Is a "Renewable Energy Standard" a good approach?

Great Debates
81

The Stern Review has been widely discredited for using fanciful discount rates in determining the present value of future damage, and if you correct for real numbers the report discredits itself in its stated purpose of carrying out real economic cost-benefit analysis of the problem and possible solutions.

No, I’d propose that any attempt to deal with the problem through rationing be contingent on similar programs being mutually applied in China and India, and that unilaterally helping to lower their oil costs and move manufacturing to their countries is probably not a helpful way to get them to cooperate. You have to convince them that there will be no free rides for them, not that you’ll just take it on the chin if they won’t help out.

And it’s an open question whether or not it would be even helpful to unilaterally lower your oil footprint. The bottom line is that every drop of oil that can be recovered from the ground and burned for less money than its alternatives - will be burned. That’s just a fact of the fungible world market for oil. One country, even one as large as the United States, cannot control it. Not unless you’re willing to start wars over it.

The only answer that will ultimately keep the oil in the ground is to come up with a cheaper source so that the world voluntarily shifts. Or, you could wait a little while until the price of oil naturally rises above its competitive market price. Then it will stop being used, just as we stopped using whale oil.

Now coal is another matter. The U.S. can lower its coal consumption without feedback effects from other countries, but that won’t stop manufacturing jobs from leaving if energy costs make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive. Then you’ll have the effect of accelerating the process of relocating the world’s manufacturing to the dirtiest, least energy efficient regions.

This is not a simple problem. Clamoring to ‘DO SOMETHING’, when no one quite knows what to do, is worse than doing nothing at all. Remember the push for biofuels a few years ago, which triggered millions of dollars of new agriculture subsidies that the taxpayers are going to pay forever? How is that working out for the environment? What if all that money had simply been used to buy up carbon credits or fun research into carbon sequestration or wind power? Until you know what your priorities are, what the various costs and benefits of the alternatives are, you’re just shooting in the dark.

I’ll believe it when I see it. China has a long history of raping its environment and taking enormous risks with the population. They’re still energy starved and face difficulties in the growing disparity between the people who live in the cities and the rural underclass.

Hell, America can’t be convinced of it, and I suspect the Chinese will be a harder sell.

[/quote]
As far as making petroleum cheaper - I think in a moderate term it will be a moderately priced or higher as OPEC will decrease production to keep the price above a minimum floor. Of course if we did reach true peak oil then rises would be inevitable; I hope that oil is made fairly superfluous before then.
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You might be right about OPEC. OPEC has lost a lot of its power to control prices over the last few years, but the effects we’re talking about are probably small enough that OPEC could make up the difference with quotas. But OPEC is on shaky ground these days as well, with new non-OPEC producers ramping up production and other energy alternatives encroaching on the market.

82

DSeid, thanks for your reply regarding costings. Also, thank you for the gentle moderation in keeping the thread on track.

I asked Der Trihs above, you might have missed it:

[QUOTE=intention]
So the question is: how are we to estimate the cost of the rise in both temperature and CO2 from say 1900-2000? That will give us a baseline. But what in all of that do you plan to count?

Depending on the location, the ocean rose from 8" to 12" over that time … how much of that rise was due to CO2? What costs do you plan to ascribe to that?

In general, growing seasons in the area where most of the world’s food is grown (NH extratropics) lengthened over that time. Surely you plan to include the increase in production in your “costs”?

Over that time, millions of dollars was spent enriching the CO2 levels in greenhouses. Rising CO2 levels decreased the grower’s CO2 costs … do you plan to include that? And more to the point, over that time, worldwide the increasing CO2 did the same thing it does in a greenhouse … increased plant growth. Do you plan to include that increase in bioproduction in your “costs”?

A warmer world is, ceteris paribus, a wetter world … in the 20th century, was that a net cost (floods) or a net gain (rain for thirsty plants)?

