Transterrestrial Musings

Comments

Who "we"? Björn and his buddies?

Posted by mz at September 28, 2007 02:00 PM

Well, obviously, "Bjorn and his buddies" (and all other rational people) are not part of the "we." They get it right.

Posted by Rand Simberg at September 28, 2007 02:17 PM

This is probably just another thinly veiled attack on global warming being either happening or being an issue. It's very common in your blog. Why do you do it? You seem to have a personal hate for Al Gore, and the article was good a good thing when it shares that viewpoint right below the topic.

Yes, there are other issues as well, both societal and environmental and mixed ones. So you are now so deeply caring about them? You seem to write so much about them. (Not.)
In my view, many environmental problems stem from the same fundamental reason, that humans are such a powerful force changing nature that unless it's controlled more carefully, many bad effects happen. We (most western countries) already have laws for waste water purification or toxic waste handling for example. They were not necessary in most places a few hundred years ago. If we went to environmental anarchism, nature would quickly be destroyed in search of cutting expenses. A chemical plant could pollute drinking water since it would make more profit - it wouldn't need the drinking water for itself. Basic logic - there have to be rules that prevent such benefiting at the cost of everyone else. There always pop up new things that turn out to be problems from the view of the environment and or public health. Some of them are bogus, some of them are true. There have been countless in the history. Mercury, PCB, dioxines, various radioactive materials...

Western countries can affect global warming by putting more or less CO2 to the air. I think that's one of the reasons it's so talked about. It's us affecting everyone. (And the future generations.) Developing countries put out CO2 too but much less per capita. Therefore, if some kind of caps are established for emissions, it isn't justified to limit the developing countries.

If some tribes wage war in africa, often western countries find it hard to make a difference - it's easy to think that it's their own fault if they are warring. But global warming is a problem caused mainly by the western world. (China is increasing as a problem and should be dealt with somehow, but it's hypocritical to demand them to cut their one quarter per capita emissions before you accept to cut yours.)

For many environmental problems, I actually agree with you to a point - one could exaggerate and say people think environmental protection is a synonyme to a good climate policy. Not so. For example, direct habitat destruction and species transfer by humans are big causes in present day extinctions. Again, to exaggerate to demonstrate a point, the jungles of the world might be homogenized after a couple of centuries... You should definitely write more about this stuff if you really think it is important! (Only half sarcasm there.)

I could perhaps sum it like this: the world's wealth is not equally divided between people. It's perhaps not rightful to demand we give from our wealth to the poorer, but it certainly is not rightful that we should just take from them. And this is what climate change can be seen as. Affecting the "not nice" "status quo" to the wrong, "even worse" direction.

Posted by mz at September 28, 2007 02:59 PM

This is probably just another thinly veiled attack on global warming being either happening or being an issue. It's very common in your blog.

Yes, because I consider it an important issue.

Why do you do it?

Because I'm concerned that the issue is being hijacked by people who are less concerned with global warming than they are that people might be having a good time and getting wealthy, particularly from capitalism.

You seem to have a personal hate for Al Gore

Well, things aren't always as they "seem." I have no "personal hate" for anyone.

"Personal hate" seems to be a phenomenon much more of the left, that they tend to project (like their propensity to tell lies in the service of the greater good) on their perceived enemies.

Yes, I suppose it can be "seen as that" by some (just as I can "seem to have a personal hate for Al Gore"). That doesn't make it correspond to reality.

Sorry, but I, and Bjorn (and his "buddies"), refuse to wear (and tighten up) the hair shirts that you and the other warmmongers "seem" to demand that we do.

Posted by Rand Simberg at September 28, 2007 03:33 PM

mz,

Why are we so singularly focused on climate change when there are many other areas where the need is also great and we could do so much more with our effort? - Lomborg

IIRC, Lomborg could be described as a Social Democrat so buddy him with care.

