Climate Countdown,Maude Barlow chairperson of the "Council of Canadians" "The continuded Destruction of the Earth"
Posted on: December 6, 2010 - 8:50pm
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Climate Countdown,Maude Barlow chairperson of the "Council of Canadians" "The continuded Destruction of the Earth"
One of my favorite person in Canada is Maude Barlow,the other being Naomi Klien autor of "Disaster Capitalism", spoke at Cancun climate talks and on "Democracy Now" check it out -- www.commondreams.org/video/2010/12/06
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Darwin was wrong.... it's not survival of the fittest. It's survival of the richest.
I think this is all part of human (d)evolution. We'll pollute the Earth to the point where very little life can be supported and then we'll go the way of the dinosaurs. And a million years from now, the Universe and everything in it will not care any more about us than we care about the dinosaurs.
'Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.' A. Einstein
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I was going to ask 'Why'...but, then it hit me: there is no profit in peace, good health and contentment.
Those who rule the masses don't want to do it for altruistic reasons. War is a money maker. Sickness, disease and poverty is a money maker. And if everyone were to suddenly become content with what they possess and stopped buying non-essential crap, the economic structure of the planet would collapse in a heartbeat.
...unless, by some miracle, everyone could relearn how to be self-sufficient.
'Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.' A. Einstein
If you read the book Collapse you should remember that the main reason each of the societies failed was either economic collapse or lack of resources (mostly food, sometimes water). It also makes it quite obvious that the CLIMATE FUCKING CHANGED all on its own which weather tends to do (for example, the Indian Tribe he studied in the American Southwest that experienced collapse when it was no longer able to grow food because of unusually long droughts, don't have the book on me so I can't remember the name).
The point is this, the climate has changed for hundreds of millions of years. We know for a fact that the Earth has been warming up since the last ice age and has gone through several swings in the past. It is utterly ridiculous to believe that we can somehow stop the climate from changing by stopping all carbon emissions. There is a small argument to be made that we might be speeding it up. But even that argument is extremely weak. So if we are going to draw a lesson from Professor Diamond's book and we KNOW that the climate is going to change sooner or later we should be addressing the steps we need to do about it to protect our civilization.
First and foremost we have to determine how to grow food. Fortunately, modern farming has brought us to a point where we can grow food anywhere. From the hottest tropics to the dry desert to the arctic we have the technology to continue to grow food. (Which I will point out global cooling would be far more of a danger to growing food than global warming.) It might be more difficult and therefore more expensive to grow food in the future but it will certainly be possible. The main problem we are experiencing today isn't that we can't grow enough food, it is distribution. People are starving to death in our world even though food is grown in surplus simply because we can't get it to them. The reasons for this are mostly political. However, in a theoretical future where the globe has warmed and it is more difficult to grow food and more food is grown in colder climates say Siberia or Alaska the logical thing to focus on is ensuring a solid preservation and distribution system so food can easily be transported from these areas to major metro areas of the world.
This brings me to Kyoto. What does it do? It makes food production and distribution more expensive. Basically, it forces governments to pay for every bit of energy used by its citizens. It is very easy to see how distributing food uses energy. How do you think the food on your plate got there? It took a ride on a truck, train, plane and or boat all of which become more expensive under schemes like Kyoto. Furthermore, the vast majority of food you eat does not simply get picked and tossed into your grocery store. It is usually processed to preserve it so it can last longer periods of time. This process tends to use massive amounts of electricity and is often a large cost for farmers. Electricity=carbon emissions = more expensive under Kyoto.
Add to that the fuel it takes to run tractors, combines and other farm equipment to do the actual farming all of which use gasoline which also becomes more expensive under Kyoto.
So while you bemoan the plight of the "poor" and complain about how the rich always screw them over you are advocating a treaty that will necessarily make food substantially more expensive under the theory that it will somehow magically stop climate change. Now how is that rational?
It seems to me that rather than making food production and distribution more expensive and therefore discouraging it (basic economic principal-if you make an action more expensive it will happen more rarely, if you make it inexpensive it will occur more often) Instead, we should take steps to encourage food production and distribution so we can feed the people who are starving on our planet today.
If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X
War profits a relatively small portion of the economy especially in modern day warfare. Why do you think we are in an economic recession even though we are involved in two wars? There is far more profit to be made in free trade for the overall economy. War is almost always started for political or religious reasons. It is usually in a countries economic benefit to not go to war unless it is going to become an old fashioned imperial power.
Sickness, disease and poverty are NOT money makers. That statement is absurd on its face. If they were money makers the third world would be loaded. CURING sickness, disease and poverty are money makers. When people are sick or in poverty the do NOT buy the non-essential crap, they spend their money on essentials. People who are content, in good health and have excess money buy all sorts of non-essential crap. That is because non-essential crap is basically luxuries that make life more fun. If you are starving to death you are not going to buy a 3d tv. People buy crap BECAUSE they are content not the other way around. That is why rich people usually have more crap than poor people. Crazy people like me that choose to live with relatively little crap are rare. For the most part, there are HUGE profits to be made in peace, good health and contentment.
The reason America has thrived and become the worlds leading economic power is because we have successfully met the basic needs of our population with very few working on farms and such. This frees up more people to work in other fields and create technology that makes life more comfortable. Go to a country where every person is forced to work around the clock to simply provide food for their families and have to be "self sufficient". I love visiting some of those places but I sure wouldn't want to live there. The result is extreme poverty, sickness, disease, and often, really high crime.