Come back with a list of the costs and benefits of the 1°F 20th century warming, and how much of each of them we should ascribe to CO2, and we’ll talk
[/QUOTE]

I make the same invitation to you. To unscramble the 20th century you have to say:

a) Which particular changes (in e.g. 20th century death rates, storm frequency, growing season length), were from rising temperature, and which changes were not from rising temperature, and which changes were partly from rising temperatures (with percentages).

b) What percentage of the rising temperature was due to humans (through landuse change, white aerosols, black aerosols, CFCs, roads and parking lots, buildings and cities, black carbon settling on snow/ice, methane, irrigation, heat content of fossil fuel, deforestation, CO2, etc.) and what percentage of the temperature rise was due to “natural causes” (often sciencespeak for “we don’t know”).

c) What percentage of the human effect was through e.g. black carbon on snow. Repeat for each of the known human effects.

d) Of the changes due to rising temperature, what is the dollar value of the benefits (e.g. less deaths from cold, longer growing seasons in the global breadbaskets [the temperate zones are where the net food exporting countries are located], reduced heating costs, greater crop variety, reduced wintertime illness, increased yields from CO2 fertilization, greater rainfall)?

e) Of the changes due to rising temperature, what is the dollar value of the costs (e.g. more deaths from heat, agricultural losses, increased cooling costs, rising sea levels, increased flooding)?

I don’t even know how you’d measure some of the stuff on that list. Global rainfall? Not known with any accuracy. Global evaporation? Same thing. What is the net dollar effect of increased rainfall and its inevitable companion, increased flooding? I say net benefit from increased rainfall, but YMMV, and I’m not foolish enough to claim we can measure it.

Now at the end of this, we end up with a dollar value. It is

(Total Benefits - Total Costs) * percentage due to humans * CO2 as % of human effects

My point is simple. You can put numbers on those things all day. At the end of the day, if three people do it, they’ll get very different numbers. Do those numbers reflect anything but the assumptions of the people evaluating the numbers? I see numbers of future damage from evil CO2 that range from zero to the sky’s the limit … pick a number.

I think it will be of net benefit to the planet. Can I prove that with numbers?

No, for all the reasons cited above. It would be just picking numbers, we don’t have enough data. But when I read the journals and stories from the Little Ice Age, it is clear that the low temperatures were causing extreme hardship, particularly to the poor, and that everyone was affected. You think we’re concerned about climate change? One of the common accusations against witches was that they caused the sleet and snow and storms (nowadays we threaten trials for oil company execs instead … that’s called “progess”). Ports were iced in, frosts struck late in the spring and early in the fall, it was bad news.

The couple of degrees the world has warmed since then have suited us well, as far as I can see. Yes, the sea rose eight inches to a foot in the 20th century … and? Sure, it’s possible we might rise another 2° in temperature … and we might do it faster, say in one century instead of three or four. I don’t see that as a problem, I suspect it will make life easier for all life. Plants like it warm. Animals like it warm.

So no, I don’t see mass starvation or planetary inundation or much of anything. We’ve seen and profited by a couple degrees warming over the last three centuries. I don’t think there will be huge ill effects if it continues to rise, and it can’t rise far. The clouds and thunderstorms cap the possible temperature in the tropics, they throttle down the sun to maintain the balance.

But do the 20th century cost/benefit analysis, DSeid, or point me to one, and we’ll see what it says. I’ve never seen one, but that means nothing. However, I certainly don’t see that we can cost the future until we can agree on how to cost the past.

Depite all of that, I would like as much as you to move to a renewable future, and I’ve worked to make it a reality. I used to teach village scale use of renewable energy for the Peace Corps. I recently wrote the concept paper for a just-funded feasibility study for a 5MW hydro plant. Nothing to do with CO2 in my case. I don’t like pollution, and I’d much rather an energy source that didn’t pump unburnt hydrocarbons and particulate matter into the air.

But to try to get there by subsidies and taxes seems foolish. We should put money into basic R&D in the energy sector. Figure out what the key technological hurdles are to renewables being truly competitive in the marketplace, and support R&D in those area. Make prizes like the X-Prize for passing certain thresholds in a variety of fields.

We do need to remember that not all renewables are created equal. A megawatt of installed hydropower capacity is worth a whole lot more than a megawatt of installed solar capacity. Sure, both put out a megawatt at peak … but the solar puts out a megawatt for a short period around local noon, less earlier and later, and nothing for half the time. The hydro plant puts out a megawatt 24/7. Which would you rather have? We should focus on the latter type of solutions.

