The Ethical Hypocrites
Here’s an ethical argument, boiled down, that has caused a bit of a stir:
The evidence for man-made climate change is incontrovertible. The consequences are potentially catastrophic to humanity. Our leaders thus have an ethical duty to take action that reduces greenhouse gases. Because they have not acted our leaders are being irresponsible and unethical.
I think it’s safe to say that many if not all climate change advocates would agree with this. Indeed, some prolific climate bloggers, such as Joe Romm and Michael Tobis, often frame their arguments in such moral terms.
So if we are to take Romm and Tobis at their word–that it is a huge moral failing not to act on man-made climate change, then I don’t understand why they are so reluctant to argue just as strenously for climate adaptation, especially since both believe that climate change has already arrived, wreaking death and destruction.
I’ve had a recent exchange with Tobis about this that deserves greater airing. In the thread of my previous post, there was a discussion about the nature of a disagreement between two highly regarded climate scientists, when Tobis popped in to say:
The situation on the ground has changed in the last couple of months, folks. You’d think that might have some effect on the argument.
This was Tobis’s way of saying that the discussion over technical disagreements was trivial, given the spate of weather-related disasters around the globe that he and the media are linking to greenhouse gases.
If this is the case (that the recent floods, heatwaves and fires are global warming related), I said, well, then even more the reason to start talking serously about the need for adaptation. Tobis countered with the typical zero-sum talking point, that mitigation (curbing carbon emissions) has to take precedence over adaptation, and that in any event, adaptation was largely a local matter.
This is the standard argument from climate advocates, who believe that encouraging talk about adaptation will undermine the urgency that should be paid to mitigation. Thus, the emphasis has to remain on mitigation, they argue.
But now that climate advocates such as Tobis are asserting that climate change has arrived with a vengeance, with tragic human consequences, I’m wondering: is it not irresponsible and unethical of them to play down the need for adaptation in order to keep the focus on mitigation? Why can’t they give equal attention to the importance of adaptation? Why should it be a second tier concern, when it’s so desperately needed?
The climate debate is often framed in apocalpytic terms by Romm and Tobis: the future of civilization is at stake. Well, where’s the moral outrage over the suffering of people today, and those in the near future, of which perhaps could be alleviated if adaptation were treated more prominently in the climate debate? Where’s the post by environmental ethicists decrying this blithness with which adaptation is treated by climate advocates?
Keith, this is at least the 5th post you have done where you have taken somebody’s words and completely distorted their meaning. I have to think this is deliberate – I’m sure it drives up traffic. I will definitely not be returning here.
Then you should point out all five posts, including the places in the last one, where I have distorted someone’s words. I gave links to the comments I referenced in the thread, too.
I don’t care a whit about traffic. I don’t pay attention to my numbers at all. Not one bit. This blog is just a hobby. I’m not seeking greater name exposure or money (you see any advertising?). It is whatever you want to make it out be.
Hypocrisy detector user error.
Aim and focus your instrument.
The ‘adaptation’ industry is well spoken for. The less prevention is done, the more they get paid to ‘adapt’ — and the more poor people get adapted.
Shorter: pay us to stop building the old stuff; pay us more to build new stuff to replace it.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-05/u-s-companies-lobby-for-technology-fix-not-co2-limit-at-climate-talks.html
—- excerpt follows —-
“The U.S. Council for International Business, whose members include General Electric Co. and Coca-Cola Co., said rules to cap CO2 emissions are unlikely soon, Norine Kennedy, vice president of energy and environmental affairs, said in an interview today. Instead, they want incentives encouraging technologies they’re promoting.
“The center of the action is technology,” she said at the United Nations climate talks. ….
…
GE Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Immelt has pushed for a price for carbon and U.S. clean energy standards to increase sales of less-polluting equipment for nuclear power and coal- fired boilers. The Fairfield, Connecticut company, whose equipment generates a third of the world’s electricity, is considering expanding further into clean-energy industries.
Kennedy said companies should have a more formal role in the negotiations. She’s drafting a proposal for the UN on how companies can have more input….”
Read the business news for catsake. None of this is a secret.
Hat tip to: http://members.autobahn.mb.ca/~het/enviro/gwnews.html#AWOGN20100808_HaHa
I explicitly argued that it was not a zero sum argument. Let me try again: the longer we delay mitigation, the more mitigation will cost and the more adaptation will cost.
I’ve never argued against adaptation. I’ve never argued against nuclear disarmament either. I don’t have anything original to offer in either of those fields or many others, so I don’t talk about them publicly much, but that doesn’t mean I oppose sensible initiatives.
I have no idea what I should say about adaptation to put out this flame Keith has ignited. “Adaptation is good!” “Infrastructure is good!” “Prosperity is good!” “Apple pie is also good!” Happy now?
What else? “Adaptation is mostly nonlocal!” … ? Huh? No, sorry. What exactly is the problem with saying adaptation is mostly a local issue and should be discussed at the local scale? What is there of importance to say about adaptation that is nonlocal? I suppose if we had a macroeconomics worth a damn it might be important to aggregate it, but what am I as a non-economist supposed to say about that?
And what does any of this have to do with Joe Romm?
In short, Keith, adaptation. Okay. What about it?
Let’s rotate that hypocrisy detector and see what ….
ding!ding!ding!
Aha:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/global-climate-talks
“… Global climate talks have sunk to a new low after China and the US clashed and rich countries lined up against poor in a refusal to compromise on emission reduction targets.
With just six days’ negotiating time left before a critical meeting in Cancun, Mexico, some diplomats fear that the fragile deal struck in Copenhagen last December could unravel.
Rather than slim down the negotiating text to allow politicians to make choices at Cancun, the US, China and many developing countries all added pages* to draft texts in a series of tit-for-tat moves that critics said had sent the talks backwards after a week of meetings…..”
__________
* ‘honest brokers’ at work?
“Romm and Tobis” – I like the sound of that.
Dear Tobis
It was you who brought in the ‘recent events’ connection. It was into a discussion about how the same thing might look different to different people (the chasm).
How do such recent events affect you – we would like to know indeed. For eg – you could be glad that the Russian Heat Wave (TM) will drag upwards the global temperature anomaly. You could make the connection between such events and climate change and claim that they have rendered any in-depth discussion of IPCC-related issue irrelevent (the apocalypse angle). Deniers could say – “these things happen all the time”.
Perhaps the lack of emphasis on adaptation has more to do with the near total absence of anything that could be adapted to.
The sea level is rising at about 3 millimeters per year. This might amount to six inches in fifty years unless the rate increases or decreases. No one is going to spend much money or make much money adapting to six inches in fifty years. Where ground is subsiding or rising up, the local change may differ. Nothing here to adapt to.
Ice at the North Pole has been on a downward trend. Sea ice at the South Pole has been on an upward trend. Polar bears are not in short enough supply in Canada that they don’t issue about eight hundred permits to hunt them. What would one do to adapt to slightly less polar ice?
Crops in the US are at record levels. Would they be even higher with less CO2 so we should do something not already being done?
People in South America are suffering from record cold weather. Maybe the folks who think this weather extreme is caused by CO2 would be willing to send blankets?
Peat bog fires around Moscow will burn for a very long time. Draining swamps and having not much in the way of fire fighting capacity have a lot to do with those. Maybe someone’s volunteer fire department wants to donate.
In spite of the constant stream of articles blaming everything that happens on global warming, and often asserting that weather events are proof of the same, there just isn’t much happening. Hurricanes are at 30 year low world wide, and the beat goes on.
The warmists have nothing to say about adaptation because focusing on that topic makes it obvious that the only catastrophe is in the minds of those who think global warming computer models have predictive ability. Apparently there isn’t a number of years with utter failure to predict anything that will change their confidence in these models, but exactly what would anyone do anywhere in the world that would be financially sensible based on currently observed ‘climate change’?
The moral imperative for a particular policy on a subject as complex as climate change just isn’t a convincing argument. This paragraph by Obersteiner lays out the complexity:
“With respect to climate change, betting big today may, due to technological path dependencies and long time-lags of global warming, fundamentally reshape our common future on a global scale to our advantage or quickly produce losses that can throw mankind into economic, social, and environmental bankruptcy. The global community may avoid foolhardy mistakes by waiting for climate change uncertainty to diminish, or it may squander the chance to lay claim to early mover advantage and lay the foundation of a wider global development risk scheme “• making development not necessarily sustainable, but at least less volatile. The truth is that effectively, there is no dominant strategy as global governance is too weak and as the science of climate change and of its drivers is too complex to distill clear future signals that would press policy makers to take on more responsible commitments.”
By making the moral imperative argument for a global policy that is doomed to failure delays the real work that needs to be done in terms of assessing vulnerabilities and developing technology portfolios, that would provide us with the information and the tools to actually do something.
“We conclude that climate policy “• especially under the consideration of the precautionary principle “• would look much different if uncertainties would be taken explicitly into account.”
Well, right on.
Obersteiner (2001) was moderately skeptical of market forces, though he had more faith in them than anyone does nowadays:
“… semi-automatic controls or invisible hands analogous to those regulating production and consumption of markets of products and services. … the system often works in reverse. Striving for the least cost for themselves, powerful stakeholder alliances use resources in ways that might impose the greatest cost on society in the long run.”
… the market economy … does not help us and often hinders us in dealing with environmental assets …. The number of success stories of preventive environmental policy regimes is very limited. Historically, we have observed that preventive policies have emerged after the perception of an “˜environmental’ catastrophe. In the case of climate change, such ex post learning bears a lot of risks….”
— Obersteiner, op. cit. (2001)
Unfortunately, preventative defences have a habit of becoming monuments to folly. History is littered with them, particularly in costly military projects- Napoleonic defenses, the Maginot Line, it goes on- the recent pandemic scares- swine flu vaccine. Murphy’s Law keeps going. Its tempting fate, political decisions in particular. Too much potential for egg on face. From a big shining orb in the sky, mainly.
