30 Aug 2013

MIT Economist’s Audacious Paper on Economic Climate Models

Climate Change, Shameless Self-Promotion 42 Comments

I’ve been traveling so much I just realized I haven’t blogged about this yet. I have two IER posts summarizing some of the key points from a forthcoming paper (in the September issue of the Journal of Economic Literature) that is surprisingly scathing in its treatment of the “social cost of carbon” estimates coming out of Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs).

Now the author–Robert Pindyck of MIT–is a supporter of a carbon tax. I made sure to say that upfront in both of my articles. (I can’t speak for other groups; don’t know if they exercised such care.) So you can read this objection from Pindyck to be sure you have the full story.

Anyway, back to my two articles on Pindyck’s paper: they are here and here. Here are some excerpts:

Pindyck’s paper is titled, “Climate Change Policy: What Do the Models Tell Us?” Here is his shocking answer, contained in the abstract:

Very little. A plethora of integrated assessment models (IAMs) have been constructed and used to estimate the social cost of carbon (SCC) and evaluate alternative abatement policies. These models have crucial flaws that make them close to useless as tools for policy analysis: certain inputs (e.g. the discount rate) are arbitrary, but have huge effects on the SCC estimates the models produce; the models’ descriptions of the impact of climate change are completely ad hoc, with no theoretical or empirical foundation; and the models can tell us nothing about the most important driver of the SCC, the possibility of a catastrophic climate outcome. IAM-based analyses of climate policy create a perception of knowledge and precision, but that perception is illusory and misleading. [Bold added.]

And:

This is my favorite part of Pindyck’s paper…:

The question is how to determine the values of the parameters [used in the computer models’ damage functions]. Theory can’t help us, nor is data available that could be used to estimate or even roughly calibrate the parameters.

As a result, the choice of values for these parameters is essentially guesswork. The usual approach is to select values such that L(T) for T in the range of 2°C to 4°C is consistent with common wisdom regarding the damages that are likely to occur for small to moderate increases in temperature…Sometimes these numbers are justified by referring to the IPCC or related summary studies….But where did the IPCC get those numbers? From its own survey of several [Integrated Assessment Models]. Yes, it’s a bit circular. [Pindyck pp. 12-13, bold added.]

Pindyck’s point is so important—and so hilarious—that I want to make sure the reader understands it. There is no underlying economic theory and we have no empirical data by which to estimate the impacts on humans coming from even moderate (let alone large) increases in global temperatures. Thus when economists design computer simulations of the global climate and economy, going centuries into the future, they literally just make up relationships between hypothetical temperature increases and the corresponding percentage decrease in the global GDP. Then, in an excellent illustration of “groupthink,” the creators of these made-up damage functions justify them by pointing to third-party summaries done of their own (made-up) damage functions.

42 Responses to “MIT Economist’s Audacious Paper on Economic Climate Models”

  1. AcePL says:

    Heh..

    “Yes, it’s a bit circular.” [Pindyck pp. 12-13, bold added.]

    Hilarious, but hardly surprising. This inconsistency is really only method to “global warming madness” that is available to proponents of that same madness. I will not cease to point out that this is almost classic example of “government work”. Having solid background in how bureauracy works when it is closed in its own reality (socialism in Poland in the 80) I just wonder how it happened to be in the first place, in US of all countries. Maybe it’s true that USSR in the end won cold war… They wanted to build communism in USA, and it seems they succeded.

    Anyway, thanks for finding that gem.

  2. Innocent says:

    The problem is that there are too many variables to be able to accurately predict. Additionally is not the Keynesian belief that there is no such thing as a bad disaster? Does it not in the end all go to GDP growth lol… Now I am being a bit overly simplistic in my analysis but still…

    I mean how do factor in the increased CO2 requiring a decrease in transpiration of plants in order to perform photosynthesis while at the same time increasing yields and increasing drought tolerance while at the same time factoring in POSSIBLE increases in droughts and POSSIBLE increases in the severity of storms whilst accounting for decreases in the number of severe storms?

    The only way I know how to do this is create a simulation in which you create the biases that you want aforehand and run the simulation. Which will give you exactly the kind of results that you expect based on the assumptions used to begin with. I know I program things like this for a living. It is not that you can predict the future, rather it is that you can understand the present and based on assumption of past events attempt to understand what is coming next. However typically the models that are created are used to MODEL the behavior so that you understand how to COPE with the cycles rather than predict them.

    I feel this is the most important thing in the world to bring to bear in any model, it is not to predict the future, simply cannot be done. I have no idea if N Korea is going to launch a Nuke and befoul everything I have done. I do not know if China is going to go all Nuke Reactor on me and get rid of Carbon. I do not even know if Solar Panels if done in Mass are going to increase UHI (Urban Heat Island) and befoul my data collection points. Heck I do not even know if my guesses as to the increase in CO2 causing the self same increase in temperature is perfectly correlated!