That’s not the only difference between renewables. In the country where I live it is estimated that 70% of the energy consumed comes from renewables … could be a model for the world, except that (apart from a few small hydro projects) it is renewable biofuel, and the biofuel is wood. It is used for copra and cocoa drying, beche-de-mer drying, and household cooking. It leads to smoke, pollutants, particulates, haze, trachoma, and respiratory ailments. Not the model you’d want. People here want to get off the renewables they’re using … anyone with money here cooks with gas cylinders, and I don’t blame them a bit. Given the choice between a bit of CO2 and people getting sick from breathing wood smoke, I know what I choose …

My point is that none of this is simple, either the costing or the underlying choices. There are no clear answers. We often get to choose between two alternatives, say gas and wood for the local women’s cooking, and both options have problems. Gas costs money, is non-renewable, and comes from overseas with high transport costs. Wood is very polluting, makes people sick, but is cheap, local, and renewable. Both emit CO2. I can’t tell you which one is “right”, or which one has more “externalized costs”. I can, however, tell you how the women have voted on the question worldwide …

83

Says who? According to you, nobody can cost it, so how can we tell? We don’t even know how much of the world’s population was significantly affected by the Little Ice Age.

It seems that your willingness to accept qualitative impressions and stories of hardship as a substitute for rigorous quantitative analysis is rather dependent on whether the impressions agree with your own personal opinions.

Says who? According to you, nobody can cost it, so how can we tell?

Says who? According to you, nobody can cost it, so how can we tell?

It seems that you’re personally requiring much more strong evidentiary support for negative predictions than for your rather rosy and vague “we like it warm” positive predictions.

Your argument seems to be that we just don’t have enough data and don’t know how to analyze the costs and benefits economically, so it’s a wash. Well, in that case, I don’t see why we shouldn’t adopt the policies that the climate scientists recommend instead of the ones you recommend.

Why should I require any more hard evidence before placing my bet than you seem to have demanded before placing yours? You acknowledge that the numbers are inconclusive and the outcomes unmeasurable, and yet you’ve chosen to believe that temparature increases will prove “a net benefit”, there won’t be “mass starvation”, there won’t be “much of anything”, the temperature “can’t rise far”, we needn’t worry about “inundation”. Well, how nice, but by your own admission you’re basically believing those things by your own personal choice, not because you have anything like conclusive quantitative arguments in favor of them.

If the numbers are inconclusive and the outcomes unmeasurable, then we’re taking an unassessable risk whatever we do, so ISTM we might as well trust the pros.

84

So Kimstu and I were walking over a bridge one day. The bridge gave way, plunging us into the icy pond below.

I struggled out and said, “Man, that was awful. I nearly died.”

Kimstu said … what? That we have to cost the incident before we can say it was awful? That we should wait until Jim Hansen or Gavin Schmidt tell us whether it was awful? That we should postpone forming an opinion until a cold water immersion specialist makes his determination?

Kimstu, you are free to follow whatever guidelines you wish. I pointed out that my opinion above was just that. My opinion.

Me, I trust the stories and descriptions of the Little Ice Age, and my personal experience with too much cold and too much heat, and watching what farmers around me said and did about too much heat and too much cold, and my observations of what heat and cold do to poor people around the world, and the mortality statistics of the effects of heat and cold, and my own knowledge of how the variation in growing seasons affects crops and animals, and the observations of people who have lived through those experiences both now and in the past.

I fear that I have seen too many “pros”, from doctors to scientists to the entire world financial sector, make horrible judgements. I have to say that there are times when the worst thing you could do is to “trust the pros” or “go with the consensus” … we can see the results of trusting the consensus of the financial “pros” all around us.

So, who you gonna believe? Jim Hansen, or your own lying eyes? …

You have fallen into the fallacy of the excluded middle between “no action” and “Kyoto”. The excluded middle is the “no-regrets” option. That is to take actions now that will be valuable whether or not the world warms.

We face all of the threatened horrors of future “global warming” today. We face storms, and floods, and droughts, and rising sea levels, and disease and poverty and all of the biblical holocausts today. And any work we do on protecting people today from the ravages of climate will be valuable whether or not the world warms. That is the path I propose in this time of uncertainty.

We are not wealthy enough to waste billions on the Son of Kyoto. Kyoto had no measurable effect on temperature. If that’s the “pros” recommended solution, you can have it with my blessings. I prefer actions that actually accomplish something, a detail that the “pros” seem to have overlooked.

85

Lousy analogy. You and I did not experience the Little Ice Age everywhere on earth. We can read some stuff about bad effects of the Little Ice Age in some populations in certain regions of the earth, but we have no reliable way of quantitatively evaluating its net effect on the earth’s climate and population as a whole.

I’ve read some pretty terrifying descriptions of the bad effects of heatwaves, droughts and floods, too. But, as you are always quick to point out, we have no reliable way of quantitatively evaluating the net effect of the conditions that caused them on the earth’s climate and population as a whole.

