Radical scepticism

A sucker who believes everything is described as “credulous” and is generally understood to be an idiot, but somehow a radical sceptic still retains a cutting-edge air of penetrating brilliance.

There’s a long history of this going back to the pre-Socratics, with Descartes and Hume giving big boosts, and in recent centuries the disestablishment of religion, political radicalism, and technological triumphalism have all reinforced the knee-jerk rejection of common sense, which is (among the educated) a new form of conventionalism.

Areas in which unexamined scepticism seem solidly entrenched include neo-classical (especially Chicago school) economics, analytic philosophy, avant-garde chic, gender studies, postmodernism, Libertarianism, the various descendants of critical theory, and transhumanism.

There should be a demeaning label like “credulous” for stupid kneejerk sceptics, especially when they’re con men too, but I don’t know what it would be.

(I sound like Scruton, don’t I?)

There IS a label for “stupid kneejerk sceptics”. They’re called “scientists” – and they usually know how to spell skeptic, because skepticism is part and parcel of the scientific process.

Scientists have questions. Scientists test hypotheses. That’s what science is all about.

Religion is the one that claims to know the answers. And faith-based science isn’t science, whether it’s “creationism” or it’s “global warming”.

The only one who needs fear an audit is someone who’s been keeping a dishonest set of books. Why do “global warming” advocates fear research?

Call them denialists. Their BS really has nothing to do with either credulity or scepticism, but rather with the grasping of any straw to deny some truth that they find inconvenient.

There seem to be a non-trivial number of denialists who take their stance out of ideological opposition to expertise and scientific consensus, preferring to label their own intuition as clear-eyed reason. Contrarians apparently get such value out of accusing other people of being wrong that they are willing to sacrifice a habitable environment for the privilege.

I prefer the term “useful idiot.” Seems to capture the political reality more accurately.

The fact is that the ‘vulgar consensus’ view on climate change held by the non-expert community is shared by very few scientists, even though a few pay it lip service when talking (down) to the press. The devil is in the detail. But this discussion does attract a lot of self-righteous foot-stampers who just don’t want to hear that. This is an issue of almost unimaginable complexity and technical difficulty but so many of you seem so absolutely certain that you grasp it, that you just KNOW THE TRUTH. As usual,though, the degree of certainty is pretty closely proportionate to the degree of scientific ignorance.

John Meredith,
You suggest that “the degree of certainty is pretty closely proportionate to the degree of scientific ignorance.” Aren’t most scientists certain that matter is made of atoms, that communicable diseases are usually caused by germs, that the Earth goes round the Sun, that the hot Big Bang model is correct, etc.? So how could certainty imply scientific ignorance?

In your view, are non-experts who share the consensus view certain that they absolutely grasp all the complex details of climate change? Or are they just certain of particular basic facts (along the lines of “the Sun goes round the Earth”) which the community has come to consensus about? Doesn’t the latter seem quite reasonable?

I’d recommend you read the summary of the IPCC AR4 report, to get an idea of the consensus view of the scientific community. Most of the standard ‘vulgar consensus’ ideas shared by most non-experts can be found right there!

http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/wg1-report.html

Harl, there’s an American way of spelling that word, and there’s a British way, and they’re different. Noah Webster. I chose the less-patriotic spelling, because I hate America.

You’re all wrong about science, too. But thanks for competing.

Relatedly, can anyone explain what Freeman Dyson is on about?

He seems to have some convoluted objection to global warming science which I don’t have the chops to parse. His most recent piece at the NYRB seems to fall off into a “well, anyway this isn’t the worst problem we face” mutter at the end. What’s the deal with him?

What if I disagree with Hansen that those who have denied climate change should be put on trial for crimes against humanity. Does that make me a delusional denier because

No, that is a political question. You fail to distinguish the two throughout.

The reason for the opposition to dealing rationally with climate change is because it signals an end to market capitalism. We will be forced to switch to some form of managed economy. They don’t want that. Perhaps some of the global elites, the top six thousand or so globally, feel that they won’t be affected much and they can ride it out. They might also see losing a couple billion of the world’s population as an added feature.

Peter, Dyson’s article didn’t seem that difficult to me. And, assuming that a runaway greenhouse-gas effect isn’t on the table, it seems to me that “this isn’t the worst problem we face” to be a quite reasonable and probably correct assertion.

He doesn’t have any objection to global warming science, convuluted or no. He seems a bit alarmed at the radical differences of opinion between two esteemed climatologists, one apparently at least close to GW-denial (and clearly in the minority) and one taking the majority, GW-affirming position. He rightly seems to believe that if there are eminent climatologists who doubt global warming, then everyone, non-experts foremost, oughtn’t be so sure about it, one way or another.