    Since this is the case the ONLY thing I have to fall back on is circular reasoning where my models predict the future based on inputs I have chosen in a complex and chaotic system.

    Anyway, I sure that the molders of this data are MUCH better at I am in creating accurate models taht have NO bias… Though for some reason I do not believe it is possible. If so then could we not do the same for ALL things?

  3. Joe says:

    “The question is how to determine the values of the parameters [used in the computer models’ damage functions]. Theory can’t help us, nor is data available that could be used to estimate or even roughly calibrate the parameters.”

    We don’t even have a heuristic available to us to be able to discover what sorts of experiments, models, or other heuristics we need to determine whether climate change is being driven by man-made greenhouse emissions. To then think that we can then compute the “social cost of carbon” makes me think we’ve come back to the time of the Titanic; that we are so big and large that we can control the environment.

  4. thinkingotherthings says:

    I agree with Pindyck’s conclusion – namely, that just because the models we have now are bad, it does not follow that nothing should be done about carbon emissions or that attempts to assess the economic impact of climate change should be abandoned.

    To argue that nothing should be done about carbon emissions is to imply that the social cost of carbon is $0*, which is just as arbitrary and unfounded as the government’s estimate of $33 per ton of CO2.

    *Insofar as one accepts the premise that a positive SCC necessitates non-market intervention. Many Austrians may not accept that premise, but throughout the climate change debate on this blog it does not seem that Austrians have fought this point explicitly. By which I mean, if this was a point of contention, the Austrian response to the government’s $33/ton figure should be along the lines of “So what? These social costs will be appropriately factored into market prices so no intervention is necessary”, but I cannot recall instances of such an argument being made.

    • JSR08 says:

      How about, if the government wants me to give it more money for Thing X or Purpose Y, it needs to empirically show or justify that X or Y is worthwhile. The onus is on the government to show that it is worthwhile to take more of my money and reallocate it in an effort to reduce carbon emissions, not me justify why I should be able to keep my money because I think some arbitrary variable like the SCC is bogus.

      In other words, “doing something about carbon emissions” = “take more of my money”, and I need to be convinced that (a) there is an actual problem and (b) taking my money will help fix that problem.

      • thinkingotherthings says:

        I agree that allowing the imposition of a tax when evidence of its economic benefits is dubious sets a dangerous precedent.

        However, so far as I can tell the scientific community has reached a consensus that climate change is an actual problem (I know not all climate scientists hold this opinion, but given that I am not a climate scientist, my most reliable data point is the scientific consensus). If it is a problem, then under the current legal regime these negative externalities are not adequately embedded in market prices because property rights over the environment are difficult and costly to allocate. On this basis I believe there is a reasonable case to be made for either a carbon tax or cap-and-trade system for firms that emit pollution. And figuring out the optimal carbon tax or number of pollution permits requires estimating the social cost of carbon emission.

        There is of course a social cost to limiting emissions if the SCC is indeed $0 or adequately handled by the market. But if the SCC>$0 and not factored into market prices then there are social costs to not limiting emissions. That is why it’s important to get a sensible estimate of these costs, even if doing so is difficult.

        • Tel says:

          There’s only a consensus amongst a select group calling themselves “Climate Scientists” no consensus amongst science in general. What exactly makes someone a “Climate Scientist” is itself pretty dubious.

          Besides that, consensus as a concept is meaningless in science, if the evidence points against the consensus then by definition the evidence is always correct.

          But if the SCC>$0 and not factored into market prices then there are social costs to not limiting emissions.

          What does that sentence even mean? Someone somewhere might be selling an item more cheaply than you think they should do. Big deal.

          • thinkingotherthings says:

            There’s only a consensus amongst a select group calling themselves “Climate Scientists” no consensus amongst science in general. What exactly makes someone a “Climate Scientist” is itself pretty dubious.

            I’m willing to be shown otherwise on this point, but my casual research does point to such a consensus among scientists. For instance, see this graph from the “List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming” wikipedia page:
            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Climate_science_opinion2.png

            I’m not sure what you mean by no consensus among science in general; do you mean including the opinions of scientists who don’t study climate change? All I meant by climate scientists are people who study climate change, which are the people who’s opinions should count the most on this issue.

            Besides that, consensus as a concept is meaningless in science, if the evidence points against the consensus then by definition the evidence is always correct.

            Of course the evidence is what matters, but neither I nor (I suspect) anyone else commenting here understands the science well enough to draw inference from the data one way or the other. Given my personal lack of scientific knowledge, my best option is to trust the overwhelming majority opinion of those who do have the background and knowledge to interpret the data, and they seem to be saying that the evidence does indeed point toward climate change being a problem.