Why should I care what you trust? You have acknowledged that there’s no reliable way of quantitatively evaluating the net effect of a past or present set of climate conditions on the earth’s population as a whole. As you keep telling us, the numbers are inconclusive and the outcomes unmeasurable.

So who cares what your own opinion happens to be about outcomes or costs or net effect? In the absence of a reliable cost-analysis method, your opinion is no more authoritative than anybody else’s. You don’t even have a degree in climate science to lend a veneer of authority to your unsupported assertions.

But according to what you just said, my eyes aren’t actually telling me anything I can rely on. The numbers are inconclusive and the outcomes unmeasurable, right? There’s no trustworthy data backing up my own opinion, or your opinion. If there’s no valid reason to trust the pros, then there’s certainly no reason to trust your opinion or mine.

Nope, I’m not ignoring the options in the middle. I’m just pointing out that according to your own position on the uncertainty of the data and the analysis, there’s no reason to think that any option is necessarily better than any other option. If we don’t have a reliable way of comparing the effects of the options quantitatively, then it’s all just a crapshoot.

Even a so-called “no-regrets” option is not necessarily better than the others. If you get hit by a catastrophe that you might have avoided, you will definitely regret not having avoided it. Even if the chance of catastrophe was so uncertain that it made good sense to focus on other activities instead of catastrophe avoidance, if the catastrophe does actually strike, you will wish you’d done differently. “No regrets” is a misnomer.

86

kimstu, thanks for the quick reply.

As I said before, you are free to follow whatever guidelines you wish. And as I also said before, it’s just my opinion. My opinion is just my opinion.

However, the fact that we cannot put reliable numbers on the various options does not make it a “crapshoot”. We make decisions on things all of the time without numbers, and without shooting dice. Nor does it mean that the experiences of people who have lived through cold times in the past and in the present are immaterial, as you seem to think. We as a society have lived through times of rising temperatures. You can throw out all of that accumulated knowledge if you wish. Me, I’ll pay attention to history.

Finally, you say:

[QUOTE=kimstu]
Even a so-called “no-regrets” option is not necessarily better than the others. If you get hit by a catastrophe that you might have avoided, you will definitely regret not having avoided it. Even if the chance of catastrophe was so uncertain that it made good sense to focus on other activities instead of catastrophe avoidance, if the catastrophe does actually strike, you will wish you’d done differently. “No regrets” is a misnomer.
[/QUOTE]

No option is “necessarily” better than the others, if it were, we’d take it and never have to worry about regrets …

You seem to misunderstand why it is called the “no-regrets” option. It is called thusly because all of the actions taken provide immediate positive benefits. It does not mean that will never regret the road not taken, that is always possible. If we waste billions to reduce CO2 with no effect on temperature, we will definitely regret not doing something else … call me crazy, but if I’m going to spend billions, I’d prefer to spend it on something that I know will be of value no matter how the climate turns out.

87

intention Stern was a cost benefit analysis, albeit one that has some criticisms floating around about it.

Interesting, I just saw this today.

Is this survey hard science? No. But they seem to be the best data we have to work with. The “low” scenario has a chance of getting into that range. The “high” scenario is largely above that range, including way above it. These possibilities concern me greatly. This is not discussing a comet strike or the sun going supeernova risks. These are large risks of catastrophic events.

Sam, I think that we are not too far off from each other in both believing that China needs to play and we need to be prepared to exert some coercive measures as global community if they do not.

It begs the question though of what constitutes “playing.” China is currently in a rapid ascent phase. Manufacturing more and, if they continue to ascend on track for becoming as big of emitters per capita as we are with many individuals owning cars. Halting that upward trajectory in its tracks and reversing it is not realistic. Slowing it down may count as success.

I’d love to see some evidence that China was committed to providing some alternative to its people to gas cars. Oh sure, I’ve already linked to the planned incentive for buying alternative fueled cars, and there are other supports they have put in place for alternative fuels in vehicles, but what would show me that they were serious would be a sizable investment in high speed rail.

Like this one.

Yeah :slight_smile: but seriously, this is meaningful investment in decreasing their future impact. It’s hard to read that as anything other than their taking the issue seriously.

88

Well, as you say, it’s totally up to you to decide what your personal view on this is.

But what puzzles me is why you are so accepting of historical anecdote, which is necessarily very incomplete and qualitative, as a source of guidance in your thinking on climate issues, while being at the same time so skeptical about observational research data and the analyses of it by climate scientists.