It is really sickening how we have so much in America and so few here actually appreciate it. We spend more time complaining about what we have when the vast majority of the rest of the world would kill to have a small portion of what we have. Rather than trying to make ourselves poorer we should be trying to make the rest of the world wealthier.
If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X
I don't know why you can't see this is true.
'Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.' A. Einstein
Actually, since I grew up in that area, I happen to know it was more than one tribe. As I can't seem to get through one of Mr. Diamond's books, I would have to guess he referenced the Anasazi (Navajo for the tribe the Hopi called Hisatsinom) Interesting bit - Anasazi means "ancient enemy" while Hisatsinom means "ancient ancestor". There is a theory that a war broke out as the climate changed and food became scarce. This is a good summation:
http://www.blm.gov/co/st/en/fo/ahc/who_were_the_anasazi.html
The Hohokam also lost most of their civilization at the same time. They had extensive irrigation systems along the Gila river. There are a number of other tribes that moved on about the same time as the Anasazi.
My husband managed to read both Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse. He said they were very good and accurate with respect to what he knew about ecology and environmental behavior.
A brief review, climate is not weather. Weather happens day to day, climate happens year to year. It isn't that bad years happen for farming, it is that the weather changes - permanently.
Let's review what it actually takes to change your farming practices when the climate shifts. It takes 2-5 years for an orchard crop to mature to profitability. The farmer has no idea the change in weather is permanent. So s/he hangs on to what they have until the orchard is no longer producing enough to be profitable for enough years that they are nearly broke. At which time, they dig up the existing orchard and switch to a new crop. Then it is more years before they can make a profit.
To grow a particular crop, temperature and daylight hours trigger fruit, flower, root or overall plant production. (tomatoes - fruit, broccoli - flower, carrots - root, taro - corm, onions - leaves, and so on) So if your climate changes, you may need to switch to climate/daylight controlled growing conditions. And then there is the commodity market. You can sell all of your produce at a price. Higher, you can't unload it. So if the climate controlled growing conditions exceed the commodity price, you can't sell your crop.
An example, in England in the 19th century, oranges were grown in orangeries on estates. Climate control as oranges don't like it as cold and wet as England gets. They were a luxury item for the upper classes. It was a big deal to get an orange in your stocking - it said your parents had money. Now? Oranges are imported and it is not a big deal to get one for christmas. So, if the climate changed, could they grow oranges in open groves? Don't know as it depends on the exact change. I do know if it got warmer, they could not grow apples without some refrigeration.
How does the farmer know when to switch crops? How can you know this is a climate change rather than a weather change? When you do figure out the change is probably permanent, how do you know which crops will grow in your area given the changes? By the time you figure that out, you may be out of money and out of time. Will some other person/farmer/investment conglomerate buy your land and plant crops? Probably not. They will build buildings instead as you can make more money in real estate instead of farming. We won't get farming as the better investment until food prices increase - a lot.
That puts all of us spending a much larger proportion of our income on food. Bad? Good? Personally for me, bad. Maybe better long term as a lot of people will starve, thereby reducing the surplus population. (nod to Dickens)
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
No serious climatologist claims that current climate change is solely due to human activities, let alone that without human activities it wouldn't change, that would be FUCKING STUPID.
What has been proposed, and has been progressively become more certain as further evidence accumulates, is that our release of gases such as CO2 and methane is having a very significant impact, and has probably changed what was a slow decline in average temperature into an accelerating rise, becoming as fast or faster than any past natural rises.
As cj pointed out, the impact on both global crop cultivation alone, even discounting the sea-level rise drowning and salinizing coastal regions, is extremely worrying.
The overall trend will force the growing area of each crop away from the equatorial regions, with viable growing regions around the equator shrinking, as temperature rises and rainfall reduces.
Note that GW suggests that initially, in many areas, rainfall will increase, due to the warming of the oceans increasing the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere. Eventually though, local temperature will be come too warm for precipitation, so for regions closer to the equator than a particular amount, rainfall will tend to reduce, while as you get closer to the poles, it will increase.
The fact that water vapour itself also acts as a strong 'greenhouse' gas serves as a positive feed-back mechanism, enhancing the effect of the increase in the other greenhouse gases.
The oceans are growing warmer and more acidic due to more dissolved CO2, but that has less impact than it might have had, since overfishing has already dramatically reduced the food available from that source.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Somebody's ignorant of the science :P I'm a little surprised that you buy into that. You actually believe politicians over scientists who understand climate?
We know how much greenhouse gas is in the atmosphere now, and we know how much has been in the atmosphere for ages thanks to rock and ice deposition, as well at the temperatures at those times. The Earth's temperature is dependent on albedo (snow, clouds, etc.) and variation in insulation by greenhouse gas-- emission by volcanic activity, bogs, fires, and absorption by plant matter, the ocean, and carbonate erosion reactions from the rain cycle (acid rain + stone).
The sun is not responsible for the climate change on Earth; it's remarkably stable, and small variations in emissions of radiation don't have a significant effect on cloud formation or heating.
The Earth does go through natural periods of heating and cooling- warm times and ice ages. During an ice age, the Earth's albedo is very high (very reflective) due to a large portion of the Earth being covered in ice- this keeps the planet cooler by reflecting sunlight. However, when the planet is covered in ice, plants and the water cycle aren't trapping greenhouse gases, and volcanoes (our largest source of greenhouse gases) don't stop chugging away. Greenhouse gas builds up until the ice melts (lowering albedo more in a feedback reaction), and the planet gets very hot and wet. Then plants grow everywhere and capture all of the greenhouse gases and the planet starts cooling down again, it starts snowing everywhere (which increases albedo cooling the planet faster), and one gets another ice age.