            What does that sentence even mean? Someone somewhere might be selling an item more cheaply than you think they should do. Big deal.

            Well, it is a big deal if the production of that item generates nonpecuniary negative externalities. For instance, if CO2 emissions by coal power plants contribute to global warming and lead to more cyclones and tsunamis that destroy towns, and the residents of those towns cannot effectively enforce their property rights, then those disastrous consequences will not be factored into market prices and hence more likely to occur. If you’re looking at this from a cost-benefit perspective, without adequate property rights protection or a government mechanism to achieve a second-best solution costs will be understated and production (of the externality-generating item) will be greater than optimal.

            • thinkingotherthings says:

              * edit: Where I say

              a government mechanism to achieve a second-best solution,

              that should just be, more generally, non-market mechanism.

            • Tel says:

              I’m willing to be shown otherwise on this point, but my casual research does point to such a consensus among scientists.

              The top heading of the link you provided is this:

              Opinions of Climate and Earth Scientists on Global Warming

              I rest my case.

              • thinkingotherthings says:

                How does that prove your case? Did you look at the chart?

                84% of AGU / AMS member scientists in 2011
                98% of the 200 most published climate scientists in 2010
                98% of the most frequently published climatologists in 2009
                90% of scientists publishing on climate change in 2009
                88% of climatologists in 2009
                82% of earth science faculty / researchers in 2009
                94% of climate scientists in 2008
                84% of AGU / AMS member scientists in 2007

                believe that global warming is largely caused by humans. Now it’s possible that there is some overlap of scientists sampled in the surveys, but are you really going to say that these numbers do not indicate a consensus?

              • thinkingotherthings says:

                More evidence for AGW being the consensus view among scientists:

                The leaders of 18 prominent scientific organizations sign an letter explicitly saying so:
                http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/ssi/climate-change-statement-from.pdf

                And wikipedia, citing the IPCC has:
                “The scientific opinion on climate change is that the Earth’s climate system is unequivocally warming, and it is more than 90% certain that humans are causing most of it through activities that increase concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, such as deforestation and burning fossil fuels. In addition, it is likely that some potential further greenhouse gas warming has been offset by increased aerosols.[1][2][3][4] This scientific consensus is expressed in synthesis reports, by scientific bodies of national or international standing, and by surveys of opinion among climate scientists. Individual scientists, universities, and laboratories contribute to the overall scientific opinion via their peer-reviewed publications, and the areas of collective agreement and relative certainty are summarised in these high level reports and surveys.”

              • Tel says:

                84% of AGU / AMS member scientists in 2011

                This was a study of the opinions of just 489 people, selected from a much larger membership of the AGU/AMS. You can’t consider 500 people to be a consensus of general science, it’s ridiculous.

                98% of the 200 most published climate scientists in 2010

                Not science in general but a very small, self-selected group. Exactly what I said above.

                98% of the most frequently published climatologists in 2009

                Again, not science in general, exactly what I said above.

                90% of scientists publishing on climate change in 2009

                Of course by “published” they don’t actually mean what the dictionary says the word means, they mean published only in a select group of journals:

                http://newzealandclimatechange.wordpress.com/2011/11/27/climategate-2-and-corruption-of-peer-review/

                Again, a carefully selected narrow opinion, not science in general.

                88% of climatologists in 2009

                Not scientists, just climatologists. Exactly what I said above.

                82% of earth science faculty / researchers in 2009

                I’m not exactly sure what this refers to, faculty of what? Where? It may refer to the Doran and Zimmerman 2009 survey, which came up with a bit 97% based on 79 people, but then admitted that actually out of the 3,146 general scientists they got responses from only 82% agreed. Anyhow, opinions have shifted since 2009 and even 3000 people isn’t even remotely representative of the general science community.

                94% of climate scientists in 2008

                Yup, that fits the pattern.

                84% of AGU / AMS member scientists in 2007

                I think you have just repeated the first one here, but strangely Wikipedia has a different reference for the same data. I dunno, can’t be bothered looking it up, see above.

                My point stands. You can always get a high percentage “consensus” if you select a small group of people based on factors that are going to make them highly likely to be interested in one particular point of view. As far as I’m concerned the idea of a professional “climate scientist” is just a person taking money from the government to publish papers that support a carbon tax (or more government regulation in general).

              • thinkingotherthings says:

                This was a study of the opinions of just 489 people, selected from a much larger membership of the AGU/AMS. You can’t consider 500 people to be a consensus of general science, it’s ridiculous.

                This is how statistical inference works. You use samples to draw inference about population values. As long as the sampling method is sufficiently random, then by the Law of Large Numbers and the Central Limit Theorem we can be very confident that the true population proportion is within a narrow interval of the sample proportion.

