Some readers may recall a sophomoric comment from an “Ethan” at this post. He persists, but I doubt if anyone is following it any more other than him. So I thought I’d start a newer thread to continue the discussion, and hopefully educate him. He last wrote:
“Mass economic dislocation, poverty, disease and death,” though, are all consequences of climate change. Sea level rise will send billions of people scrambling for higher ground, competing with the existing population for dwindling resources. The deserts will spread, and indeed are already spreading, destroying millions of acres of arable land in the southwestern United States and northern Africa.
Now, I am not suggesting solutions to this problem. Massive government intervention leaves a bad taste in my mouth, too. But it makes me sick to think that there is still so much doubt about climate change and its consequences among the general population, when the science is solid. My statement that 1 percent of scientists think climate change might not be human caused may be “argumentum ad verecundiam,” but it is nearly accurate…the number varies slightly from survey to survey, but in all the reports I could find it has never been above 4%. So we’re looking at, at worst, 97% consensus that climate change is a reality, and that human activity is the driving force behind it.
I have read the “climategate” emails, and frankly, there is nothing in them that suggests a vast conspiracy of scientists. They contained unprofessional language concerning doubters of climate change, but all of the quotes which seem to point to such a conspiracy were obviously removed from their proper context when reprinted by the media. In fact, I blame the media for the fact that so many people in the United States are not sure if climate change is a reality. That 1 – 4% of scientists is given equal time with the 97 – 99% who are positive climate change is happening, which creates widespread doubt when it should be minimal.
Now, again, I don’t know exactly what should be done about climate change. Action on a large scale is needed, and frankly I don’t know if people are ready for that. But the consequences of inaction will be very high, and will be seen in my lifetime. The consensus is that our emissions of greenhouse gases (e.g., our consumption of fossil fuels) must peak by 2015 for the temperature to stabilize at no more than 2 degrees Celsius above temperatures at the end of the last century. So I don’t know about you, but I’m probably going to buy an electric car when they hit the streets, and I think I’ll be doing my shopping at local farmers’ markets whenever possible. Even those little things (buying potatoes grown in your state instead of ones that were flown or trucked across country) make a difference. I just hope those little things are enough.
I’m kind of swamped today, but I trust other readers will set him on the road to wisdom. I would suggest though (because it’s not obvious that he did) that he start (as I suggested at the time) by reading the piece I wrote at PJM that the post was partially about.
The problem with the “wait and see” approach is that if the predictions of the IPCC reports are even half correct, billions of dollars and lives will be lost. And the time frame their predictions cover spans one century, not several. We’re talking about catastrophic sea level rise, drought and famine by 2050. There is a good chance I’ll be alive to see it.
I would be interested in hearing the supposed “profound and harmful” effects of attempts to curb our greenhouse gas emissions now. As far as I am aware, there is no consensus on what measures to take, let alone predictions about the effects of such measures. Near as I can tell, we’re talking about growth in the solar panel and wind farm industries, the return of agriculture from “factory farms” to small, local growers, and the refocusing of the automotive industry on electric and hybrid-electric vehicles. These hardly strike me as draconian measures.
The problem with the “wait and see” approach is that if the predictions of the IPCC reports are even half correct, billions of dollars and lives will be lost.
Once again, did you read my Pajamas Media piece?
Near as I can tell, we’re talking about growth in the solar panel and wind farm industries, the return of agriculture from “factory farms” to small, local growers, and the refocusing of the automotive industry on electric and hybrid-electric vehicles.
No, forcing us into those industries before the technology is mature (and it’s not, and it can’t be made that way on command with a magic wand or government program), and dramatically increasing the cost of current energy sources, would dramatically reduce economic growth, keep much of the developing world deep in poverty, and wipe out much of the future wealth we’ll need to deal with the deleterious consequences of warming, if they occur.
I agree with Jeff. I don’t care what happens to Mann, Jones, et al, other than that they be viewed with the skepticism they clearly richly deserve. What I want to see is real science start to be done in this area, consonant with the scientific method and free inquiry, instead of fudging models and data to get politically pre-determined answers, engaging in intimidation of dissenters and groupthink, and hiding the ball.