Posted by D Anghelone at September 28, 2007 04:02 PM

"I could perhaps sum it like this: the world's wealth is not equally divided between people. It's perhaps not rightful to demand we give from our wealth to the poorer, but it certainly is not rightful that we should just take from them. And this is what climate change can be seen as. Affecting the "not nice" "status quo" to the wrong, "even worse" direction."

And there we have it. Thank you mz, for so truthfully exposing the red component of the modern environmental activist watermelon.

Green on the outside, red on the inside -- environmental activism today is a wamed over PC version of socialism. After the death of Marxism, the god that failed, AGW crusading provides a new warm religious redoubt for true believers in socialism to retreat to.

Posted by Brad at September 28, 2007 04:45 PM

I sometimes think Al Gore makes a Toc H Lamp look bright!

Posted by Andy Clark at September 28, 2007 05:29 PM

Funny, Saint Al doesn't seem willing to debate the issue. He's not the brightest bulb on the string, and probably wouldn't hold up very well to people who actually understand it.

Which does not describe either Bjorn Lomborg, Vaclav Klaus, Lord Monckton, or Dennis Avery. All of these people, Gore included, are at best students of science. It would be a waste of time for them to debate each other, when they should instead be learning from real climate scientists.

Such as the real climate scientists at realclimate.org. They say that Gore is not a bad student of their field, whereas Lomborg is a disreputable smartass.

This is not an expression of "hate for Al Gore."

The underlying problem is not so much your personal feelings about Al Gore as that you have been as gullible as a toddler on the subject of global warming. Lomborg freely explains that he is neither a meteorologist nor an economist. He's a boring political scientist who reinvented himself as an interesting political opportunist. You respond to him as if he won Nobel Prizes in chemistry and economics.

Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina really did win the Nobel Prize in chemistry. They discuss global warming very differently from Bjorn Lomborg.

But even though the underlying mental state is gullibility rather than hatred, it is true that you would take a sarcastic phrase such as "Saint Al" as strong evidence of Bush Derangement Syndrome if it were applied to "Saint George". So saying that you don't "hate" Gore is just sanctimony.

It's simply a dispassionate assessment of his intelligence, particularly considering that he flunked out of divinity school. How dim do you have to be to manage that?

Except that divinity school is not an intelligence test. All you have to do to "flunk" divinity school is get bored and drop out with incompletes, which is what Gore apparently did. Actually a lot of people at both ends of the intelligence spectrum think that divinity school is boring. You would have to pretty zealous (which is to say, gullible) to take this as proof that he's stupid.

The SAT is not an intelligence test either, but it is at least a bit closer as a measure of student aptitude. Gore's SATs were 625+730. Again, I don't mean to say that this really proves that Gore is smart, stupid or anything else in between. But since it is said here that Gore's grades prove that he's stupid, it does make one wonder about the SAT scores of those who say so. At best, it's an elitist judgment, given that 1355 on the SAT is much higher up the bell curve than, for example, the pass line on the ASVAB.

Posted by at September 28, 2007 06:29 PM

" "

One needn't be a climate scientist to assess whether the output of climate scientists adheres to proper scientific practice. If transparency is lacking, then it is not possible to verify proper scientific practice.

Mr. Lomborg needn't be a political scientist to recognize costs and benefits, and argue that AGCC is not among the best investments. He need not be a logician to know that appeals to authority are logical fallacies. He need not be a sociologist to understand the potential for groupthink that exists within any scientific research of consequence. He need not be a psychologist to understand the risks to liberty inherent in Green politics.

And Mr. Simberg need not address these more worthy causes, to justify critiquing the "science" of climate, and the power grabs by Mr. Gore and his fellow travelers.

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Posted by MG at September 28, 2007 07:01 PM

If transparency is lacking, then it is not possible to verify proper scientific practice.

Saying that meteorology lacks transparency is an ignorant prejudgment, or a cynical one. Most meteorologists are like weather men: they like point to the maps and charts and explain everything. Certainly that description fits the people at realclimate.org, who are among the most patient, helpful, respectful teachers in the blogosphere. Even if you couldn't care less about global warming, you can learn a lot of bread-and-butter science from that site.