                If you want to argue that the sampling methodology was flawed, i.e. that the likelihood of selecting an AGW denier for the sample was biased downward relative to the true population proportion you can make that claim, but to argue that the sample size is too small does not square with basic statistics.

                Regarding your point about climate scientists vs scientists in general: of course the are only going to survey scientists who study climate change – those are the people with the greatest expertise and knowledge about the particular subject. Why should the opinion of people who don’t study climate change be relevant? If I wanted to know the scientific consensus on whether Einstein’s theory of general relativity holds (outside the quantum scale) I wouldn’t survey chemists and microbiologist and botanists — I would survey physicists, the group of scientists that have spent the most time studying the particular issue at hand.

                My point stands. You can always get a high percentage “consensus” if you select a small group of people based on factors that are going to make them highly likely to be interested in one particular point of view. As far as I’m concerned the idea of a professional “climate scientist” is just a person taking money from the government to publish papers that support a carbon tax (or more government regulation in general).

                I can’t say for sure that you’re wrong here, it just seems highly unlikely to me that the overwhelming majority of climate scientists would be this maliciously deceitful. (And note that your definition does not apply to all climate scientists, as there were some in each survey who disagreed with the consensus view).

            • Tel says:

              For instance, if CO2 emissions by coal power plants contribute to global warming and lead to more cyclones and tsunamis that destroy towns, and the residents of those towns cannot effectively enforce their property rights…

              If people whose property rights have been destroyed can find a causal chain of evidence leading back to people driving cars then by all means let them use the traditional legal system to demonstrate their case.

              Let them bring in those 200 self acclaimed Climate Scientists who had a consensus about the issue and who are represented by the purple bar on the graph you linked to. They can be expert witnesses if you like.

              By the way, if you check the Accumulated Cyclone Energy chart (ACE) the cyclone activity has been strongly trending down for the past couple of decades (while CO2 has gone up).

              http://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/screenhunter_19-may-08-06-04.jpg

              There’s a count of hurricanes (USA only I believe) as compared to presidency. Obama has presided over one of the lowest hurricane periods.

              I accept that you don’t put yourself forward as a climate expert, but a tsunami originates from undersea earthquake or landslide and has no relation to either Global Warming, nor anything atmospheric.

              A meteotsunami is not actually a tsunami, and anyway can be associated to relatively low intensity storms (Hurricane Sandy was merely category 3, it happened to dump a lot of rain at an inconvenient time).

      • Ken P says:

        There is a fair amount of agreement that the social cost is negative for the next several decades.

        Will these non market interventions be non-circumventable? Or will it just result in economic activity moving to unregulated countries?

    • Richie says:

      Start with holding your breath; that will do something about carbon emissions.

  5. gofx says:

    Except at the end he goes sort of mini-max and says that a carbon tax could be thought of as insurance and that having the tax at some level might give us information on the social cost of carbon. When I saw the author was Pindyck I thought he would really get into how bad the modeling and measurement errors are in these models as well as their embarrassing forecast errors. I still like his econometric text, but geez I wish he would have focused on the climate modeling and not even use the dubious economic welfare framework.

  6. von Pepe says:

    This is awesome.

    Pindyck is author of the econometrics book we used in grad school.

  7. martin says:

    famous physicist Freeman Dyson on “Bogus Climate Models”
    “this is a very dubious business if you don’t have good inputs”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTSxubKfTBU

    I think Hayek’s “The Pretence of Knowledge” nobel lecture is also relevant:

    http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/1974/hayek-lecture.html

  8. Dyspeptic says:

    “Yes, it’s a bit circular.”

    Understatement of the year.

    Other than that you’re all a bunch of climate deniers. Off to re-education camp for you heretics! No cell phones, no computers, no books. Just good, hard, proletarian work in The People’s Solar Panel Factory gulag. Don’t breath too deeply though, silicon tetrachloride is nasty stuff.

  9. Bob Roddis says:

    Austrians must face the fact that the world for them is non-ergodic but clearly predictable for Keynesian and “progressive” bureaucrats. Keynesians insist that the economy would “run” a whole lot slower without their “stimulus” which they know how to perfectly calibrate while at the same time they know exactly how hard to put their foot on the brake to slow the economy with carbon taxes. I’m impressed.

  10. Bob Roddis says:

    Dr. Robert Murphy was on WJR (Neo-con central) in Detroit back in July talking about Global Warming. Just search for the word “Murphy” to find the 8 minute interview. There’s much discussion about how predictions are hard. Especially when they are about the future.

    http://www.wjr.com/page.php?page_id=821

  11. Mike M says:

    Climate Change:

    Since the beginning of Earth’s creation, its climate has been perpetually changing.