The thing about the catastrophic AGW claim is that it is extraordinary. The earth has had a long history of staying within a pretty narrow band of temperatures, conducive to life. It has, during that time, had vastly higher concentrations of CO2 at some points. Yet somehow unless we spend trillions of dollars and give up significant amounts of liberty, and potentially allow millions or billions of people to die (wealth is life, in a very real sense), then we are all DOOMED!!!1!
Sorry. That last bit was a bit snarky. Nonetheless, it is true that this is an extraordinary claim, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. We have not seen extraordinary evidence. In extreme crises, we may dispense with evidence and go on trust. However, to do that we must both feel the crisis and trust the people who propose to lead us through. Clearly, you feel the crisis. I and many others do not; for us, there is neither an immediately visible state of crisis nor sufficient evidence to indicate that there is likely a crisis of such magnitude that we cannot deal with it more normally. Similarly, you seem to trust the climatologists, because they are scientists. I do not trust them merely on claimed credentials; I’ve seen too many times when experts were flat wrong. Nor do I trust them on gut instinct, because they do not inspire trust: they hide evidence; they attack their opponents personally rather than attacking their opponents’ positions; they generally act like used-car salesmen.
So here we have a situation where a lot of people are unconvinced, and where the consequences of taking action are arguably as bad as the consequences of not taking action. As I said, I appreciate your willingness to argue the point, rather than flinging poo. More rational argument is needed. Even more needed is trustworthy evidence on which to make decisions.
You say the science is solid. I disagree, and I believe I’ve stated some of the reasons here and in earlier comments. (I would be happy to restate, if I have not sufficiently made clear my reasons.) In essence, I disagree with nearly every claim you made in the post Rand quoted. And given the extraordinary nature of the claims, it would take extraordinary evidence to convince me.
Well, I obviously disagree with most of these assessments. But, enough of this
http://xkcd.com/386/
for today.
Carbon taxes and or cap and trade are the most widely proposed “solutions” I’ve seen bandied about. Both would drastically reduce our economic productivity, transferring wealth from producers to the government and those politically favored. The result would be lower economic growth, lower technological and other innovation, and increased fragility in the face of change. Ironically, all of these are exactly what we must not do if we wish to be able to deal with climate change. The King Canute solution of whipping back the tide is both drastically costly and very, very, very unlikely to have any real effect; as a utilitarian solution to the supposed problem, it is pathetically non-optimal. If there is drastic climate change, the vast power of the earth would swamp our attempts to prevent it, and our only real option would be to adapt. Less wealth, more regulation and more centralized control are precisely the ways to be destroyed by rapid catastrophic change.
So even if I agreed that the supposed crisis were real, I would still not favor the solutions most commonly recommended.
Gotta love XKCD. That we can agree on.
HT: Glenn Reynolds
Accept Defeat: The Neuroscience of Screwing Up
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_accept_defeat/
Why we should be concerned about “consensus” and “settled science”.
The problem with the “wait and see” approach is that if the predictions of the IPCC reports are even half correct, billions of dollars and lives will be lost. And the time frame their predictions cover spans one century, not several. We’re talking about catastrophic sea level rise, drought and famine by 2050. There is a good chance I’ll be alive to see it.
That depends both on the underlying research being correct and the IPCC actually making predictions of significant harm in the next century. Billions of dollars and an unknown number of “lives” just doesn’t sound significant to me. In comparison, we propose to radically restructure the world’s energy and transportation infrastructure. I see that as costing hundreds of billions of dollars a year. That’s a lot of wealth to dissipate for hypothetical harm.
Even if we assume the emergence of some magic technology that will negate the harm after a few years, that still ends up being trillions of dollars of lost wealth by the time we get to 2100 (and we ignore that sooner or later the magic technology would be adopted anyway, making once again the “do nothing” strategy superior). If the magic technology doesn’t emerge, then we’ve dissipated tens of trillions of wealth by the time 2100 comes around. No prediction of global warming has costs in that range.
I would be interested in hearing the supposed “profound and harmful” effects of attempts to curb our greenhouse gas emissions now. As far as I am aware, there is no consensus on what measures to take, let alone predictions about the effects of such measures. Near as I can tell, we’re talking about growth in the solar panel and wind farm industries, the return of agriculture from “factory farms” to small, local growers, and the refocusing of the automotive industry on electric and hybrid-electric vehicles. These hardly strike me as draconian measures.