The sheer amounts of greenhouse gases involved are enormous, but they're also well understood- and in proportion to that contributed by human activity, they aren't overwhelming. We know how much volcanoes are releasing, and we know how much we are- volcanic emissions are almost completely compensated for by erosion, and we amount to the straw that broken the camel's back by pushing emissions beyond the ability of the environment to capture the gas.
The argument is neither small nor weak that humans are contributing substantially to global warming- it's obvious.
This is a terrible straw man- nobody is saying that (or, nobody with brains). We can drastically slow it to the point that it won't be an issue for generations, though, or let it continue and restructure all of our infrastructure to move inland, and relocate our farms and cities.
The only reasonable "lets not do anything about it" argument is the one that new weather patterns *might* be better for humanity than the old ones (once we restructure), or that one wants hundreds of millions of people to die off to thin the herd a bit-- or perhaps just to shake up the current political dominance in some regions by letting climate trigger revolutions. Obviously *we* aren't in much danger from this short of the potential to trigger global war.
It's true that we don't know exactly how weather patterns will change, but that we have a major hand in changing them is not reasonably deniable.
Even if we weren't one of the primary causes (which all of the evidence is bearing out that we are), we do have the ability to STOP global warming and control our environment.
We could stop the climate from changing by controlling the amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (as are current attempts), or we could increase the Earth's albedo and say "f*ck greenhouse gases".
Increasing the Earth's albedo would involve (most economically) orbital mirrors reducing the amount of sunlight hitting the Earth by casting large shadows over much of the world. That would certainly stop global warming, but it would also likely alter the weather in extreme ways. Even assuming we just cast shadows over parts of the ocean and over deserts, the cooling in those areas would likely change weather patterns.
A more consistent and reliable approach would be to reduce our own emissions, and capture atmospheric carbon industrially (yes, taking responsibility for some emissions by volcanoes too), and installing mirrors only to cover regions where ice has been lost
If you want the climate to change, that's one option- but don't pretend that we can't control it. If we let this go on, we have to be ready for the consequences (which, of course, may have good and bad components).
Lack of rainfall, though, can be solved technologically through irrigation; it's harder to solve frost problems growing too far from the equator. Provided the eventual infrastructure for nuclear powered desalinization plants, we should be able to utilize the equatorial regions for growing despite high temperatures.
After the apocalypse of war and famine, we might even be better off once we rebuild all of our infrastructure.
Every cloud has a silver lining, right? You have to look on the bright side of global catastrophe.
Don't we need a climate catastrophe and a few other catastrophes to control population growth? That's how control is done, isn't it?
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
Do you have any evidence of your vast intricate conspiracy??? Are there scam artists in the medical industry that try to convince you that you need more medication than you probably do? Sure. Is there a conspiracy of people intentionally making you sick so you have to pay the doctor more money? No. Are you suggesting that someone created H1N1 and the Bird flu? Granted, both were overblown in the media because there is a lot of profit in scaring people, but I do not believe anyone intentionally created the viruses to make money.
If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X
So? The world isn't fed on fruit. Fruit is extremely volatile and extremely hard to preserve. It is a modern development that it is even available to most people outside of the localities where it is grown. The world is mostly fed on beans, rice, grains and animals, crops that are far more dependable even with radical weather changes. Right now we are growing surplus food in the US. I am arguing that is a good thing and we should encourage it (which plans like Kyoto do the opposite by making it more expensive). That way, if the climate does change radically and quickly low yielding crops for a few years will not be such a big deal. And right now, farming is a very profitable investment. A business savvy farmer can make an awful lot of money although they all like to pretend they are poor.
So if you are 100% right on everything you said how does Kyoto make sense? Kyoto makes farming more expensive to produce food without necessarily increasing food prices, creating a lower profit margin and therefore less investment in food production. So if all the doomsday people are right Kyoto makes things worse.
If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X
@ Bobspence and Blake
I am not a genius when it comes to science. I am a casual observer at best. So I don't really want to argue whether or not global warming is happening or how much humans may or may not be contributing to it because you both will kick my ass. I think it is important to discuss what we should do about global warming. I but that GW very well might be happening. I do not buy the doomsday predictions of Al Gore and friends. It is just like Glenn Beck, he is right about a lot of the economic problems we face but exaggerates them to doomsday levels to make money.
If GW is happening, it is going to happen and there is no way we will stop it for two reasons. Eliminating even a large portion of co2 emissions is not practical. No matter what the US or Europe does countries like China are not going to participate. Second, since the globe has been warming a long time it makes sense to me that it very well might continue without us. I was taught in grade school that melting glaciers created the Great Lakes. Is that not true? If glaciers have been melting that long it doesn't make sense that the few remaining glaciers melting has suddenly become a problem so large we should trash all of our economies to stop it. And does anyone seriously believe that measures like Kyoto would cut carbon emissions enough to make a noticeable difference?
The obvious question that we ought to answer is assuming GW is happening, what should we do about it? This is an economic question and a field I feel quite qualified to argue in. My argument is very simple, Cap & Trade, Kyoto, carbon credits etc. all make energy more expensive. Since large amounts of energy are required to grow food and transport it, rising energy costs will cause an increase in the costs of food production. The inevitable result is less food production unless food prices rise correspondingly. The problem is that if food costs rise many people in the world will no longer be able to afford it. If our goal is to feed as many people in the world as possible that seems counter-productive. And if the GW fear mongers are right we should be doing everything we can to increase food production and distribution so that when the amount of production per acre is cut by climate change we are still producing enough. To encourage food production we need to make it as profitable as possible.