As far as I can tell, GW is the conventional wisdom among climatologists and on that basis, I assume they’re probably right; but while there’s still vigorous debate from experts who are non-cranks, then we oughtn’t consider it equal to things that are known-truths in science.

And, more to the point, unlike most things in science, this is something involving public policy that affects billions today and many billions more in the future. If GW isn’t true, or if it is but there are not associated justifications for an extreme policy—for example, the one he associates with Stern—then the bad human consequences of that policy might dwarf the bad consequences of GW that it aimed to prevent. In the article, in the context of the economic modeling, he discusses how the Stern policy would mean (according to him and the author he references and infers from) keeping China at the level it is for two generations longer than it otherwise would be.

This may be a very real matter of temperment and how one understands the world and makes moral judgements, but to my way of thinking and feeling, those are not consequences to be merely shrugged away. From my view, that’s real human misery we’re talking about that we’d be choosing.

Anyway, making a rational economic analysis and accepting that particular economic analysis is his main idea. I can’t disagree with the former; it’s the latter I have some problems with.

His own hobbyhorse is speculating upon the likliehood of a technological solution, particularly genetic engineering in the form of something like carbon sequestering trees. He’s of the opinion that this is almost certain (the economist he refers to does not).

Personally, I think that history indicates that some technological breakthrough that radically changes carbon production or carbon sequestering is more likely than not in the timeframe of ten to fifty years. But the existence of the technology seems to me to be only part of the solution to the problem; the other parts are whether it could be implemented in time and whether it would be. (Although certainly many breakthroughs in energy production could be reliably assumed to be enacted, and quickly, if they had more immediate economic benefits over previous technology.)

My own view is that all in all, the problem with the whole GW debate is that even if our confidence that there’s a problem is quite high these days, almost everything else associated with the problem is unknown or extremely ambiguous. It’s impossible to make the sort of informed decisions we want to make about policy decisions this great. The only way I could feel comfortable making important decisions at this juncture would be if they were based more on risk analysis of probabilities than on suppositions that we actually know what’s going to happen and know how to calculate its costs. I don’t feel confident about making the judgments that Dyson seems to make or that the Stern policy makes. That’s not to say that I’m advocating doing nothing; I’m advocating making decisions about what to do on the basis of rational judgments about what we risk if we don’t do anything, whatever those might be. I’m not at all confident that the economic model Dyson discusses is doing that. It assumes a great deal. (Not the least appears to be that the discounted rate is an external variable—something really contestable on the scale at which the model imagines economic intervention.)

Finally, about the “worst thing that could happen” bit, it seems to me that in terms of human suffering and economic effects there’s a number of things possible, even likely, that would be worse. We’re overdue for global pandemic, for example. I’d bet money right now that perhaps even one—but much more likely a few—of those will kill more people in the 21st century than global warming will. We could have a big nuclear exchange. Not seeming particularly likely today, but things like that can change fast. And GW isn’t really as much a threat to the the planet’s life that a number of other current and possible future human activities are.

Peter, Dyson’s article didn’t seem that difficult to me.

It’s not difficult; it’s just garden-variety senile bullshit. And he’s full of crap about existence of any reputable climatologists who are skeptics, NOT counting the well-known tiny handful who are well paid to lie.

By the way warming makes pandemics significantly more likely. As well as guaranteeing that a hell of a lot of people in poor coastal countries will drown. I guess to comfortable Westerners spooked about having to adjust their energy-intensive go-go lifestyles, all the deaths that will result from those two factors don’t matter much.

The reason for the opposition to dealing rationally with climate change is because it signals an end to market capitalism.

Well, as market capitalism is indispensable in eradicating poverty, I’d have to say that’s a pretty darn expensive cost.

As far as being skeptical, here’s my opinion: I am fairly convinced that man made C02 has caused the world to warm. It seems to be fairly settled science. But I remain skeptical of massive government intervention for lack of sufficient answer to the following questions:

1) How catastrophic will AGW be?
2) How catastrophic will the cost of abating AGW be?

From my reading of the IPCC reports, the catastrophe seems to come from relying on positive feedback effects. To the scientists in the discussion: are positive feedback effects settled science? Without those effects, will AGW be catastrophic?

Even if positive feedback effects are real, what are the costs to us if we try to abate AGW? Those costs seem to be extremely high. What if we’re better off being rich with technology to deal with a warmer planet than poor without? What is the cost in human lives from a cooler and poor planet? How does it compare to the costs of a warmer but wealthier planet?

Please note, I’m not questioning the settled science that man made C02 has, and continues to warm the earth. What I’m asking about is the impacts of that warming, and the impacts of our actions. Are these answers settled?