    Next.

    • Bob Roddis says:

      I used to think that the last ice age and glacier covering Michigan was millions of years ago. Wrong.

      http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=glacier&w=10419026@N08

      • Tel says:

        Yes, we are in the “Quaternary Ice Age” right now, and this involves a cycle of glaciation about once every 100k years. We are due to start freezing up (gradually) in another few thousand years.

        Personally, I’m not freaking out about it.

        • AcePL says:

          Well, since few thousands is in “one percent” I would, as this is shaving awfully close. From my POV it is already cooling… And this may be much faster process than “gradually”…

  12. Yancey Ward says:

    If it ever became clear that a new ice age were beginning (incontrovertible temperature measurements), you could be 100% certain that the the response of the climate science community would try to lay it at the feet of industrialization.

    • Ken P says:

      That will be a real problem.

      • guest says:

        Something even more damning has already happened:

        The 1970′s Global Cooling Compilation – looks much like today
        [WWW]http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/01/global-cooling-compilation/

        • Tel says:

          All of that cooling is guaranteed to come along, just look at the Vostock ice core data. Thing is, a cooling period takes many thousands of years and none of us will live that long.

          The Earth’s population will either gradually decline, or we will figure something out as we go.

          The reason WUWT keeps the historic list of 70’s cooling alarmism is because the modern warmists will swear black and blue that no such articles were ever published.

  13. Collin says:

    It’s like Psychiatry.

  14. thinkingotherthings says:

    Tel (I’m continuing our thread here to have more space) :

    Regarding hurricanes, here is a study showing that climate change can lead to more frequent and intense hurricanes:
    http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/07/05/1301293110.abstract?sid=9fb226fc-6f82-4b7a-8c91-6ce889da1b1a
    Another link suggesting the same based on tidal data:
    http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/global-warming-is-causing-more-hurricanes-8212584.html

    But this is a side issue. I would rather focus on your next point:

    If people whose property rights have been destroyed can find a causal chain of evidence leading back to people driving cars then by all means let them use the traditional legal system to demonstrate their case.

    The following is just one expected effect of global warming (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming#Observed_and_expected_effects_on_social_systems) :

    “In small islands and megadeltas, inundation as a result of sea level rise is expected to threaten vital infrastructure and human settlements.[168][169] This could lead to issues of homelessness in countries with low lying areas such as Bangladesh, as well as statelessness for populations in countries such as the Maldives and Tuvalu.”

    Do you think impoverished Bangladeshis, Maldivians, and Tuvaluans have the resources – both money and time – to file lawsuits against millions of manufacturers across the developed world? The costs would be staggering and the cases would drag out for years. Legal fees and value of time spent in court would easily dwarf some of these poorer country’s GDPs. Furthermore, many of the people who will be affected are not even born yet and thus cannot represent themselves.

    And the issue is more complicated still. There may be a scientific consensus that human-induced GHG emissions will lead to such disastrous consequences, but tying a specific firm or person to a specific flooding event would be much more difficult to prove in court.

    If the costs of going through the legal system were negligible, then I would much prefer that to an inaccurate tax or cap system. But in this case the costs of going through the legal system would be monumental and prohibitive.

    • Bob Roddis says:

      Everyone knows that under Ancap, there wouldn’t be any roads. Therefore, there wouldn’t be any sprawl and no Global Warming. Further, without eminent domain and funny money loans and inner city public schools, there really wouldn’t be much sprawl.

      It’s all the Keynesians’ fault.

    • Tel says:

      here is a study showing that climate change can lead to more frequent and intense hurricanes

      That’s a computer model, based on certain input assumptions.

      The actual measured evidence of real meteorological activity shows that hurricane/cyclone activity is decreasing. As I already said, the evidence must be master, and the model must be secondary.

      From the tidal gauge article:

      Although scientists were not able to prove that climate change is causing more large hurricanes, they believe the study is consistent with the predictions that global warming and warmer seas could bring about more intense tropical storms.

      I don’t quite get that. They found a short-term correlation between warmer seas and bigger hurricanes, but also no long term trend indicating that there are more hurricanes?

      In small islands and megadeltas, inundation as a result of sea level rise is expected to threaten vital infrastructure and human settlements.

      But that hasn’t happened either, they keep predicting it, but those coral atolls just keep growing more coral. Funny that, the way coral grows by itself, almost like a living thing. You know what coral is made of right? CO2, and Calcium. Since Calcium is abundant, more CO2 means more coral all other things being equal, and the coral likes warmer water.

      Do you think impoverished Bangladeshis, Maldivians, and Tuvaluans have the resources – both money and time – to file lawsuits against millions of manufacturers across the developed world?

