, a biogeochemist and ocean ecologist at Oregon State University. He soon homed in on the carbon chemistry of the water. âoeMy wife sent a few samples in and Hales said someone had screwed up the samples because the [dissolved CO2 gas] level was so ridiculously high,â says Wiegardt, a fourth-generation oyster farmer. But the measurements were accurate. What the Whiskey Creek hatchery was experiencing was acidic seawater, caused by the ocean absorbing excessive amounts of CO2 from the air.
Interesting how your link forgot to mention that the area was experiencing unusually high CO2 levels that couldn't be explained by normal absorption of atmospheric CO2. I just scraped a little veneer off and whoops, there went the conclusion.
It is an example because it specifically talks about the US, which is no longer a free market capitalist society.
So somehow energy use in a non-free market capitalist country is automatically "excessive"? I consider that opinion merely irrational.
And highly subsidized energy isn't "cheap" energy.
Having said that, I'm all for selling electricity in relatively free markets.
Most economic systems, including capitalism and communism, try to subvert the natural way property and ownership is handled (or lack thereof), with the belief that their way to distribute resources would yield better results for society.
That's a remarkably crappy way to describe what's going on. There's no "subversion" of what doesn't exist. You can have infrastructure that is somewhat capitalist and/or communist in nature which enables you to own and use things in ways that can't be done in the absence of that infrastructure.
That said, there's no need to try so hard in discrediting communism on religious grounds.
If you're going to attack it, then any weakness like this is fair game.
You know what else happened between 1970 and now? Increase of the labor force available to the developed world by around a factor of six to ten. When supply of something increases so dramatically, you should expect that the price paid for it does as well. This explains most of Krugman's observations. Robots aren't displacing human jobs - cheaper humans are displacing human jobs.
Now, I've read endless claims that due to technology, less people are working now than before. But when we look at what's going on, we see that such labor issues only exist in the developed world. And that a lot of that is because it's because it's so much harder to employ people and start new businesses than it used to be back in 1970. Rather than try to make their labor more competitive in the world, the developed world has turned around and made the problem worse while complaining about it and using that very problem as justification. For example, there are many direct effects that make hiring people more expensive, such as, minimum wage, shorter work week, and employer payments for various mandatory benefits.
And I see people continue to double down on this madness, for example, advocating shortening the work week even further. But that just means that people start to work more than one job to get by even to the point of getting paid "under the table" when the government regulation and taxation grows too much.
It's not just that these things aren't needed, but that their effect is opposite that which is intended.
You neglect the fact that the number of jobs removed FAR outnumber the amount of new jobs created or even available to begin with.
So we've probably removed via technology more jobs than currently exist. What should one conclude from that "fact"?
We can put you in charge of the State Department For Deciding If A Person Really Needs That.
LOL, I'm sure he'd be a good fit.
The amount of energy currently used, if more properly distributed, may lift many people out of misery. Without any new, additional sources of energy. The US is of course a prime example of excessive energy use - 5% of the world's population using about 25% of the world's energy.
Ok, how is that an example of excessive energy use? I can see it as an example of above average energy use, but the term, "excessive" implies that it is somehow too much energy use.
All the definitions of religion that I have looked up include not only cultural factors, but also involve supernatural beliefs
For communism the classic supernatural belief is that someone has a permanent claim to ownership of something merely because they handled the object during its creation, and they can't get rid of this claim of ownership even if they want to.
Those crazy Bavarians are hardly Germans, they're like Texans.
You mean, there are other kinds of Germans out there? And they're not like Texans? The horror.
I figure it'll run around $1 trillion, maybe even considerably less with our continued technology development. That leaves plenty of money for other things.
You presented only future costs. It's not a "contradiction". It's a biased argument.
How long will it take you to correct your position?
Several decades as I've noted elsewhere. We'll just have wait for independent confirmation of the IPCC's projections.
but let me just note that discount rates of future costs are pretty much artificial by nature
They are observed too. Which makes them valid.
The 1,4 % discount rate used in the Stern Report means that we count costs that occur 50 years into the future at half their value, which I and many (but certainly not all) economists think is reasonable.
I consider fraction of GDP to be more reasonable. That leads to a discount rate more like 3% at least through the end of the century (though it probably will decline as more of the world reaches modernity) and costs in 50 years are quartered not halved.
For example, an equal cost and and in 50 years by your discount rate would have in 50 years twice as much GDP to cover that cost. That means our ability to cover that cost has doubled in 50 years. In addition, paying for the cost now means that GDP declines somewhat over that time period (since money used for the cost isn't used to invest in growing more GDP).
Hansen's 1988 paper predicted a climate sensitivity of 3.4C per doubling CO2e. It has since been seen to follow 3.2C per doubling.
First, it's worth noting here that they have huge error bars on equilibrium temperature sensitivity. They also have yet to actually measure it. Thus, I don't believe you at all in this respect.
Actual observed temperature sensitivity or "transient" temperature sensitivity is around 1.3-1.8 C per doubling and I have yet to see evidence that equilibrium temperature sensitivity will be much different.
So, we've waited. We let the clock run. It agreed with the models.
So, now you will change, yes?
No, because they don't agree with the present.
As I mentioned earlier, we'll run the clock out and see what happens. If you're right, then reality itself will show me in error and that's far more solid than your assertions above.
