Worthwhile Canadian Initiative

Yes (!) to your point three. Sadly, dogwhistle politics work just fine in the States. Canadians, however, generally know that they need to be multicultural or the whole thing will unravel.

There is no theory of anthropogenic global warming that satisfactorily predicts the changes in climate we see, or that satisfies the basic requirements of making falsifiable predictions, and there is absolutely no theory anywhere that can show on-shore wind farms can make any serious contribution to energy needs on a consistent basis.

Here in the UK on shore wind farms have been highly successful at diverting money from working people into the hands of wealthy land owners, and we now see the benefits of a green energy policy in the massive loss of jobs in the UK steel industry undercut by overseas companies what have cheaper energy. But I’m sure the Paris conference will be good news for people who make a living constructing political campaigns devoid of any firm scientific basis.

Well, we got 4 comments into the thread before denial showed up.

@7 some references please?

Always fun to imagine AGW denialists applying their reasoning to, say, their own health.

“So which cigarette was it, doctor? One I had twenty years ago? One of the hundred I had last week? Oh, you don’t know which one caused this theoretical “cancer”? Well, glad you’re happy with your “risk factors” and “comprehensive longitudinal data” and “scientific consensus”, but if people stopped buying cigarettes the economy would collapse and we’d all be back to living in caves, which everyone knows is your real goal anyway. Good day sir!”

The tobacco spin doctors simply migrated into the fossil fuel industry when their services were in demand, but to be fair, outfits like Exxon were well ahead of the game both on understanding the science and then denying it:

http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/what-exxon-knew-about-climate-change

“Confusticate and bebother these dwarves!”–Bilbo Baggins.

Dipper, if you go to realclimate.org, you’ll find some scientists who from a combination of personal virtue and public spirit are willing to lead people like you gently through the basics of climate science. The rest of us are less patient.

@ Dipper, your question is not even wrong.

@ 17
Why don’t you go and look it up and come back and tell everybody? Why should anyone here have to do it for you? Or does the fact that a random collection of people on the Internet can’t or won’t give you the answer to that specific question right now this minute definitively prove that climate change isn’t happening?

(Sadly I think you feel somehow that the last is true)

@ 17
Btw I can say – genuinely off the top off my head without checking it – that depending on the emissions rate this century the expected average global temperature increase is between 2.5 and 5.8 degrees centigrade. That’s from the latest IPCC report and you’re welcome to check and tell me if I’m wrong.

Now let’s see if he repeals Bill C-51.

That will be something to see, after his party voted for it. I mean, I know at the time Trudeau effectively admitted they were supporting it purely from naked political calculation and rank moral cowardice, not principle, but it will still be interesting to see if they move to repeal it on the grounds of, “Yeah, but now that we’ve won the election, we can be against it.” Canadians really needed to keep seeing more of Anti-C-51 Mulcair, and a lot less of Anti-Keynesian Mulcair. (Balanced budgets no matter what, Tom? Really?)

I’m also less sanguine than Professor Quiggin about the boon to the environment, given that the Liberals officially support Keystone XL, and are amply greased with oil money. Still, they’ll be much less likely to actively muzzle inconvenient scientific conclusions, which is something.

mds, I agree. With the NDP planted so firmly centre economically, what could the Liberals look but good? I agree also that this govt will be less likely to muzzle the scientists, but I wonder how much of the damage already done will be undone? So much funding cut. Harper has made huge changes in his tenure, and they will not be easy to undo even if there is the will to do them. And the NDP aren’t even the Opposition so they can’t influence Trudeau.

The split left strategic voting story is a compelling one – obviously the Leftist parties need to consolidate (notwithstanding the fact that one of them just elected a safe majority government). The difference in policy stances put the Liberals and NDP much closer together than either with the Conservatives. It just makes sense.

That said, I don’t believe it’s true.

The Conservatives outperformed polling as well. Maybe they siphoned off NDP support. No that’s impossible because it doesn’t fit the narrative – it must be the “shy Tory effect” of older Conservative voters being less likely to respond to surveys. Maybe, but that sounds like rationalization to me.

I think people severely underestimate the size of the anti-NDP and anti-Liberal constituencies. The anti-Harper faction gets the most press not only because he was the incumbent, but also because they are the most organized and capable with communications and the media.

I’m in an inner suburb of Toronto that was Liberal until 2011, then Conservative and is now Liberal again. The NDP had a weak showing this time, but historically have done well enough to be considered credible. From what I know of my neighbourhood, I am almost certain that a combined Left party would have lost to the Conservative. There are plenty of voters here who will never vote for either a Lib or an NDP even if it means supporting Harper.

The NDP are proud socialists. And while Socialism! doesn’t carry anywhere near the stigma that it does south of the border, there is a sizable group that would prefer almost anything to Socialism! They also have never formed government and were Official Opposition only once. A lot of people don’t consider them a serious party.

The Liberals have earned the distrust and disrespect of many people over their decades as the “natural ruling party of Canada”. Between the behaviour of Liberal party elites and the never ending smear campaign of the Conservatives, the Liberals have a pretty sizable stable of enemies.