I outlined above the “profound and harmful” effects as I see them. The mere fact that there’s no consensus on what to do is just more evidence that action taken now will be premature.
Wow. I came late to the party, considering it was my post to which Ethan was responding.
I love how these types always pull out all these links which purport to prove their point. Are these all pod people who get their marching orders from a centralized location, or maybe through transmitters in their heads? Or, are there just an incredible number of people so insecure in their own mental ability to reason things out for themselves that they must, perforce, spend hours upon hours at the same sites trawling and cataloging everything someone else said which they can use to skate out when they have backed themselves into a corner?
Trying to reason with people like Mark and Ethan is futile. As Jeff says, they are just monkeys flinging feces. Go ahead and fling ’em, guys. I won’t respond. You bore me.
The climate is getting colder. A lot colder. By all indications, it will continue to do so until even these lemmings’ link libraries cannot rescue them. Cap & Trade is dead, for now, and with the almost certain blowout in next years elections, any treaty or new regulation is going to have rough going. Eventually, this insanity will die out, just like the global cooling scare of the 70’s (yes, it was virtually identical, it just didn’t go as far because the climate changed on them before they could ramp up the juggernaut – I was there) did.
I always thoughtone of the most effective ways to sequester carbon would be to grow lots of monoculture pine forests, cut them down and stack the wood. But that goes against environmentalist beliefs. Besides,it wouldn’t make much sense anyway, because Catastrophic AGW (CAGW) does not seem to even close to being proven scientifically (outside of the New York TImes and its brethren). Even though I love alternative energy (wind and solar) it would be more effective to lower carbon output to simply build a bunch of nuclear reactors to generate electricity. What I hate about this debate is both the refusal of the catastrophic AGW proponents to answer why the Earth went through so many climate changes before invention of the SUV (or even of human beings) and their assumption that skeptics somehow want a ruined environment. I daresay most of us CAGW skeptics want a clean environment and do not want a lot of pollution. But the solution to this is more and better technology, not technological retreat. The solution is to continue developing clean and more efficient technologies. Those are worthwhile in and of themselves. We should not destroy the industrial economies and shovel money to Third World kleptocracies to combat a problem that is not even proven.
Tom W. –
A survey of “environmental engineers and practitioners”, which includes the guys who run the air handlers at your local Howard Johnson’s, is not the same as a survey of climatologists. A survey of climatologists, arguably the right people to ask about the climate, yields a 97% belief that the planet is warming rapidly and that the effect is caused by humans. A survey of the scientific community yields a similar number.
Whether or not you choose to believe their conclusion, the belief in the scientific community started out at zero and grew over a period of thirty years through the normal process of data collection, analysis and peer review. In other words, just a handful of people slowly convinced a large and skeptical body. It’s quite possible that over another thirty years we will discover some heretofore-undiscovered cause for global warming, but in the mean time given the implications any truly conservative person would take the idea very seriously. We have only one place to live.
Simpletons like Dave can’t imagine someone who is both a firm supporter of evolution (and a religious agnostic) and a skeptic on shoddy science like AGW. It doesn’t fit the template, and would make his head explode.
Well this Dave has no trouble with the apparent paradox.
It’s simple. Rand believes the things he believes in and discounts those that he doesn’t agree with REGARDLESS of the data or evidence involved.
It’s true, it does take a pretty special intellect to manage that.
Hugh Ross is a bone fide astrophysicist who believes the universe is 14 billion (ish) years old AND the that the Earth was created by God about 6000 years ago.
The ability to ignore science for the dogma you believe is criss-crosses the political divides.
Bother… pressed send too soon.
In the 15 odd years I’ve been reading Rand’s stuff on line his ability to believe contradictory stuff has astounded me. Another thing that’s always amazed me is Rand’s ability to make predictions of certain FACTS that actually don’t turn out to be true.
For a recent example I wonder if he got around to eating all the popcorn he bought to watch the DMC explode when Hillary staged a massive coups?
