hot enough for ya?

[Sangoma]

remember hockey sticks?

http://www.climatecentral.org/gallery/g ... entrations

How could I not. It's one of the most shameful examples of so called climate science. If you are serious about this do yourself a favor and read about the saga between Mann and McIntyre in detail. This is one of the major reasons I am skeptical about the anthropogenic causes of climate dynamics.

[nafod]

Authors include The Black Swan guy.

This has been my biggest argument for acting. How can doubling or trebling CO2 (the dose) not have an effect? We use uncertainty in that effect to do nothing, when the uncertainty should just as well drive us to reign in the CO2 dose.

[Gene]

Are you arguing, through your reference to the USSR and the Nobel prize winner, that we should not “centrally plan” a defense against asteroids?

I am sure you are not, but it comes across that way a bit.

Nice try at the false dichotomy. I hope that parents are not cashing out their 401Ks under hardship rules to have you teach Philosophy courses, Nafod.

The Apollo project was an example of central planning on a short term project with clear goals and methods. So that it worked well. Three guys died in a bonehead accident when their capsule was over pressurized with pure oxygen. Nobody else died. Even when Apollo 13 had that accident the recovery was world class work.

The USSR was also an example of central planning. The USSR had vague scope, poor definition of goals and too many excuses for failure.

They fucked up War Communism, went to the NEP. They then went to Collectivization and DeKulakisation. Millions perished from hunger and violence. Stalin killed off his best and brightest military minds during the purges. Most of the old guard also perished during the purges. All of this lead to a shitty performance in the Winter War, which encouraged Hitler to invade. Tens of millions more people died during the invasion and war.

From the 1950s on it was a series of theatrical stunts, "world revolution" through subversion, and at home an ossified life under the rule of Central Planners, Party sycophants and... more excuses. Until finally they were spent into the poorhouse by NATO. ....and more excuses.

Markus Wolf, former head of the DDR external intelligence said in his autobiography, "We accepted too many excuses".

I pick the USSR as a better analogue to "climate remediation" than the Apollo program, Nafod. Shitty scope, too much capricious government spending and way too many excuses.

Hell, you people can't even get one fucking Nobel prize for Physics or Chemistry. When I confront you on it you fog.

You got nothing, Nafod, except your fear of leaving the Intellectual Herd. Free hint - ain't no Lions out here who will take you down. All you gotta do is what I did in Academia, close your mouth and be thought a Progressive.

[Gene]

Climate change has a much higher probability, bordering on certainty now, of nutpunchng humanity.

You have no quantifiable basis for such a comparison. Just your opinion. Your faith. Your faith in climate science.

The problem in addressing it is in the fact that we are causing it. The government “cultivate the garden” with things like funding tech for alternatives and actually pricing the cost through carbon taxes, without full-on central planning. Etc.

Funding tech for alternatives would be desirable no matter what the reason. We don't need imaginary threats like Climate Change to do that. As I said a long time ago in a post to you, the carbon based fuels are running out. Worse, such fuels are being denied to the developing world. Even more worse, we need those fuels for chemical feedstocks. For stuff for everyone.

Nuclear power is the most carbon negative power source that people can do, perhaps even including Hydroelectric. How many new nuke plants have come online since the 1970s in the US? One, at Watts Bar. There were three AP1000 reactors under construction, only one remains at Vogtle and it's being pushed to the side. The other two were scrapped.

How many more nuke plants were closed? How much more CO2 will come from Natural Gas turbines and boilers as a result? Where is the outrage? I see cheers from people about closing nuke plants.

Why shut them down? More for the big companies. Preferential funding for "alternative" energy sources, "renewables" and using Natural Gas to supplement the stochastic nature of sunshine and wind. Renewables grew at a fast rate because they were almost non existent a few decades ago. Natural gas is one of the big winners since fracking made it cheap.

The one thing some neglected to watch, Nafod, was that some of us watch what people do. If people really wanted low carbon energy we would be building nuke plants. We would be working on fuel reprocessing, as Areva/Framatome would like to do down in S. Carolina.

We would be busting our asses on fusion power. How much money has been spent on ITER? How many times has it been delayed?