IMHO these are reasonable questions to ask before we decide to dismantle capitalism, commandeer private property, and ignore Hayek’s knowledge problem with a planned economy, in order to save the planet.

Global CO2 levels have been up to 20 times higher in the past. Where’s the runnaway greenhouse effect. Global warming must occur 50 per cent of the time all through history. Prove it’s man made and if it is , how it will hurt us. And I don’t want the UN proving it to me.

dave in 16 says

it’s OK, soon physical reality will take at least some of their lifestyle away.

to continue with the tiresome litanies of irrelevant rhetorical questions: is that the way that physical reality caused the war in Darfur? Or the way that physical reality caused the disaster in New Orleans? Or the deaths in the 1995 Chicago heat wave? How dare sociologists trepass on the physicists’ turf by studying such things…

Noen in 18 accuses me:

No, that is a political question. You fail to distinguish the two throughout.

As was pointed out, I was only asking snarky questions. You’re right that I was trying to highlight the difference between politics and science, though. When you say

We will be forced to switch to some form of managed economy.

it seems to me that you are the one who is failing to distinguish politics and climate science. That was just the approach I was trying to criticise.

I agree with lemuel pitkin in 21 on this:

Personally, I’d love to see an end to capitalism, but the notion that climate change is going to bring it about strikes me as just a new and unhelpful strain of left eschatology.

Why do people think that climate skepticism has any purchase with sections of the population outside those with a professional interest? I suggest it is not enough to write off mass opinion as a borderline mass psychological disorder of ‘denial’ or ‘delusion’. I think that much of the resonance for it comes from the way that science seems to be used by greens as a proxy for morality or politics.

What I get a kick out of is the way that global warming critics, ID supporters, and other denials are spectacularly skeptical about consensus science but immediately seize on any particular result they think helps their cause as if the fact that it garnered a headline someplace means it must be true. People in the science business know that any individual study doesn’t mean a great deal because the sciences advance more like an amoeba than like a rocket, with lots of fits and starts.

Philosophical skepticism once had a predominately melancholy cast about it because it reflected despair about the prospect of really knowing anything. Modern skepticism, the brand of skepticism promoted by Fundamentalists and PR experts, has a totally different feeling tone. It’s all about the fear that we can find things out and indeed have found some things out, many of them things we don’t want to believe. If you compare the contemporary situation with that of antiquity, the Middle Ages, or even the Enlightenment, one very obvious difference is that we now possess an understanding of many of the basic facts of nature. It is certainly theoretically possible to doubt that physical objects are made out of atoms or to imagine that we’ll someday discover that the Earth is not billions of years old or that all living things are literally kin to one another; but doubt about these and many other familiar facts is now either an exercise or a symptom.

But I care. I care a great deal. I also care a great deal about the poor in developing countries that might be asked to share a disproportionate burden of slowed economic growth that results from carbon limiting policies shoved down the throats of the third world by the first.

Since you care so very much, stop listening to horsecrap from the likes of Lomborg and Dyson and start paying attention to the people who actually study this stuff for a living, who will be happy to explain to you that the impact of climate change will hit poor countries much harder than rich ones. Conversely it’s still the rich ones who are disproportionate emitters (especially figured in the way that actually makes sense- per capita; per capita emissions by the US are over 5.5x those of China) and must bear most of the responsibility for cutting emissions. (You do understand the distinction between absolute quantity of emissions and growth rates of emission, right?) The crocodile tears about the economic effects on poor countries of curbing CO2 emissions are dishonest propaganda paid for by rich-world vested interests. This propaganda is spread by hired liars like Lomborg and is then picked up by naifs like Dyson (and you).

One Two comments above mention the still taboo prospect of “Perhaps loosing a few billion people can be viewed as a good thing”.
The impossibility of doing that without engaging current political and social control agencies is lurking at the edge of Dyson’s “what they see as more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet, including problems of nuclear weaponry, environmental degradation, and social injustice”.
Who would the currently powerful choose to enter their great ark, and who would they leave behind?
Social injustice and the creation of a genetic bottleneck, a new Mitochondrial Eve.
The idea that we’re facing all these things simultaneously, that they’ll shift in urgency and impact in complex ways, doesn’t seem that bizarre. But lots of people have been trained from birth to see only one plotline with one protagonist and one antagonist.
Using a word like “environmentalist” now is awfully lame for someone of Dyson’s stature. It’s like “hippie” which was coined by the US mass media to denigrate a cultural phenomenon that was scaring the shit out of everybody not in it, but which until that coinage had no name, making it even more intimidating.
The mandated use of environmentalism and its derivative terms is a kind of spell, by locking everything into these cramped categories the opponents of caring for the world have an advantage from the get.
Someone whose house is threatened by an out of control fire will be very concerned about the local environment. Widening that concern isn’t a huge imaginative feat.
You can smell the smoke now, and see it in the air.