And a united Left party wouldn’t get the same rebranding benefits that Harper’s CPC did. The current Conservatives were united from the PCs and the protest splinter Reform (and later Alliance) party. So Mulroney-hating conservatives could see the “new” party as a return to the Reform minded conservatives they love and a repudiation of the Progressive Conservatives that gave them Meech Lake or the GST.

A united Left is instead two parties that are portrayed by the media as buddy-buddy teaming up in a cynical grab for power. I think that united Left boosters haven’t thought through the implications of that.

Re: Bill 51, I went to Wikipedia to see what the heck you all were talking about and it says there that the bill was passed “with support from the Liberal Party, which promised to amend the bill to increase oversight if elected”. So there’s that.

I could engage with Dipper on this issue. I could show them the science and the work done. I could walk them through it step by step.

You could also do this until Dipper acknowledges that you and many others had done so.

However, you prefer not to.

Wow what a night. I was up late at a local campaign party. Some quick thoughts:
-So glad to finally see the back of Harper. He was an awful combination of mean spirited and incompetent.
– Hopeful about Trudeau the Younger. He seems to have his heart in the right place and he ran an excellent campaign.
-Sad to see the NDP lose so many seats. Personally I think they made a huge mistake trying to tack to the center. They let the Liberals be the party of bold change and played it safe. And they paid for that.
– On a more personal note, I canvased and volunteered for both the NDP and the LPC this election in different ridings. It was a great experience and everyone should do it. More importantly for me though, my partner also got out and canvased. I am so proud of them I could burst. As I have mentioned previously here, my spouse suffers from depression and anxiety and has been off work for quite awhile. Getting out and doing something positive was just so great for them. So I might be one of the few Canadians who is sad that this campaign is over.

Anyway I am pretty happy with how it all turned out (would have preferred a NDP/LPC minority) and am looking forward to some change.

Dipper writes: I seem to have touched a nerve.

Autovivisection live on CT! Getcher tickets here!

Ugh , smells so much like sea lion around here.

Thanks for you kind words Lynne. I agree it was tough to watch so many good NDP MPs lose their seats. Paul Dewar especially was a blow. Anyway I am with you. Lets be cautiously optimistic and see what happens.

/I really hope Trudeau follows through with his promise to reform our voting system…

NDP, in my opinion, made a giant mistake by embracing austerian economics. Why should one run a balanced budget in a downturn? That’s not socialist, that is economically ignorant. The liberals dared to say, that’s crazy, and they won. This was not some sub issue either – it was the main stick used against the Liberals in the campaign.
The Liberals can be proud. After nominating Ignatieff last time, it did look like they were trying to go the way of the Liberal Dem party in the UK. But this time they kept their cool and did an excellent job kicking the terrible Harper in the butt. Great work!

Not that anyone here needed my help to see that Dipper is a liar, but on the subject of wind power in the UK:

-Dipper is perhaps obliquely referring to constraint payments to wind farm operators, which compensate operators for energy that can’t be used due to electrical transmission constraints. This would be the most charitable (least untrue) interpretation. But constraint payments are not the primary incentive for wind power generators, nor are wind operators the only recipients of constraint payments.

-The primary support mechanism for onshore wind is (was) the Renewables Obligation Certificates system, which pays out for energy actually delivered. If wind ROCs are really making landowners rich, that’s only possible because wind is actually generating a lot of megawatt hours. If landowners were installing Potemkin wind farms that looked the part but didn’t generate output, they wouldn’t be paid.

-There is a near real time visualization, with links to historical data, of electricity statistics in the UK here. You can see the dips in fossil generation whenever the wind rises. Since wind is not dispatchable it does not directly retire fossil generation capacity but the fossil capacity generates additional emissions when it actually burns fuel. The foregone use of fossil fuels caused by increased renewable output is clearly visible in the real time statistics and year-end summaries.

“The last time I was in Canada, I looked through Will Ferguson’s Bastards and Boneheads, a history of Canada’s PM’s, and found it amusing. But I never heard from Canadians what they thought, either about the book or about the reputations of their various PM’s. Any Canadians care to weigh in?”

Love that book. Steven Harper is perfect Bastard as described by Ferguson. Not sure what Trudeau will end up being classified as.

/Maybe it is time for a new Edition?

Dipper #8: “@7 some references please?”

1. The climate is a complex system; complex systems are multi-compartment systems with lots of connections:

Ashby, Introduction to Cybernetics.
Simon, The Architecture of Complexity.
Gell-Mann, What is Complexity?
Many things published by the Santa Fe Institute.
von Bertalanffy, General System Theory.
Heylighen et al., Complexity and philosophy.
Rescher, Complexity: a Philosophical Overview.
Juarrero & Rubino, Emergence, Complexity, and Self-Organization.
Heylighen et al., Complexity and Philosophy.
Rescher, Complexity: a Philosophical Overview.
Bunge, A World of Systems.