      Well now you are talking about international law and the concept of world government. I don’t personally believe that the Maldivians have any evidence that they have suffered demonstrable harm to date, certainly no evidence they can pin on the “developed world” specifically, but you are right that if they did have evidence it would be difficult to take that anywhere. Never the less, the first step is to gather genuine evidence of damages and they have not even done that yet, it’s all presumed future stuff.

      However, many people do have direct evidence of harm done, the people of Afghanistan could quite reasonably claim they are worse off now than before the Bush invasion, the people of Syria might be able to find evidence of American gun running (via Benghazi probably) which has resulted in millions of casualties. Certainly Mexico could point out that handing guns to drug dealers was a bad idea… all of these problems go back to government. These are not maybe, perhaps future problems, they are right now problems, with far larger consequences than anything Global Warming has done. Let’s fix that injustice first, huh?

      Funny thing with war crimes, the losers are the only ones who get prosecuted. The winners are heroes, by their own declaration.

      If you want to get into future, perhaps problems, we could look at the many Americans who are going to get ripped by their Social Security going bankrupt. I expect that to start kicking in within around 15 to 20 years (much sooner than any Global Warming disaster). Those people will have a court system to utilize since both the perpetrators and the victims are living under the same jurisdiction… well kind of the same jurisdiction.

      • thinkingotherthings says:

        That’s a computer model, based on certain input assumptions.

        Sure, and maybe it’s not perfect, but the simple fact that it relies on a model is not a reason to dismiss it out of hand. Personally I don’t know enough about the science to know if their model is reasonable, but the fact that it’s published in a reputable scientific journal merits its consideration.

        I don’t quite get that. They found a short-term correlation between warmer seas and bigger hurricanes, but also no long term trend indicating that there are more hurricanes?

        Not able to prove =/= no correlation. But the main take away is the last couple paragraphs:

        “”I found that there were monitoring stations along the eastern seaboard of the United States where they had recorded the daily tide levels all the way back to 1923. I have looked at every time there was a rapid change in sea level and I could see there was a close correlation between sudden changes in sea level and historical accounts of tropical storms,” Dr Grinsted said.

        Once the correlation between storm surges and tropical storms was established, the researchers analysed global temperature records to compare the number of storm surges in warm years with the number observed in cold years.

        “We simply counted how many extreme cyclones with storm surges there were in warm years compared with cold years and we could see that there was a tendency for more cyclones in warmer years,” Dr Grinsted said.”

        But let’s say for the sake of argument that global warming doesn’t affect hurricane activity. I was just using that in an example. Check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_global_warming or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_climate_change_on_humans or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_impacts_of_climate_change and pick any number of outcomes with negative externalities. If there is any truth to even some of these effects, then the social cost of carbon is positive and needs to be accounted for.

        But that hasn’t happened either, they keep predicting it, but those coral atolls just keep growing more coral. Funny that, the way coral grows by itself, almost like a living thing. You know what coral is made of right? CO2, and Calcium. Since Calcium is abundant, more CO2 means more coral all other things being equal, and the coral likes warmer water.

        They predict that the rising sea levels caused by global warming will flood coastal cities and islands in the future. I’m not aware of a scientific consensus that it should have happened by now. So the fact that it hasn’t happened yet doesn’t seem significant to me. And I don’t understand your point about coral.

        Well now you are talking about international law and the concept of world government.

        I am not advocating world government. I am saying that the costs for those in other countries (and also in this country, but sticking with the particular example I brought in for now) of enforcing their property rights through the existing legal infrastructure are prohibitive, and the imposition of a carbon tax or cap-and-trade system – even if only done unilaterally, although hopefully in cooperation with other nations – is the next best way to align incentives.

        Never the less, the first step is to gather genuine evidence of damages and they have not even done that yet, it’s all presumed future stuff.

        The problem is that if they wait for the damage to occur, they will already be SOL. You’re telling me that if there is evidence that AGW significantly increases the probability that the Maldive Islands flood, – or even, say in California – that they should have to wait until the flooding actually occurs and their homes are decimated and loved ones killed before they have a legitimate legal claim? That is preferable to taking proactive preventative action?

        And even if they did wait until after the damage occurred – which again, I think is much less desirable path than preventing the damage in the first place – even then, how exactly do you go about showing that a specific flood was caused by the emissions of particular individual molecules that originated from a particular firm half way across the world?

        […] Afghanistan […] Bush […] Syria […] Mexico […] Let’s fix that injustice first, huh?

        Sure these are problems that need to be addressed, but they are not reasons to postpone dealing with climate change. The people working on climate change are largely not the same people, I would presume, to fix these other issues.