The Maginot Line worked. Note that the 1940 invasion was through the Netherlands and Belgium. France and England had many problems, one of which was assuming that a 1940s motorized army with tanks couldn’t attack through the Ardennes. That wasn’t the fault of the designers of the Maginot Line, however. The Line wasn’t meant to defeat a German attack, but rather to channel it where counterattacking forces could stop it. Part A worked. Part B didn’t.
Wikipedia sums it well:
“The World War II German invasion plan of 1940 (Sichelschnitt) was designed to deal with the Line. A decoy force sat opposite the Line while a second Army Group cut through the Low Countries of Belgium and the Netherlands, as well as through the Ardennes Forest which lay north of the main French defences. Thus the Germans were able to avoid a direct assault on the Maginot Line by violating the neutrality of Belgium, Luxemburg and the Netherlands.”
Recent pandemic scares … you might think differently about SARS if no steps to contain it had been taken. The recent pandemic flu scare was avian, not swine, flu and if you’re questioning the urgency with which people were asked to vaccinate against swine flu, it was to lower the odds of genetic material between swine and avian flu mixing, leading to the possibility of something like the Spanish flu of 1918. Avian flu was always reported (by scientists) as being a threat *if* it changed in a way that would make human infection common, and pushing swine flu vaccine was a tactic to minimize that threat.
“Too much potential for egg on face. From a big shining orb in the sky, mainly.”
We’re in a solar minimum, and Russia is seeing a heat wave that they’ve never seen before in their recorded history, and that might well be a 3000-year event.
I have a hard time seeing how lower solar output leads to such an extraordinary heat wave.
Dear Tobis
Since you seem to have retreated to your blog, let me try to present why arguments such as the one you presented is/can be problematic
You said “Adaptation is local”. This is simply recursive and tautological. Adaptation is local – what else can it be? Therefore the only takeaway message anyone gets from that is: – “adaptation is local, Russia will deal with her problems, let us talk about things like globally conforming legislation”.
You also go on to say, in your blog:
A few weeks ago I thought “major impacts in the future are very likely”. Now I think “major impacts have very likely started”.
The takeaway from that is: “although these problems are local, I do not hesitate to infer a global causal chain, as supportive of AGW.”
Both of the above, look like exploitation of a weather event to bring in and play up the importance of “global warming”.
Sections of the media plays the “consistent with” game every summer. How come you too? You are usually found criticizing them, no?
Allow Eli to point to the five fold way
Adaptation to deal with the damage already done
Amelioration, eliminating harmful effects of our actions
Conservation with needed and desired but not wasteful usage
Substitution of green systems for destructive ones
Mitigation reversing our thoughtless abuse
All are needed today, which is what MT was talking about before he got chopped up in your mix master.
Mitigation/adaptation are not enough because of delay.
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2009/11/adaptation-conservation-substitution.html
There was a very useful parsing of the relationship between mitigation and adaptation by Huq and Gross, including a comment on geography (this was from 2003)
——————————-
– The geographic characteristics are also completely different. Mitigating greenhouse gas emission will have global benefits regardless of where the actions themselves are taken. In case of co-benefits these will mostly be local. On the other hand the impacts of climate change on ecosystems and human systems will vary in severity from place to place. They will also vary with respect to the ability of the ecosystem or human community’s ability to cope (i.e. its adaptive capacity) with such adverse impacts. Some (but by no means all) the adverse impacts of climate change may be reduced by taking advance action (i.e. adaptations), but these will always be at a location-specific level. There is thus an inherent disjuncture between analysis of mitigation (local action but with global climatic benefits and local co- benefits) and adaptation (local in terms of both the action and its benefits/consequences)
——————————————–
for a bit more see
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2006/10/mitigation-and-adaptation.html
As is clear even from this brief note, Shub is full of himself.
Frankly, I don’t think anyone who thinks that the the Maginot Line worked should be anywhere near deciding national energy policy. The unjustified faith of the French in their static line defenses made possible, even more likely, their many other lapses in judgment. The battle of France lasted about 6 weeks, and was really over before that.
The French prepared at great expense for the risk their experts warned them of. In the process, they doomed themselves to risks the consensus never anticipated because of their faith in those experts. They poured a fortune into fortifications, rather than expanding their military. They believed the Line would give them time to mobilize. They believed they could be more sanguine toward German aggression toward others because they were safe behind their fortifications. Ever hear of the law of unintended consequences?
The experts are never as smart as they, or their political patrons, think they are.
I don’t see Tobis playing down adaptation, indeed he says: Adaptation is crucial. It is necessary, but it is not sufficient. That’s hardly hypocrisy, on his part anyway.
I’m probably breaking some version of Godwin’s Law by using a cancer metaphor but, what the heck…
Adaptation is taking pain meds and learning how to breath and function with compromised lungs. Those are necessary but temporary measures and they are local. Mitigation is quitting smoking, preferably the day before yesterday and urging everyone else to do the same. That may not be sufficient either.
If we are to accuse climate policy advocates like Joe Romm of ethical failings, perhaps a more effective charge would be in their playing down of the nasty side-effects of the medicines they are prescribing. While economically secure individuals can comfortably contemplate, say, a doubling or tripling of gasoline prices, the poorer and weaker are likely to feel those effects more acutely. Optimistic talk of green jobs is a bit like telling someone that their hair will grow back better after the chemo has worn off.
Actually, I think the “adaptation is local” line is spot-on. I may be presuming Tobis’ intent, but the way I see it, there simply isn’t a collective, global problem to address in terms of adaptation. That is, the problems – perceived or otherwise – are seen as diverse, and thus the responses would also be diverse.
So to answer Keith’s question, I see nothing immoral about not advocating a unified response to a diverse set of problems. (Although I do like Judy’s point about a “portfolio” of response measures. This can be very effective, to the degree that certain issues – say, flooding – may manifest themselves in similar ways across diverse localities, and thus respond to a similar set of adaptation strategies.)
Having said that, I think it is wrong to use the term “mitigation” only in the context of CO2 reduction … at least without specifying that context. The causal chain – to use Shub’s phrase – is: increased CO2 –> increased mean global temperature –> a variety of “climate change” problems. Since a singular issue – “increased temperature” – is part of that causal chain, a whole host of climate change issues can be addressed by mitigating <i>either</i> CO2 increases <i>or</i> global temperature increases. Thus, a “mitigation strategy” should also refer to one of a handful of proposed methods for reducing global temperatures. Geo-engineering, if successful, wouldn’t need to bother with CO2 at all.
(And I’ve actually seen the term “mitigation” used both ways. So that’s why I think it is important to specify what is meant, rather than assume “mitigation” means only “reduce CO2.”)
As an aside, one could also argue that ocean acidification is a second global problem associated with higher levels of CO2. Thus, ocean acidification would be a second link in the causal chain, parallel to global temperature increases. However, I haven’t worried much about ocean acidification since I read this <a href=”http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/19/the-electric-oceanic-acid-test/“> excellent post</a>.
So, to further answer Keith’s question (but in a slightly different way) I believe it is a moral failing to argue strenuously about reducing CO2 levels, while at the same time completely dismissing or ignoring all lines of research into mitigating <i>temperatures</i> … especially since reducing global temperatures directly can be done at a greatly reduced cost.
Keith – sorry about the html code. I somehow completely ignored the helpful tools in the comment box. Apologies.
Just so people are aware, I’ve made similar critiques before. See here and here, for example.
There is a false dichotomy that climate advocates present when they argue that adaptation cannot happen without mitigation. It can and it must, if millions of people in developing countries are to be spared the miseries from the kinds of disasters we’ve seen this summer around the globe. Why do I say that? Because of those other inconvenient facts on the ground, which I talked about here.
So my riposte stems from the disaster fetishization that I see coming from climate advocates who are touting the floods and fires and heat waves as proof that AGW has tangibly arrived. Michael wants to continue to talk about the urgent need for mitigation, which is fine. But he also a tendency in his blog posts to wax moralistic about who will be bear the blame for the end of civilization when the full force of climate mayhem is upon us.
Now I happen to think that there is a good case to be made for adaptation to extreme weather events even without using AGW as an excuse. But now that climate advocates are going to be saying, see, it’s here and its causing all this suffering, well, all I’m saying is, doesn’t that make the case for adaptation even more urgent–in your eyes? Shouldn’t you be talking about that as much as anything else?
I’ll respond more directly to Tobis shortly.
The problem with Keith’s idea, in the words of J. Willard Rabett, is that
1. Adaptation responds to current losses.
2. Mitigation responds to future losses
3. Adaptation alone plus future costs is more expensive than mitigation,
4. Adaptation without mitigation drives procrastination penalties to infinity.
Michael Zimmerman, a philosophy professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, whose work is in the environmental arena, sent this comment via email:
“You’re making an important point, cogently. People can’t have it both ways: a) climate change calamities are already upon us, and b) our duty is to lower C02 emissions, which may or may not have some effect on climate several decades from now, as most scientists affirm. If climate change is already causing calamities, a significant measure of attention, effort, policy, and money should go toward helping people adapt to the changes upon us. You are right on target here. Lowering emission and working to adapt can go hand in hand. Why the either/or position?”
Eli,
First, interesting projection on the snide aside directed at Shub.
Secondly, it’s obvious you equate any emphasis on adaptation with “delay” of mitigation. I keep pointing out those inconvenient facts, that mitigation isn’t happening anytime soon on the scale you believe is should. Meanwhile, you would have adaptation remain the poor stepchild in the climate debate, which, given the claims of current AGW-linked tragedy, is at best, cynical, at worst, callous. Like I said, zero sum.
KK, seems to me that you can believe that
> adaptation can[] happen without mitigation. It can and it must
only if you believe stuff like
> Only if you believe stuff like this:
>wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/19/the-electric-oceanic-acid-test/
But why would you believe something like that? It’s a sucker’s bet, if you talk to the marine biologists. No doubt you will.
Industry delays mitigation until they can unload the old property and move the money, after which they will support mitigation because they’ll own the mitigation gear. Ask that guy from GE, quoted above.