The Bullshit wears thin. Really. If people who support AGW and want less CO2 emissions were sincere they'd be demanding much more nuclear power. I see some of it, like the special subsidies for keeping existing plants open, but I see too much emphasis on Steampunk energy.

[Gene]

Authors include The Black Swan guy.

This has been my biggest argument for acting. How can doubling or trebling CO2 (the dose) not have an effect? We use uncertainty in that effect to do nothing, when the uncertainty should just as well drive us to reign in the CO2 dose.

I have read some of Dr. Taleb's books. When did he do Climate Research? He's a Statistician, isn't he? Not a climate scientist.

This is a nice polemic. Especially this part.

This leads to the following assymetry in climate policy. The scale of effect must be demonstrated to be large enough to have an impact. Once this is shown, and it has been shown, the burden of proof on the absence of harm is on those who would deny it.

This would make sense if a climate model were reliable, able to predict and align to past readings. Some models have been proposed. So far, the rest of us, who were trained to be skeptical of anything scientific, wait for prizes, for recognition, for closed equations.

The biggest part of Climate Science is what plagued our Soviet friends. Too many excuses.


Those of us who follow along with this debate, try to understand it, get buried in tangential crap like Nafod's post. This has nothing to do with the science.

Has a lot to do with perception management.

[Gene]

remember hockey sticks?

http://www.climatecentral.org/gallery/g ... entrations

How could I not. It's one of the most shameful examples of so called climate science. If you are serious about this do yourself a favor and read about the saga between Mann and McIntyre in detail. This is one of the major reasons I am skeptical about the anthropogenic causes of climate dynamics.

My concern, Sangoma, has been, what if these characters are right?

What do we do? I'm for more nuclear power. Our Russian friends created a big old fast neutron breeder reactor, the BN-800. The Chinese are buying one. The Chinese don't fuck around with power.

I don't want some sort of social regimentation. We have too much bureaucracy already. By his own admission Dead Man Walking is a bureaucrat. Are you impressed with his depth of thinking? I'm not. Nafod is basically a bureaucrat with tenure. He makes some good points, but unfortunately he runs to the Progressive Canon when he wants to make a point. Too much time in the Faculty Lounge I'd guess. Neither one is a bad person. I don't want people like them deciding my economic priorities.

I don't want some Hippy clowns making me go out and harvest biomass while they strum guitars and smoke dope. I don't want an energy poor world like what a lot of people in the developing world suffer today - half of the kids die of common diseases, people die young, lives are stunted. Live like paupers while the Big Shots tool around in jets.

A lot of the alternative energy sources are warmed over 18th century sources of power. They're not cutting edge, they're almost like Steampunk science fiction done with 21st century materials. Totally silly.

More people die falling off of windmills than die of nuclear power per Terawatt-Hour, even including Chernobyl and Fukushima. Nuclear power is more expensive than Coal power especially in the US. The Canadians in Ontario province get the bulk of their electric power from nuke power, it's pricey. So are windmills and solar cells.

You go to these people, discuss how to fix climate change. Their first reflex is some sort of social democracy, a bureaucracy at least. The biggest emitter of CO2 is China, a mixed economy under the control of a huge bureaucracy. This is our model of the future?

I had one sneer at me, "Technical fix". He wanted government power.


We're supposed to trust these people? These would be Philosopher Kings and Philosopher Queens who can't even manage their own affairs?


The fossil fuels are running out. Even if Peak Oil were a myth there is still only so much of it to go around. We need better, more compact and controllable sources of power. Wind mills and solar cells rely on the pity of Gaia. I don't believe in Gaia, I don't believe in social democracy and I don't trust bureaucrats to micromanage an economy.

[Sangoma]

Authors include The Black Swan guy.

This has been my biggest argument for acting. How can doubling or trebling CO2 (the dose) not have an effect? We use uncertainty in that effect to do nothing, when the uncertainty should just as well drive us to reign in the CO2 dose.