I mean, sure, the observational record on climate, considered as a full scientific data set, is still lamentably spotty and incomplete (although it’s rapidly growing in size). But my goodness, it’s practically ironclad evidence compared to the level of scientific validity that we see in the qualitative, subjective, hole-filled mishmash of fact and legend provided by historical sources on events like the Little Ice Age. Whence this double standard?

89

kimstu, you point me to the instrumental climate record on the Little Ice Age, and we can discuss it. Until you find it, what we have is peoples stories about that time. We know there were ice fairs on the Thames back then, hasn’t happened since. We know that ports were iced up for months at a time back then. No, we don’t have exact degrees of frost, we have reports of frost … so?

In order to see if predictions for the future might hold any truth, the first thing we must do is look at the past. I look at the past and see a couple of degrees rise since the Little Ice Age. Since that did not cause any huge dislocations of the types forecast by global warming alarmists, I take that into consideration even though we don’t have instrumental records that far back. When the stories and journals and reports of that time talk about the incredible hardships from the cold, I take that into consideration even though there were few thermometers back then.

You claim I am choosing to believe the historical record in preference to the instrumental record. I am not, for the simple reason that we don’t have instrumental records for that time, the historical record is all we have. You can throw all that out if you want to. For me, I say it is much, much better than nothing.

Finally, you still seem to think that there is some value in the scientific consensus. I give it as much weight as the financial consensus before the bursting of the recent bubble. Go back and look at some of the projections of the economic future from that time, and compare them to the actual outcome. Then ponder on whether it means anything that there was a huge consensus back then that financial times were never better and the future was never so rosy …

Next, look at all of the climate scientists claims and forecasts from a decade ago, and compare them to the actual outcome … then ponder on the value of their predictions.

I do not ignore scientists and what they say. But unlike you, I do not swallow it blindly either. I do what I have encouraged people to do many times on this board – THINK ABOUT THE CLAIMS! You don’t have to be a scientist to look at the past temperature rises and see if any of them caused massive dislocations … I have not seen that in the historical record. We warmed a degree in the last century. Where are the huge losses from that warming?

I disagree with what many climate scientists say, precisely because I have looked at the observational research data as you recommend above. I suggest that anyone who has the skills do the same. I run the numbers from the scientists claims … and though sometimes I find solid work, all too often I find huge holes. I analyze the results of the climate models … and I find that the overwhelming majority of them are not at all lifelike. Many of them show month-to-month temperature changes never seen on the earth … yet many climate scientists accept them without a thought. In fact, critical thought seems to be in very short supply among some climate scientists, theres a heap of them that seem much more interested in concealing their data and methods and making doomsday predictions than they are in examining the subject at hand.

As a result, I do the math myself. I read about previous temperature rises, and I think about them. I repeat the calculations to see what I find. I go back and look at the quality of the original data. I compare the results to my experience and the experience of others. In short, I follow the advice of Richard Feynmann who said:

So if you want to blindly trust and believe in various “pros” like the climate scientist “pros” and financial “pros” without giving their predictions even a smell test, much less an intense searching look, be my guest. Me, I take a more jaundiced view of the world. Since we’re discussing costs, the Stern Report is an excellent example. Anyone who knows about discounting future values reads it and says “This guy has done the analysis all wrong.” But it is still getting cited, even here on this thread.

PS - Do I know about discounting future values? Well, at the moment I’m the Chief Financial Officer for a company with $40 million in annual sales, so the answer is definitely yes. I understand discounting future cost and benefit streams very well, I do it routinely as part of my job. If Stern worked for me and turned in that report, I would fire him on the spot for incompetence, he would not work for me another day. Again I say, don’t just swallow this stuff. Think about it. Do the research. Check what others say. Give it the sniff test. Read the studies from both sides of the aisle. Compare it to your own experience. Read the arguments of those who do not believe a given claim. Do not trust someone just because they tell a story that agrees with your preconceptions, or because they have a PhD, or because their name is Bernie Madoff and dozens of people think they’re infallible. Do your own due diligence, you will likely be very surprised at what you find.

90

First, anyone who trusts a press release is a fool. The study itself is available here.

Second, the study perfectly expresses the problem. Look at the “pros” judgement on say a tipping point regarding El Niño if we assume the highest temperature rise.