2. On the irrevocable condition of imprecise prediction in complex systems, including in the climate:

Michael Hopkin, Climate sensitivity ‘inherently unpredictable’ (Nature 2007).
Murray Gell-mann, Fundamental Sources of Unpredictability (1996).
Murray Gell-Mann, The Quark and the Jaguar.
Beckage et al., The limits to prediction in ecological systems (Ecosphere 2011).
Almost anything by Stuart Kauffman.
Almost any discussion of the N-body problem.
Rescher, The Limits of Science.
Rescher, The Stochastic Revolution and the Nature of Scientific Explanation (Synthese 1962).
Toulmin, The Return to Reason.
Oreskes et al., Verification, Validation, and Confirmation of Numerical Models in the Earth Sciences (Science 1994).
Liu et al., Observability of complex systems (PNAS 2012).
Sugihara et al, Detecting Causality in Complex Ecosystems (Science 2012).
Robert Logan, What is Science? – The Language, the Non-Probativity Theorem and the Complementarity of Complexity and Predictability (2000).
Testa & Kier, Emergence and Dissolvence in the Self-organisation of Complex Systems (Entropy 2000).
James Wilson, Scientific Uncertainty, Complex Systems, and the Design of Common Pool Institutions (chapter in National Research Council, The Drama of the Commons, 2002).

3. So it will never be precisely predictable. But we know that the previous REAL history of the climate gives us a lot of EVIDENCE of extremes and abrupt change which would now be devastating and much more costly than CO2 reduction — and which happened both in the Medieval Warming Period, and BEFORE the rise of our agricultural civilization. A few of many citations:

Donnelly et al., 700-yr. sedimentary record of intense hurricane landfalls in southern New England.
Donnelly et al., Climate forcing of unprecedented intense-hurricane activity in the last 2000 years (AGU 2015).
Mark Lynas, Six Degrees (on the Medieval Warming Period, especially his research biblio).
Schmidt & Hertzberg, Abrupt Climate Change During the Last Ice Age (Nature Education Knowledge 2011).
Wikipedia, Dansgard-Oeschger oscillations.

4. So then, we go to what is known about abrupt and unpredictable change in complex systems, and find that accelerated extremes are often indicators of tipping-points, and the climate is unlikely to be an exception to the rule:

Peters et al., Cross-system comparisons elucidate disturbance complexities and generalities (Ecosphere 2011).
National Academies of Science, Abrupt Impacts of Climate Change: Anticipating Surprises (2013).
Bestlemeyer et al., Analysis of abrupt transitions in ecological systems (Ecosphere 2011).
Biggs et al., Turning back from the brink: Detecting an impending regime shift in time to avert it (PNAS 2008).
Brandt & Merico, Tipping points and user-resource system collapse in a simple model of evolutionary dynamics (Ecological Complexity 2013).
Charlesworth, Tipping Points, Inertia, Ethics and Policy (2008).
Crutchfield, The Hidden Fragility of Complex Systems— Consequences of Change, Changing Consequences (Santa Fe Institute 2009).

5. And here are just a few of the huge number of reports (they are coming almost weekly) indicating that extremes have begun:

Easterling et al., Climate Extremes: Observations, Modeling, and Impacts (Science 2000)
Smith et al., Near-term acceleration in the rate of temperature change (Nature Climate Change 2015)
Science News, Climate Change Occurring Ten Times Faster Than at Any Time in Past 65 Million Years (2013)
Diffenbaugh & Scherer, Observational and model evidence of global emergence of permanent, unprecedented heat in the 20th and 21st centuries (Climatic Change 2011)
Barnosky et al., Approaching a state shift in Earth’s biosphere, (Nature 2012)
Study finds early warning signals of abrupt climate change (PhysOrg 2014)

7. And indeed, climatologists have been erring on the side of caution:

Brysse et al., Climate change prediction: Erring on the side of least drama? (Global Environmental Change 2013)

So that’s what you need to know about complex systems and their relation to the scientific method.

thanks Lee A. Arnold for the list – that’s a lot of work which is appreciated. I will select and read. I trust will this will help explain why although prediction is not possible in complex systems (section 2) the IPCC publishes lots of predictions to make their case.

And thanks to Matt (43) for reassuring me that Landowners do not receive subsidies, in which case withdrawing the subsidies won’t be a problem.

Correction: onshore wind supplied 9.3% of 2014 electricity demand in the UK, not 9.8% — transcription error on my part.

The basics of climate change are remarkably straightforward.

First, the Earth (on average) emits as much heat as it absorbs from the Sun (no, that quantity is not changing significantly; yes the changes are included in the models.)

Second, the atmosphere of the Earth is more transparent to visible light than it is to infrared light, creating a greenhouse effect that makes life possible.

Third, the magnitude of the greenhouse effect depends on the composition of the atmosphere, which is changing due to human activity. We know both are true beyond a reasonable doubt: the key direct evidence for human-induced origin is the changes in the isotopic abundances of carbon and oxygen. Living organisms, or fossil fuels made from dead ones, have different isotopes than volcanoes and the like.