Almost all economists believe (to put it non-technically) that Free Trade is a good thing. Can one be a skeptic about Free Trade? Or is one a denialist?

“Personally, I think that’s the result of the abysmal science reporting we see today and is equally true of almost everyone who isn’t scientifically literate, whether it’s about their political oxe being gored, or not.”

The good old mantra again: The Alarmists Are Just As Bad… The Alarmists Are Just As Bad… The Alarmists Are Just As Bad… The Alarmists Are Just As Bad… The Alarmists Are Just As Bad… Om… Om… Om…

This so-called ‘global warming skepticism’ is simply a religion, based on chanting mantras to ward off facts.

(I’m sure the ‘skeptics’ will vehemently deny that they’re chanting the mantra… right before they do precisely that.)

— bi, International Journal of Inactivism

oops, meant ‘the *chance* of getting…’

Just read the link at 36: excellent. Despair-inducing, but excellent.

“It doesn’t (1998 was the last big El Nino, and using it as the starting point of a trend is evidence, at best, of total ignorance of statistics).”

The important point that is made is that there has been no global warming over the preceding ten years. This is open to dispute, of course, but may well be true, it looks true from the best data. There may have been some cooling. This was not predicted by any of the climate modellers, although it is true that there may be a continuing upward trend over time and we would expect some plateaus along the way. The fact is, though, that absolutely nobody knows whether global warming is continuing, slowing, or declining. This is far too complex a system for anyone to model accurately. People who believe the modellers are as naive as those who believe the predictions of financial experts on the markets (except that the climate is massively more complex a phenomenon than the economy, naturally). Anybody here who discusses this with climate scientists off the record, will know this, of course.

14: There is no such thing as the “oracle of science”. Science isn’t an oracle. It’s science, and science is organised doubt. Oracle is a large software company specialising in databases.

Further, who is suggesting “dismantling capitalism and moving to a planned economy”? Please? Cites? What is proposed is to tax a specific kind of pollution, either as a tax or as a cap-and-trade system.

When your argument includes both a monster strawman and a claim that requires different laws of nature, it’s often a sign that you’re wrong.

This is a much, much, simpler issue than climate change and the policy implications are much, much smaller.

John, if global warming would only hurt a few hundred/thousand farmers profitability and cost the lives of some amount of farm livestock, then not many people would be particularly bothered to make significant sacrifices to stop it given the scale of changes needed. However climate change has significantly larger potential for damage than a few badgers with tuberculosis.

Our collective tragedy is that empirical methods can, in principle, only take us so far. After that, it’s all Rush Limbaugh and questions in Parliament.

Let no one accuse me of relativism or anti-realism. Nothing in the forgoing entails that there is no fact of the matter about AGW. I’m happy to say that the theory is either true or it is false, no matter what anyone thinks. But I confess I would be very hard pressed to explain why this matters. It seems, dare I say, a point of purely philosophical interest.

I can already hear this complaint:

“Look if we really took this seriously we would have no reason to suppose that important issues like AGW could ever be rationally resolved even among reasonable people. But that would leave us with no motive to participate in the debate. What would be the point of arguing?

Yours is the counsel of intellectual impotence and despair. If we accept it we would have nothing to do but retire to our beds and succumb to post-modernist funk. “

Quite right! Welcome to my world.

The striking thing about this (from the link in 36) is that for the author there is no middle between science and philosophy on the one hand, and Rush Limbaugh and postmodern despair on the other.

It’s a toxic sort of defeatist perfectionism: first you make philosophy and science completely rigorous, so that nothing can really be known and these disciplines impotent, and then you give up. A great triumph of Cartesian doubt.

There are tools to be used which are cruder than philosophy’s, but sharper than Rush Limbaugh’s. But the mission of philosophy is to dibunk these only-relatively-sharp, unphilosophical tools.

Anyone interested in a look at what bouts of rapid warming have done in the past is welcome to hit the geology section. There’s a lot of writing about it these days. Peter Ward’s Under a Green Sky is most current of the books I have here – the study of atmosphere-induced mass extinctions is a very rapidly developing field.

The executive summary is that most mass extinctions other than the meteor-caused one at the end of the Cretaceous seem to have begun with rapid atmospheric heating and the emission of toxic gases, like methane released from clathrate ices. The one at the end of the Permian wiped out more than 90% of all species, and something like 95% of all living organisms. And right now we are uncomfortably close to the conditions at the start of one of those berserk times.