If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X
Actually, China has been investing gobs of money in carbon capture technology, and likely will not only compensate for its own carbon emissions in the next few years, but also start a new industry of selling carbon credits internationally. From where I stand, it looks like there are some investors in China who are really keen on a new industry of commercial carbon capture.
That's why policies such as cap&trade are so important; they incentivize carbon capture.
The really brilliant thing is that carbon capture is profoundly simple- nearly everything around us gladly engages in it (the rock under out feet, the pants we are surrounded by), it's just a matter of accelerating the process, so it's not an energetic process (if it was, it wouldn't be practical).
A free market of carbon credits would knock the price down to almost nothing in just a few years of R&D and competition.
If we were to commit to carbon trading by year X, the technology would be there before we were, ready to capitalize on it. It's only expensive now because it remains uncertain as to whether it ever will be mandated.
You're still on with this straw man? Both Bob and I already explained that argument is bullshit- nobody is saying that we're the only cause of climate change. However, we're perfectly capable of STOPPING natural climate change while we're at arresting our own contributions.
And even if we don't, warming more slowly- by hundreds of years- *would* make a great difference in giving civilization time to adapt agriculture and civil infrastructure.
It's about the birth of an economy- Kyoto isn't a final solution by any means.
It doesn't cost that much to capture carbon. The best thing that could come out of this, though, is a move to more nuclear power (which will not run out in the foreseeable future, unlike international dependencies on oil trade- a resource which may some day dwindle)
Or, if we simply act to reform our atmosphere, global warming will stop progressing and even reverse, and it will be a non-issue all the same.
The warming is happening, with indications that we have under-estimated the rate. The glaring example being that the loss of Arctic sea ice happened way earlier than expected.
We can at least moderate GW with practical measures, regardless of the exact balance between man-made and natural contributions.
Even without GW, we should be doing all we can to move from oil-based production because of the other elephant in the room, Peak Oil.
Despite some minor glitches, the early predictions about the timing of when we will start to run out of economical sources of petroleum seen to have been 'close to the money'.
The other big threat to food production is the growing market in first-gen biofuels, like corn for ethanol, that compete with food crops.
We need to push the development of biofuel crops that can grow in conditions and on soil not suitable for food crops, or can generate more bio-fuel suitable waste while still producing food.
Algae-based systems that require only sunlight do not compete for land with food crops.
Many of these responses do not require massive total investment, if enough nations can get their act together. With some well-thought-out incentives to kick-start the market forces in the right direction, it will be the most economic way to do what has to done to meet the threats of both Peak Oil and Climate Change.
Not to mention that doing away with wasteful practices and increasing efficiency can actually ultimately save money - just requires the will and a bit of initial investment.
And thanks, Blake, I was going to bring up China as actually showing major signs of becoming part of the solution and not part of the problem. They are already getting into electric vehicles, photo-voltaics, and wind-power, just to name three. They are also building advanced high-speed trains, which will reduce their 'carbon footprint', by reducing the need for people to use cars, buses and planes.
They produce far more engineers and scientists than the US.
Good recent comment here:
http://www.science20.com/science_20/blog/will_china_overtake_us_science_leadership
If the US doesn't start adopting more rational policies, they will simply become less relevant over time, and be left behind.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
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It's not the fault of the plants; they're already as efficient as they're going to get at producing hydrocarbons. What genetic engineering can do for us is to get the plants to produce more vitamins, or better ratios of proteins (which doesn't help with alternative fuel production). While we can choose the ratios of what plants make, they're still bound by thermodynamics and we can't get them to produce more biofuel waste without producing less food in the process. This is more of a mechanical processing issue on our part, and one of how much we're wasting- we need to be using more of what the plants produce to make fuel instead of wasting it.
Algae is one possible solution, though it requires extensive infrastructure to put into place. Another solution with regards to food crop competition is a little more obvious (and doesn't require any real technological advances)- we need to stop wasting the majority of our potential food crops on feeding livestock.
Peak oil is only a threat if one imagines that we'll maintain everything that we're doing. When oil prices soar, if Westerners cut back on the grain-fed meat, there will be plenty of food around to keep prices reasonable until we develop the new infrastructure we need. There's so much waste going on in the system that a few changes would prevent any food shortages in the developed world.
It's odd, though-- given the typical political conservative's love of steak, one might think they would be all about getting off oil as soon as possible to prevent any interruption in the meat supply. Peak oil isn't likely to ruin my day.
Democracy is rule by the masses- and when the masses are uneducated and barely intelligent enough to tie their own shoes, you can't expect much better. At least the states are a republic instead of a democracy (that would be a terrible mess), but it's closer than it aught to be mob rule. The matter of representatives and division of power just keeps the government incompetent enough to harm the people as much as they would like to be harmed.
China is effectively a Meritocratic republic, with democratic elections for representatives and local government from that Meritocratic pool- rather than just having any old idiot who can get funding being elected, the people chose between more intelligent, experienced, and competent candidates. Vetting isn't perfect, but that's a large part of what keeps China on the track to advancement. I have little doubt that they'll surpass the U.S. in a short time.
All Kyoto has done to any significant effect is make developing nations a little less able to 'develop' (an economics guru should already know this), so it is safe to imagine anything similar will have the same effect...
The same way increased taxes encourage saving and responsible spending by the common masses (if not outright tax evasion)?
Nope, not buying it.
What will most likely happen (and has already happened, in fact) is that power companies -already government-sanctioned monopoly- will transfer the added costs right back to their customers like most big producers do in the US.