So many educated people, so intelligent, so willing to spend trillions of dollars of other people’s money without a clue as to the consequences. And all when they can’t even agree on what the real risks are, or how certain any given risk is. The more I follow this debate, the more affection I am beginning to have for the chasm between the consensus and the liberal/moderate skeptics. It may be our only real hope.
Hank (23):
You’re buying into that false dichotomy. Tell me: has there been mitigation of climate change in the last 20 years? Do you think it’s going to happen this year or next, or the year after that?
So your logic is that we shouldn’t put adaptation on the same playing field as adaptation, because the latter only encourages further delay of the former. I just can’t understand this rationale.
Here’s another example of the kind of disconnect that I’m talking about. It’s as if climate advocates are in their own denial about this.
Those who insist on waiting for the revolution to arrive before taking up the plight of those already suffering is something I can’t fathom. It’s an ideological stance that, quite frankly, I find heartless.
GaryM:
Let me reiterate: the kind of adaptation I am arguing for is something that should be done anyway, just on the basis of natural disasters resulting from prolonged drought, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, etc.
Relevant to this discussion, here’s an excerpt from a 2005 article in The New Republic, by Daniel Sarewitz and Roger A. Pielke, Jr.:
“In principle, fruitful action on both climate change and disasters should proceed simultaneously. In practice, this will not happen until the issues of climate change and disaster vulnerability are clearly separated in the eyes of the media, the public, environmental activists, scientists, and policymakers. As long as people think that global warming = worse hurricanes, global warming will also equal less preparation. And disasters will claim ever more money and lives.”
Eli
I don’t know how you managed to read attitude from that post above of mine.
From the paper you quote:
“Mitigating greenhouse gas emission will have global benefits regardless of where the actions themselves are taken.”
From the EPA (you often quote), defending the IPCC
“Our primary focus was on the implications of climate change for the United States, and we relied on peer-reviewed literature to assess these impacts. We did not refer to this specific issue in either the TSD or the Endangerment Finding…”
Contradictory, isn’t it? Do you know how many times the EPA uses this very same nonsensical conclusion to defend its endangerment thing? More than half-a-dozen, I would say.
When it came to owning up for the mistakes and exaggerations the IPCC made in its global CO2 story, the IPCC-apologist EPA wriggles out in each and every instance, arguing that the impacts in question, were local, and occurring outside the United States.
Is any greater proof required that AGW proponents practice the global/local switch as convenient.
> There is a false dichotomy that climate advocates present when they argue that adaptation cannot happen without mitigation.
I don’t know what the expression “climate advocates” refers to, but I do know that Tobis said that adaptation was necessary, but not sufficient. If that represents what Tobis said (let’s presume he is a climate advocate for the sake of our conversation), there is none of the dichotomy you wish to portray: saying A entails B is certainly not either A or either B. Maybe I missed something climate advocates said. Could you provide some scary quotes where climate advocates present adaptation and mitigation as a dichotomy?
Let’s suppose that, for “climate advocates”, adaptation is not enough. Do you disagree? I suppose so, since you quote approvingly Zimmerman, who says adaptation and mitigation should work hand in hand. Hand and hand, codependance, necessary but not sufficient: there might be nuances, but not more than that.
In fact, the only big difference I see is in emphasis: we must not only believe that adaptation is necessary, we must emphasize on it. We must not deemphasize it, would certainly say an honest broker, if he ever existed. So we must talk about it.
If I understand what you say, someone who believes that adaptation is necessary, but does not talk about it (or not enough, let’s decide about that another time) is an hypocrit. Do you agree with my understanding of your point?
Maybe there is another way to convince the “climate advocates” than saying they’re a bunch hypocrits. Here is an idea: we convince them that, since they believe adaptation necessary, they must concentrate their time talking about adaptation. In return, each time they talk about adaptation, they have the right to talk about mitigation. Something like: “ya know, all this adaptation is good, even necessary, but it’s not enough: we should also mitigate this and that”. That way, you are happy: the “climate advocates” are talking about adaptation. They are happy too: they get to talk about mitigation. They are also happy for another reason: Keith Kloor would have no reason to believe they’re hypocrits anymore. Seing the climate advocates and you happy would certainly make me happy too.
Would it be a good idea, you think?
Keith,
We are rebuilding New Orleans, on a river delta, below sea level (in part), in a location where future hurricanes are inevitable (eventually). The best mitigation would not involve spending billions or trillions on new initiatives, but in being just a wee bit more intelligent about where we spend the money we are already spending.
If that is the kind of mitigation you are talking about, I’m with ya. But where were the climate scientists and skeptics when that debate was lost (to the Democrats running the congress, Louisiana and New Orleans)? Did anyone involved in the current debate speak up about that? Or was it not politically correct?
“Let me reiterate: the kind of adaptation I am arguing for is something that should be done anyway, just on the basis of natural disasters resulting from prolonged drought, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, etc.”
Nobody on the conservation/environmental side argues with this. You’re attacking a strawman, which, by definition, doesn’t exist.
MT is arguing “IT IS NOT ENOUGH”. And it’s not. We’ve been doing this for the last century, and global warming is tossing our efforts into the toilet.
You don’t have your nose to the ground. You don’t realize that real-world managers ignore the so-called “debate”, and are trying to devise adaptive strategies because we won’t do anything to reduce CO2 emissions.
These people recognize it’s a stopgap measure, as MT states.
This whole discussion continues to elude my feeble brain. Take #29:
“[Keith is] making an important point, cogently. People can’t have it both ways: a) climate change calamities are already upon us, and b) our duty is to lower C02 emissions, which may or may not have some effect on climate several decades from now, as most scientists affirm.”
OK, I agree with both assertions, although for “b” I would substitute “will almost certainly” for “may or may not”. So I am trying to have it “both ways”. Thence we read:
If climate change is already causing calamities, a significant measure of attention, effort, policy, and money should go toward helping people adapt to the changes upon us.
I agree with this as well. Then:
You are right on target here. Lowering emission and working to adapt can go hand in hand.
I agree again. Finally:
Why the either/or position?
How is accepting a and b an either/or position? Now if b said “our only duty” or “our duty to the exclusion of all else” there would be a contradiction, but then nobody would agree with b and it would be a straw man argument. But b as stated does not argue against adaptation.
When we say “no adaptation without mitigation” we do not mean that no adaptation should begin before mitigation is agreed to. We mean that adaptation cannot succeed in the long run unless mitigation is agreed to.
I also learn that there is some disagreement as to what “adaptation” means, and begin to suspect that some people are using “zero-sum game” wrong. But the whole disagreement remains far from clear to me.
It’s peculiar to defend yourself from an accusation you don’t understand. I’d appreciate if someone would have mercy and explain the issue to me in words of one syllable. That is, if someone would please state a position which they are confident that I hold, and explain how it is seen to be unethical. I’d be much obliged.
Michael Tobis believes (4) that I have twisted his words into something he did not say.
Let’s go back and look at one of the comments in a previous thread that prompted this current post. He writes: “Adaptation is crucial. It is necessary, but it is not sufficient.”
In the next sentence, he says: “As Eli says, ‘no adaptation without mitigation.'”
What does that mean? Well, further down in the same comment, we have some elaboration: “There is a cliche metaphor about adaptation without mitigation: deck chairs.”
So, in full, I take Tobis to mean that adaptation is ultimately fruitless without mitigation. Fair enough?
Now, in an earlier comment on that thread, I challenged Michael to think more realistically about the world’s reliance on fossil fuels and the global prospects for mitigation of co2 in the near term. He ignored that in the comment I quote from here and instead mouthed the mitigation mantra.
Meanwhile, as I previously mentioned, Michael is often quite moralistic in his blog, quick to blame journalists and skeptics for, as he sees it, spreading disinformation that confuses the public and ultimately delays action on climate change. History, he is fond of saying, will find journalists especially culpable if society is brought to its knees by climate change.
As it is late, I don’t feel like wading through Michael’s archive for citations, so I’ll just leave it up to him to verify that I have accurately characterized his views so far.
So what I take away from this is a guy who is preachy about the future of humanity but less moved by the plight of humans living today. Now, maybe that’s an unfair assumption on my part, I will own up to that. But I’m just going by what he emphasizes in his blog and the moral framework he uses to discuss climate change.
In fact, I made a more general assumption about climate advocates on the whole based on how little they discuss adaptation in the blogosphere. Given the latest proclamations of AGW-linked disasters, I find their continuing reluctance to talk about adaptation more than a little curious. And yeah, even hypocritical.
Meanwhile, the question from me that prompted Keith’s switching and baiting me on adaptation remains. Let me remind you.
Given that recent events seem to weigh on the side of bigger climate problems sooner, should that not influence people’s political calculus on mitigation?
I think I understand the answer Keith proposes on this front: that this cannot be, because on his view, that mitigation is not just difficult, but “impossible”. That is, no matter what the climate system does to us, we cannot rally ourselves to respond, because response is “impossible“. Consequently we’d better hope really hard for some very cheap techno-pixie-dust because, barring a deus literally ex machina, we are well and truly hosed.
Then the people taking this bizarre position of radical disempowerment turn around and accuse me of immorality by suggesting that I “oppose” “adaptation” somehow. Well excuse me while I pick my jaw up off the floor, that just doesn’t compute for me. If it isn’t our planet. exactly whose is it? Why are we supposed to be powerless to act? And what is the ethics behind arguing against humanity controlling its own destiny?
I can’t help but suspect that the ethical question that is directed at me on this thread, whatever it amounts to, arises not because I really advocated something seen as wrong, but because it deflects attention from the question I asked.
It seems that damage in the future is no longer the issue. The damage is happening now. Climate change is already destroying wealth. Coping with the issue is going to only get harder from here on out, as we already have started to pay a sort of implicit tax for our past foolishness. This implicit tax has absolutely no benefits in the future, only in the past. And even under the best of circumstances, the tax increases into the future.
Now that we have our first taste of paying such a tax, will we still contrive to further increase the burden on the future?