As much as I like Taleb's writings (significant proportion of them anyway) I cannot take everything he says at face value. Increasing CO2 will definitely have an effect. This raises several important questions. First, has this kind of increase happened before? If so, what happened to the climate, planet and people living at the time? The science that's supposedly tasked with this question has been ruled by politics and bad journalism. If you read about the Hockey Stick saga, one of the foundations on which the current anthropogenic climate change reasoning lies, the war - literally - between Mckittrick and Mann, you quickly realise how bad this science is.

[nafod]

The one thing some neglected to watch, Nafod, was that some of us watch what people do. If people really wanted low carbon energy we would be building nuke plants. We would be working on fuel reprocessing, as Areva/Framatome would like to do down in S. Carolina.

We would be busting our asses on fusion power. How much money has been spent on ITER? How many times has it been delayed?

On fission power, we have the 3 Mile Island, Chernobyl, and now Fukushima to thank for the aversion. Both Chernobyl and Fukushima are royally @#$&-ed up sites, like, uninhabitable for who knows how long. No one really knows what is going on in Chernobyl and they are desperately trying to figure out the status of the fuel in Fukushima. Even with nuke tech that can survive a total loss of cooling and not fail, the public trust is gone, unfortunately.

I am all for fusion power research. We’re getting closer. When we get “someone is going to get rich” close you’ll see private industry jump in more.

[nafod]

I have read some of Dr. Taleb's books. When did he do Climate Research? He's a Statistician, isn't he? Not a climate scientist.

He’s not a statistician so much as a Risk guy. A decision making under risk guy. His core thesis is that when systems get complex enough, the uncertainty distributions tied to them do not have exponential tails, they have fat tails obeying power laws. That changes everything. When you lay potential outcomes on the tails, you get huge risk.

The climate is nothing if not complex. Once you accept that, everything he said applies.

[Sangoma]

Gene, I am not sure. Nuclear power is some sort of answer. The problem is that when nuclear reactors go bad they go really bad. Sure, not many people died as the result of these accidents, but this can rapidly change if reactors proliferate. Then again, I am not an expert.

The way climate politics are currently run doesn't make any sense whatsoever. We can't even get an answer to the most basic question: what is the risk related to the current climate change? What we get now is the competition in catastrophic predictions for the next 100 years and the models that are notoriously unreliable. There is no debate, no mention of possible positive effects that could be productively used. Hockey stick graph has been accepted in the face of blatant violations of methodology.

But even if we accept that CO2 is the principal driver of current climate change we fail to address the root cause of its increase, the economy. Western economy is driven by continuous expansion and growth. This is basic capitalism. Unless it changes any measure to counteract the effects of this economy will be at best half-measures. It's like taking vitamin C to counteract carcinogenic effect of smoking. Sure, it will work to some degree, maybe, but eventually the harm will prevail. Accordingly, until the very principle of the economy changes I am afraid nothing will really work.

Lastly, and I don't want to come across as a communist, but until there is some sort of wealth distribution from the rich countries to the poor very little will happen. Do you see Malawi, Bolivia or Thailand start installing expensive technological solutions to reduce the use of fossil fuels? I don't. Unless the wealthy part with some of their fortunes and pay for the Third World to participate in this. Which, again, I cannot imagine will happen on the large scale.

At this stage the only solution to climate change I see is reaction and mitigation. Which, I think, is the best possible solution, given unreliability of the models. It just doesn't make sense to invest large amounts of money and resources to avoid an outcome predicted by unreliable methodology - which makes it a low probability event. As opposed to dealing with events as they happen.

[Sangoma]

I have read some of Dr. Taleb's books. When did he do Climate Research? He's a Statistician, isn't he? Not a climate scientist.

He’s not a statistician so much as a Risk guy. A decision making under risk guy. His core thesis is that when systems get complex enough, the uncertainty distributions tied to them do not have exponential tails, they have fat tails obeying power laws. That changes everything. When you lay potential outcomes on the tails, you get huge risk.

The climate is nothing if not complex. Once you accept that, everything he said applies.

