Potpourri
==> An article I just saw on Facebook (from last month) talking about a new theory of how life formed on Earth. Naturally everyone in the comments is very civil when discussing the religious implications.
==> I have my first click-baity title for an article at FEE: “The Economics of Karaoke (and Other Necessities).”
==> Max Borders has a good Earth Day post summarizing the climate change debate. My favorite part is his crystallization of what the “consensus” case relies upon, matter-of-factly:
* The earth is warming.
* The earth is warming primarily due to the influence of human beings engaged in production and energy use.
* Scientists are able to limn most of the important phenomena associated with a warming climate, disentangling the human from the natural influence, extending backward well into the past.
Scientists are able then to simulate most of the phenomena associated with a warming earth and make reasonable predictions, within the range of a degree or two, into the future about 100 years.* Other kinds of scientists are able to repackage this information and make certain kinds of global predictions about the dangers a couple of degrees will make over that hundred years.
* Economists are able to repackage those predictions and make yet further predictions about the economic costs and benefits that accompany those global predictions.
* Other economists then make further predictions based on what the world might be like if the first set of economists is right in its predictions (which were based on the other scientists’ predictions, and so on) — and then they propose what the world might look like if certain policies were implemented.
* Policymakers are able to take those economists’ predictions and set policies that will ensure what is best for the people and the planet on net.
* Those policies are implemented in such a way that they work. They have global unanimity, no defections, no corruption, and a lessoning of carbon-dioxide output that has a real effect on the rate of climate change — enough to pull the world out of danger.
*Those policies are worth the costs they will impose on the peoples of the world, especially the poorest.
Did you write the title, or did FEE?
I only ask because I submitted a piece once where they “suggested” I change the title to something much more clever than I was able to come up with on my own.
This one was mine. Sometimes they tweak it.
Anyone who does not use civility and restraint is an absolute piece of garbage, the scum of the earth.
On the Antipodean update channel, Dr Bjorn Lomborg took home a few million of my tax money.
Not that I’m thrilled to see the cash go out the door, but the other choice was much more cash going to Prof Timothy Fridtjof Flannery, the guy who is not a trained Climatologist, nor even a Meteorologist but who consulted on matters of drought (making predictions that turned out to be just plain wrong) and encouraged the spending of some billions on a so far useless desalination plant. Lomborg looks like surprisingly good value in comparison.
http://pindanpost.com/2015/04/18/the-evil-genius-of-the-hon-christopher-pyne/
I know there’s a few people around here who might say negative things about democracy, but it’s a fun game when played well. Putting a wedge position just on the edge of what your opponents will tolerate inevitably leads to some of them revealing they are complete hypocritical nutters. This in turn repels the normals, and elections tend to be won on the middle ground. It ain’t a prefect system, but it works better than some.
Kind of a classic own goal when the people loudest about the corruption caused by “big oil” go and have conniptions in public because a small fraction of the government climate change propaganda budget went to someone with every so slightly different opinions to their own. But you know government money couldn’t possibly corrupt anyone, could it?
“I know there’s a few people around here who might say negative things about democracy, but it’s a fun game when played well. Putting a wedge position just on the edge of what your opponents will tolerate inevitably leads to some of them revealing they are complete hypocritical nutters. This in turn repels the normals, and elections tend to be won on the middle ground. It ain’t a prefect system, but it works better than some.”
Not that delegating already wrong-headed so-called “collective” authority (the individual States) to an even more collective General Government was a great plan for securing individual liberty, but the Constitution prevented the government from playing that game.
Some here will say “Ahh, but it didn’t”, but insomuch as it was thought of as a contract (it wasn’t one), you can’t blame the structure of the document for a lot of the economic destruction and erosion of freedoms that have happened since America was founded.
The reason is because, Constitutionally, government workers were to uphold the Constitution – it was never to be a contest between two or more parties.
This is what makes “bipartisanship” so frustrating. Opposing parties were NOT to compromise with each other but to uphold the Constitution.
All parties were bound by the Constitution. The purpose of a Constitution is to restrict government, contrary to Cass Sunstein’s mental gymnastics.
The level of destruction we see today is not, as some Austrians say, the natural result of following the Constitution. The government simply ignored it.
(Aside: Those Austrians who criticize the Constitution on the grounds that “a piece of paper can’t do anything” have to criticize contracts for the same reason, if they’re going to be consistent.)
I’d say Max fails the Ideological Turing test in laying out the “consensus” position. But he’s hardly alone in that.