Fourth, this must have a direct warming impact on the planet, which is measured with numerous direct and indirect diagnostics.

Now feedback can amplify this, and different models predict different feedback (within a range that is shrinking). But the basic physics is more than a century old and the evidence is simply overwhelming at this point that it’s occurring.

If someone disputes points 1-4 above they’re either arguing with the data, physics, or both. So it’d be good to see what precisely the question is actually about: is “maybe we’ll be lucky if we do nothing?” supposed to be a serious position?

Dipper #49: “…although prediction is not possible in complex systems…”

No, PRECISE prediction is not possible. Nor does the IPCC claim to make any. All of their predictions are given with various degrees of uncertainty.

In your comment #4 you wrote, “There is no theory of anthropogenic global warming that satisfactorily predicts the changes in climate we see, or that satisfies the basic requirements of making falsifiable predictions…” But both of those statements are false, and the only way to make those statements is to hold the unrealistic expectation that a precise prediction will be forthcoming (and/or must be forthcoming, in order to act).

In the case of complex systems, we usually go with the observation that they all TEND to go haywire when disturbed, (and until they settle into a new regime, a regime that we may not like), and then after that, we attend to the preponderance of evidence.

In the case of climate change, the preponderance of evidence is overwhelming.

That evidence is composed of BOTH real measurements (of all sorts of things, not just air temps) and the outputs of models, models which are continually updated when falsified by the measurements or by retrodiction, within the allowable uncertainty.

Short-time reader, first time commenter: perhaps this is an inauspicious place to start, and I won’t claim to have fully apprehended the rules of the subculture that is the comments on this blog, but here goes:

At first glance, it seems like there is an awful lot of troll-feeding going on here. I mean, I’ve been around the block, and Dipper seems like exactly the kind of would-be gadfly who scrapes together a couple of long-discredited talking points and them plops them down like turds, trying to irk those who he correctly perceives will be irked by his nonsense, all the while sitting smugly back and saying “see? Nobody wants to engage! Ergo, climate change is a myth and a conspiracy! AHA!”

And that did occur, to some degree; however, it also happened that he WAS engaged with, and with more patience than I could imagine mustering, and appears even to have considered considering the evidence. Is it possible? Are there actually good-faith skeptics of climate change? (In truth, I don’t doubt that there are. I just doubt that there are many, or any, who wander into a blog like Crooked Timber and start talking about how “the models don’t prove anything” and “Wind Power is intermittent” as if that hasn’t been talked to death; as if nobody ever noticed that the wind doesn’t blow all the time, or that the weather is complex.)

I am humbled in your presence.

My heartfelt congratulations to all Canadian friends! As much as I hate FPTP voting, it sometimes just feels cathartic to see a party humiliated like that. A bit sad for NDP but they lost most of their seats in Quebec, which had never been an NDP base. Meanwhile NDP won the provincial government of Alberta which gives them ample opportunity to prove themselves.

That the conservatives still ended up second shouldn’t surprise anyone. There is no other party that would have split the right wing vote, and you can’t expect there not to be a right wing presence, even in Canada. It is in fact hugely impressive that the left liberal parties together won more than two thirds of the popular vote. In the 1990s, liberals could only win because conservatives were split.

I would say you are quite a downer here Bruce considering that Trudeau is the son of the man who created the liberal, left wing Canada I love and hope to get back. But I would prefer not to.

In reply to Dipper #4

“There is no theory of anthropogenic global warming that satisfactorily predicts the changes in climate we see, or that satisfies the basic requirements of making falsifiable predictions…”

You have it exactly backwards. Ignorance would seem to me to demand that we be cautious.

See page 8 of http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/pp2.pdf

Not that late – he was 52..

EMS claims that her father was a noted scientist, in Solar physics. The claim is that the Sun’s output can vary, most of the temperature changes can be attributed to the Sun.

A couple of things.

Reports are that Lynton Crosby had very little input into the Conservative campaign. For one thing, he wasn’t here. They also say the two main Conservative campaign heads were at each other’s throats, which may account for some of their bad campaigning. The Liberal campaign, by contrast, was masterly, moving smartly to the left when the NDP, convinced they were front-runners, moved stupidly to the centre. How can a supposedly social-democratic party refuse to raise taxes on the rich, which Trudeau said he’d do, and also insist on balanced budgets?) Two bad campaigns and one brilliant one led a party that started the campaign in third place to end up with a majority government.

From a political scientist’s lunchtime talk today: Trudeau plans to take the provincial premiers with him to the Paris climate talks. His climate policy has long been not to implement some national program from the centre but to coordinate possibly different programs at the provincial level. Right now British Columbia has a very successful carbon tax while Quebec and maybe Ontario are (I believe) implementing cap-and-trade schemes. (Ontario’s Green Energy Plan, on the other hand, has been an economic disaster.) Taking the premiers with him is very much in line with that policy, though exactly how much the premiers of e.g. Alberta and Saskatchewan will commit to on climate change remains to be seen.