As an example of the kind of thing that has helped mass extinctions in the past…

When the global currents stop flowing, the upper layers of the sea become very different from those down below. The deep part goes anoxic (oxygen-free), and everything that needs oxygen dies down there, leaving only bacteria that flourish in anoxic environments. Some of them put out sulfur as a metabolic byproduct. And some bacteria feed on that, and emit things like methane and hydrogen sulfide. From time to time that stuff can bubble up to the surface, and – as happened with an African lake some years ago – poison everything on the surface for quite a ways around. And when circumstances let the anoxic layer get relatively close to the surface, a lot of methane can go into the air, and keep getting refreshed for a long time.

Now, one of the indisputable things going on right now is melting of both pole caps, with a rate of loss that keeps getting faster than predictions. (Some data on melting rates, and no amount of foolishness like “but there’s been no net warming since 1998” need apply – melt rates are what they are, and are quite visible in photographs, unless one wants to claim that space travel’s all a hoax too.) And additional fresh water in the north Atlantic weakens the Gulf Stream, which is a critical part of the global current system. Even weakening it allows for some of that separation of layers and rise in low-oxygen and anoxic species; if the stream gets turned off, then we’ve got one of the big factors in mass extinction right there.

(There are modern examples of such separated seas, by the way, like the Black Sea. The bad things that can happen when their depths get stirred up aren’t hypothetical, but based on studies of how such things act now. A world full of anoxic depths would not be a fun place.)

Nor is that the only element of non-impact-driven mass extinction where the world we’re making bears a disturbing, unhappy resemblance to the world as it was when many, many, many living things died all at the same time.

On a rambling personal PS, the specific set of data that tipped me out of a position of skepticism about global warming came from my enthusiasm for exploration of the Titanic, and marine archeology in general. In one of his excellent books on the subject, Charles Pellegrino mentions briefly something that was for him just confirmation of a phenomenon he’d already accepted but I hadn’t: the rate of sedimentation on the Titanic and throughout the North Atlantic is way up in recent decades, and accelerating.

Overfishing is responsible for a lot of that, reducing the populations of fish available to eat the plankton and other lil’ critters whose remains form most of the sea-bottom sediment. But the mix of lil’ critters is changing, too, with warmer-climate species moving north. It’s not hard to establish the upper and lower bounds of temperature in which species can live, thrive, and reproduce, so when you find a lot of organisms that require warmer water than used to be available at a particular spot, you can know with significant confidence that the water temperature’s gone up even without the supporting data of, you know, water temperature measurements.

Sedimentation rates are hard to change. The fact that they have changed in recent decades is one of those simple, clear signs of how much we’ve changed the sea above the bottoms where those lil’ critters’ remains accumulate.

It was following up on his footnotes that convinced me. There was a clearly measurable change, and the explanations for it run back (in the end) to “we did it”.

“John: Yes, as usual, the occasional voices of denial are being inflated in size and significance by those who have a variety of vested interests in the status quo.”

Sure there are those with vested interests, but the status quo always has defenders – it’s called lethargy.

Or look at some of the comments appended here just today, where posters make it clear that, as far as they are concerned, ‘greenness’ is a fascist plot:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/03/consumeraffairs

John Meredith continues with his scientific mantra:

The Alarmists Are Just As Bad… The Alarmists Are Just As Bad… The Alarmists Are Just As Bad… Om… Om… Om…

So, when confronted with the well-documented machinations of the oil and coal lobby, our inactivist brethren just have to throw out a random climate conspiracy theory… shucks, there are so many conflicting conspiracy theories being proposed already that I’ve practically lost count of them. But it doesn’t matter than the theories contradict one another, does it? All that matters is that The Alarmists Are Just As Bad… The Alarmists Are Just As Bad… The Alarmists Are Just As Bad… Om… Om… Om…

 – bi, International Journal of Inactivism

You confuse long- and short-term interests. As major fraud trials, bank collapses, etc prove over and over again, people will do almost anything to preserve their short-term position, even when it ought to be obvious that their house of cards is going to collapse. Less neo-classical, more behaviourist economics needed…

I visited this site after learning that it had been rated among the “top 100” academic blogs. But I haven’t found much of substance in this thread, mostly just a venting of spleen and smug self-righteousness.

If I might offer one constructive point, it would be the suggestion that the big corporations are not generally defenders of free-market capitalism. They’ve learned to live quite comfortably with government intervention. They find the power levers and use them to turn the spigots of subsidy and the advantages of regulation to their benefit. The more managed the economy becomes, the closer you get to the old Soviet Union and its client states, where–don’t you know–a small group of insiders enjoyed wealthy lifestyles while the masses struggled. And they weren’t very good stewards of the environment, you may be sure.