“A meritocratic society is one in which inequalities of wealth and social position solely reflect the unequal distribution of merit or skills amongst human beings, or are based upon factors beyond human control, for example luck or chance. Such a society is socially just because individuals are judged not by their gender, the colour of their skin or their religion, but according to their talents and willingness to work, or on what Martin Luther King called 'the content of their character'. By extension, social equality is unjust because it treats unequal individuals equally.” "Political Ideologies" by Andrew Heywood (2003)
Kyoto was just too little, even if in the right direction.
China demonstrates that CO2 reduction requirements are only a hindrance to 'development' for countries which are fixated on 'business as usual', and lack the imagination to see opportunities to create whole new industries in response. They can then sell more stuff to intellectually backward countries like the US. Ever noticed how much of the really good research being done in the US itself is by expatriate asians?
Cancun seems to have been a less than inspiring effort, maybe the next meetup will get somewhere.
As one might have anticipated, it looks like nothing much is going to happen there until the effects of GW are really beginning to hurt more than just the polar bears and farmers in developing countries. Which will be too late to avoid some of the more serious impacts.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Bob mostly beat me to this,
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say I've probably lived in more developing countries than you have. There is a profound level of wasted energy in developing countries- it's the waste, not limitations on productions, that are holding them back.
There are non-load bearing walls made of cement. There's little to no insulation whatsoever, and most houses are literally open to the air in some part of them. Few to no mechanized dishwashers (the lack thereof being a monumental waste of water), and I could go on regarding distribution infrastructure and construction techniques.
It's a matter of lack of innovation because things have always just worked that way, and nobody bothers to change them due to small initial investments which would quickly pay for themselves if ever made.
People just need to build smarter, and use energy where it's needed, with alternative methods where it isn't. Where these policies have the potential to force innovation by way of inconvenience, they could help jump start these regions into more efficient development.
There's your problem. Obviously monopolies are counter-productive to any kind of innovation. Energy monopolies, however, so not always translate to infrastructure monopolies. When people start building more intelligently, non-intensive technologies will come to the fore to compete with the energy intensive ones.
More availability of microfinance in those countries, along with a bit of pressure from rising costs of inappropriate but convenient western sourced materials is a very hopeful prospect to get many off in a more efficient direction.
While I haven't lived in developing countries as Blake has, I have visited many in Africa and East Asia, and Pacific Islands, and China, so I too have at least a feel for this. There is something about seeing this with your own eyes that brings it home, to me at least. I have also been to the US several times, for contrast...
It is also encouraging to hear about all the ways people in Africa and elsewhere have been able to find productive ways to employ communication and computer technology from the West (probably made in China) to develop local businesses and assist agricultural planning and food distribution.
OTOH, many big established corporations in the USA have been very stuck in the past and old business models, so slow to adapt, from the car manufacturers to the film and music distributers. They needed a kick in the ass.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
My concern is that the integrity of the science which determines to what extent climate change is man-made has been comprimised: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/20/AR2009112004093.html ...to what extent, I don't think anyone knows... But it opens the door for the craziness of the way we're debating this... Which is not to make a determination, or to claim thaT Global warming is a hoax, but rather to establish that there are lobbyists on either side of this discussion who benefit financially...
I equate global warming to terrorism, in that both are real, but there is money to be made off panic.
www.RichWoodsBlog.com
Seriously, that was such a non-event beat-up.
I base that comment on so much discussion and response to it, but I can't quickly point to any proper discussion of it - most of it was via podcast.
There is far more money involved on the denialist side.
I see the deniers displaying much of the same psychology as Theists.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
I can't argue against anything you've said...
But I will say that science depends on integrity... and when scientists skew facts to suit their own astigmatic assertions, it is abhorant..... Perhaps the data they suppressed was irrelevant... But the fact that they convoluted evidence is NOT.
www.RichWoodsBlog.com
The way I heard it, much of the impression of convoluted and 'tweaked' data was based on a misunderstanding of the process of re-factoring the raw data to allow matching it against other data from different sources, combined with some in-house phraseology to refer to the processes which suggested to an outsider that actual dishonest data-fittng was being done.
A bit like the way Theists react when they hear scientists use the word 'theory'.
They were a bit casual in this internal exchange, since it was not intended to carefully explain what they were doing to the non-scientist.
The mechanics of 'cleaning-up' and analysing a lot of this data involves some subtle processing, which is not easily described in a few words, so a lot of short-hand jargon develops among such teams.
Not saying it is out of the question that some 'fitting' was occurring, even some unconscious selection, or just sloppy processing, but the bulk of the scandal was based on misunderstanding.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Tell me, how many different ways are there to misunderstand "hide the decline" from "I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e., from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline"? Do temperature "declines" cause problems for climate researchers?
“A meritocratic society is one in which inequalities of wealth and social position solely reflect the unequal distribution of merit or skills amongst human beings, or are based upon factors beyond human control, for example luck or chance. Such a society is socially just because individuals are judged not by their gender, the colour of their skin or their religion, but according to their talents and willingness to work, or on what Martin Luther King called 'the content of their character'. By extension, social equality is unjust because it treats unequal individuals equally.” "Political Ideologies" by Andrew Heywood (2003)
Yes, temperature declines do cause problems under some circumstances. There are people around who will say - the temperatures declined this year so global warming is not happening. And so it is a problem, because those people do not understand trends or climate. And how many times can you explain to them about trends and climate just to have them yell - SEE!! temperatures declined this year so it isn't happening - before you get a little jaded about it all. See the RRS forums for examples.