The election was a good one for Canadian democracy. The voter turnout was pretty high, the huge advantage the Conservatives had in money — they made the campaign extremely long in order to get the maximum benefit from that advantage — didn’t help them, nor did their relentless anti-Trudeau advertising (“He’s just not ready”). If anything, it alienated voters.

There are a whole lot of Harper policies Trudeau can reverse, e.g. about crime, the muzzling of scientists, the long-form census, etc. I just worry that with all he’ll have on his plate he won’t be able to do all of them.

I was surprised to read that Justin Trudeau is Pierre’s son. Pierre must have fathered him very late in life.

His last child was fathered in 1991.

Frankly, I think the NDP would have taken the same hammering if they’d skewed to the usual left economically and admitted they’d be running a deficit or two. Trudeau took a serious risk on that front, but it had the potential to pay off big time (and it did). And he could get away with it because the Liberals have had quite a decent deficit-related record (they balanced the budget, after all). The NDP can’t get away with that because the prevailing line of criticism against it is based on running deficits and economic mismanagement.

It’s worth pointing out that Canadians have only every voted in the Liberals or the Conservatives (under one name or another)–except in 1917, when they voted in the Union party (a coalition of Liberals and Conservatives). So while we have the appearance of a multi-party system, it’s really not. That’s the root of my disappointment here: we had a real chance to try something different, and we didn’t take it. We would probably have been dissatisfied with it (everyone always is), but it would have legitimated the existence of other parties going forward. As it is, why do we even bother?

Putting Harper’s defeat in perspective. If you like President Drone Strike, you’re going to love Justin Trudeau. First, Harper’s defeat is pretty much par in Canada’s parliamentary democracy after about a decade in power. The two parties change places every decade, or so with some exceptions. Harper defeated the Liberals in 2006. Jean Chretien, Pierre Trudeau’s more than able street-wise crony, defeated the hapless Kim Campbell, the Conservative PM, in 1993, as the Canadian political landscape fissured. Campbell, the Conservative, retained just 2 seats for the Conservative, losing her own seat in the process. Chretien won with 177, 22 fewer than the 199 Canada’s Conservative party now holds in defeat.

I realize that the giddy may actually believe that political and other skills are passed through the genes and that the son will rule as the father. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I strongly recommend the fact-free read up a little on the bios of both men, because the comparisons end with the name. The only people who loathe Justin more than the Conservatives are his liberal enemies, who rightly point to Justin’s lack of intellectual heft, spotty employment history, and questionable career path.

If you want to know what Canadian royalty is, you’re looking at it and clapping.

Surprised?

76: It’s true that Canada at the federal level has effectively been a 2-party system but at the provincial level, there’s a lot more diversity. And 70, the government of Alberta is NDP so maybe they will address climate change. Especially now that the oil industry is in mega crisis. In any case, this is the opportunity and the challenge of the new government – can they free Canada from being a hostage to the oil industry? (Surprised Bruce isn’t even mentioning the elephant in the room).

JQ: “There really aren’t any honest denialists left, and haven’t been for years (I’ve checked fairly exhaustively). Without exception, anyone who turns up in a CT comments thread asking rhetorical questions like Dipper’s is a fraud or a troll.”
and
“In this case, there’s even less point in responding to Dipper. As I point out in the OP, Dipper’s thoughts on climate change are about as relevant as his (I’m pretty confident of the pronoun) opposition to equal marriage (also a pretty safe bet)”

I find this level of hostility quite depressing. Last winter in one of Belle’s threads I said I thought there were things that couldn’t be said among leftists, including here, without there being a lot of hostility, and she then posted her “Safe” thread. Here you are, JQ, illustrating my point.

It is inaccurate to call Dipper a “denialist” since he acknowledges climate change at the outset. I don’t know all the details about climate change that some of the people here do, but surely it is permissible, even desirable, to discuss what are truly green energy alternatives.

As I say, the reaction here is depressing.

Lee A Anderson,

I am actually making a systems theory argument at the moment at VCAT (this is the tribunal that decides on planning permits in Victoria).

Is there anything in particular you would recommend on systems theory and changing courses of action?

The main systems theorist I have read is Andreas Faludi as the then Minister wrote he was influence by Faludi in composing the Planning and Environment Act 1987.

Faludi’s key ideas I am looking at are the ideas of regular reviews, integrated decision making, and that planning is not only physical land planning but involves various different resource budgets.

So my argument is that the 1.2 million bird capacity broiler farm that is being proposed by the developer, while not exceeding the land resource budget, exceeds the GHG emission resource budget.

One of the Tribunal members said this was an argument that ultimately led to a conclusion there should be no new broiler farm developments in Victoria.

I used case law about a gas power plant, where the VCAT decision was a proposed extension could only proceed with the condition that another gas facility of the same size of GHG emissions would shut down.

The developer’s lawyer is going to argue that while this raises an important issue of sustainability it is ultimately outside the jurisdiction of VCAT.