Unless I misunderstand, under Colorado School ethics, we must. I’m enough of a utilitarian to reject those ethics. They’ve been tried quite thoroughly in the financial and real estate markets recently. They don’t work.
Michael (34):
Can you point to where I said mitigation was “impossible”? What I said was that the near-term prospects for global agreement to mitigate carbon emissions were dim. Any disagreement on that?
Meanwhile, as you continue to assert, AGW linked weather disaster is upon us. If this is the case, all I’m suggesting is that you and Romm and others that profess to care so deeply about humanity should start talking more about the urgent need for adaptation in some areas of the world. Otherwise, your one note tune that journalists/skeptics are-the-bane-of-progress-on-climate change action rings a little hollow to me.
There’s action that can be taken to save lives before the world comes together on a united front to mitigate climate change–whenever that will be. (It’s not deck chairs on a ship.) That adaptation doesn’t seem to be that important to climate advocates is something I judge by how little they talk about it.
“So, in full, I take Tobis to mean that adaptation is ultimately fruitless without mitigation. Fair enough?”
OK.
“Now, in an earlier comment on that thread, I challenged Michael to think more realistically about the world’s reliance on fossil fuels and the global prospects for mitigation of co2 in the near term. He ignored that in the comment I quote from here and instead mouthed the mitigation mantra.”
Hmm. Here’s another of my favorite mantras: “Political reality must be grounded in physical reality or it’s completely useless.” – Hans Joachim Schellnhuber
“Michael is often quite moralistic in his blog, quick to blame journalists and skeptics for, as he sees it, spreading disinformation that confuses the public and ultimately delays action on climate change. History, he is fond of saying, will find journalists especially culpable if society is brought to its knees by climate change.”
Fair enough.
“So what I take away from this is a guy who is preachy about the future of humanity but less moved by the plight of humans living today.”
I don’t follow that step. Could you break it down for me?
“I find their continuing reluctance to talk about adaptation more than a little curious. ”
I still don’t know what you are talking about. What am I supposed to say? What have you said about it that makes you more ethically sound than I am? Or what has McIntyre said? Or von Storch? Or Pielke Jr.? Or, really, anybody who writes mostly about global climate change from any perspective? Show us a model of propriety to aspire to, and then we’ll talk.
Meanwhile, I just have no idea what I stand accused of.
@36 MT:
<i>Meanwhile, I just have no idea what I stand accused of.</i>
Why, being “shrill” of course. See also Krugman, Paul and Donahue, Phil.
When the guilt-by-association, strawmen, and demands of disavowal/affirmation come flying…
Gary M, re rebuilding New Orleans, the hurricane experts tried to inject some sense into this, see here. This joint statements, made by a group of scientists on both sides of the hurricane “wars,” was pretty much ignored, it was newsworthy in a minor way because it reflected a truce in the hurricane wars.
The argument given for adaptation to climate change without taking any other action is that the change will be limited to 2K or less. A light varient of this is that currently adptation is enough, but future effects can be dealt with by research breakthroughs and we should concentrate our efforts on adaptation and research. ‘
HOWEVER, if the changes are ALREADY locally disastrous the moral calculus shifts and you and your ilk are on the wrong side of the equation trying frantically to place the blame on someone else.
MT is being attacked, as things break says, for being shrill, but more for blowing up the Colorado School’s entire argument.
Extreme events having the potential for catastrophe (e.g. floods, droughts, hurricanes, heat waves) have always been with us and always will. Paleoclimate records suggest that the last 100 years has been a particularly benign climate in terms of drought and hurricanes. Given our vulnerability, floods, droughts, hurricanes, heat waves already produce much damage and suffering. Even over the course of natural variability, such extreme events might get worse. Even in a cooler climate, we will still have plenty of disastrous droughts, floods, hurricanes (big heat waves are less likely, but more people actually lose their lives from cold).
Kevin Trenberth is very fond of attributing a % of a particular disaster to global warming: it was 7% for Katrina and I think I saw 5% for the Pakistan floods. Even if you think this attribution is convincing (I don’t), well what about the other 95% of the Pakistan flood waters? Etc.
Adaptation to reduce vulnerability to extreme events isn’t just about expensive infrastructure, that only the developed world can afford. Its also about getting some advance warning of the particular disaster (10 days or even 5 days is a huge help) and having an emergency management plan in place to evacuate people, their livestock, their seeds, and anything else that their future livelihood depends on. If you didn’t read Webster’s paper on Bangladesh when I posted it earlier, here they are again.
So the Pakistani floods were the worst in 800 years? Yeah, that global warming 800 years ago must have caused alot of problems. An understanding of what is going on with this year’s weather is provided by Sir Brian Hoskins in the Economist. Its a blocking pattern. The heat wave in Russia, which is expected once a millennia, might happen once in 100 years with global warming.
There are some good arguments for CO2 mitigation, but even if successful it would not prevent extreme weather events. If our primary vulnerability is to extreme weather events rather than slow creep issues like sea level rise and ocean acidification, then adaptation should have a front and center place in our strategies. And the very fact that adaptation measures are local helps garner local political support for them, since the affected communities can clearly identify their own common interest in these adaptation measures.
A successful CO2 mitigation program isn’t going to help that much with floods, droughts, or hurricanes (will help with heat waves, but again more people die in the cold), we will always have them. We just need to get over that idea.
Eli (39) moves the goalposts when he says, “The argument given for adaptation to climate change without taking any other action…”
I don’t argue this, Judith doesn’t argue this, RPJ doesn’t argue this. This is the false choice that Eli frames because it’s convenient to his argument.
Now, Eli being Eli, I understand why he does this. But Michael, do you understand what Eli is doing here and do you understand that since you invoke him in in this debate, I have to ask: is this what you believe? Because that’s not my argument. All I’m saying–with reference to adaptation–is that it should be a much bigger part of the climate discussion.
So just to sum up: I believe that adaptation and mitigation can go hand in hand. I do not downplay the need for mitigation. But it is Eli who downplays the significance of adaptation, out of his misguided belief that it will undermine mitigation efforts.
The question is whether this blocking pattern was available to the system before the recent changes to climate forcing at all.
For one thing, once you start talking about a 10,000 year heat wave, as some people are doing, you are abusing the concept of climate, as you start getting into the time scale of large natural climate changes. The quasi-equilibrium we usually start our conversations with simply doesn’t correspond to reality.
For another, a claim that event X is the largest in 800 years is a different claim than that event X has an 800 year mean repeat interval (in a quasi-stationary climate). One often sees them conflated as in “what happened 801 years ago?” It should be made clear whether one is talking about a statistical construct or an actual historical event. Did something actually happen in Pakistan in 1210 AD? Or is “800” a statistical artifact, or for that matter a SWAG?
For a third, once climate forcing really gets going, we lose the quasi-stationary assumption altogether. Repeat intervals (“100 year floods”, “500 year heat waves”) become meaningless as the mathematical concept of climate breaks down altogether, and we find ourselves just in a massive transient adjustment (like the Younger Dryas period).
Putting all this together, the idea that events like the present disasters in Asia are not attributable to climate change (or, more correctly, to rapidly changing anthropogenic climate forcing) becomes highly problematic. We see a blocking pattern that has never been seen before. OK, a curiosity. That blocking pattern persists for ten weeks and counting. Now that is something that is need of an actual dynamic explanation. How can a pattern be so stable this year when it has never been seen before as far as anyone can tell? The simplest explanation is that something in the boundary conditions has changed. Now what might that be?
And this raises the problem that Lazar just raised on my blog. We can only adapt to phenomena we have already seen or have a very strong reason to suspect are coming. With a year’s warning, Moscow could easily have built heat/smoke refuges that could have dramatically reduced mortality and injury. Presumably, once the dust settles (literally) they will do so. But who could have foreseen this exact bizarre event? How could anyone have allocated the resources for such a scheme?
What would the response have been? “Please! It hardly ever gets to 25C in Moscow! Heat refuges, the idea! And those particle filters, what arrant nonsense! Please, I have a city of ten million to manage, I have trouble even keeping the plumbing working, kindly don’t bother me with fantasies!”
So it would be good at the least to have “adaptation” clearly defined in a context of rapid climate change. How high should the levees be? How deep inland should the evacuation routes go? What exactly should we adapt to?
While weather disasters are not going away, the claim that “a successful CO2 mitigation program isn’t going to help that much with floods, droughts, or hurricanes,” is not remotely obvious or certain. Current events clearly weigh against this assertion.
If our primary vulnerability is to extreme weather events rather than slow creep issues like sea level rise and ocean acidification, then adaptation should have a front and center place in our strategies.
Is anyone arguing that this should not be the case? MT’s point – which seems staggeringly uncontroversial – is:
When we say “no adaptation without mitigation” we do not mean that no adaptation should begin before mitigation is agreed to. We mean that adaptation cannot succeed in the long run unless mitigation is agreed to.
If there’s disagreement with this position, why not argue it directly? Why so much active effort to create this “MT doesn’t care if people die” straw man?
Eli has never said anything against adaptation to my knowledge, so I don’t understand the question.
I do want to know what the definition of “adaptation” is in a climate change context. Clearly we can only adapt to threats we understand and can calibrate. The present events are telling us that there may be threats we cannot anticipate. To my understanding, adaptation is piecemeal and ad hoc and local. This isn’t some sort of dismissal of its necessity or cost. It is to ask what exactly we are talking about if we are talking about “adaptation” in general.
“Let’s talk just as much about adaptation” without specifying what we are adapting to and where just seems to me to say “talk half as much about mitigation as you do”.
There is no objection to adaptation. Nobody is ducking any real issues about adaptation that we know about. But your demand that we “talk about adaptation” is impossible to comply with unless you raise some actual issues about adaptation. So, go ahead.
What is it about adaptation that we should be talking about?
Please, be specific.
One wonders how dhogaza learnt that the Russian heat wave was the worst in 3000 years.
What is the ‘problem’ with adaptation? There are two, falling on two different sides.