Climate - is a general trend. The weather has ups and downs. Weather =/ climate - see the previous paragraph. When you are talking about climate change, you are talking about a trend. And there will be some variability year to year. What does the regression analysis show? Is the trend tight to the data or is there a lot of variability?
I don't have the answers to these questions re global warming and it is late and I don't want to go hunt them up. But all regression analysis (curve fitting, trend analysis) also has a statistical measurement of how well the data fits the trend line. The exact method of determining this measurement depends on the type of data collected. Play around in Excel at some point, it will do regression analysis for you. Enter a bunch of data, graph it, ask Excel to do a regression analysis. If you work a little, you can get the same trend curve using vastly different data.
And yes, the data is groomed - it is always groomed. You usually always have outliers. Someone measures wrong, uses the wrong protocol, or the data point is just out there because it is out there. Say, your data is consistently between 20 and 100. But one day when you review the data, there is a point of 523. There may be no reason for this odd data point, but it will throw your trend line way off of the rest of the data. (Try this in your spreadsheet.) So a good researcher will remove this outlier from the data, and document that they did so and why. "Joe made an error collecting the temperature data by using an uncalibrated thermometer. This thermometer was later tested and never measured the temperature of boiling water correctly in 40 attempts." Maybe they were measuring the temperature of fumeroles 2000 meters under the sea and couldn't afford to go back and remeasure. This stuff happens in the real world of real instrumentation.
This is why there has been so much argument about whether global warming is happening or not. Do we have enough data to make a conclusion? What is the data and how reliable are the measurements? What is the reliability of the various graphs floating around? A lot of science types have been going over the data and analysis with a fine toothed comb for years now.
Climate analysis is way over my head. I can comprehend the specific statistical analysis - if I go review my old textbook. I can visualize the complexities of programming the computer models - but I would not want attempt to program one of the models. Not without a lot - a lot - of review and additional education in programming simulations and reviewing the relevant statistical analysis. So I have to do what most of us on this forum have to do. Who is publishing the data? What institutions are they working for and what organizations do they belong to? Where does their funding come from? What are their stated goals? How does it seem to fit in the predictive models? That is, when they make a prediction, how well does it actually predict? And then I go with the ones that seem to be the most honest and most respected by their peers. Yeah, peer review may not be the best measure, but it is what we have unless we all become climatologists ourselves.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
The way I see it, there are only two possible outcomes in science -honest findings and results as free of bias as can be achieved, and think tanking/woo/the like. Omitting data because it doesn't support the conclusion you wanted points to the latter.
“A meritocratic society is one in which inequalities of wealth and social position solely reflect the unequal distribution of merit or skills amongst human beings, or are based upon factors beyond human control, for example luck or chance. Such a society is socially just because individuals are judged not by their gender, the colour of their skin or their religion, but according to their talents and willingness to work, or on what Martin Luther King called 'the content of their character'. By extension, social equality is unjust because it treats unequal individuals equally.” "Political Ideologies" by Andrew Heywood (2003)
False dichotomy, Kapkao - lack of perfection, of purity, does not equate to worthless, that is an ancient intuition, and like most such, a fallacy.
EDIT: There may well be only two possible outcomes, that the results are either acceptable or not.
But you are not referring to outcomes, you are referring to the various possible paths by which those outcomes were reached. And there are many possible mixes of clean, clear analysis, on one hand, and studies dealing with much less clean data, and then possible individual researchers who may have significant biases, unconcious or not.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
I was once asked to review a doctoral thesis that came to direct opposite conclusions from another similar experiment. Data was not omitted, but was interpreted through the biases of the thesis author. Another time, I watched a professorial candidate lose 20 years of work because he didn't take into account a paper that was written 30 years before he began his research. Scientists are human. That is why so many scientists have been slow to accept any climate change theories - either way, changing or not, hotter or colder. It is very complex, and there are a lot of possibilities for error. Enough review has been done that most now agree, the earth is getting warmer and a chunk of it is due to the case of humans the earth is suffering.
Retaining or dismissing outliers is an art. Is this a good point and anomalous for a reason or is it badly measured or is it something else? It isn't easy to tell when you have data collected over many years, the instrumentation has evolved a lot in the intervening years, and the data was collected using different protocols. A commercial ship in 1850 would collect temperature and wind data very differently from a new modern research vessel. That doesn't mean you can't compare the two, you just have to be very careful. It isn't about woo or think tanking. It is about how can we understand what is happening over time.
That includes reviewing and adjusting our mathematical models to best fit the data we have. Which is what these guys were doing. The language used in the emails was not politically correct because they did not realize the emails were going to be published. Unfortunate -- never put anything in an email you wouldn't mind having plastered on the front page of any news outlet.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
Scientists make errors, yes. That's supposedly a part of science in itself -trial and error. But what does any of what you typed refer to in my post?
“A meritocratic society is one in which inequalities of wealth and social position solely reflect the unequal distribution of merit or skills amongst human beings, or are based upon factors beyond human control, for example luck or chance. Such a society is socially just because individuals are judged not by their gender, the colour of their skin or their religion, but according to their talents and willingness to work, or on what Martin Luther King called 'the content of their character'. By extension, social equality is unjust because it treats unequal individuals equally.” "Political Ideologies" by Andrew Heywood (2003)
It isn't as easy as - objective vs self serving. It never is.
Never mind, we are probably talking at cross purposes again.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
Kapkao,
I cannot tell you how many ways one can misunderstand the expression 'hide the decline', but there is only one correct interpretation and I have already done the legwork of uncovering it: http://www.rationalresponders.com/forum/sapient/all_things_environmental/5338#comment-281541
Stultior stulto fuisti, qui tabellis crederes!