“…the belief in the scientific community started out at zero and grew over a period of thirty years through the normal process of data collection, analysis and peer review…”
Yeah, the Mafia started out gradually, too. You really see this as somehow supporting your position?
Besides, it’s not even true. The fix was in early on, and a lot of the advocates were drawn from the ranks of the Global Cooling crowd. Like this guy.
And while we’re all congratulating ourselves on how great engineers are in various fields. I’ll point out that the “father” of modern creationism was an engineer himself.
As Rand, himself, so ably demonstrates year after year, just being an engineer, even a recovering one, doesn’t grant anything except proof that you were prepared to apply yourself throughout a fairly arduous training process.
And being a climate “scientist” doesn’t grant anything except proof that you can get government saps to fill your wallet.
Those fifteen years were a lot odder for me, reading your stuff on line.
A simple view….
In the past long before humans we had more Co2 we had less C02
In the pasty long before humans we had higher temps than now and we had lower temps than now.
5 Years ago at the beginning of this AGW the AGW people made predictions about the next 5 years. They were 100% wrong, in both sign and magnitude. Why should I trust them now?
So given that the climate will change regardless what we do.
What can we do to be maximally adaptable?
Destroying our industrial capacity is not on that list….
Paul, if you really want to ask some questions, how about these?
What is the optimal temperature of the Earth? Why is that optimal?
When has the Earth ever been at that temperature?
How long did it stay there?
Why did it change?
I have yet to get answers to these questions. For some reason, the first pair draws blank looks from the AGW people, who suddenly seem to have something else to do and look: shiny things!
Rand Simberg wrote: No, forcing us into those industries before the technology is mature (and it’s not, and it can’t be made that way on command with a magic wand or government program), and dramatically increasing the cost of current energy sources, would dramatically reduce economic growth, keep much of the developing world deep in poverty, and wipe out much of the future wealth we’ll need to deal with the deleterious consequences of warming, if they occur.
Rand, on what do you base your statement that the technology is not mature?
– Cost-wise, with the big drop in IGBT pricing, PV has just quietly hit grid parity in several places like New Mexico, and will do so in the rest of the U.S. over the next few years (and drop below grid parity in many places). At the present rate of PV installation, possibly a third to half of worldwide energy production could be PV in 22 years for less than the cost of installing coal and NG.
– Nuclear is certainly a mature technology, and with a transition to (admittedly immature) thorium or neutron-enhanced breeders it would be cheaper than NG or coal. NG in this country will probably climb in price over the next decade to match nuclear.
– Wind is mature enough at this point to supply a large percentage of our energy needs, and like nuclear has plenty of room for improvement.
We lack compact energy storage right now, but a good market survey would make a great article for PM and it would show you that the there are no scientific reasons for this situation to remain for very long. As for generation, just these three energy sources could easily replace NG and coal and largely supplant oil in the next three decades with very little stress on our economy.
Why not write a few articles on batteries, supercapacitors and new energy technologies for PM? A quick look at the magazine website just now showed very little coverage, and the technologies have made huge advances in the past few years.
I was referring to wind and sun as baseload. Nuclear didn’t seem to be on Ethan’s agenda.
In order for me to do PM pieces on those technologies I’d have to invest time in researching them. Unfortunately, PM doesn’t pay me well enough to do that, which is why I focus on my areas of expertise.
Paul:
The U.S. no longer produces much of anything. What little industrial capacity we have left is being off-shored pretty rapidly. So is R&D. I was talking to a friend who works for GlaxoSmithKline yesterday, and he told me all the big pharmaceutical companies are now moving their R&D to India and China, now that their research establishments are mature enough to replace the U.S.. They’re laying off U.S. workers like crazy. China and India, meanwhile, are building major thin-film production capacity and using it to get themselves on to wind and PV.
Whether or not you believe in GW, other countries have recognized that renewable energy is a huge new market. We could play in that market, too, if we chose to.
Rand:
Unfortunately I’ve spent the past few weeks doing very little else other than research energy-related topics, having gotten fascinated with the geopolitics of oil and determining whether humans could in fact switch over cost-effectively in a few decades. My conclusion is that in large part it’s already happening while we’re debating whether it’s possible, faster than I would have imagined. Also, strangely enough, the anti-nuclear wackos that used to turn my stomach have started writing pro-nuclear manifestos. That whole community has flipped over.