Follow the money is the elephant in the room? Absolutely agree. *cough*-big-oil-*cough*.
Better look at what side big oil is on then. They're getting rich off of things like biofuels and renewable energy.
Well, one reason might be that the last time CO2 levels were over 800 ppm there were no ice caps and sea level was over 200 feet higher than now. Admittedly that would take several thousand years to come to pass but it will be inevitable at those C02 levels.
Ok, so why is that particularly bad? It's a slow rise in sea level because it happens over a long period of time. Easy for humanity to adapt to it. And at the end, you have a new continent, Antarctica to colonize.
It's already reached the point where it's disrupting oyster growers in my state.
I doubt you or anyone else has even the least bit of evidence for that.
We just don't know but I think it's better to be safe than sorry.
Yet, you're only "safe than sorry" in one direction and not other directions. Impairing our civilization will cause problems as well.
For a more complete listing of the possible effects you can read the IPCC Working Group II reports
These are damaged goods. IPCC reports have been used before to exaggerate AGW, its harm, and understate the costs of AGW mitigation. I consider it just a very well funded propaganda source at this point.
Instead, if we do nothing, I think we'll be lucky after the dust settles, if most of the world will still be able to feed itself. But don't worry, evil corporations and greed will be blamed for any resulting starvation and such, not the failure of feet-dragging politicians and voters to prevent a long-predicted tragedy.
See? It works both ways.
No, I don't see that. You left out the preceding question "Why hasn't it happened already, if it's so wonderful?" IMHO we're going with the better option now despite the AGW alarmism and all the big money back that.
And have you actually looked at what is predicted in the "long-predicted tragedy"? Slight increase in sea level. Slight increase in storm intensity. Slight increases in ocean acidity. But there could be "tipping points"!
of which at least three melt-throughs are in bedrock evidenced by drilling samples
If that had happened, we'd see a huge steam release from the core hitting ground water as well as the water piled on top of the core. In other words, there'd be a lot more heat there than there actually was. But we didn't see that. What is more likely is that your alleged drilling samples don't even remotely suggest what you claim.
You could now, but probably not if you wait for a runaway positive feedback to happen.
I'm pretty sure I can get that money to stretch out. For example, what positive feedback are you thinking of? Massive methane release? Small airplanes dropping flares greatly reduce the impact of that. I could be flying them for the next millennium for maybe a few tens of millions of dollars a year.
Develop and subsidize lighter albedo roadways. Iron seeding of the Pacific. Fighting fires in northern Canada which blow soot across Greenland. Putting out coal mine fires throughout the world.
Then you get to the big projects like putting up a vast solar shade in the L1 Sun-Earth Lagrange point or dumping enough ice on the Antarctica continent for the next millennium to counter sea level rise. I think those are quite feasible on my budget.
But I don't think AGW is that serious that one really needs to do much about it even over the next millennium. I would much rather just invest that money in normal businesses.
And what am I ignoring by stating that future costs are relevant to current evaluation?
Future benefits.
For example, there are benefits to global warming, such as more arable land in the Northern hemisphere and possible opening of the Northwest Passage.
You however, choose to substitute your own opinions for the summary of the published science presented in these reports.
My opinion is just as "scientific". Let us keep in mind that the IPCC has long shown various unscientific biases in favor of presenting AGW in a more alarming light. And I see you don't have any defense for RazzleFrog's original use of the word, "fact".
If we ask "What kinds of freedom in space does the skepticism of Arendt and Ballard place in question?" the answer would seem to be "Any conception of freedom which undermines our shared sense of vulnerability." What they point to is an appreciation that our human vulnerabilities are among those things which help to bind us together with others who share "a life like our own". Their kind of skepticism cannot then be answered by appeal to the removal of vulnerabilities but the latter is precisely what they find threatening. Any promise of freedoms which encroaches too far upon our shared vulnerabilities, which promises too much, will then also risk removing the basis for a specifically human sense of community.
This is from page 10. He's discussing ideas from a couple of philosophers (one, Hannah Arendt gets mentioned favorably in his Moon mining ethics paper) shared vulnerability yields a basis for a "specifically human sense of community". While he yearns for a better basis, he states that he thinks no "viable substitute" exists.
Well, let's look at historical examples of this in application. The German Nazis of the late 1930s were experts at this task, creating shared threats against mostly imaginary dangers such as Jews or Communists, which they used to build said "specifically human sense of community" and start a world war and various democide programs that killed many tens of millions of people.
So I'm not very impressed by such an ethics concern given how it's been used in the past. Maybe shared vulnerability is not that viable after all? I would suggest that if there really needs to be anything shared (and I don't see that there does), then shared goals are more worthy and ennobling than shared vulnerabilities.
But this is the sort of argument from the person who thinks they have ethical arguments against non-existing stripping mining of the Moon.
Well, why hasn't it happened already? And what does your argument have to do with slavery?
I mean I think the Arctic is just as beautiful as the moon. Are you saying that if there's an energy source there we should wreck it because you like plastic bottles?
Well, if there's something valuable there, I'm good with moderate levels of wrecking. We seem to be able to manage that. As to the Moon, one of the great ironies of this ethics article is that we probably wouldn't be able to notice complete mining of the lunar surface unless we happened to be there. Overturning the top couple of meters of lunar surface isn't really going to look all that different to us on Earth.