Can you be more specific Josiah?
Bob,
Take, for example, the second item in Borders litany. No one thinks that nuclear power plants cause global warming. It’s not production or energy use that’s the issue; its greenhouse gas emissions.
Bob,
Take, for example, the second item in Borders litany. No one thinks that nuclear power plants cause global warming. It’s not production or energy use that’s the issue; its greenhouse gas emissions.
That sounds like more of a nitpick than a failed “Ideological Turing test” to me.
If you asked 100 people who believe in man-made global warming, “Do you believe that ‘the earth is warming primarily due to the influence of human beings engaged in production and energy use?'” All 100 would answer in the affirmative.
Josiah, see Andrew Keen’s answer.
By the same token, it’s not greenhouse gas emissions that are the issue. No one thinks that if humans emitted greenhouse gases but put giant mirrors in space that reflected away 95% of the sunlight from Earth, that the Earth would warm. So you just failed the test, right?
The clouds that warm weather causes are like “green mirrors”.
It’s like so-called “Global Warming” won’t stop punching itself.
Bob,
If space mirrors reflected 95% of sunlight, then it would not be the case that the earth was warming due to greenhouse gas emissions, though it would still be the case that it was warmer due to those emissions.
However, since there are in fact no space mirrors I am straining to see how this is relevant.
So what you are saying is that even in a deflationary environment (where prices are falling) printing new money still deprives someone of their savings?
I mean, as compared to the value those same savings would have had, without new money being printed.
“The earth is warming primarily due to the influence of human beings engaged in production and energy use.”
Josiah is correct that nobody claims that production and energy use cause global warming, so the statement as written is at best misleading.
Say there were several teddy bear factories. One of them has an old an badly maintained furnace that emits dioxin. We could say that most dioxin emission was caused by people engaged in teddy bear manufacture. Sort of true, but sort of missing the point. That way of putting it makes it seem that those calling for dioxin reductions are asking for reductions in teddy bear manufacture, when they are actually asking for better furnace maintenance.
He makes another error when he says “Whether one views the models as predictions or as scenarios, the evidence is barely within the most conservative of these in the most recent assessment.”
He has assumed his preferred evidence is the correct evidence, and declared it to be “the evidence”. What he should say is that estimates using recent observational data are lower than other estimates using different methods. It is not certain which method is more accurate.
In point 4 he claims the data has been deliberately fudged, citing Christopher Booker. The article is just wrong – homogenisation (the “fudge” of which he complains) actually reduces the apparent global warming. variability.blogspot.de/2015/02/homogenization-adjustments-reduce-global-warming.html
He quotes Dyson saying “With the exception of eclipses, there is virtually nothing scientists can say with certainty about the future. ” Clearly rubbish. I predict that next July will be warmer here than next December. Despite the chaotic nature of the weather, I am pretty confident of my prediction.
Overall, while there may be valid points within it, I fail to see how the post could be described as “good.”
Take, for example, the second item in Borders litany. No one thinks that nuclear power plants cause global warming.
Probably, but nuclear plants not causing global warming doesn’t contradict the second item.
To clarify: it’s perfectly possible for all global warming to be caused by energy use while at the same time some energy use doesn’t cause global warming.
Just because all cheese is made from milk doesn’t mean all milk is used to make cheese.
This is like saying that people get drunk by drinking liquids containing water. You could say that’s technically accurate but it’s really missing the point. It’s the alcohol that inebriates, not the water.
“Naturally everyone in the comments is very civil when discussing the religious implications.”
I believe you forgot to add ” . . .. /end sarcasm.”
If you need to put sarcasm tags on your writing, you’re doing it wrong.
Also a little known fact: every time someone explains to Bob Murphy jokes he himself made, he kills a kitten.
Please, think of the kittens!
I tend to agree with you Ivan, however, Gil’s comment is in keeping with Poe’s law.
Regarding the article about how life formed on Earth, I was just reading Asimov’s Twentieth Century Discovery which has a chapter explaining the same or very similar theory presented. It was published in 1969. Maybe at the time one of the pieces to the puzzle, probably lipids, had not been experimentally verified. However it doesn’t seem like such a new theory.
Btw, Bob, I cited the second item on Borders’ list because it was the first one that I found tendentious, not because it’s the only one that was so. Do you really want to claim that if you showed the list to someone they’d say “the person who wrote this clearly accepts the science on climate change”?