That big government is not sweetness and light, that it cannot be counted on to do the right or rational thing, that it is by nature a clumsy and dangerous servant and tyrannical master, is the consensus among all informed observers of economics and history–except, of course, for quacky nay-sayers. Oops, now you’ve got me doing it. Cheers.

Revealed preference: many of us alarmists believe that surviving the apocalypse would be unlikely and hardly worth it, whereas preventing it (though difficult) is a worthier goal. In any case, few so called alarmists expect the disaster in their own lifetime. That’s a constant of environmental politics: for economists and ordinary folk, 20 years is long-term, whereas for ecologists, 100 years is short-term.

I think that the combination of short-term thinking, stupidity, ignorance, dishonesty, ideological resentments and obsessions, and greed accounts for the revealed preference of the deniers. But it’s true, probably none of them are cackling “Yes, global warming is at hand! And my goal is to make sure that it happens, in order to maximize the human suffering ! Hahahahaha!!”

Except maybe Nigel Lawson [UK 1980s history required to appreciate…]

John Meredith, if you so can so completely misread the “revealed preferences” of the coal and oil lobbies, please do not make any conclusions from your extensive off-the-record discussions with the climate scientists! Because you may have misinterpreted them, too.

By the way, both economy and climate are complex systems, but economics will have far LESS success at prediction than climatology — for a couple of very obvious reasons. So your assumption that climate is more complex than economy should in fact be reversed, for the purposes of making predictions.

Indeed, the commenters here who insist that climate mitigation will have unacceptable economic costs have swallowed another canard.

Part of this has to do with the appalling misunderstanding of economics, not least among those who have taken a college course or two in the subject.

For one thing, economic models are analytical similes, not hard chemistry and physics.

For another thing, none of these economic studies has made a full and credible cost/benefit analysis of warming and mitigation, for two simple reasons: (1) human creativity is not predictable, and (2) very little of ecological degradation, and the “network effects” that the degradation will cause to human life, are accurately quantifiable in money terms.

Stern was criticized for pointing-out the obvious, from people who think Lomborg is an economist.

Perhaps this is another proof that the denialists, (always so ready to jump from the existence of global warming to the presumed net costs of its mitigation,) are HARDLY skeptics, –or else they would put their own beliefs to the knife. But we already suspected it is an emotional dysfunction, didn’t we?

Thanks for that graph, Bruce. A graph is worth a thousand words.

Um, A, the experts aren’t talking about CO2 as a magic bullet. To take a very mainstream exposition, weighted conservatively because of administrative pressures, look at the EPA page on recent climate changes. You’ll find greenhouse gases, plural, discussed, plus aerosols, desertification, deforestation, and several other things. Carbon sequestration would help with a whole bunch of them, but it’s not thought of by anyone with a clue as a single-source problem – that’s a false rendering by people interested in dismissing the whole thing.

No, I’m suggesting you’re a victim of carefully calculated propaganda plying on your good will and sensible concerns to feed you lies. I’m not attacking you, I’m attacking (some of) your sources.

By the way, guys, here’s a quote I recently came across which perfectly encapsulates the mindset of conlibertarian climate inactivists:

My understanding of economics is quite complete, thank you, as is my understanding of the power of freedom, and the proven consequences of totalitarianism.

What is most disturbing is that AGW’s supporters understanding of economics is so weak, that they don’t recognize government force and intervention when it’s staring them in the face.

 – Dean

I hereby nominate the phrase “My Understanding Of Economics Is Quite Complete” for the illustrious title of The Next Big Internet Meme™.

 – bi, International Journal of Inactivism

Bi: Wow. He is aware of all economics traditions. All our econ are belong to him.

Off to bed.

Bruce: Whose propaganda?

It would seem global-warming scientists have put the emphasis on CO2. It seems to me the discussion is about CO2 and only CO2, e.g. the speech by Hansen here http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/TwentyYearsLater_20080623.pdf.
Sounds here like stopping CO2 is the magic bullet.
or
“Grenhouse gases include water vapor (the most abundant by far), carbon dioxide and methane. The concern among many climate scientists is that increasing amounts of CO2 will increase the overall global temperature (global warming) and have a damaging effect on the Earth’s climate.”
from the accuweather.com blog site.

Anyway, as I said, I’m sceptical about 3/. I have no doubts that too much CO2 is bad (all CO2 and no oxygen is very bad), or that too much CO2 in the atmosphere can change the weather (as would too much of most things).

a:

15 years or so of scientific endeavour is probably not enough to establish such a fact

If you really think the global warming theory has only existed for 15 years, you’re really, really ignorant, and you should really read up more before pontificating on a subject you don’t know much about.