He need not be a logician to know that appeals to authority are logical fallacies.

Lomborg is certainly no authority at all to appeal to. It's certainly true that appealing to authority never advances knowledge, but it's a perfectly valid way to learn a subject. Teachers are authorities, not debate opponents. They are not perfect authorities and they do not dictate the truth, but if they had no expertise, they would be unqualified teachers.

This very point perfectly captures Lomborg's smartass attitude. He just doesn't respect knowledge. Instead of learning from teachers, he says that they are afraid of his free inquiry. He may know nothing about computational fluid dynamics, but he treats papers full of computational fluid dynamics as part of his "debate". Well, he has the right to mouth off, but it reflects poorly on him and anyone who listens to him.

Posted by at September 28, 2007 07:43 PM

Lomborg is a social scientist with little understanding of risk as it applies to global warming. You can't perform a cost-benefit analysis on global warming when the earth is possibly moving into unknown territory in terms of operating parameters. How do you measure the cost of a scenario that you can't quite fathom except that it is one humankind has not faced before?

But of course pleasing to Rand since it gives him the opportunity to flail away at a liberal, Al Gore today, someone else tomorrow. Rather pathetic really.

Posted by at September 28, 2007 07:44 PM

"Saying that meteorology lacks transparency is an ignorant prejudgment, or a cynical one."

Nice straw man, " ". I make a general comment about science, and you pick (of all things) meteorology? Almost all natural sciences have play in the ongoing research into Earth's climate.

"He just doesn't respect knowledge. " Actually, he respects it enough to critique its construction, and critique those who try to pass off incomplete knowledge as facts that are beyond debate.

"He may know nothing about computational fluid dynamics, but he treats papers full of computational fluid dynamics as part of his "debate". "

Well, I know a fair amount about computational fluid dynamics, and am well acquainted with its perils and pitfalls. Do you know of any GCMs that "predict" the past, if time steps backwards?

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Lomborg is a social scientist with a keen understanding of how groupthink, money, religion, and psychology can interact to enslave and to destroy. I am quite amenable to his observations and his arguments.

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My own general critique of the AGCC "debate" is as follows:

1. The level of knowledge is incomplete enough NOW to make predictions quite uncertain. Yet, 15 years ago, the far more rudimentary science got used to justify the Kyoto Protocol. Since then, the politics of the whole issue have overwhelmed the scientific process of understanding.

2. Enough "scientists" signed onto a political process (the IPCC), and accepted a claim in their name of "scientific consensus". One problem: Consensus is political, not scientific. Independently reproducible results are science, not politics.

3. Notable "scientists", such as NASA Goddard's Hansen, have behaved untransparently and politically enough to throw into doubt the entire process's fidelity to the scientific method.

4. Political elites do not behave like there is crisis. Rather, they behave like there is an opportunity for political and monetary aggrandizement. To wit:

-- continued use of private jets
-- resistance to offshore wind farms
-- resistance to nuclear energy

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The combined corruptions of opacity of research, political gamesmanship, and the religous strains of Green all make me reach for my wallet and my rifle. It almost doesn't matter what the Earth's climate is in fact doing, or why. The corruptions make impossible discerning fact from marketing pitch. Consequently, one's position on AGCC is principally a matter of faith, not reason.

Perhaps Mr. Dietz, if he is reading, can offer some thoughts on my apologia.

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I take comfort from physorg.com. Humanity's mastery of matter and energy is improving very rapidly. I expect that by 2012, I will be able to purchase a useful plug-in hybrid vehicle, charge it with low cost solar electricity, and observe the proliferation of new designs of nuclear reactors

Posted by MG at September 28, 2007 08:54 PM

And all this will happen, in spite of the "debate" over AGCC, and the machinations of the power-grubbing opportunists like Mr. Gore.