So what I want to be able to argue is that there is a good reason that GHG emissions should stabilise and then reduce – which means in agriculture too, especially livestock production and consumption.

But Faludi is a bit broad on that – I think it is the logical outcome of integrated decision making and resource budgets – as if you are exceeding a budget you have to turn expenditure around, as the treasurer is always saying.

But I think I need some additional arguments, if I am allowed to make a reply next week.

Do you have any ideas from systems theory that would help? The idea you have to brake and change courses sort of thing..,.

Regardless of whether you think climate change is happening or not, isn’t it just a good idea to take care of the planet, and not do things that could potentially damage it? I don’t know why this is even an issue for people :/

” but none of his father’s drive, intellect, and ambition.”

I could point out that running a flawless campaign, holding more campaign events than any of his opponents and beating a better funded opponent who had the support of the Media could show you may want to look at your argument.

But I would prefer not to.

ZM #84: “Is there anything in particular you would recommend on systems theory and changing courses of action?”

James Wilson’s chapter in The Drama of the Commons edited by Elinor Ostrom et al. (which I listed above) is a very good example and has a superb bibliography. As to whether this will convince local politicians in advance of convincing the local voters, I doubt it.

One of the problems is that, as a troll-denialist just confirmed here, lack of understanding of complexity and imprecise predictability is also a cognitive issue, and it is intimately bound up with confusion, misunderstanding, short-sightedness and self-serving misdirection about economic policy. Even the most honest tribunal member–if there are any–is fighting against enormous psychological and economic forces.

This gets us back to the essential nature of the reactionary “social-cognitive bias” which has bred climate denialism, a widespread and systemic phenomenon having general parameters which Corey Robin writes about, and which I listed from the political science literature under another John Quiggin post (at comment #36), so I think that maybe you should read this first:
https://crookedtimber.org/2014/07/17/condemned-by-history-crosspost/#comment-543475

I find this level of hostility quite depressing.

And I find it quite depressing that we ought to feel compelled to offer any level of respect to this bullshit:

It is clear that what we have now is a full blown religious cult of AGW. The climate gods are angry because The West has been bad. The high priests call for sacrifices to appease the gods, so something must be seen to be done now, even if the science says we have much longer to act.

Dipper is not making any kind of argument. He does not know anything about AGW or climate science or anything at all, beyond regurgitating tired right-wing talking points about “complex systems” and “computer models” as though he had any notion of what those terms meant. This isn’t a good-faith discussion or even medium-quality trolling; this is a person who just decided to show up and shit on a thread with his ignorance.

It’s not my blog and far be it from me to tell its proprietors what to do, but people who come here making those kind of idiotic worn out arguments should be banned outright. The level of discourse has improved measurably since the exile of Brett Bellmore, so the system works.

82 Lynne, If you have not, find a copy of “Bullshit” and read it. “Digger” is taking advantage of the kind nature of the people here, and is making fun of their devotion to a fact based reality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit

sry 88

I’m charmed by the idiocy of people who seriously think that “If I just show up in a comment thread and post some nonsense on a topic of great scientific complexity, surely that will show them the error of their ways.” Because that’s how we settle scientific questions and not in, I don’t know, peer reviewed publications or something. If you’re so sure you’re right, put your money where your mouth is and write the definitive set of papers that will surely demonstrate that tens of thousands of climate scientists worldwide have no idea what they’re talking about. It must just be a short hop to there from cavalierly posting in CT comments.

Zedblank – as someone who has not read into climate change in any depth I have been following the thread with interest, including especially Lee Arnold’s set of links. But I do notice that (so far as I can see) Dipper didn’t actually say any of the things you attribute to him/her, including but not limited to the things in quotation marks.

my comments on science as religion were about politicians making a religion out of it. Some scientists seem to have been drawn into it, which is unsurprising given the clear incentive to create scares and so get more funding. This is a bad environment in which to do science. Scientists would be far better off being left alone to do science, not being engaged as cheer leaders for glory-seeking politicians.

As I noted above (85) the response of politicians in the UK has been entirely detrimental. Industry in the UK is now paying roughly twice as much for electricity as German industry, largely down to the building of wind turbines, and overall not a single molecule of CO2 has been conserved. We would be far better off building nuclear power stations.

Measuring ghg emissions by production rather than consumption is unfair, as it works in favour of advanced economy countries where manufacturing is offshored. Counting by consumption and especially including air travel and accounting holiday emissions to the nationality of the holidayer means most advanced economic countries have higher ghg emissions than the official figures.

With other sorts of environmental disasters we don’t hold the buyer responsible for the action of larger organizations, and it would be a recipe for ridiculous inaction if we did. BP: “It’s not our fault that oil rig exploded, that was just the outcome of trying to serve our impatient, cheap customers! Fine them instead.”