Two pros say the odds are from zero to 10%. Two others say the odds are between 70% to 90% …

Now, we can average those out, and say that the odds are about 40% … but if you believe that, you’re mathematically challenged. What it shows to me is we don’t know.

If you are still confused, consider a simpler example. If one professional says something is almost sure to happen, and another says it is almost sure not to happen, that doesn’t make the true odds 50% …

Here’s the drill:

  1. Forget about the press release. Read the original study.

  2. Go through it again and again until you understand the data, the methods, and the results.

  3. Think about whether the results mean anything. For example, the El Nino tipping point question was answered by a total of nine people, and even with that ridiculously tiny sample their answers are all over the map. Think about whether that result has any meaning at all. Does it have a meaning at all, or (given the huge spread of the answers) are their guesses just guesses? …

Despite their lack of meaning, the results are announced in a press conference as being a big support for the AGW crowd … my analysis of the results only shows that scientists differ wildly on the question of tipping points, so it is way too soon to put a number on them. But you should not believe me. I say again what I have said before: read the study, think about it, and make up your own minds whether it is valid or useless. I vote for choice B. I say if one scientist gives the odds at 5% and another gives the odds at 95% that we have moved out of the realm of what we normally call science and into the realm of “pick a number” … but YMMV.

91

You know intention if I was on trial for a serious crime I would actually hire an expert lawyer and probably take his advice; I wouldn’t just go and try to read the law books my self and think that my analysis of my case was more likely better than an expert lawyer’s. As much as I believe in doing my own due diligence and questioning expert opinions and all. Sometimes the less foolish choice is to admit that specialists know more about certain things than I do.

Not being personally expert in these areas, I certainly cannot debate the merits and limitations of Stern’s approach - I merely submit it as an example of the cost benefit analyses that you stated you had never seen. Okay. You haven’t seen one that you agree with.

Given your stated expertise in understanding what is an appropriate method to perform discount analyses I would request your thoughts on the methods employed by this critique of the Stern Report.

On edit: Full text is behind a wall and honestly, I’m not so interested that the $10 single article fee isn’t enough to leave me at the abstract level. And the “press release” gave more detailed information than the abstract does. Obviously the data is not as you portray it: two say this and two that. There were 43 experts polled. Results as reported in the “press release” stated a few assessments as “most” and “almost all” … that is a bit stronger than “we don’t know” … even this fool knows that. :slight_smile:

92

Do the current climate models predict that the past temperature rises would have caused massive dislocations?

If not, then the fact that massive dislocations didn’t occur doesn’t contradict the models at all.

Nor does it undermine the models’ predictions of the (currently unknown) effects of future temperature rises.

Are you talking degrees Fahrenheit? Because the graphs I’ve seen seem to show only somewhat less than about one degree Celsius change between the Little Ice Age and now.

Again, I guess you mean a degree Fahrenheit? Do the models predict that there would have been huge losses from that warning?

You’ll be pleased to know that I’m applying a healthy dose of skepticism in the reliability of your expert opinion.

If I’m not supposed to blindly trust the consensus of the professional climate scientists (and I agree that rational skepticism is always a good attitude to maintain), then I certainly shouldn’t blindly trust your self-proclaimed expertise, your alleged credentials, or the reliability of what you think you have managed to understand about climate science.

That’s good advice. Yes, I do look at data and graphs, and I read studies to the best of my ability, especially those in semi-lay journals like Scientific American, which are easier for me to grasp, and I do my best to understand the issues for myself. If I find that your arguments make more sense to me than those of the consensus scientific view, I’ll let you know.

93

intention, the newer IPCC assessment actually does give some better probability ranges. This figure is a good review. Just FYI.

94

Not sure what you mean. Perhaps we are talking about different climate models, but I’ve never seen one that predicts anything but climate. If know of one that predicts dislocations and effects of temperature rise, please provide a citation.

I’ve seen a variety of estimates, usually on the order of 1-2°C. Yes, I do mean F above. And no, the models don’t predict anything about losses, only about temperature.

I know its an unusual concept, but I’m asking you to think about the question yourself. I’m asking you to look at history with your own eyeballs and see if the temperature rise, either 20th century or Little Ice Age, caused massive dislocations. Has nothing to do with climate models, get that out of your head. The prediction (from the scientists, not the models) is that future temperature rises will have a huge cost. I look at past temperature rises, and I don’t see that cost … why not?

This is also why I’ve asked if anyone has a citation to a study of how much the 20th century temperature rise cost the world. I’ve never seen one. If there are none … then there are no expert opinions on the matter to use for guidance. What then?