I am afraid you are contradicting yourself and so is Taleb. One chapter in Black Swan is devoted to Poincare, a mathematician turned French Prime Minister in his time, and his three body problem. In short, the problem refers to the movement of planetary bodies relative to each other. When there are only two planets present their movement is simple. However, when another is introduced prediction becomes incredibly complicated. Taleb illustrates this with the snooker ball example. If you hit one snooker ball with another you can estimate the final position of the former after one bounce with good accuracy. Knowing the mass of both, the direction, the force of the impact - that's enough to give you a fairly precise position. Adding an additional bounce changes the situation exponentially. The more bounces, the more variables you need to measure and take into account: the friction of the table cover, the elasticity of the material balls are made, the temperature in the room and the balls etc. According to Taleb to estimate the position of the ball after eight bounces with reasonable degree of accuracy you have to know the position of every molecule in the Universe.

Now turn your attention to climate and try imagine the number of variables necessary to take into account to predict temperatures in one hundred years. Or other events, so often mentioned in newspapers: number of deaths from heat waves, victims in military conflicts triggered by climate change, number of heart attacks join New York City in eighty years, wheat production in Philippines in 2090 and the like.

Based on the above, does it make any sense to distill climate change to one variable, CO2 concentration in the atmosphere? And does it make any sense to try influence climate dynamics, taking into account the complexity of factors that influence it? Whenever I mention that current models are incredibly unreliable I get the same answer: we have to get more data and improve the models. In other words, do the same as before and expect the result to be different.

[nafod]

I have read some of Dr. Taleb's books. When did he do Climate Research? He's a Statistician, isn't he? Not a climate scientist.

He’s not a statistician so much as a Risk guy. A decision making under risk guy. His core thesis is that when systems get complex enough, the uncertainty distributions tied to them do not have exponential tails, they have fat tails obeying power laws. That changes everything. When you lay potential outcomes on the tails, you get huge risk.

The climate is nothing if not complex. Once you accept that, everything he said applies.

I am afraid you are contradicting yourself and so is Taleb. One chapter in Black Swan is devoted to Poincare, a mathematician turned French Prime Minister in his time, and his three body problem. In short, the problem refers to the movement of planetary bodies relative to each other. When there are only two planets present their movement is simple. However, when another is introduced prediction becomes incredibly complicated. Taleb illustrates this with the snooker ball example. If you hit one snooker ball with another you can estimate the final position of the former after one bounce with good accuracy. Knowing the mass of both, the direction, the force of the impact - that's enough to give you a fairly precise position. Adding an additional bounce changes the situation exponentially. The more bounces, the more variables you need to measure and take into account: the friction of the table cover, the elasticity of the material balls are made, the temperature in the room and the balls etc. According to Taleb to estimate the position of the ball after eight bounces with reasonable degree of accuracy you have to know the position of every molecule in the Universe.

Now turn your attention to climate and try imagine the number of variables necessary to take into account to predict temperatures in one hundred years. Or other events, so often mentioned in newspapers: number of deaths from heat waves, victims in military conflicts triggered by climate change, number of heart attacks join New York City in eighty years, wheat production in Philippines in 2090 and the like.

Based on the above, does it make any sense to distill climate change to one variable, CO2 concentration in the atmosphere? And does it make any sense to try influence climate dynamics, taking into account the complexity of factors that influence it, especially when we haven't even covered the basics, if the change of such magnitude and significance occurred before?

True it is difficult to predict due to the nonlinearities. What you can say something about, is the probability distribution for the magnitudes of output (e.g. temperature) for complex models. Whatever the estimate of the parameter is, the probability distribution of that estimate tends to be a fat tails one for the highly complex system, not an exponentially distributed like a normal, exponential, etc. There are pretty clearly to me temperature increase values that would be catastrophic, and while an exponential distribution of their value makes the worst case realistically unrealizable, a fat tails distribution does no such thing at all. They’re in play.

It’s an obvious no-brainer decision to try and mitigate dumping carbon into the atmosphere and avoid the global science experiment of finding out what happens when we hit CO2 levels not seen in over 800,000 years. It could turn out very, very, very bad.

But I don’t expect us to do anything about it until the doodoo has fully hit the fan and it is too late to stop it. We’ll be adapting to it, whatever it is. I kind of feel sorry for the future generations.

[Sangoma]

I am not sure you understand what you are saying and therefore advice you to stay away from statistical terminology. Distribution of probabilities of an outcome predicted by current models is definitely a fat tail. So fat, actually, so that the obtained probability has no value. As per picture below.