Firstly, adaptation is something any local body – city, state or nation will undertake, as and when it ‘learns its lessons’ – either prospectively or retrospectively. Adaptation will or will not occur – regardless and with no heed to the theory of global warming. That is the first problem, my friends, that is a serious problem indeed.
The other ‘problem’ is one, of framing the scenario. So, all of a sudden, there is talk of adaptation. Adaptation to what? To global warming? (re Dr Curry above). So we’ve all accepted the notion that ‘global warming’ caused the floods and the waves?
Let’s just call it adaptation to floods.
Michael, we have good weather analyses for maybe 60 years. We have pretty much no idea what blocking patterns might have occurred prior to say 1950. And what about the record cold in South America? Should we blame this on global warming also? Lots of lives being lost among the indigenous peoples who have little shelter. Lots of very big floods have occurred in other regions over the past several centuries. I agree that the Russian heat wave is an exceptional event.
Climate isn’t stationary. We have pretended that it is for the latter half of the 20th century, with engineers having their little tables based on one in 100 year events, etc. The fact that this worked at all is a testament to the benign climate we had in the latter half of the 20th century. Natural climate variability has provided plenty of catastrophes in the past and will do so in the future. Whether (and which of) these will be worse in a warmer climate is not known very well. Climate models simply don’t make any kind of reliable hurricane projections. Climate models are also lousy at precipitation, and they are generally lousy at extreme events (on the tail). As Brian Hoskins says in the Economist, we have no idea whether such blocking events would be worse or not with global warming.
I’m saying we just don’t know. But as I have said over and over, we need to pay alot more attention to the plausible worst case scenario (and figuring out what it actually is), as a combination of both natural variability and anthropogenic warming. Then figure out what our vulnerabilities are (and these are local). Then factor all this into some sort sensible and supportive combination of polices. Using two extreme events linked to a single weather pattern as an argument in favor of CO2 mitigation policy just isn’t convincing. These extreme events are a wakeup call for how we should actually be imagining the plausible worst case scenarios for the next century. But they only factor into the overall reasoning about policy options as I described at the beginning of this paragraph.
The emotional impact of Hurricane Katrina and the dread of such future events really helped turned the tide of public awareness and support for global warming, for the first time they understood that 1-2 degrees warming could have a catastrophic impact. But the public has matured (for the most part) beyond buying each cold wave as disproving global warming and each heat wave or devastating landfalling hurricane as proof of the need for CO2 mitigation. Using the events in Russia and Pakistan to kick start carbon stabilization policies just isn’t going to work, because people still remember how cold it was last winter. You need a better argument than this.
It is not impossible for unprecedented cold outbreaks to result from unprecedented hemispheric flows, so while it would be abuse to language as well as sense to blame cold temperatures in South America on “global warming”, it’s not impossible that it is a response to anthropogenic climate change. Now it may be revealing of my own prejudices and those of the people I follow that I know less about the South American event than I do about the Asian one. So I don’t actually know what happened meteorologically. Judith, if you do, please fill me in.
Entre nous, let’s acknowledge that “global warming” is a very bad name for what we are doing to the system, anyway.
Otherwise, I am totally with you until you get to “Using two extreme events linked to a single weather pattern as an argument in favor of CO2 mitigation policy just isn’t convincing.” Then you start to get into what will or won’t convince the public of this or that, and generally into the journalistic horse-race mentality and the whole Colorado “politically impossible therefore not to be advocated” paralysis. This whole line of reasoning is murdering the democratic process, and I reject it.
Let’s talk about what’s true, and what’s possible and what’s unlikely. Let’s talk about how to explain it to the public. Let’s talk about how to digest it into informed policy. But let’s not talk about what sells. Therein lies the problem, not the solution.
In fact, the two extreme events linked to a single weather pattern have changed my own thinking about the problem. This is an event of a different nature than, say, a single thosand year flood in middle Tennessee. There are at least thousand places the size of the part of Tennessee that got a thousand year flood, so we expect such a thousand year event on average annually, somewhere.
We only have two hemispheres. A once-in-a-thousand-year configuration (sort of, we really don’t know the repeat interval for the reasons you mention; Rob Carver comes up with over 15,000 years with plenty of caveats attached) of the jet stream is something to at least make a person sit up and take notice. Whether this wake-up call is or isn’t convincing to others is not an issue that I think is worth discussing. Whether or not I am correct to find that it changes the picture is much more interesting.
By the way, as a result of related discussion I have learned that there are global reanalysis products going back as far as 1869. Here is the project and here are their data.
Michael, public opinion doesn’t matter very much on global warming policy. Yes, they are voters, but climate change etc doesn’t rank in the top 10 issues on too many voter’s lists. So all these efforts to convince the “public” are pretty much a waste of time. What you need is to convince the policy makers, and that ain’t going to happen until some politically patalable policy options emerge.
Yes I am familiar with the new reanalysis project going back to 1969. I served on Gil Compo’s thesis committee about 15 years ago, and I have been aware of this project for a long time. It is a brand new data set, it has not yet been scrutinized and assessed for its plausibility in getting upper air circulations correct.
Whether what happens in one locale is a one in 1000 or one in 15,000 event doesn’t make a difference to my critique of your argument. We have no way of attributing this event to CO2. And global warming wasn’t happening 15,000 years ago.
I’m still saying you need a better argument. I use global warming interchangeably with AGW; climate change can be associated with range of factors, so I don’t use that word when referring specifically to AGW.
” then I don’t understand why they are so reluctant to argue just as strenously for climate adaptation”
1. umm, because they’re still trying to persuade people that AGW exists in the first place, against virulent opposition?
2. because there are only so many hours in the day, and neither of them make a living off their blogs?
3. because arguing for “adaptation” is meaningless without having a deep understanding of how different local climates will respond, and regional AGW modeling is still in its infancy?
(so, do we need more dams, larger flood control facilities, potable water source diversification, expanded groundwater recharge operations, salt water intrusion barriers, invasive species removal programs, forest thinning, or wetlands rehabilitation & expansion? which provides the highest return on investment?
and just what you write if MT, for example, started writing about the need for Pakistan and the US to raise taxes substantially to pay for these programs? would you support him, or would you attack him for promoting multi-billion dollar investments in programs that may be useless in responding to the local change in climate?)
1. Although there are people who argue for adaptation and not mitigation, I think it is technically true that the reverse is not true–most who argue for mitigation give at least a ritual salute to adaptation. So technically Tobis has the right ‘side’ in this tactical discussion and Keith does not. However Kloor would be correct to follow up and ask to see the adaptation strategies advocated since 1988 by the Hansenist Brigade. Slim pickings.
2. Because adaptation in many cases boils down to strategies that greatly resemble ‘development’ in poorer parts of the world, adaptation to climate change gets embroiled in other policy discussions, muddying the waters.
3. Because the voting public in developed democracies don’t care much about climate change, it is natural that politicians should not base career-threatening decisions on climatic effects. This will be true even for politicians who believe climate change is a problem.
4. Adaptation can hide behind ‘development’ in some cases. One interesting question would be, can mitigation hide behind other top-tier policy issues?
5. The climate change debate had its 3 months in the sun last winter. It looks as though some people got used to it. Now that climate change is returning to its natural position in the issues framework, it is also natural for some to use sensational tactics to keep the policy above its normal level. As hyping weather as climate is a tactic used in the past, it is not surprising to see it happening this week.
But it was a mistake in the past and it is a mistake now.
It’s IPCC not IPGW for a reason. Human activities dominate contemporary climate change, but in a context (discussing hostirical or paleo evidence) where it matters, one can say “ACC” rather than “AGW”.
Global warming is just a symptom. We aren’t forcing the surface temperature, we are forcing the radiative transfer; the inputs via aerosols and the outputs via greenhouse gases. To talk about this or that event being caused by “global warming” artificially limits and distorts the conversation in my opinion even in informed circles. It has led to endless and excessive fascination with the minutiae of global mean surface temperature.
For many mitigation seems to be defined only as a globally agreed regime to suppress CO2 emissions. This (a) ignores political reality (b) misses attacking other factors like carbon soot which are doable and can be more mitigating than suppressing CO2 and (c) discounts current trends in energy transformation, the real mitigation strategy.
“How can a pattern be so stable this year when it has never been seen before as far as anyone can tell?” (emphasis changed – to where it belongs)
If I may paraphrase:
I don’t know how this happened, but I know it proves that I am right and you are wrong. And guess what, it is worse than we thought.
This is science?
Will someone come up with a new argument to justify the self proclaimed elite taking over the world’s energy economy? Please? The repetition is getting to be mind numbing.
I agree completely with Mr. Kelly at #52.
Gary M, no it is not science, it is informed speculation. That’s why it’s in a blog, not a journal.
Note that there is no sign that anything like this has happened in a thousand years of Russian history. So we know it’s a rare event. We also know that all the natural climate forcings are relatively quiet right now. So what exactly has changed? Hmm, the Arctic ice has retreated, and the oceans are hot, and the jet stream has retreated poleward, and the atmosphere contains more latent heat, and the nighttime low temperatures are rising, and the lapse rate is increasing. Quite a lot. I wonder why those things are happening…
The first science on this exact event won’t be out for a couple of years. Hopefully we won’t be getting a lot more unprecedented events to cope with meanwhile.
The reason to focus on CO2 mitigation over other greenhouse forcings in public discussions is that CO2 mitigation is necessary and difficult and expensive and slow. So the public has to get solidly and permanently behind it. Of course we should be going after other greenhouse gases ASAP, but this is not as politically difficult.
The likelihood of some other form of energy replacing fossil fuels that is cost-effective requires a change in relative costs. As a first step, direct and indirect subsidies to fossil fuels must stop. Probably direct subsidies to alternatives must start. If people don’t understand the necessity of this they experience the short term costs and not see the long term benefits. They will punish the party that does it and reward the party that refuses.
That’s why the public needs to understand the problem. There really is no alternative. Even in the unlikely event that some carbon-free fuel cheaper than coal emerges, the coal interests will be jockeying to twist the market in their direction. Actual industries have more political power than potential industries. The only way out is through telling the truth.