And if there are none, then what are these so called “experts” (do they have a degree in costing temperature rises?) doing? If they are making predictions for the future without first consulting the past … how “expert” are they?

I am pleased to read that you apply a “healthy dose of skepticism” to what I say. You are correct that skepticism is very healthy. Most assuredly you should not trust me any more than anyone else. Nor have I asked anyone to. What I have asked is for people to think about the issues and judge for themselves. All I ask is that you apply that same healthy skepticism to everything related to climate. There are plenty of frauds, pseudo-scientists, and venal practitioners on both sides of the issue. Healthy skepticism is indispensable in the field.

DSeid asked above if I would hire a lawyer if I was in legal trouble. Of course I would, just like I hire a doctor when I’m sick.

But what happens when one doctor says you have a 95% chance of surviving the operation, while a second doctor says you only have a 5% chance of surviving? That’s the situation we find in much of climate science, as I just showed above. What then?

But it is worse than that, much worse, because climate science is a new science and there is a huge amount about it we still don’t understand. In particular, we don’t know if one doctor is better than another. Richard Lindzen says one thing, Jim Hansen says the exact opposite … what then? Christy and Douglass say one thing, Santer and Schmidt say the opposite … what then? Me, I’m skeptical of all of them, including myself. As my Grandma used to opine,

[QUOTE=Someone Much Smarter Than Me]
You can believe half of what you see, a quarter of what you hear … and an eighth of what you say.
[/QUOTE]

For many people, they want to take some kind of average value, they want to go with the consensus. But the average of “this operation is almost sure to kill you” and “this operation is almost perfectly safe” is not “this operation will half-kill you” … in fact, in most real world situations one doctor will be right and the other wrong. That means that the average, the “consensus result” of getting half-killed is the least probable outcome of the operation … go figure.

And as we have recently seen, a consensus of finance “pros” turned out to be not just worthless but extremely toxic, despite the fact that we have studied economics for centuries, and climate science for only decades. Science is not decided by voting, it is decided by experimentation and observation of the real world. In fact, every unexpected scientific discovery proves the prior consensus wrong … otherwise it would be expected. In such a situation, blind trust in scientific consensus is not the best of choices …

Finally, kimstu and DSeid, my thanks for keeping all of this in a convivial and congenial tone. Discussions that even peripherally involve climate tend to degenerate into insults and name calling on both sides. I appreciate your discussing the issues rather than the personalities and allied trivia.

95

ISTM that it’s because temperatures haven’t risen very much so far. By your own argument about the Little Ice Age, much of the pre-20th century temperature rise in the Northern Hemisphere was just restoring temperatures to what had been typical pre-Little-Ice-Age levels.

In fact, by your own arguments, comparatively small temperature changes can have quite catastrophic effects. All that Little Ice Age hardship you deplore was apparently caused by a fairly small shift in northern regional temperatures. This changed the local climate significantly from what the inhabitants had been used to, and they suffered considerably as a result (assuming for the nonce that we can take the existing historical record as a generally accurate portrayal of climate).

Subsequently, warming from various causes reversed the Little Ice Age temperature drop, and what seem to have been the “normal” climate patterns that modern civilization was built on were re-established.

I don’t understand why you appear to think that this somehow undermines predictions about the effects of further warming. The point is that up to now, at least in temperate regions, not very much net change has occurred.

But the change isn’t stopping here. Nowadays we appear to be moving away from our “normal” temperature and climate patterns in the other direction, as the global climate continues to heat up.

You seem to have an optimistic belief that further warming won’t produce net negative effects, simply because “cold bad” and “heat good”. Sorry, but this is not at all convincing.

Not really. As DSeid noted, you cherry-picked some responses to make it appear that there’s more drastic and widespread disagreement among climate scientists than there is.

Mind you, I’m not saying that the research community’s views are monolithic or that the science is definitively settled. I’m just noting that you personally don’t come across as a reliable source on the current state of the science, because you clearly have an axe to grind.

It’s not that I think climate scientists as a group are super-smart or always right. It’s just that I’m not getting the impression that you’re any smarter or more likely to be right than they are, despite your constant put-downs of them.

96

Regarding costing of the “externalized costs” of warming, one of the ones that is most often cited are increasing health costs supposedly associated with warming. However, as this post by Indur Golkany shows, there’s no evidence that human health decreases when CO2 goes up. In fact, quite the opposite

Again I say, externalized costs are extremely difficult to assess.