Btw, I had completely dismissed PV on the basis that it never seemed to progress, always seemed to be too expensive and sucked up a meter per kilowatt at best. I’m now toying with the idea of throwing a few kilowatts on the roof of my house; my house would be cooler in the summer and my electricity bills would drop to nearly zero.
Dave, if it’s already happening, that’s great. Among other things, it means that there is no need for government intervention in the economy.
Also, the topic under discussion isn’t “within a few decades.” I have no doubt we can do it in that time frame. But Cap’n’Trade and Kyoto demand it within a single one.
That’s not really accurate.
Fewer people work in manufacturing thanks to productivity gains, but the US share of global manufacturing output has actually increased in the past decade or so.
Again:
AGW may or may not be a reality. But even if it isn’t, then many of the things needing to be done if it is are worth doing anyway – and many of the things already being done are not worth doing.
Not worth doing: wind power, ground-based solar. Both have truly appalling power density and maintenance costs and both are unreliable. Also add most of the current approaches to biofuel – particularly turning food crops into fuel. More controversially, tokamak fusion.
Worth doing, limited application, possible side benefits: high-temperature incineration with power generation, thermal depolymerisation, waste and sewage digesters, district heat and power.
Definitely worth doing (if we can, in some cases): focus and/or Polywell fusion, OTEC, blue-green algae biofuel, wave power, SPS. Many of these have side benefits, too.
Even more worth doing: Nukes. Lots of nukes.
Worth doing, if Americans can get over their love affair with huge, inefficient cars: sharp rises in tax on automotive fuels. (Probably phased in, to avoid too much economic dislocation.)
The side benefits of less oil use and energy independence from various sorts of dictatorship? Simple, really. Less resources for them to make trouble with.
This is an interesting thread – some thoughts;
On GIGO: I wrote a FORTRAN program for part of my PhD to simulate inelastic neutron scattering in ionic crystals. Pored over it for days and days, submitted to the CRAY god and let its wonderous FFT routines do their work. A wonderful graph appeared, with a peak near zero and some fuzzy stuff tapering off. Not quite what I expected, so it was interesting – had I found something new? I hurtled into my supervisors office, partly excited, but mainly concerned – I had no idea what was going on. He looked, he examined, he prodded and poked the graphs. He looked at the source and after what seemed an age (it was probably 5 minutes – he was *good*) he proclaimed “Well, Tony you seem to have cancelled out the peaks in the simulated data – look here and here at these variables”, “Yes?” said I, “Yes, so basically what you’re seeing is the thermal vibration we put into the ions in the first place – damped for sure – but, well it’s basically a random number generator now”.
That was my GIGO experience – and as a result, I am *always* sceptical of numbers that come out of ‘simulations’ now.
I agree with Jeff that if we, the people, are being expected to radically change our lives because of these ‘extraordinary’ events, then the evidence has to be extraordinary too.
On the data: If I can download something like ‘python’ (great language by the way), compile it on my laptop, having made sure the SHA checksum was valid to ensure no code tampering, then use it to run simulations, all the while safe in the knowledge that hundreds of eyes have been over the publicly available (with revisions!) code to make sure it does what it says it does, then I fail to see why it is so difficult for CRU and other agencies to make their code *and their data* available online – with checksums to ensure no tampering – and allow *anyone* to see what the evidence is.
Regarding the number of scientists who agree with AGW – I will just point out that towards the end of the 19th Century most physicists thought that all the major questions had been answered. And then there was the photoelectric effect…
However, this may all be a moot point. Like Dave Klinger I’ve been looking at alternative energy sources for a while, and I’ve come to the following conclusions; a) nuclear energy (fission) is likely to have some breakthroughs yes, but actually a whole raft of different types of reactors are becoming available – and China just keeps upping the amount of electricity it says it will generate from nuclear power (those anti-nuclear hippies have a lot to answer for), b) nuclear (fusion) also has a chance of becoming viable in the next 5-10 years (but not ITER – the tokomaks will never be economically viable, they’re just government welfare programmes), instead look to Bussard IEC and Focus Fusion for a start, c) nanotechnology is looking very promising for battery/supercapacitor applications, as well as making PV much more viable and d) all the natural gas deposits that have become economically viable in the US and elsewhere will also have a substantial effect…
But the biggest point in favour of ‘things getting better’ is the emergence of China and India. These countries have experienced *famine* on a biblical scale. They are not going to put their development on hold at assuage some Western guilt complex at violating ‘Gaia’. And of course the recent farce in Copenhagen showed that all too clearly, with the petulant ‘One’ being effectively marginalised.