Cool, thanks. Apparently, you're one of the few people here capable of finding these things out.
“A meritocratic society is one in which inequalities of wealth and social position solely reflect the unequal distribution of merit or skills amongst human beings, or are based upon factors beyond human control, for example luck or chance. Such a society is socially just because individuals are judged not by their gender, the colour of their skin or their religion, but according to their talents and willingness to work, or on what Martin Luther King called 'the content of their character'. By extension, social equality is unjust because it treats unequal individuals equally.” "Political Ideologies" by Andrew Heywood (2003)
When it comes to determining validity in science, yes, it really is that black and white.
“A meritocratic society is one in which inequalities of wealth and social position solely reflect the unequal distribution of merit or skills amongst human beings, or are based upon factors beyond human control, for example luck or chance. Such a society is socially just because individuals are judged not by their gender, the colour of their skin or their religion, but according to their talents and willingness to work, or on what Martin Luther King called 'the content of their character'. By extension, social equality is unjust because it treats unequal individuals equally.” "Political Ideologies" by Andrew Heywood (2003)
NO, it is a varying mix of those and probably other factors in every case.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
polarising issues. Conservatives tend to deny climate change and believe in god. I am being subjective and have certain friends of mine in my mind as I say this but some people fit the stereotype so well it's impossible to ignore them. Like you others I think the science shows we have warmed the planet with production of greenhouse gases. It's hard to see this not getting rapidly worse as the emerging economies get online with production of electricity and use of cars and additional industry and so forth.
Still. You'd think the new players will learn something from the mistakes of the past?
Yeah, Cj, Collapse was a great book. How fascinating was that one island in the Pacific where when the family population depending on a strip of coast reached a certain point a chap would just swim away and drown himself to ensure the population remained sustainable? You'd think we'll do the same with reduced numbers of kids and so on but as population stalls and consumption flattens, growth driven economic models will be tested.
We can't go on like this, that's for certain. I think we'll find a way forward, in honesty. Slap me down fluffmeisters but I wish some big event would happen to put the case beyond all doubt so's we could just get our shoulders to the wheel and work it out. This havering really shits me. What this event might be, I don't know. Some melting event that did not flood anything for preference but we've had that for how long without putting the doubters to rest?
Something pointedly bad is going to have to happen.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
essentially saying the same thing in different ways. Or did I miss something?
Ed: No - I see the technical point of difference now. I'd have to agree that a latent bias is impossible to sieve from collection or interpretation of data. As soon as you set up a model some sort of bias becomes inherent. You need to be open to it.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
This is why both the raw data, and the techniques for analysis are traditionally submitted for peer review by other statisticians-- and why triple blind trials are done (where even the statistician has no idea what the data is).
Is there any evidence that the raw data was not available for peer review?
Either way, it's irrelevant to the fact of climate change. The human contribution to the cause is also irrelevant. We can control our environment, and we need to do so if we do not wish to suffer the consequences. Pretty simple.
Why is this such a big argument?
Signature ? How ?
I thought the captain ordered the ship to avoid it, and the helmsman made a steering error?
Off topic, but there were a whole lot of odd events that fell into place that ultimately lead to the sinking of the Titanic. In fact, there were hundreds of different things that could have been done to avert the disaster and were not.
Funny thing is, I have heard many theists use all of this as sign that god MEANT for the ship to sink. After all, the Titanic was advertsied as unsinkable. Yep, human beings were arrogant enough to construct an unsinkable ship, so the merciful, loving, forgiving, all-knowing and all-wise god just decided to kill all the people to teach everyone a lesson. Probability, chance, randomness, and human error had absolutely nothing to do with it.
BUT, if I ever doubted the existence of god, I need look no further than that horrible film with the Dicaprio kid and that cacophony of a soundtrack sung by Celine Dion. If a film like that could have been made, god could not exist, for surely he would have intervened and stopped James Cameron from wasting the celluloid.
“It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.”
― Giordano Bruno
That is my point. Let the climate change and simply be prepared with our food production system to adapt (which for the most part we already are in the Western world). Maybe we could stop all climate change but I don't really see a reason why we should devote significant time and resources towards doing so. Especially to devote resources to stopping GW that might be happening from natural causes. Taking steps to adjust to climate change seems a lot more rational to me than running around like chicken little declaring that half of humanity is going to die.
You want to pollute less? That is cool with me. If you can make me a green car that gets 200 miles per gallon at a reasonable price I'll be first in line to buy it. If you can build a factory or power plant that is more efficient and therefore pollutes less great. You find a way to make algae into an economically viable biofuel? You will be a billionaire if you have an ounce of business sense. You want to come and take my money for government programs in the name of stopping GW? Forget it.
I for one hope it warms up. It is damn cold and I don't want to move farther south.
If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X
That's a reasonably argument, but as much as you don't want to move, do you think anybody else wants to?
People on Islands, displaced (hurricanes and salty soil).
People in coastal regions, displaced (hurricanes and migrating coast lines).
People in large swaths of Europe, displaced (As the Gulf stream changes, Europe may actually freeze).
People in areas that turn into deserts, displaced (rain patterns change, equatorial regions become very dry).
There are a shit load of people who will need to move- it's even possible that you'll have to move because of it. Entire countries are being uprooted.
Now, *I* don't have any problem moving, but restructuring all of that is a potential issue for those silly people who plant roots in an area.
It's not maybe- we can stop all climate change. It isn't that difficult to change the concentration of different gases in an atmosphere with even moderately advanced terraforming technology; there are dozens of ways we could go about it. The only question is how much it will cost.