        If you want to get into future, perhaps problems, we could look at the many Americans who are going to get ripped by their Social Security going bankrupt. I expect that to start kicking in within around 15 to 20 years (much sooner than any Global Warming disaster). Those people will have a court system to utilize since both the perpetrators and the victims are living under the same jurisdiction… well kind of the same jurisdiction.

        Sure, social security is another problem. It’s not a reason to postpone dealing with climate change.

        • Tel says:

          From Miami Herald – July 5, 1989:

          A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000. Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of “eco-refugees,” threatening political chaos, said Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the United Nations U.N. Environment Program, or UNEP. He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before…

          Yeah well that never happened. San Jose Mercury News quoted the same guy with the same prediction June 30, 1989.

          The Vancouver Sun – May 11, 1982 reported:

          Mostafa Tolba, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program, told delegates from more than 100 countries that, in the last decade, “on almost every front there has been a marked deterioration in the quality of our shared environment.”

          He told the opening session of the week-long meeting, called to review UNEP’s work since its creation in Stockholm 10 years ago, that world governments must take action now or face disaster.

          Lack of such action would bring, “by he turn of the century an environmental catastrophe which will witness devastation as complete, as irreversible as any nuclear holocaust.”

          Over the top much? Good thing it never happened.

          Here’s a whole stack of James Hansen predictions (going back decades):

          http://hauntingthelibrary.wordpress.com/2011/01/06/james-hansen-1986-within-15-years-temps-will-be-hotter-than-past-100000-years/

          In the comments someone quotes his famous one from 1989 claiming that within 20 or 30 years:

          The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water. And there will be tape across the windows across the street because of high winds. And the same birds won’t be there. The trees in the median strip will change.

          Hansen later decided that he really should have said “40 years” but anyhow we aren’t even slightly on track for any of that to happen. We aren’t even halfway there, or even a quarter of the way.

          Presidential advisor Daniel Moynihan wrote a memo on September 17, 1969 under the heading “FOR JOHN EHRLICHMAN”:

          The process is a simple one. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has the effect of a pane of glass in a greenhouse. The C02 content is normally in a stable cycle, but recently man has begun to introduce instability through the burning of fossil fuels. At the turn of the century several persons raised the question whether this would change the temperature of the atmosphere. Over the years the hypothesis has been refined, and more evidence has come along to support it. It is now pretty clearly agreed that the C02 content will rise 25% by 2000. This could increase the average temperature near the earth ‘ s surface by 7 degrees Fahrenheit. This in turn could raise the level of the sea by 10 feet. Goodbye New York. Goodbye Washington, for that matter.

          Interestingly, this memo was released as part of the Richard Nixon library but the link went away in 2012 (still available on the wayback machine). Anyhow, for what it’s worth, New York and Washington are still right where you left them.

          For a more recent prediction, it’s hard to go past Paul Beckwith predicting that there would be zero ice on the North Pole in 2013, and of course the Mainstream Last First team attempted to row the Northwest Passage this year (but quit early due to all that ice getting in their way). Then there’s these guys:

          Sebastien Roubinet and Vincent Berthet are crossing the Arctic Ocean, through water and ice, with only the wind and their own stamina to carry them.

          Needless to say they didn’t make it… recently a Russian icebreaker rescued them. Look, top marks for enthusiasm, but a little short on the common sense. I think there was another French rower who believed the “ice free Arctic” prediction, not sure what happened to him.

          Recently Dr. Nils-Axel Morner pointed out that the climate scientists haven’t even been measuring it right and sea level is only going up at a rate of 1.5 mm/year. Or perhaps it’s just slowed down a lot when it was predicted to be accelerating.

          Getting onto tropical storms, you should check Dr. Ryan N. Maue, who has collected four decades of data for Accumulated Cyclone Energy graphs. It shows that the peak years were 1994 and 1998 and the general trend has been down since then. It is entirely possible that this also correlates with temperature, because recent years have not been warming either, but long term it does not even remotely correlate with CO2… and that’s the whole point.

          If you want an even better explanation of how this works (in a political sense, although not in a scientific sense), read Ed Krug’s book “Environment Betrayed: The Abuse of a Just Cause”

  15. Andrew_M_Garland says:

    Are we to believe in the integrity of a scientific “community” where prominent members of academic and government institutions announce they are willing to lie for the supposed good of the peasants?

    One might argue that these are only a few. If so, why aren’t the rest denouncing them, and proudly proclaiming that the data is enough, and proclaiming that exaggeration and lying are not needed, and are in fact demeaning to science?

    Lying for climate change
    3/3/12 – Ed Driscoll   [edited]
    === ===
    People are admitting that they are willing to lie for their cause.