I regard most of the politics now as a desperate attempt by these opportunists to position themselves in front of the parade of technological innovation that will render AGCC and Peak Oil moot concerns.

The basic manipulation attempt goes as follows:

1. Scare people into believing AGCC is a crisis.
2. Enact illiberal, oppressive measures that are marketed to forestall the crisis.
3. Already existing technology matures, spreads throughout human activity, and resolves the CO2 emission "problem".
4. The manipulators of #1 and #2 above declare the "problem" to be solved, and the "crisis" averted, thanks to #2, not #3.
5. #2 remains, even though the putative reason for it no longer exists.

I suspect, hope, and pray that the manipulators are too late -- the technological solutions will arrive before the political "solutions" get enacted.

Posted by MG at September 28, 2007 09:00 PM

And all this will happen, in spite of the "debate" over AGCC, and the machinations of the power-grubbing opportunists like Mr. Gore.

The basic manipulation attempt goes as follows:

I suspect, hope, and pray that the manipulators are too late -- the technological solutions will arrive before the political "solutions" get enacted.

Posted by MG at September 28, 2007 09:00 PM

Sounds like an argument to understand the territory. After all, society is also moving into unknown territory. It would be a shame, if the measures to prevent global warming indirectly make global warming worse. For example, if global warming controls cause increased poverty and population growth, that can cause both increased CO2 production, and governments and societies that fail to comply with carbon emission reductions. So you can get the "best" of all worlds: more poverty, more unstable societies, more corrupt governments, and more carbon emissions.

Posted by Karl Hallowell at September 28, 2007 11:57 PM

Throw the Virgins into the Volcano!!
(we'll use YOUR daughters)

This baloney has been going on since we lost our fur and had to steal it from hyenas.

As soon as there are enough resources in the tribe for someone to get out of work without everyone getting riled-poof! A priestly class is born.

These 'shamans' justify their existence by identifying 'dangers' to the tribe from the spirit realm, and by 'protecting' the tribe from them.

In return they extract goods and services (wealth, power, the right to hang around in the cave while everybody else chases the bear) from those who haven't the mental power to grasp the nuance of the trouble they would be in if the shaman wasn't around to get them out of jams and stuff.

This 'help' usually involved chucking someone else's daughter into a volcano, getting the biggest boar steak while the guy who killed the boar is getting his rear end stitched back up, and by generally mooching off the efforts of others and asking them to be thankful for the treatment.

Such is the case with AGW.

I cast a jaundiced eye on the whole operation.

What is really going on is that the left/socialist tribe wants control of the resources. They want to allow you to exist on their benevolence, and they want you to say thank you.

They are using people's innate nature of wanting to fit in by making this whole Global Warming thing an appeal to 'heal the earth'; nobody wants to be in the crowd that doesn't want to 'heal the earth'. BAH!

The only thing that surprises me is that is that they haven't used puppies and kittens ...yet.

Posted by Lazlo at September 29, 2007 06:31 AM

if global warming controls cause increased poverty and population growth

It's the world's wealthiest people, Americans and Canadians and so on, not the poorest, who have a big carbon footprint. They are the ones sounding the chicken-little alarm about the economic catastrophe of global warming controls. It has been taken to ridiculous extremes. A Prius is not a "hairshirt"; neither is a wind turbine, nor a nuclear power plant, nor good home insulation. Lomborg, for his part, blatantly caters to this fake-panic mentality. (Really it's a tantrum mentality.) He endorses the most pessimistic, uncreative scenarios of cost mitigation as the gospel truth. His economics is just as bad as his meteorology.

In fact the debate is changing and the newspapers say that Bush is now rushing to the front of the parade --- to try to steer into a U-turn. When it's the Iraq war, the one thing that Bush wants most is resolve. Just this week Bush is asking Congress for 140 more fat lumps of resolve for the Iraq war. But when it's global warming, Bush now endorses what everyone else endorses, except for resolve. Resolve, he says, is the one thing that we can't afford.