Keith,
Maybe you are breaching the chasm after all. Both Michael Tobis and Judith Curry agree that voters are irrelevant.
Two questions for both.
The Obama administration clearly favors cap and trade, “investment” in alternative energy (except nuclear), and the whole laundry list of the climate advocates’ agenda. They had a filibuster proof senate, large majorities in the house, the presidency, the media (except Fox News, the WSJ editorial page, and the names that give you all shudders), not to mention the entire public school system of the U.S. teaching children from the age of 4 of the dangers of global warming.
1) Why did they pull the cap and trade bill (so far) and surrender in Copenhagen?
Next, I would agree that Democrat politicians are usually willing to ignore voters wishes to pass legislation. The “health care reform bill” proved that. But in that case the leadership was willing to trade near term losses to change the system in a way that could give them electoral advantages for decades, while the cap and trade etc. would likely have a different long term electoral effect. So:
2) If the elections at the end of this year result in a conservative House, and the elections in 2 years a conservative president, how exactly do you propose to convince those policy makers of anything, when you have been belittling them for years?
OK, I really had three questions for MT.
3) Don’t you think that the arguments you are making now make the political scenario in question 2) more likely? (not that that’s a bad thing in my opinion)
Michael, you are dead right on this one:
“As a first step, direct and indirect subsidies to fossil fuels must stop. ”
This is an AGW policy that even the libertarians can love.
Michael Tobis (55),
“informed speculation” works for me, although I would probably apply that term to a lot more of the science in the debate than you would.
But I am curious, how do you know “…that there is no sign that anything like this has happened in a thousand years of Russian history[?]” Did you really research that? And more importantly, how?
Judith Curry, Michael Tobis,
If by subsidies you mean actual payments like in the case of ethanol, or special tax breaks not similarly available to other industries, most conservatives would agree with you as well. Stop them now. However, too many include tax breaks that are available to all other industries as “subsidies,” such as deductions for taxes paid on foreign investments/income. There you would have a debate.
GaryM, we were writing simultaneously. I will reiterate.
It is necessary to convince most voters that mitigation is necessary; this certainly, and indeed notably, includes voters in the US who incline to the position nowadays called “conservative” though I consider that something of a misnomer.
I would love see that happen on the time scale of the next election so that responsible action could occur. I am not at present optimistic about that. While time is on our side on convincing people, as the climate itself deteriorates, it is not on our side in terms of pulling together an adequate response. I am pretty sure we have lost at least five years, and probably ten. The consequences of this delay will not be known with precision for fifty years or more.
On the whole, I sure hope you guys are right and we are wrong. But I don’t recommend betting on it.
GaryM, in searching for an answer to your first question, you may find it fruitful to consider the possibility that the DemocRat/Socialist Cabal To Indoctrinate Our Children, Control Our Economy, and Sap and Impurify Our Precious Bodily Fluids is not as powerful as you imagine it is.
OK, who are you and what have you done with the real Michael Tobis?
Michael Tobis,
It is my understanding (I am not a climate scientist, so if it is incorrect please tell me) that CO2 stays in the atmosphere for several decades; meaning that the we have a significant amount of warming ‘in the pipeline’ from CO2 already emitted. So the people living today will likely suffer serious climate change whether we ceased all ghg emmisions today or kept on pumping them out (though this would have serious consequences in the future). Therefore it seems that adaptation will have a greater impact for people living today. Remember, better ‘deck chair’ management saved thousands of people in chile.
Let me be clear, I completely agree with you on the necessity for mitigation. Having read your comments describing your much more nuanced view of mitigation/adaptation; why use the term “no adaptation without mitigation” if this is clearly not what you mean?
The analogy of adaptation to arranging deck chairs on the titanic is also obviously meant to be derogatory, but better arranging of deck chairs will certainly save A LOT of people and their livelihoods; whereas the positive effects from mitigation are most likely long term (After you and I and most of the people living today are dead).
You are right that adaptation takes place on a local level, so why not encourage climate activists (and everyone else for that matter) to get involved on a local level with adaptation; learning how climate change will affect specific areas and what can be done to prepare. Grassroots, bottom up activism is all the rage anyway, why not direct some of this energy towards adaptation?
The events this summer are most likely a sign of a changing climate, but they are also a sign that many countries are poorly prepared for natural disasters. No one here is arguing against mitigation, and you are supposedly not arguing against adaptation, so what is the beef?
Cheers,
Isaac
GaryM, nobody wants climate change.
Ignore the fantasy demons operating the UN’s black helicopters from the socialist bunkers under Zurich with their hands on your wallet and their death taxes on your grandmother’s IV drip. They’re not real. Nobody in this conversation is the enemy you imagine you’re fighting.
GaryM,
I think that it is an MT that sounds more real than the pompous one you got used for so many years 😉 If MT’s own discursive climate has changed so much because he was accused of being an hypocrit, we might even own some thanks to Keith 😉
I was going to say that the other Michael Tobis whom Keith likes to accuse of extremism is someone whose existence I doubt. In any case I’ve never met the fellow.
See John Nielson Gammon re “Did it Happen Because of Global Warming?” He gets it exactly right.
“extremism”
The difference between what Joe Romm says and Michael Tobis is, Tobis always packages his apocalypses in reasonable and moderate terms.
isaacschumann (64):
You capture my perspective precisely. And you say it much more diplomatically and constructively than me. Thank you.
I don’t recall being the person who had a beef. Look up at the address bar at the URL. Note that I am supposedly the exemplar of an ethical hypocrite.
I am still trying to figure out what it was I did that rated such an accusation. Now Isaac is asking me where the beef is?
And Keith says Isaac speaks for him. About the beef! That’s just the limit of what I can handle in one day.
Anyway, I sure haven’t got it. I give up, Keith, where is the dang beef?
> We find that even Americans who tend to discount climate change or are ambivalent about its relevance react favorably when the issue is re-framed in the context of public health.
Source: http://scienceblogs.com/framing-science/2010/07/study_re-framing_climate_chang.php
Sorry, Keith, but just to make it crystal clear – there is no evidential connection between these ‘events’ and global warming, all related, apparently, to a temporary, connected disruption of the jet stream. That Michael Tobis etc want to pretend otherwise proves conclusively that they are interested in the science only as rhetoric, there to support their particular political project – mostly a beat up of capitalism and western man and a genocidal, Poll Pot wish to ‘return to nature’!
I repeat – no connection between weather events and climate change!
See R. Pielke Jnr passim.
And Roger says again and again that the necessity for adaptation and mitigation strategies are based on the long term predictive skill of certain climate change theories – not on here today gone tomorrow weather events. Some just disagree on how strong such theories are as regards causality. But that’s another matter!
I assume Keith is away involved in his real life. Until he comes back to hopefully delete Lewis’ comment (75), as the token conservative around here, and one not obverse to ragging on Michael Tobis’ politics, I think the “genocidal Poll (sic) Pot” reference (and it’s Pol by the way), is as obnoxious and offensive as any comment I have seen. Maybe Lewis has had a few too many on a Friday night, but that is no excuse for such garbage. It is an insult to the millions of victims of that murderous maniac, an insult to the readers of this blog, and a defamation of Mr. Tobis.
“no connection between weather events and climate change”
That doesn’t even make sense.
adverse, not obverse, of course
Just catching up. Yes, Lewis (73), you’re way over the top there. No place for that stuff here.
Notwithstanding my own disagreements with Michael, I happen to think he is quite sincere about his climate change concerns.
I’ll settle for #79, then.
I also think he is sincere. I think however he is at best hasty in his linking recent ‘events’ in Russia, Pakistan and China to anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. In a far more genteel way, it is as over the top as Lewis–and possibly as damaging.
Pretty much just us chickens here on a Saturday night. Who brought the cards?
The only possible damage from MT’s climate views is if they actually delay the attainment of his own urgently needed goal. They do.
He insists that CO2 suppression be the lead strategy and the principle focus. He favors it precisely because it is difficult and expensive and slow. It even requires a successful mass education program to begin to get started. This has been going on for more than twenty years.
What was it Jon Holdren said about adapting to the unavoidable and avoiding the unadaptable.
We do need to start preparing. New Roads more than six feet above the storm surge line, new dams to store the water that glaciers do now, new power transmission lines, stop contaminating the underground water that we will so desperately need. We will also need new airports to replace the ones that cannot be saved.
All of that will be meaningless if we fail to mitigate. Civilisation will not survive 750 ppm.
MT. The reason that the populace isn’t listening is simple.
For years the mantra has been “Weather is not climate”, trotted out (corrctly) anytime a freak weather event was used against AGW. The recent attempts to use unusual events to bolster the case are so transparently hypocritical as to border on the absurd.
They demonstrate to the public at large that many in the AGW camp are willing to change the rules and their stories to suit their desired agenda.
I note also that while you mentioned that Dr. Carver had plenty of caveats you didn’t mention this bit;
“Another big assumption I make is that daily maximum temperatures follow a Gaussian (normal) distribution and that from 30 years of CFSR data, I can adequately characterize such a distribution.”
Yes, it’s a caveat, one I would think of as so big as to make the findings worthless. (Provided I understand him correctly) Using 30 years worth of data to extrapolate probable averages 15,000 years into the past strikes me as bloody silly. I wonder how “extreme” the winters were back in 1850 based on his averages?
A simple question. If he wasn’t sort of supporting your position, would you accept the methodology?
Or can we simply conclude that “Weather is not climate unless we want it to be.”
Concerning #73 Lewis. While his comment was over the top here it must also be remembered that there is in fact a small percentage of the green movement who really do believe that humans are a blight on the planet and Gaia will be much improved when we are all dead. It should also be noted that some of those who have a very relaxed attitude to vast numbers of human deaths have also held high positions in the green movement.
Weather is eventually climate. Fixed that
Fixed what?
JohnB, as Judith points out in the new thread with a misdirected link, the conventional wisdom is here; that at least in aggregate we have evidence of anthropogenic climate change with direct consequences, not just a tiny shift in mean temperature. I am indeed going a bit further, not about the other events but about the jet stream in Asia. I am working toward an elaboration on my blog.