Of course a patchwork of national solutions will not solve a global emissions problem, if the problem just gets offshored. The West blaming poorer countries for manufacturing export goods while poorer countries blame the West for buying them is also a recipe for ridiculous inaction. Emissions must be curbed before decisions reach the level of an individual shopper, looking at competing products A and B and trying to guess at their embedded energy content and associated emissions. I would favor tariffs on imported products in proportion to the emissions of their manufacturing. If supply chains don’t provide enough transparency to verify actual emissions, presume the worst and set tariffs accordingly.

Couple of things. The comments about Canada being held hostage by the oil industry are just plain stupid, or to paraphrase John Quiggin a marker for left wing academic identity politics. Maybe you should compare Harper to Putin as Putin is replacing Hitler on the internet?

Second, good luck to Mr Trudeau in working with the premiers. I am assuming Bill Gardner is not Canadian but we have a constitution that give the provinces control over health care in their jurisdiction. (Yes I realize the Feds provide health care to certain jurisdictions) One thing Harper did was he did not interfere in provincial areas of responsibilities, for better or worse. Blaming Harper for anything to do with health care is nonsense. The health care issues in my area are directly the fault of our previous premiers.

BTW the luck above is not snark. With change we should all be positive and hope for the best, especially in the first period of good will. Maybe Harper’s period of ignoring the provinces, coupled with massive political provincial change since the last set of federal provincial nastiness mean Canada can enter into a period of going forward on a bunch of long term issues that have been outstanding for a while.

John Quiggin – as far as Keystone goes Harper and crew pretty much have bent over to the Americans on every issue – and we did not get our pipeline. Maybe a different approach is required? Removing troops and planes from Syria is a start, as would be cancelling the F35. When the Americans say jump it is hard to negotiate when you are in the air. The Aleyeska pipeline is instructive as to how internal American politics trump common sense, so Keystone is likely a lost cause. And let’s hope Alaska’s remaining production gets stranded. Serves them right.

One thing I would like new Government to do would be to make travel within Canada more enjoyable. Removing the intrusive and wasteful air traffic security would be a start. A friend was denied entry on a Alaskan Cruise out of Vancouver by Homeland Security as his passport was about to expire. I get the Alaskan part of the cruise but at least the Government of Canada can do is insist Homeland Security treat Canadians with respect and dignity.

As far as trash talking Putin lets hope Mr. Trudeau comes to his senses and treats a leader of a nuclear armed nation with some respect. This demonizing of Putin is becoming worrisome – unfortunately the Russians are real and we share arctic interests with them so lets hope to to constructive relations with our Northern Neighbor.

Well, Dipper certainly succeeded in one way: derailing a discussion about the recent dethroning of a powerful friend of climate denialists.

“I was happy to shit on a thread and bow out forever but then someone had respond as though I were worth engaging, and now I have to come back to shit on this thread some more. P.S. Stop hitting yourselves, nerds!”

It is more refreshing to assume that we choose clean energy (solar/wind/nuclear(?)) over dirty energy (coal) — and then debate how we do that.

There are vested interests in keeping the status quo. People work in coal mines. People broker sales of coal. And so on. I suppose the cost of energy from coal is less than the cost from clean sources — so we have to account for that.

Just trying to raise the level of the discussion….

David Archer has a number of excellent books on climate.

Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast, a textbook for non-science major undergraduates, Blackwell-Wiley, 2006 with Second Edition 2011. A companion web site provides access to Open Climate 101, an interactive on-line class based on video lectures followed by reinforcing quizzes, and on-line interactive models with tutorials based on the labs our students do.

The Climate Crisis: An introductory guide to climate change, December, 2009, Cambridge University Press.

Links at the link. The interactive models are especially instructive to play with. Recommended to all.

Deleted, as advised. Please, nothing more from you on this thread

Joe 106, do you wish to dispute that Harper’s government was a government of, for, and by the oil industry? Seriously, on what grounds? Muzzling scientists, espousing climate change denialism, and abolishing Canada’s environmental protection laws, but none of that has anything to do with the oil industry?

Quite apart from Trudeau’s person and ideology, what this election has done is reduce the oil lobby’s influence. Harper’s base was Alberta, the new government’s base is Quebec and Ontario. It would be delusional to think that the oil industry won’t still have a lot of power in Canada but maybe now there is fighting chance. One can hope.

Is there any hope that a more sensible Canadian government might be able to halt or slow things like tar sand development?

Excellent. That’s the Canadian in me. It really is worth a listen!

TM @127:

I don’t see that a slowing of tar sands development due to low oil prices makes the argument that clean energy is a better alternative to fossil fuels. Low oil prices make fossil fuel consumption more attractive compared not only to tar sands oil but also to alternative energy sources.

Here in Ontario, the NDP has tried in successive campaigns to make environmentally sensitive noises around oil production while promising to keep oil prices low at the pump so as not to hit “regular hardworking Canadians”. Even as an NDP voter, I have yet to see how that circle can be squared.

“Canada’s prairie provinces have socialist roots that run deep. Tommy Douglas, the socialist Baptist minister and leader of the CCF, introduced single payer health care to North America when he formed the first socialist government in North America.”