These two positions, more than anything else that the Bush or the US has done lately, have drained American credibility in the rest of the world. Sure, foreigners still eat at McDonald's and they still love Google. Their eagerness to deal with Washington is at an 80-year low. It's a much bigger devaluation than that of the US dollar.

Posted by at September 29, 2007 08:33 AM

In other words, it's status quo. If all it takes is cowardice towards tyrants and lip service to imaginary dangers in order to earn your trust, then your trust is worthless and the US loses nothing by ignoring you.

Posted by Karl Hallowell at September 29, 2007 11:24 AM

Yeah, I see, no substance at all. Immediate knee jerk reactions just calling me a leftist and red, it's some just some yelling in this part of the blogosphere, pretending it is immediately invalidating everything I say without any lines of argument or reasoning.

One can not have rational discussion here about the whole principle of the benefiter paying the full cost of his endeavours etc. that is one of the building pillars in the history of environmentalism. Maybe the discussion is not getting on as it's felt that you are not on strong moral ground, when advocating environmental anarchism. It would make you vulnerable.

Taken the anarchism and total deregulation to a thought experiment extreme, in your world, you could pollute millions to death with no consequences, just to make a tiny bit more profit. The atmosphere is nobody's property now is it, so anyone should be able to do anything they want with it, right? In China for example the regulation isn't working very wonderfully and the living conditions in many places aren't that great.

As for Lomborg, he's been thoroughly discredited by scientists on his fame-thrusting work, "The Sceptical Environmentalist": http://www.lomborg-errors.dk/error_catalogue.htm. Of course the economists (who don't understand biology and take constant growth as an unquestioned ever-good axiom) and many industries love him as he says that pollution is not bad and conservation is not needed. So he's been very popular in certain branches of the press and blogosphere.

Take for example James Hansen. A physicist and a climatologist, who does his job. He's being constantly attacked on this site and many others, with all kinds of weird tales. Hansen took *legal advice* for free from an organization partly funded by George Soros, since he was being suppressed and he couldn't get them from somewhere else. And this translates to Transterrestrial Musings as "But I guess it's all right when James Hansen is funded by George Soros.". It could happen to anyone, linking to a false news story with a false blurb. But here it happens constantly and without corrections. And with only one slant.

Posted by mz at September 29, 2007 11:54 AM

"Their eagerness to deal with Washington is at an 80-year low."

That's okay, because MY willingness to deal with Washington (DC) is at a decades-long low.

More seriously, " ", I suspect that foreigners were more willing to deal with the US in 1942 or 1946 than they were in 1927. Of course, if you have data... But of course, you don't. Please, don't quit your day job to become a political analyst.

If our President is pushing an alternative to the bankrupt Kyoto protocols, one that plays to American strengths, then what is there to complain about? If he is choosing to do so NOW (actually, for the past couple years), it is likely because his proposals will work better than the European led Kyoto Krap.

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I hope that as our energy systems, info systems, and economic systems of exchange decentralize, so also will our national system of government.

Posted by MG at September 29, 2007 11:59 AM

"Their eagerness to deal with Washington is at an 80-year low."

That's okay, because MY willingness to deal with Washington (DC) is at a decades-long low.

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I hope that as our energy systems, info systems, and economic systems of exchange decentralize, so also will our national system of government.

Posted by MG at September 29, 2007 11:59 AM

Perhaps Mr. Dietz, if he is reading, can offer some thoughts on my apologia.

There's the science of global warming, and there's the question of what policy should be in the face of the science. Too many conservatives have gone over the boundary into outright crankishness in denying the science, when focusing on the policy angle would be much more principled and productive.

Whether Al Gore flies a private jet (say) has nothing to do with the science. The physical world has properties that science can figure out, regardless of whether any given bloviator is a hypocrite. Science *does* involve the search for consensus, at the most fundamental level. Science is a team sport, combining the work and thoughts of thousands of fallible scientists into a less fallible whole. Rejection of the validity (if not infallibility) of this process is a rejection of science itself.