The way, for instance, Joe Romm handled the Nashville floods was not fair and excessive. I reject it. But to make what might seem to be a similar claim about the Russia/Pakistan megacatastrophe is very different. I am trying to elaborate on my blog.
By the way, I am not personally interested in any “green movement”, real or imaginary. Some of my best friends are greenies, admittedly, but I often have to grit my teeth and try to overlook come of their idees fixes. I’d really prefer a sustainability movement that had some respect for science.
However, I don’t believe that there is any significant “green” movement to eliminate humanity. The best way to eliminate humanity is to be be as anti-green as possible, after all.
Thanks for your slightly grudging support on the mass murderer thing, though.
Keith, I apologize to Michael Tobis if I was somewhat over the top – I did not in any way mean that Micheal or other mainstream environmentalist are like Pol Pot or have an agenda that is the same.
I expressed my self clumsily but what I did mean and believe quite sincerely that much of environmentalism is on a spectrum, that if viewed from a historical point of view, shares many of the attitudes of nihilism and misanthropy, which at extremes has produced the utopian projects which filled, with horror, the last century. This is a general historical, philosophical and is indicative of a malaise general to mankind. I also believe that modern capitalism is itself a product of this nihilism, in fact, nihilism in action, hence its highly, destructive, amortising, alienating character. I am therefore by no means a conservative or right winger. These distinctions are just passée.
To repeat, I apologise if I offended Michael or any sincere thinking environmentalists. I will try to write not so clumsily next time.
Yours sincerely
Lewis Deane.
When the political dust settled, it turned out that negligence and poor decision-making significally compounded the disasterous effects of Katrina. In some aspects, this supports MT’s approach to adaptation on the local level. The city of New Orleans was aware of it’s precarious locale and imperative necessity to repair and improve it’s failing infrastructure. On the macro level, the Army Corps of Engineers had formerly evaluated the dire situation, but both the city and the state dropped the ball. An absence of disaster preparedness and lack of response left the victims to fend for themselves. There is no excuse for the inept failure of the Lousiana state officials to declare a state of emergency and notify federal officials. It’s tempting to suspect ruthless political motives or corrupt mishandling of tax dollars, but simple local incompetence is probably more realistic.
However, this example also supports Keith’s point. Since Katrina, scientific analysis has found no link between increased atmospheric of CO2 level and hurricane activity. So mitigation cannot sufficiently address human vunerabity. Had adaptation measures been given priority, much of the human suffering could have been avoided. Putting all our eggs into the mitigation basket on the purely theoretically basis that storm severity will magically disappear, is pretty foolish. But if that’s your belief, don’t claim some ridiculous moral high ground(MT).
It exposes the underlying environmentalist ideology that mankind is a blythe on the planet. Overpopulation and CAGW go hand-in-hand. Are they secretly hoping for large death tolls to both cull the heard and serve as proof for urgent mitigation policy?
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/08/climate-porn-2010.html
RPJ’s latest post includes this quote from Gavin Schmidt:
If you ask me as a person, do I think the Russian heat wave has to do with climate change, the answer is yes. If you ask me as a scientist whether I have proved it, the answer is no “” at least not yet.
The idea that CAGW supporters get some type of elation or confirmation-bias cheap thrill from tragic events is pretty unsettling. Maybe there is a male tendency to use sexual imagery metaphorically. Or maybe it’s just Roger?
I just now read MT’s post about his disapproval of the Green movement’s goal of population control. I probably wouldn’t have made the reference I did in my previous response.
I apologize, Michael.
laursaurus a small but important point, there is a link between increased tropical cyclone activity and climate change as caused by increased greenhouse gas concentrations. What is at issue is whether there has been an increased cost in property and lives, and in spite of what Roger Pielke Jr. says, there is at a minimum two points of view on that (the answer also depends on over what period, how you account for the money spent of detection and adaptation, etc.)
I am working on post on hurricanes and climate change, a rather complex topic. Stay tuned, hope to have it posted before the end of the month.
Keith, thanks for letting my apology through – I was actually horrified by the reaction my silly comment made when I looked back at it this morning and wished I could unsay what I had said. But probably best to leave it as it is as a warning to others!
Thanks again, Keith, for your patience in this.
Yikes! I can’t believe this guy came right out and admitted exactly what I suspected:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2010/aug/12/us-politics-climate-change-ipcc-russia-pakistan
I sometimes imagine what it would take, weather-wise, for people to see that we have to do something about this. It puts one in the odd and perhaps I confess morally unsupportable position of cheering for a certain amount of calamity, the better to put the crisis in stark relief, but hopefully not too much calamity, lest many die. But doing nothing and relying on oil-industry-funded “scientists” to argue that it’s all a hoax so that said industries can be free of the coffle of state interference is more morally unsupportable, as time and tide shall demonstrate.
The “profile” link on the Guardian website has no information about who this blogger is. Is he a scientist or just a Green Movement extremist?
“Thanks again, Keith, for your patience in this.”
Don’t worry, Lewis. I doubt Keith or anyone else will hold a grudge against you. I certainly stepped in it on this thread!
I really admire Keith’s style of moderation, which has proven to be uniquely savvy. Permitting posts that exceed the bounds of the stated comment policy and coaching participants out in the open has not only lead to self-moderation. But people appreciate being treated fairly. Censoring blog comments tends to create resentment, especially when it is perceived to be lop-sided. Look at how RC’s practices have backfired by increasing public skepticism of the science it intends to promote. Somewhere else in the blogosphere, the rejected party posts his side of the story along with the the comment anyway. It probably never occurs to the reader whether or not the offended party may have toned it down from the original version that warranted the decision. Not only do the readers understand what made it objectionable, they have an opportunity to apologize and think carefully before clicking the “Submit Comment” button. Instead of getting angry, I wind up feeling a little embarrassed.
It’s turned out to be a huge bonus, since by creating a safe and neutral venue, climate blogging celebrities from all different points of view come to participate.
It was nothing short of amazing how what JC described as a “drive-by car wreck” was transformed. When each side broke through the barrier by engaging on the other guy’s thread, we witnessed a milestone in the climate debate. It might have not have quite satisfied everyone. But none the less, a corner was turned.
Over 1,000 comments combined! That’s a huge accomplishment. And poor Keith was sick as a dog at the time! Fortunately, he’s back in action 😉
Maybe I missed the others, but I found this one tangible recommendation for adaptation:
“New Roads more than six feet above the storm surge line, new dams to store the water that glaciers do now, new power transmission lines, stop contaminating the underground water that we will so desperately need. We will also need new airports to replace the ones that cannot be saved.”
I have yet to see anyone here address tangible steps taken to adapt to those catastrophes that the CAGW folks keep projecting. Seems to me that at 3 millimeters per year, we have plenty of time to move roads. Presuming that the six or so inches over the next fifty years actually causes peril to an existing road or airport, there is time to build a berm or whatever.
Won’t most people who control the large amounts of money required to move a road or an airport want a lot more certainty than exists today before they spend scarce resources on projects that may not be needed for another century?
laursaurus, thank you for your good words.
I believe my words were symptomatic – otherwise what meaning would they have – of a general despair: that, however any many times, mankind has believed he/she is doing good, he/she has always done bad. Therefore I say let the whole boiling boil itself out. For those who interfere cannot, when you look at history, be well meaning. Hence the solution they propose is an ill doctor seeing his own jaundice yellow.
I think that’s probably an unhealthy attitude, a way of reading history wrong but one must be carefull to protect oneself from tyranny and disaster. Isn’t it better to be free in a dieing world than unfree in a healthy one. Quaeretur.
‘tyranny and disaster’ – I don’t mean that anyone envisages this or wishes or even has a dream of it. What I mean, to repeat, is that we, as mankind, are driven forward by certain forces that makes us be what was never intended! Despair comes from knowing human beings cannot help being ‘human beings’.
But then hope says that gesture ( for instance, turning of the light ) ripples through all of us – is the beginning of something I know not what?
Why not simply move out of the flood plain? US government flood insurance buys you out once, and then assumes that if you rebuild in the same place it’s your problem. Why build the roads higher, build them back further.
Lausaurus, agreed, “It was nothing short of amazing how what JC described as a “drive-by car wreck” was transformed”.
I felt myself lost and ‘aggressively impotent’ when it came to Prof. Curry treatment. I think that’s why I lost it the other night – I hate bullies and I will always go over the top to fight back. So, I suppose, I kept that resentment – the treatment of Curry – in my heart and struck at the nearest person I could see. Words are O.K., because they’re forgotten but written words are indelible!
Eli Rabett,
Despair is a very special prize which I earned over many years and hold close to my heart – it does not mean inaction, or destructive behaviour – it means I pay only 5 pound a week for my electricity because I believe that, in my small way, I’m doing good – That is, I believe the whole bag is aboiling but will insists on doing right! Forgive me, when I laugh, if grand statements are made.
Keith, I would not plague you if this wasn’t, as it seems, a ‘dead’ thread:
But I think, there is a misunderstanding here: my feeling is a philosophical one – there is something I expect from mankind and it isn’t petrol – it is the un-gloomy, joyous dance of poetry. But what do I see but threats of destruction, of Armageddon. So, yes, I deal with that – but then, see, nothing but pessismism. We must begin with hope – otherwise we are lost – hope that is real, that is concrete, that means something and is actionable by every Joe Blogg and Jane, too. If we carry on speaking to ourselves with unrealistic and ridiculous plans we will get nowhere. Speak to the man on the street: – I know him, he will understand!
I’ll mark this day on my calendar–Eli Rabett makes perfect sense at #100. (Don’t tell him the Republicans were saying this during the administration of George Bush the Elder…)
Yeah, Tom, he’s one guy who wants to say ‘Yes!’
Lewis,
…if I may speak for more than myself,…is it that only those who wail about the end of the world take on passionate, heart-rending voices and those who listen, tolerate and thereby encourage such behavior be content with mumbling, trapped in politeness?