What does it matter what the causes are? You keep bringing this up, and every time you do so it's a red herring- it's completely irrelevant as to what is causing climate change. Completely. The effects are the same regardless of what's causing it.
You do look pretty silly when you suggest that human activity might not have much to do with it, though. Not quite flat-Earther silly, but pretty close.
Yeah, see, if we knew exactly how the climate would change- where will it get hotter? Where will it get colder? Where will the rains move? Then it wouldn't be a big problem. In fact, there would be so much investment from the private sector in the new land and infrastructure that it might even be *good* for our global economy (short of the shipping problems; choppier seas, more hurricanes).
Unfortunately, we have no such accurate models; we can only make some pretty wild conjecture about where the water will be going, or how it will affect each location, and that's a pretty serious issue. We can't adjust to it ahead of time if we don't know what's going to happen.
Half of the population dying? That's within the realm of possibility- it could even be worse. The real problem is what might happen when millions of people are displaced and hanging out in overcrowded refugee camps like viral petri dishes, breeding new diseases (particularly people from the tropics). We could easily breed a new smallpox. It doesn't matter where you live; that isn't a good thing. As the world warms, on average, the CO2 will increase, but so will Oxygen, producing more wildfires, and expanding the range and frequency of malarial mosquitoes (as well as new resistant forms of malaria, and other pest borne diseases).
If we aren't well prepared for the change, displacement and warming alone could be *very* dangerous. That's not to mention all of the other social and economic problems that situation could produce. The lack of knowledge and technology to accurately predict what is going to happen makes that all the more threatening.
How about government research programs to determine how climate will change, so cities and agricultural infrastructure can be prepared in advance?
Either that, or we need to expand the scope and funding of CDC and our military, and be ready to completely lock down our borders and be fully self-sufficient to prepare for the inevitable wave of new diseases that will be coming from those displaced populations.
It could very well get colder in Ohio, or just stop raining entirely there and turn into a desert. There's no reason to believe everything will remain the same, and the area will just become a little warmer. Climate is dynamic and chaotic; even the slightest change can drastically alter a system. The world will become warmer on average, but many places will become colder or simply turn into deserts, tidal flood plains, and other undesirable environments.
It's a hell of a lot easier to just stop climate change by using basic existing technology to just capture a bit of carbon, rather than dealing with the consequences later.
Signature ? How ?
Probably because of the attempts made so far to politicize it -both by skeptics and supporters alike. There is the belief that the useless figureheads (i.e. politicians from Europe) in favor of laws (supposedly) protecting the environment are, in fact, merely using climate as a platform to nudge the remainder of the world towards social states. (Which is something I'm vehemently against. Most of you should know me enough as to 'why')
None of this, of course, has anything to do with the science itself, or those conducting it.
The 'need' is pretty subjective. Many of the "consequences" haven't been well established as of yet. I live far enough inland to not be concerned with the consequences as I know them to be. In fact, most people living on the shorelines of developed nations shouldn't be worried (except for maybe their tourism economy.)
Did you know Blake, that the Earth has had a much reduced (or nonexistant) glaciation level than it has today, while still sustaining vertebrate life nearly as complex as today's? The Earth has obviously been much warmer in the past, yet there was no catastrophic change in ecosystem such that a major extinction event occurred. Of course there was no civilization back then, but then, we are much more mobilized in addition to being civilized than any animal previously was. The rising sea levels will not rise suddenly or catastrophically; the change will be just steady enough for everyone to have years advance warning.
The only cultures I could imagine being adversely affected by shifting ecozones, rising sea levels, and increasing sea levels would be the ones made up of ignorant vermin living off of subsistence agriculture. (and even then, only Bobspence and a handful of others here at RRS would care)
Everyone else has an abundance of tools to fight the problems that may happen in a warmer future.
Probably, but no significant conclusions can be derived from it until 3rd party peer review has been done. (props to Blake for inadvertently explaining that for me)
Scientists can always choose what they want to believe, but what John Q. Scientist wants to believe (and other conscious bias) does not equate science; not even when included with actual findings.
“A meritocratic society is one in which inequalities of wealth and social position solely reflect the unequal distribution of merit or skills amongst human beings, or are based upon factors beyond human control, for example luck or chance. Such a society is socially just because individuals are judged not by their gender, the colour of their skin or their religion, but according to their talents and willingness to work, or on what Martin Luther King called 'the content of their character'. By extension, social equality is unjust because it treats unequal individuals equally.” "Political Ideologies" by Andrew Heywood (2003)
And even today, large amounts of people live in Arizona and New Mexico, even though it's mostly desert. IIRC, the term "Mecca" comes from a city in the middle of the Arabian peninsula.
Last time I checked, Venice originally started out as a fishing village on "salty soil".
as for coastal regions, some fool could always pull a New Orleans and attempt to wall off the ocean, but that would probably result in many more 'New Katrinas'.
“A meritocratic society is one in which inequalities of wealth and social position solely reflect the unequal distribution of merit or skills amongst human beings, or are based upon factors beyond human control, for example luck or chance. Such a society is socially just because individuals are judged not by their gender, the colour of their skin or their religion, but according to their talents and willingness to work, or on what Martin Luther King called 'the content of their character'. By extension, social equality is unjust because it treats unequal individuals equally.” "Political Ideologies" by Andrew Heywood (2003)
Biological life has been recycling material, and going on for billions of years. Perhaps life is the greatest technology. I don't see why we should give up. If life can do it maybe we can to.