Gore's actions do have something to say about his internal ethical system, which presumably motivates the policy actions he espouses.

Posted by Paul Dietz at September 29, 2007 05:41 PM

I much preferred the old religious arguments between PC users and Mac users. At least in that one neither side thought they were going to save anybody's souls.

It's the world's wealthiest people, Americans and Canadians and so on, not the poorest, who have a big carbon footprint.

And here we see why the argument on AGCC has shifted from production of greenhouse gases to "carbon footprint." Since more pollution and greenhouse gases, per capita, do in fact come from less-developed poorer countries, the Church had to come up with some new class of sin to keep the penance spotlight on those with the deepest pockets.

Posted by McGehee at September 29, 2007 08:25 PM

Since more pollution and greenhouse gases, per capita, do in fact come from less-developed poorer countries

Counterfactual

http://www.carbonplanet.com/home/country_emissions.php

Posted by at September 30, 2007 11:05 AM

As I understand it, more pollution per capita comes from the poorer countries while more CO2 emissions per capita comes from the developed world. Some people consider all pollution to be equivalent, including CO2 emissions or water with modest levels of contaminants. I find this view deeply in error.

Posted by Karl Hallowell at September 30, 2007 06:33 PM

Karl, what is your source for this? What do you mean by pollution in this case?

It's true that many eastern European countries at least used to generate and use energy very inefficiently and had no cleaning technologies etc... and probably some of that still holds. For example sulphur. Then there is agricultural pollution, fertilizer runoff etc...

There is the municipal waste water cleaning issue too. I live next to a big somewhat poor country that has a bad attitude to this and I get to suffer from it. It's not nice swimming in the sea if it's full of poisonous Cyanobacteria like happens every late summer. International regulations aren't nearly tough enough on this.

Probably though, there is a general trend, when you go poorer, all natural resource use just drops and thus pollution drops too.

Posted by mz at October 1, 2007 06:32 AM

Probably though, there is a general trend, when you go poorer, all natural resource use just drops and thus pollution drops too.

what is your source for this? What do you mean by pollution in this case?

Seriously, what's your source, mz, and what is the assumption that pollution drops off.

And what is false about this story:
"James Hansen is funded by George Soros." Free legal advice isn't free if someone's paying for it. Are you saying the work was totally pro bono? $720,000 is a lot of money, but probably necessary when you use your civil servant position to make political statements. One does wonder why the $250,000 Hansen received from Teresa Heinz in 2004 wasn't enough. Whatever you want to believe, it is certain that James Hansen's propaganda is funded via George Soros.

Posted by Leland at October 1, 2007 11:39 AM

Rand,

Are you funded by Exxon?

This is funny:
I started to get the feeling that there may be expectations (strings) coming with the award, and I was concerned that it may create the appearance that I had spoken out about government censorship for the sake of the $. So I called the President of GAP, asking how the nomination process worked and who made the selection. He mentioned that he either nominated or selected me. So I declined the award, but I continued to accept pro bono legal advice for a while.

The principal thing that they provided was the attached letter to NASA. This letter shows me why scientists drive 1995 Hondas and lawyers drive Mercedes. I have a feeling that the reader of that letter had at least one extra gulp of coffee that morning.

Oh, what an honorable person. He turns down the $10k to avoid appearances of impropriety, but keeps the "free" legal advice. Or to twist his words, he gave up the 1995 Honda he could buy with $10k because he was already getting a chauffeured ride in a Mercedes.

Note, the suppressed man received the advice AFTER appearing on 60 Minutes. And his appearance on 60 Minutes was after his political pronouncements in 2004 that earned him $250,000 from Heinz. What's $10k when you already had $250,000?

Posted by Leland at October 1, 2007 11:54 AM

Are you funded by Exxon?

If I am, they must have the wrong address to send the checks.

Posted by Rand Simberg at October 1, 2007 12:00 PM

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