    •  Prof. Chris Folland, Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research
    “The data doesn’t matter. We’re not basing our recommendations on the data. We’re basing them on the climate models.”
    •  Dr David Frame, Climate modeler, Oxford University
    “The models are convenient fictions that provide something very useful.”
    •  Paul Watson, Co-founder of Greenpeace
    “It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.”
    •  Sir John Houghton, First chairman of the IPCC
    “Unless we announce disasters no one will listen.”
    •  Christine Stewart, former Canadian Minister of the Environment
    “No matter if the science of global warming is all phony … climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.”
    === ===

    80% of IPCC members are not climate scientists
    2/17/2009 – UddeBatt
    === ===
    [edited]  During the question and answer session of
    At last week’s William Schlesinger/John Christy global warming debate, (alarmist) Schlesinger was asked how many members of the United Nation Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) were actual climate scientists. This question came after Schlesinger had cited the IPCC as an authority for his position.

    It is well known that many or most of IPCC members are not scientists at all. For example, its president is an economist. His answer was quite telling. First he broadened it to include not just climate scientists but also those who have had ”some dealing with the climate.” His complete answer was ”something on the order of 20 percent have had some dealing with climate.”
    === ===

    Climate Change Deniers
    WhattsUpWithThat – 6/22/12 by Anthony Watts   [edited]
    === ===
    Consider the geological record of global temperature variation as best as we can reconstruct it, not for just 200 years, but for 25 million years or a billion years. There is nothing remarkable about today’s temperatures!

    The present is not the warmest or even close. It isn’t the warmest in the last 2-3 thousand years. It isn’t warming the fastest. It isn’t doing anything that can be resolved from the natural statistical variation of the data. Indeed, now that Mann’s utterly fallacious hockey stick has been reconstructed to include the Little Ice Age and the Midieval Warm Period, it isn’t even remarkable in the last thousand years!
    === ===

    IPCC Lead Author Says Climate Models Are Failing
    6/24/13 – Heartland by James M. Taylor
    === ===
    [edited]  Hans von Storch is a lead author of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He told German newspaper Der Spiegel that climate models are having a difficult time replicating the lack of global warming during the past 15 years.

    “If the lack of warming continues, in five years at the latest we will need to acknowledge that something is fundamentally wrong with our climate models. A 20-year pause in global warming does not occur in any modeled scenario.
    === ===

    Global Warming: How to approach the science   (PDF 58 pages)

    Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate
    Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    Seminar at the House of Commons Committee Rooms
    Westminster, London, 22nd February 2012

    This is a careful, scholarly, clear, and readable presentation of claims and data. Global warming is not a hoax, but catastrophic, damaging global warming is a hoax not supported by evidence. This paper deserves wide distribution and reference.

    Prof. Lindzen points out that a doubling of carbon dioxide by 2050 would be expected to increase average world temperature by about 1 degree C (1.8 deg F). The alarmists pose that natural processes will multiply this warming to 3 deg C. Current data seems to give a multiplier of .5, giving .5 deg C of warming by 2050 (.9 deg F).

    A major argument against an explosive, self-multiplying warming is that we are here to talk about it. If the Earth’s climate system had a multiplier, rather than a brake, then prior much warmer and much colder periods would have spiraled to either a freezing or boiling extreme. Venus would be an example. Earth has been stable for 3 billion years.

  16. Cody S says:

    Has anyone here ever seen The Seventh Seal?

    I keep thinking of the scene where the Christian fundamentalist roll through town lashing themselves and wailing to God, and then burn a “witch”, in hopes God will forgive them for whatever sin has caused the Black Plague.

    What idiots they were in the Dark Ages, thinking every problem they saw in the world around them was caused by their “sins”.

    We’re much smarter, now.

  17. Jesse Phillips says:

    The importance of the distinction between existence and actuality is to demonstrate that the necessary aspects of deity do not preclude God having contingent aspects, provided they do not conflict with the necessary ones. We saw previously, in the discussion of real relations, that there must be contingent aspects of the divine being if it is to have perfect knowledge of contingent things. Aquinas resists this conclusion, in part, because he sees contingency as a kind of metaphysical virus that infects the very existence of the one of which it is a characteristic. He says that a being whose substance has any admixture of potency is subject to decay (as in physical creatures) or annihilation (as in the case of angels) (Summa Contra Gentiles I, ch. 16, para. 2). The logical type distinction between existence and actuality ensures that contingencies in God pose no threat to the deity’s necessary existence. Thus, Hartshorne says, “That God exists is one with his essence and is an analytic truth … but how, or in what actual state of experience or knowledge or will, he exists is contingent in the same sense as is our own existence” (Hartshorne 1948, 87). It is also part of Hartshorne’s theory that God’s character or essence is supremely excellent. Thus, the contingencies in the divine actuality do not include the possibilities of God being selfish, cruel, or wicked as they do in the human case.

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