[nafod]

You are using the ensemble of climate models to get a distribution, plotting (I assume) the mean values. That is not what I am saying. I am saying that the uncertainty with each climate model is modeled by fat tails. The uncertainty with any climate model is fat tailed because it is modeling a system of sufficient complexity. Even if the model just pumps out a "deterministic" number. The fat tailed aspect is a property induced by the system being modeled (climate) and not the model itself.

[Sangoma]

Modelling climate, a complex model with the multitude of unknown variables and their interactions, as well as making projections about outcomes one hundred years from now, is useless. You cannot predict a sever storm, a fat tailed event, three years from now. Similarly you cannot make predictions of outcomes one hundred years from now.

Cheer up. The latest IPCC report says that the emissions targets will not be achieved by even 2030 and so we have missed the boat and are now doomed. I am going to sit back, light a cigar and wait for the end, like Guggenheim on the Titanic. Waiting, using your language, for the doodoo fully hits the fan.

Or maybe you shouldn't pay too much attention to the Report.

Expert: Climate report stokes unwarranted fear

Almost none of the models’ predictions have come true, noted Legates, including a world famine by 1985, more than 50,000 climate refugees per year by 2010, and a snow-free England by 2012. The world also experienced a hiatus in air temperature rise between 1999 and 2017 that the models did not foresee.

But Legates said reports like National Climate Assessment have deeper problems than faulty predictions and costly policy proposals, pointing out that the drastic actions global warming alarmists propose would hurt the poor. He said inexpensive energy makes clean drinking water, disease prevention and treatment, and ample food, clothing, and shelter possible, and securing those should be the priority.

[dead man walking]

climate change at u.s. military bases

http://www.climatecentral.org/gallery/m ... tary-bases

[Sangoma]

I say the Army causes Global Warming!

[dead man walking]

deceasing snow cover

http://wxshift.com/climate-change/clima ... snow-cover

[Sangoma]

Link for those who are prepared to put in some time to understand the Hockey Stick controversy.

What is the ‘Hockey Stick’ Debate About?

[nafod]

Modelling climate, a complex model with the multitude of unknown variables and their interactions, as well as making projections about outcomes one hundred years from now, is useless. .

You keep using the lack of utility of the models as an argument against acting, when Taleb bases his argument on what you should do assuming you have no models. You just know you are putting an orders of magnitude pulse into a highly nonlinear system where resultant uncertainties are therefore huge, and an unacceptable range of the outcomes are not very friendly to civilization.

[Sangoma]

Something bad is happening, we don't know what causing it and don't have credible data to say what interventions are likely to be effective to possibly prevent it. But it can be really bad and therefore we should act. That's your - and Taleb's - reasoning, right?

[Fat Cat]

Something bad is happening, we don't know what causing it and don't have credible data to say what interventions are likely to be effective to possibly prevent it. But it can be really bad and therefore we should act. That's your - and Taleb's - reasoning, right?

It makes sense to toggle the only factors you are capable of affecting. And it's not correct to say that there is no credible data to suggests what interventions are likely to be effective. If excess carbon is the problem, carbon emissions reductions are a credible remedy.

[Sangoma]

Is excess carbon a problem? If you spend time and try get the details you will see the issue is far from settled. You can start from the link I posted earlier.

[nafod]

Something bad is happening, we don't know what causing it and don't have credible data to say what interventions are likely to be effective to possibly prevent it. But it can be really bad and therefore we should act. That's your - and Taleb's - reasoning, right?

No

Fat cat has it.

[Fat Cat]

I don't want to play the "read the link" game. You are no doubt aware that there are links that support a correlation between warming, carbon dioxide, and other so-called greenhouse gasses. Unlike you, I don't claim to be a climate scientist. I note that the author of the link you posted isn't one either, but rather an economist.

To me it is plausible that, if you release additional carbon into a closed cycle, at some point you will have a problem. Plausible doesn't make it true, and like you I oppose being alarmist, but it bears exploration.

I note again your tendency to quibble over details while completely avoiding the substance of a topic.