It may be that in the future, Deng Xiaoping, P. V. Narasimha Rao and of course the great enabler, Ronald Reagan will be seen as the people that made the 21st Century the cornucopia of prosperity that it has the potential to be.
So in short ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’.
The leading cause of death worldwide is poverty. Anything that slows worldwide economic growth effectively promotes poverty, leading to more deaths. The policies advocated by the AGW or “climate change” crowd will result in far more deaths than the climate changes themselves.
Talk to a geologist if you want some perspective. Throughout geologic time, the Earth has warmed and cooled many times. Most of these warming and cooling periods predate human beings. Obviously, the climate is changing just as it has throughout geologic time. Before we can predict future climate changes and humanity’s impact on the changes – if any – we need a solid scientific understanding of what caused those changes in the past. Without that, any climate model is little more than useless.
Developing a scientific understanding of the climate is a long and painful process. There are so many factors to consider. Since there were no scientific instruments in place much more than 150 years ago (about the end of the Little Ice Age), many of the measurements must be derived from second-hand sources like the thickness of tree rings, but even that isn’t a simple process. There are multiple factors that can influence the thickness of a tree ring including temperature but also including rainfall.
All of the raw data sources need be made available. Any adjustments to the raw data must be documented as to the nature and reason for the adjustment. The process must be repeatable by other researchers. Only then can the input data be considered trustworthy.
The source code for the computer models must be open for review by software professionals. Code review would’ve caught many of the horrors in the ClimateGate code. The model must then be validated. Start at some known time and condition in the past (say 100 years ago) and run the model. Compare the output to what actually happened. If the output disagrees with historical data, the fault is with the model, not the data. Lather, rinse, and repeat until you get a model whose output actually matches reality within a reasonable percentage. Only then can the model have any respectability. Even that is difficult, though, because of those multiple factors that influence climate. For example, if solar variability is a significant factor on the climate (which I strongly suspect), then the accuracy of the model will depend on how well it can predict future changes in solar output. We’re a long way past the days when people simply accepted outputs because it comes from a computer.
Sure, doing all of this is a lot of work but who said doing real science was easy? If you don’t want to do that, then don’t call it Climate Science. Call it something like “Climate Studies” and put it in the sociolology department along with “Women’s Studies” and the like.
Sure, doing all of this is a lot of work but who said doing real science was easy? If you don’t want to do that, then don’t call it Climate Science. Call it something like “Climate Studies” and put it in the sociolology department along with “Women’s Studies” and the like.
And don’t use it as an excuse for restructuring human society.
I have a new application of the precautionary principle: Unlimited power in the hands of government is a bad thing with a shitload of historical evidence to support that conclusion. Therefore, we should take most of that power away, to prevent future cataclysms.
“For a recent example I wonder if he got around to eating all the popcorn he bought to watch the DMC explode when Hillary staged a massive coups?”
You can relax, he was just 4 years early. And what does a mid-80’s Rap Group have to do with it?
Mr. Hallowell, if someone does some serious work on real alternative energy – and it comes up trumps – then human society will be restructured anyway, whether you or anyone else want it restructured or not.
As a gedankenexperiment, imagine that focus or Polywell fusion proves possible in small units – say the size that would power a house or a large vehicle. (As an aside, either can probably use a fusion reaction – proton/boron-11 – that produces next to no radioactivity.)
What does that do to society, both within (for example) the USA and internationally? There is even a distinct possibility that we’ll eventually be able to make fusion-powered cars.
Mr. Hallowell, if someone does some serious work on real alternative energy – and it comes up trumps – then human society will be restructured anyway, whether you or anyone else want it restructured or not.