 – bi, International Journal of Inactivism

“My undestanding of economics is quite complete” — Dean

a:

And seriously, how do you square your assertion of only “15 years of scientific endeavour” with the fact that James Hansen just made a speech on the 20th anniversary of his initial testimony before Congress?

 - – –

Bruce Baugh:

He is aware of all economics traditions. All our econ are belong to him.

His Understanding Of Economics Is Quite Complete… As Far As I Know.

 – bi, International Journal of Inactivism

bi: Let’s see. I wrote “15 years or so”, not “15 years”. That would seem to indicate I was writing from memory (and, with advancing years, one tends to forget how much time has gone by) and not particularly concerned about the exact number. When Bruce made his claim about “propaganda” I did some googling (imagine that!), because I thought perhaps I had made a mistake, and Hanson’s speech came up. Yes, 20 years.

But I insist. I am obviously so much more ignorant than you and you are obviously so much intelligent than me, I am just honored that you are taking your time off to instruct me.

“Yeah, thanks for realizing that.” You’re welcome. I’m sure you believe it too.

Bi, did you go look at the EPA page I linked to? And even in the quote you give (and the rest of the speech, because I did go read it), it seemed to me that he was talking about CO2 as the single most serious problem in an array of problems big and small. Which is, well, pretty much the consensus, as I understand it. An effective reduction in the rate of increase of CO2 in the atmosphere would do as much or more good than any matching improvement in any other part of the web, and although the CO2 problem is very big, it’s also more directly amenable to action than a lot of the other parts.

I honestly don’t understand your hang-up.

“It’s also worth noting that pretty much all the stuff I’ve seen suggested for immediate action would be entirely worth doing even if there were no global warming.

Shifting to more sustainable patterns of agriculture so as to reduce topsoil loss and reduced productivity, for instance – we had a Dust Bowl in the 20th century, we know it can happen again, taking steps to forestall such a thing is simple pragmatism.”

Sure: so exactly what is the system of farming that reduces topsoil loss the most? As far as I understand it (and I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong) that’s no till farming. A form of farming that depends upon both herbicides and pesticides. And yet there are some who insist that the more sustainable form of farming that we must adopt is organic farming: which creates greater topsoil loss than no till.

I don’t doubt that the climate is warming, that we and our CO2 (and methane etc) emissions are the cause of it. I do rather doubt some of the proposed solutions for I think that some people are using the necessity to solve this problem to propose their own pet projects. Organic farming perhaps, the insane tomfoolery of first generation biofuels, “food self-sufficiency” and so on. These and other things are put forward under the rubric of the sort of green solutions we need but at least one of those (first generation biofuels) actually makes the carbon problem worse, not better, as arguably an insistence upon food self sufficiency would make lives worse (reducing the trade in foodstuffs would lead to foods being grown on lower productivity land than trade would allow).

I’m abslutely convinced that some are clambering aboard this bandwagon to insist that their pet theories be put into practice, whether they actually aid or hinder the solution to the climate change problem.

“The reason for the opposition to dealing rationally with climate change is because it signals an end to market capitalism.”

Eh? I don’t recall that the successful solution to the problems of acid rain and SOx emissions led to the end of voluntary exchange nor the private ownership of the means of production. Nor did the creation of municipal sewage systems, to look at an older pollution problem.

As to moving to a “managed economy” as I think JQ noted a little while ago, the remarkable thing about the way the debate is developing is that while intervention in markets might be required (cap and trade or carbon tax to taste) just about everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet in that that is all that is required. Intervene in said markets to correct the externality, yes, then leave those markets alone to do their stuff.

The EUTS, the various Kyoto mechanisms, pretty much all of the proposals in fact, are about how to preserve market capitalism, not to end it.

pretty much all of the proposals in fact, are about how to preserve market capitalism, not to end it.

The reason that I believe we are seeing the end of market capitalism is because I believe the situation is much more dire than is commonly perceived. The safe level for CO2 is 325 to 350 ppm, we are at 385. There is zero political will to do what is needed and we are at a tipping point now. Therefore, since nothing will be done we are going to have a new climate. One where life exists at the poles and the rest of the planet is uninhabitable. The United States will cease to exist. In the wake of such massive change I would be very surprised if any kind of democracy at all survives.

And it’s all happening orders of magnitude faster than was ever imagined. A couple of years ago the loss of the arctic icecap wasn’t supposed to happen until mid-century. It’s happening now. The old prediction was that in 40 years we would not be able to grow wheat in the continental US. Today that looks wildly optimistic. How do you have a normal economy if you can’t grow your own food?