97

kimstu, you are incorrect when you say:

[QUOTE=kimstu]

[QUOTE=intention]
But what happens when one doctor says you have a 95% chance of surviving the operation, while a second doctor says you only have a 5% chance of surviving? That’s the situation we find in much of climate science, as I just showed above.
[/QUOTE]

Not really. As DSeid noted, you cherry-picked some responses to make it appear that there’s more drastic and widespread disagreement among climate scientists than there is.
[/QUOTE]

I have only pointed out one of the parts of the study. If you actually read the study, you will see that there are a number of others just as bad. All that your claim of “cherry picking” has done is to allow you to avoid the issue. There are parts of climate science where the difference of opinion is huge. The one I pointed out is one of many. I mentioned before the great difference between the views of Lindzen vs. Hansen, and of Douglass and Christy vs. Santer and Schmidt. Because of our lack of understanding of the subject matter, climate science is not at all comparable to the situation with doctors or lawyers, as DSeid claims. It is rare to find one doctor saying you have 95% chance of surviving an operation when another puts the chances at only 5%. In climate science, that kind of divergence of opinion among top scientists in the field is not an uncommon occurrence.

w.

98

kimstu, I just noticed your comment:

[QUOTE=kimstu]
I’m just noting that you personally don’t come across as a reliable source on the current state of the science, because you clearly have an axe to grind.
[/QUOTE]

And James Hansen and Gavin Schmidt don’t have an axe to grind? Or are you saying that they are not reliable sources either? I’d believe the latter, but not the former … but then I know of few reliable sources on the state of the science. The IPCC has a huge axe to grind, none of those bureaucrats would have a job if global warming were seen to be false. They are true believers who have actively squashed discussion and concealed disagreement among scientists … can I assume that you find them unreliable as well?

99

You know intention, I am tempted to respond with how nonsensical and irrelevant the ditty about CO2 and health you linked to is the issues of health related to future global climate change as predicted by the climate experts (start with that the effects are not linear and that in the short term CO2 is a correlate for becoming Westernized) and to go back and forth about how to best decide given a particular range of expert opinions, but this has indeed veered into debated the reality of the risks of global climate change, which as I said, I really have no desire to do, and this thread did have an intended focus. Mind you, I appreciate that having created the op gives me no ownership or control - threads may be birthed by the op but they have their own autonomy once born - but in hopes of bringing this discussion back to its intended subject - that of how to hit a particular target once one is decided upon and how mandating particular approaches and percentages is not productive - I offer this new subject to rant about.

Dang those Congresscritters like their mandates don’t they?

Separately I read thisrecently. I knew there was a reason I liked that rag.

100

DSeid, it’s your OP, and your gentle suasion is most appreciated. I posted what I did, not to debate global warming, but once again to show how difficult it is to ascribe “externalized costs”. You are correct that rising CO2 emission levels is a proxy for what you call "westernization, but is perhaps better described as the increasing wealth of a given society.

My point is that health is much more correlated with a society’s wealth than the outdoors temperature. This makes it extremely difficult to say “if the temperature goes up X degrees because of increasing CO2, there will be $X in associated health costs.” It doesn’t seem to work that way.

As to congresspersonages and their mandates, I say bad idea. The problem is that you can mandate anything you want. Doesn’t matter if it is affordable. Doesn’t matter if it is achievable. Just pass a law. Economic government by fiat.

The government here has just mandated that there will be no more copra (dried coconut meat) exports after the end of the year. This is supposed to secure for the country the added value of changing it into coconut oil before export. According to the sponsors, it will increase employment and improve foreign exchange and all the usual good things.

Unfortunately, there are no mills in the country to turn copra into coconut oil … and the odds of someone building one in that time are about zero. So all the legislation will do is remove what for most people in the villages is their only source of income. Brilliant.

That’s the reason I am opposed to government mandates. Look, I support the idea of building mills here. But to mandate it with an impossible time frame is like a “renewable energy standard”. Lunacy.

Generally an excellent article on the dangers of cap-and-trade. I, like you, am fond of the Economist.

While the original estimate of the taxes raised by cap-and-trade was 645 billion, recent estimate have pushed that to over a trillion … and the administration hasn’t denied it, saying the 645 billion was a floor …

Biggest single tax increase in American history, and the most regressive (poor folks spend a much larger percentage of their money on gasoline, electricity, and heating oil).

Color me unimpressed …