That’s a different situation, Fletcher. We’d eagerly restructure society because it would be clearly better. I’d be helping out as well. But restructuring society with Other Peoples’ Money for dubious ideological goals? That’s not a good idea IMHO.
Fletcher Christian @ December 30th, 2009 at 3:19 am
AGW may or may not be a reality. But even if it isn’t, then many of the things needing to be done if it is are worth doing anyway…”
Fine and good. But, we do not need all the proposed global regulation and taxation to do it. In the end, that will do more to delay your goals than advance them.
“The side benefits of less oil use and energy independence from various sorts of dictatorship? Simple, really. Less resources for them to make trouble with.”
Way too simple. Who says they need extensive resources to make trouble? They only need foot soldiers to do that. You are proposing to expand their recruiting pool by closing off avenues for gainful employment.
I just love how a global warming thread brings out all the the ecofascists. To them, AGW mitigation isn’t about making economic sense, logical sense, or applying really any high level reasoning to the subject matter. It is simply about fundamentally changing humanity to fit within the paradigm of their guilt ridden agitprop. In order to atone for the sins of our excessive consumption and pay for the crimes against the environment requires bold and immediate action through direct force of will. To them the time for talking is over, we just have to act according to the directives of our intellectual betters. After all, these intellectuals should be completely trusted to do the right things because they have Nobels and Pulitzers. They may ask, “How many prizes have you won?”
Fletcher Christian wrote: Worth doing, if Americans can get over their love affair with huge, inefficient cars: sharp rises in tax on automotive fuels. (Probably phased in, to avoid too much economic dislocation.)
Why is this worth doing? Who benefits besides the people who take the money and those they give it to? Raising the cost of getting from one place to another and the cost of growing food does not help. When someone comes up with a transportation technology cost competitive with what we use today the change will happen. Until then, trying to force the change by taxation will hurt those with limited resources the most and help no one except the political leaches.
If you’re a political leech, that’s a benefit. In fact, it’s the point.
Frank – who benefits? Good question. I submit that the answer is “everyone in the entire free West”. If only because someone would indeed be hurt by it. That someone being the petrofascist dictatorships of the Middle East, Russia and probably Venezuela.
Karl, as for restructuring society in the scenario I propose, or something like it – I extremely strongly doubt that the people in charge of (for example) Exxon would be joining us.
One might wonder why the tiny amounts of money (compared to the defense or Social Security budgets, for example) needed to get some serious work done on the alternative energies that might actually work have not been forthcoming. It couldn’t be because powerful vested interests would be hurt, could it?
For what it’s worth, my solution to global terrorism (to some extent and other things are necessary), AGW if it actually exists, energy independence and in the slightly longer term shortages of strategic minerals is fairly simple. There are many approaches to non-fossil fuel energy that haven’t been seriously tried. The amount of money needed to try ALL of them is trivial compared to the two budgets mentioned above. Especially since one necessary step is to get rid of NASA.
Doing this would also make the hard subjects (hard sciences and engineering) more attractive as a career. There is something wrong with a system in which talented graduate physicists find it better to use their mathematical skills gambling with other people’s money than doing what they are trained for.
If we were serious about energy independence, we’d adapt a strategy along the lines of this:
1. Conserve where it makes economic sense. Even lowering the rate of growth in energy consumption by a few percentage points would result in tremendous energy savings over time.
2. Increase domestic production of energy, to include off shore drilling, tapping newly discovered natural gas reserves, and building more nuclear power plants for reliable baseline power.
3. Implement alternative energy where it makes economic sense. If alternative energy was economically viable, you wouldn’t need to offer tax incentives for the utility companies to adopt them. We might choose to subsidize the development if there is a realistic prospect of the technology becoming economically viable without the subsidizy in a reasonable time, say 5-10 years.
Since the Obama Administration is doing nothing to increase domestic energy production except that which needs continuous subsidizies and often isn’t reliable enough for baseline power productions (especially wind power), I contend that they’re all hat, no cattle when it comes to energy independence.