The western US is on fire. There are 8500 fires at this moment, you can see them from space. It’s happening because all mediterranean climates across the globe are turning to desert and have been for some time now. The time to act was 20 years ago. We failed to act and therefore the thermodynamic ball is rolling downhill. There isn’t a force on this earth that can stop it.

Hm. I see the Bandar-log are out in force.

…Mowgli could not help laughing when the Bandar-log began, twenty at a time, to tell him how great and wise and strong and gentle they were, and how foolish he was to [disagree with] them. “We are great. We are free. We are wonderful. We are the most wonderful people in all the jungle! We all say so, and so it must be true,” they shouted.

Personfromporlock, meanwhile, will drown happy in the knowledge that he has remained true to the veneration of Poseidon, and not contaminated himself with filthy heathen inventions like flotation vests and lifeboats.

Dave: Meh. It’s one thing if someone says “I don’t understand the justification for X” or “claim Y seems to me to be missing a lot of possibilities” – you can talk about the science and policy and ethics of it all. When someone says “You’re all fools and monsters” there’s no sensible response available. They’re not participating in discourse and shouldn’t be rewarded by the pretence that they are.

Context matters, too. Personfromporlock has a lengthy history of always fancying themselves ever so wiser and cleverer than those who know anything about the subject, and always being in the wrong.

Sorry about the line breaks.

bi: yes I am really really ignorant and you are so much more intelligent than me. Does that make you feel better?

You’re a whiny bastard, a. If you’re not good enough to play, stay off the court.

I haven’t made any special study of global warming, but I see methane mentioned a lot too, not just CO2. As Bruce Baugh says, there are a range or related problems.

I really like to play up the Nazi/holocaust connection by referring to them as “Warmocaust Collusionists”.

I still don’t know what this all means completely — but I’m sure it makes all the smug remarks here about the “scientific consensus” rather ridiculous.

Oh noes! There’s no consensus because one climate scientist disagrees!

Well, I don’t know about Lindzen’s climate science, but he really went too far out of his field of expertise when he started dabbling in conspiracy theories.

When it comes to conspiracies, he should really have deferred to the real peer-reviewed experts, such as -Myanna Lahsen, Naomi Oreskes, Conway- Lyndon LaRouche, Alex Jones, David Icke et al.

  — bi, International Journal of Inactivism

I don’t see why your characterization of Lindzen as “dabbling into conspiracies” is anything but laughable nonsense.

OK; fair enough. Let’s have a look (and thanks for the link, by the way).
In his original article, Lindzen says:

Some scientists issue meaningless remarks in what
I believe to be the full expectation that the media and the environmental movement
will provide the “spin.” Since the societal response to alarm has, so far,
been to generate scientific funding, there has been little reason for scientists to
complain. Should scientists feel any guilt, it is assuaged by two irresistible factors:
the advocates define public virtue, and administrators are delighted with
the growing grant overhead.

and

Intimidation
has mostly, but not exclusively, been used against those questioning
alarmism. Victims of such intimidation generally remain silent. Congressional
hearings have been used to pressure scientists who question the “consensus.”
These scientists are pitted against carefully selected opponents. The clear intent
is to discredit the “skeptical” scientist from whom a “recantation” is sought.

and

More recent is a controversy over a thousand-year reconstruction of mean
temperature purporting to show that the half degree (centigrade) rise of the past
century was unprecedented. Because of the extensive use of this work in the
politics of global warming, Representative Joe Barton demanded the analytical
detail since the research was supported by U.S. funds. Both the American Meteorological
Society and the American Geophysical Union protested Barton’s request.
One need not go into the merits of this controversy to see that the response of
professional organizations sends a chilling message. Only the defenders of the
orthodoxy will be defended against intimidation.

Lindzen’s response to Rahmstorf is much more of the same. I’ll just quote the passage that tickled me most:

One might note in passing that the last sentence simply glosses over hundreds of peer reviewed papers that
document the Medieval Warm Period (or Medieval Optimum, as it was referred to before it
became fashionable to fear warmth).

Lindzen is a smart guy, and he has contributed a ton of value to climatology.
But his views on the science are deeply interwoven with his politics, and there is just no unweaving them.

But, then again, in so judging him maybe I’m just being fashionable. Who can tell, with all this intimidation and pressure going on?

Rahmstorf, in contrast, seems to be genuinely interested in figuring out what climate sensitivity really is, and honestly pissed off that Lindzen insists on playing Galileo.

Perhaps you figure it’s all just a postmodern Rashomonian relativist mishmash, and the truth depends on whose Al is gored.

If so, and if you agree with Lindzen that Joe Barton — Joe Barton, for crying out loud! — was right, and it was the AMS and the AGU who were sending “a chilling message”, then I can only wish you a pleasant stay in Bizarro-world.