I don’t think so.
Lewis,
I too think Eli wants to say yes. I’d like him to stop talking about climate and talk only of actual fossil fuel replacement.
Keith,
I haven’t seen Tobis playing down the need for adaptation (e.g.) and I find your description of his position as hypocritical entirely misplaced.
Both adaption and mitigation are important. But for the long term risks, mitigation is a ‘conditio sine qua non’ for keeping the risk at manageable (i.e. adaptable) levels. That’s the nature of the game we’re in, and to a large degree due to the long lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere.
John Holdren has said:
“We basically have three choices: mitigation, adaptation, and suffering.
We’re going to do some of each. The question is what the mix is going to be.
The more mitigation we do, the less adaptation will be required and the less suffering there will be.”
The reverse is not necessarily the case: The more adaptation we do, the more we (note, this is not the same “˜we’, but only refers to those specific aspects and location where adaptation is being done) can postpone mitigation, but we’ll still have to reduce emissions (mitigation) anyway, otherwise adaptation costs and/or suffering will keep on increasing without bound. Besides, future mitigation is likely more expensive (because it will have to be done faster) than current mitigation, if the same risk level is to be achieved (unless a miraculous technological breakthrough is found, but banking on that sounds risky to me).
Treating the cause is more important for the long term risk than protecting against the symptons, especially if the problem would otherwise increase over time. Of course, that doesn’t negate the need to alleviate the symptons. Both is needed; both address different aspects of the issue. Providing poor people with a fishing rod is more helpful to them in the long run than providing them with a fish for dinner.
I wrote a bit more on adaptation-mitigation here (nr 5).
Shub, I don’t understand your question – ‘those who listen, tolerate and thereby encourage such behaviour’ – what behaviour? – if you think my ‘wailing and gnashing of teeth’ is unproductive you have misunderstood me – I ‘wail’ and act. I do believe that by example one leads, not by prescription.
Yes, I’m contradictory – for all my ‘wailing and gnashing of teeth’, my own pessimism, I also believe in the long term sagacity of mankind. Our own actions produce consequences which our progeny can and will adapt to. What is difficult to grasp is how ones own ethical or unethical behaviour somehow might shape that future. I mean the arrogance of it, considering our profound ignorance and the real chaos that is reality. Because of my knowledge of history I cannot tolerate the idea that some, who ‘know better’, can, from a position of ‘superior expertise’, dictate to ‘the rest’ what is ethical and correct. I would therefore have a free mankind that lead to destruction than an unfree one. But the choices are not that stark. ‘Liberal democracies’ do behave well and do know how to change themselves. They will.
Hmm. We’ve been unconsciously adapting to the 1-1.5K increase in temperature in the past 100 years or so (who knew we had to mitigate?). And here we are in a world with a healthier and wealthier population than ever before in the history of human civilization.
Michael Tobis,
Sorry for the late reply, away from the computer all weekend.
Point taken, maybe I should have directed the ‘wheres the beef’ question at everyone.
People tend to forget that there are boundaries on a business as usual outcome for this century, and they don’t include Mad Max scenarios. Population peaks at 2085, emissions begin to decline soon thereafter, adaptation costs estimated to run at @ 5% of GDP whether it’s in one year or 100.
But civilization does not collapse, the Greenland Ice Cap does not melt, and if we sit on our butts and do nothing it’s just an ever-more expensive problem to fix, and humanity waits a longer period for CO2 concentrations to dissipate.
That’s what the IPCC says. Tobis, Rabett, Romm and Hansen say things will get dramatically worse. But the science they use to justify these statements keeps getting busted. So they have to use the disaster du jour to keep the kettle boiling.
I do not advocate sitting on our butts. But nor do I wish to see every attempt to discuss what we can do get interrupted by wails of ‘The sky is falling!’
The sky isn’t falling. If, as Tobis has said on this site over the past couple of days, temperatures rise 2.5 degrees C (my, how precise…) due to a doubling of CO2 concentrations, it is a significant problem, it should be addressed, and we should start now.
But it doesn’t mean Moscows everywhere or Pakistan/China in perpetuity.
Lewis,
I dont think you got my point right. I was saying those, who listen and indulge all this scare-mongering, – inspite of not believing in all this one bit themselves, by their own tolerance – encourage and nourish such behavior.
And once AGW proponents take the “moral high road, speak for all humanity, abrasive, certainty-riddled, always off-topic but on-message concern troll” phenotype, the skeptic then takes on a “calm demenaour, asking pointed questions, polite, deferential, an almost-servile” phenotype.
So when you were letting it rip with the Pol Pot and all that, it is OK really – that’s what I said above.
“The evidence for man-made climate change is incontrovertible. The consequences are potentially catastrophic to humanity. Our leaders thus have an ethical duty to take action that reduces greenhouse gases. Because they have not acted our leaders are being irresponsible and unethical. I think it’s safe to say that many if not all climate change advocates would agree with this.”
___________________
Indeed. Those who define the “argument” are usually best at defending it. It is, after all, “their” argument. The ethical “dilemma”, if one exists, is also theirs. “Agreement”, if achieved, and usually it is, would also be quite one sided. Who is most at fault when logical arguments in ethics fail to achieve unanimous agreement? The author or the 90% of the audience who are listening? (There’s always the 10% no one can wake up.)
Sorry, Shrub, misunderstood you.
Would, Keith, this being a ‘dead’ thread, permit a poem (edit: if it’s inappropriate). All poets are prone to hyperbole.
Mankind Today
Everyone looks at my child with an ignorant eye –
Impotent to act, to ask why?
If one could drive backwards,
Bouncing, on the way, the billion skulls of our victims
And ‘unmake’ the mistakes we made,
Wouldn’t it be, couldn’t it be
That we just make, ‘made’ other ‘mistakes’?
Reversing backwards over a fella
Already prone ‘ cause you’d ‘biffed’ him.
A future that means something completely unexpected
Like happines. Or love. Or man/woman
Isn’t as bad you believe.
Just, forever, normal – failing but succeeding, too.
Terror destroys – the tyranny of terror.
Michael Zimmerman (21) summarized perfectly.
You’re right, Tom – it’ seems to be that the cost of vigilance is to ask for a real basis for every proposed change – you cannot say to Joe Blogs I’m going to radically re-organise your life without making it very clear to him that ‘this and this’ is the urgent reason why. And, no Joe Blogs is, in the end, going to except cardboard for real vegetables. If only people would talk sensibly to this fella, maybe he might decide to change his ways. Then again, he might not. One has choice after all!
Hot Russian Climate Porn
LOL Shub!
Did your comment make it past the spam filter?
Almost mistook it for the old Usenet!
That is the beauty of CAS . Keep everything open – don’t spoil it for the others.
Regards
Tobis (42)
Of course blocking pattern was available to the system before the recent changes to climate forcing. How do you think Moscow registered 36.8 in 1920? But if you want to treat this as a question go ahead and find an answer your own way. Maybe your claims will acquire some basis after that.
Talk about a 10,000 year heat wave is nonsense. There are no records nor proxies that would allow to establish this. Why can’t you talk about facts?
We never had any justification for quasi-stationarity. First, there was MWP then LIA. Natural variability, you know. On longer time scales – yes – Younger Dryas and glacial cycles.
It’s the same blocking pattern that we’ve seen before, just longer. But ask yourself for how long do we have the means to establish the fact of blocking. Less than a hunderd years, right? Not a lot of time. So why jump to conclusions?
Could it be that additional forcing facilitates blocking? Yes. Do we have any sort of dynamical link at least on a hand-waving level? No. Could it be that blocking is regular event with a random length in time such that a 10 week blocking naturally occurs once in N years? Of course it could be. We simply don’t know. Why pretend that the answer is almost obvious? It isn’t. If anything it behooves you to prove the link between forcing and blocking. As it stands, it’s an empty claim.
Contrary to what you think, the forest and peat fires are not so rare in those parts. Even I lived there long enough to witness it a couple of times. Your presumption that they will get ready for the next one is wrong as well. You don’t know much about Russia, do you?
Keith,
I’d loved to say in ‘one sentence’ ‘what everyone else would say in a book’:
Every thing you expect of the future will not happen. What will happen, you will not expect.
Explication: we have realised, long ago, that we cannot stop our gas gussling brethren – for instance, let us say, in a kind of guilt-ridden and masochistic spirit, we drove down to zero our carbon deficiencies – would others do the same, could we expect others to do the same?
Hardly. And doesn’t that say to us that such expectations are utopian, or, at least, self defeating. You will not persuade the world to be virtuous. But through your and my example you might lead them to that virtue.
I’m sorry, that was ridiculously pompous. It’s not normal, I promise you.
MT, sorry if you thought my support on that was “grudging” in any way. It wasn’t meant so and I’ll attempt to be clearer if it ever comes up again. I was speaking in general and not as a reference to you. The two parts of that post were entirely separate subjects in my mind. My apologies for not being clear on that.
And Lewis, credit where it is due. Your apology was well said.
PS to KK, another topic suggestion — something watching corporate PR about climate, in the new world we’ve been given by the courts.
First corporations are people with full free speech, no longer limited by requirements that commercial speech meet a higher standard for honesty and accuracy in some limited way.
Now, this from the 9th Circuit, which makes clear that anything goes:
“… the Constitution prohibits the government from prosecuting someone for merely lying, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said in a 2-1 ruling.
“The right to speak and write whatever one chooses – including, to some degree, worthless, offensive and demonstrable untruths – without cowering in fear of a powerful government is, in our view, an essential component of the protection afforded by the First Amendment,” Judge Milan Smith said in the majority opinion.
If lying about a medal can be classified as a crime, Smith said, so can lying about one’s age, misrepresenting one’s financial status on Facebook, or telling one’s mother falsehoods about drinking, smoking or sex….”
Or, of course, falsehoods about climate change.
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/emoticons/punch_and_judy.gif
[…] Well, I’m not gone yet. I just read this op-ed in today’s NYT by Thomas Homer-Dixon, which is related to, um, a certain controversial post. […]