Fletcher:
“One might wonder why the tiny amounts of money (compared to the defense or Social Security budgets, for example) needed to get some serious work done on the alternative energies that might actually work have not been forthcoming. It couldn’t be because powerful vested interests would be hurt, could it?”
No, silly, it is because what we have is so much easier. The infrastructure is in place, and cheap liquid fuel, the product of eons of solar energy storage, is just lying in the ground for the taking.
Moreover, there are a staggering plethora of other uses for this miraculous gunk and its long chains of organic molecules upon which our modern industrial society depends, at least as much as it does for the energy which may be extracted by breaking the bonds which bind them together. Where do you think the materials in the keyboard you are typing on, and all the other plastics, as well as the epoxies and resins holding your very house together, come from? The very food you eat is processed and preserved using petroleum derived substances. It’s everywhere around you.
Furthermore, it’s not just money which has to be devoted to the alternatives. It is resources: brainpower, manpower, and motive power, among others. Money is just a way we allocate these things. We can reallocate those resources, but there are opportunity costs, costs with which our competitors likely will choose not to burden themselves, putting us at a disadvantage.
If your wildest dreams were to come to fruition, we would have cheap and abundant energy to do with as we please. But, we already have that, so what you are advocating represents a net loss integrated over the development time. It is better and smarter to take advantage of the existing resources and expand the alternatives as it becomes necessary.
One more thing: Alternative energy sources are made more expensive, compared to fossil fuels, by the direct and indirect subsidies given to fossil-fuel using industries. For example, I very much doubt that the oil industry pays anything like enough in tax to offset the increased military budgets made necessary to secure oil supplies.
For example, I very much doubt that the oil industry pays anything like enough in tax to offset the increased military budgets made necessary to secure oil supplies.
Two things to remember here. First, a good portion of those military budgets would be required anyway to secure the trade routes for goods not based on fossil fuels. Second, we are overpaying for this protection.
“First, a good portion of those military budgets would be required anyway to secure the trade routes for goods not based on fossil fuels.”
Undoubtedly. The notion that we could develop alternative sources of energy and then turn our backs on and ignore troublesome regions of the globe is a pipe dream. For one thing, even with alternative sources of energy, oil would still permeate our society (see previous post). And, in the energy market, oil would simply compete with those other energy products. Now, instead of the inhabitants being pissed off at us because they think we are taking advantage of them, they would be pissed off at us for competing in their market and threatening their livelihoods. Which alternative of these two do you think would make them angrier?
“Second, we are overpaying for this protection.”
Who are we “overpaying?”
Who are we “overpaying?”
Military contractors. For example, as I understand it a lot of support roles (like cooks) are now done by expensive civilian contractors instead of military personnel. A number of military systems have been designed for obsolete tasks or to provide pork to certain districts (though Secretary of Defense Gates has cleaned that up a bit). The Iraqi occupation has a number of examples of excessive costs due to the way the US pays for services there. And I think we can mostly agree that the US didn’t invade for the oil.
Even if so, this is small change in the overall military budget.
Who are we “overpaying?”
Military contractors. For example, as I understand it a lot of support roles (like cooks) are now done by expensive civilian contractors instead of military personnel.
Following the end of the war in Viet Nam, the military was restructured. Many support jobs were no longer needed in peacetime so they were either transferred to the Guard and Reserves or outsourced. So, when a short war like the ’91 Gulf War happens, we activate the Guard and Reserve units. You can only do that for so long, though, so for a protracted war we go to contractors. We hire them for as long as they’re needed and let them go when the job is finished. That’s usually cheaper in the long run as compared to keeping people with those skills in the military (paying all of the associated costs including retirement benefits) when they’re no longer needed.
That’s usually cheaper in the long run as compared to keeping people with those skills in the military (paying all of the associated costs including retirement benefits) when they’re no longer needed.
What I’m hearing is that the US is paying several times more for contractor capability than if they had their own people doing those duties.
“What I’m hearing is that the US is paying several times more for contractor capability than if they had their own people doing those duties.”
But, over a shorter time period.
But, over a shorter time period.
A lot of those duties have to be performed indefinitely (eg, soldiers always need to eat). I don’t see the “shorter time period”. There’s probably a lot of contractors in Iraq that have been doing the same expensive thing for six years.