Very true. And for those who don’t know, Tommy Douglas was the grandfather of Kiefer Sutherland (and former father-in-law of Donald).

Plot idea: 97% of the world’s scientists contrive an environmental crisis, but are exposed by a plucky band of billionaires & oil companies.

H/T to Scott Westerfeld

kidneystones 10.23.15 at 2:02 pm

Excellent points. I understand the frustration with the denial stance, but the urge to call out opposing opinions as trolling has demolished credibility on all sides.

Oh. Sorry. {blush}

“There are no responsible Republicans or conservatives.”

Of course there isn’t. Have you been watching the Republican presidential debates? Have you been following their behavior on the Debt Limit? Their attacks on food stamps? The fact that Red States are LITERALLY spending billions of dollars to deny health care to poor people?

These are not the actions of responsible people. These are the immoral actions of sadistic bastards. It does the world no favours to pretend these are simple policy disagreements.

RJ, Hiv denial and vaccine denial were both incubated, nurtured and spread by the left. HIV denial especially–in the West it was all about the CIA trying to trick gays and in Africa it was all about colonialists trying to trick Africans.

Being for “your side” is a strong impulse. Republicans are definitely convulsing in it at the moment. Left wing views have done a lot of damage convulsing in it too. Being aware of it in yourself is the first step toward combating it.

‘The Left’ =/= crazy conspiracy theorists who make left-wing noises. Neither HIV denial nor vaccine denial ever have been platform positions of any centre-left party nor any longstanding far-left group I’ve ever heard of. So no, I don’t accept your childish ‘tu quoque’. Totally untrue with any intelligent context. Bullshit, Seb.

128 et al, if I really need to spell this out, the argument is that the oil industry is extremely environmentally destructive while also providing very little economic benefit, especially long term. Of course here in the US, the oil industry has been heavily subsidized, by orders of magnitude more than clean energy ever got. The same is probably true in Canada, certainly when the external cost is factored in. So the economic case against the oil industry isn’t that hard to make, or wouldn’t be if the powers that be actually cared about economic rationality. And that’s where governments matter. Canada doesn’t have to be a petro-state.

Brett, considering the fate of the assumption (which I once shared) that anti-vaccination is a peculiarly left-wing trope, what would you present as evidence that rightwingers are more rational with regard to GMOs and nuclear power?

Considering that LNT is the admittedly conservative assumption used for industry radiation safety in the US, it hardly does to suggest that as crankery. On the other hand, we have Ann Coulter promoting hormesis, which seems to be widely rejected.

Mike Adams is an HIV denialist and anti-GMO maniac with a higher profile than Bethell and Duesberg.

http://www.naturalnews.com/028707_AIDS_epidemic.html

I was really looking forward to reading what the regulars at CT had to say about an election that meant a great deal to a lot of Canadians. So thank you to JQ for the OP.

Lynne, MPA, good to hear your reactions. Seems Kidneystones might be Canadian, given his strong opinions on our politics.

Not my preferred choice for Prime Minister, but allowing myself to hope that some really positive things can get done before the entitlement of Canada’s naturally ruling party sees the window of opportunity close.

Regarding worthwhile Canadian initiatives:

18 months until their platform’s promise on electoral reform comes to fruition by the introduction of legislation after review of various forms of voting. Such a change, had it been in place prior to the most recent election might have influenced the role strategic voting played in giving the Liberals their majority.

Happy that he’s taking May and the premiers to Paris for the summit on climate.

I’m also hoping to see the Party’s platform promise for the creation of the national public inquiry on MMAW. Given his collaborative efforts on the climate file perhaps this can include a range of ideas of how to improve what is an unacceptable status quo. Here on the left coast we have a minister who figures he probably won’t resign for his office’s routine triple deleting of emails. One specific instance of which is alleged that 14 emails were deleted after an FOI on the highway of tears was received. Public Safety minister of Quebec was in tears the other day over the new allegations in Val d’or and Cree groups seem to be mobilizing.

Lots of tough, important work to be done. Hope the 42nd is up to the job.

Ugh I really do know how to close tags.

this is Kieran Healy’s post on anti-vaxxers in California.

As to the Canadian election: I’m going to get more involved in my Riding Association and urge the Oranges to advance a position unambiguously defending public property and institutions as a positive good and not the pork barrels they are constantly accused of being. I don’t see a realistic chance of turning the party back to an explicitly socialist one, but if the party is unwilling to discuss fundamentals at election time, the voters already have another pragmatic centre-left party available, one with a longer track record.

Same goes for last year’s Provincial election in Ontario.

159, strongly agree. Liberals have this misguided view that refusing to give the right a platform in our publications is akin to censorship. Nope. We are not obliged to take seriously and discuss any BS that anybody brings up. These 160+ comments have been almost empty of serious debate of the Canadian election and its implications, because CTers have allowed a clique of rightist obstructionists to derail the thread from the start. And to be clear, I don’t blame the rightists for that, I blame the liberals. And frankly the right is winning, at least in this country, precisely because they know how to stick to their talking points.