Climate Lukewarmers and Pragmatism

I'm one. So is Judith Curry. Here's another in a VERY lengthy piece that destroys the Carbonista Alarmist Watermelon hegemony:

I can't do much more than pick off a couple of my favorite beefs with the authoritarian scolds.

The science at the very top is unarguably corrupt with the intention of furthering a political agenda. That turns ALL THEIR WORK INTO QUESTIONABLE CRAP.

Science + Politics = Politics

You cannot argue otherwise.

The essence of science is falsifiability. There exists no current theory of AGW that can be seriously hypothesis tested. Belief in God is similarly founded. AGW IS A RELIGION.

The models have failed. The economics of ALL decisions based on these predictions are now crap and yet the Carbonista are insisting on unabated intervention BASED ON CRAP. That is religion playing out.

You need to be of a certain age to appreciate the Chicken Little frauds of the past to bear full weight. Trust me, it's shampoo. Rinse. Repeat.

Read it all.

Here's another's summary (I'm not 100% behind this):

 

As I remember, Judith Curry states that there are actions that we do need to take related to our current understanding of warming - perhaps more oriented to resilience.

My understanding is that she agrees that the heat is arriving at earth and staying (rather than leaving).

I think her issue is more that we don't know for sure exactly how earth will respond.


We are pretty much acting like a toad on a hot plate at present. And, the bills are starting to arrive - the Pentagon, regional drought in the US and damage to agriculture in other countries as well, NOLA futures, the Chesapeake Bay projects (and the coastlines of the world where they can't even afford to think about it), ocean acidification, etc.


Let's also remember that public policy decisions are made LONG before there is anything like 100% confidence. GW implemented TARP (and Obama doubled it) without there being agreement on what it would do - in fact, we STILL don't know, even after the fact.

As Newt Gingrich said, we make public policy decisions based on odds X cost, NOT on fact or proof - something science can't EVER provide.

 

No economic case can be made for ANY remediation without accurate models.

Intellectual honesty requires you admit to at least that.

 

This is more of the idiocy of "we can't move until we've proved the future."

We NEVER operate this way. Ever. Yet deniers want to apply this idiocy of yours to this one problem.

Let me ask you, did we have accurate models when we did TARP or when we make a DoD budget? Of COURSE not. There is great disagreement on economic models for our own economy - yet we don't let that paralyze us. We don't have accurate models of what national security issues will arise - yet we don't lt that paralyze us.

As for global warming, we ARE investing in remediation on this right now. So, thankfully you already lost on this. It's just that you haven't quite yet lost to a large enough degree.

 

Ah, that would explain continued building on the coasts.

 

No we did not have irrefutable accurate models. With that being said, no one was going around claiming that the models we did use were settled science and not up for debate. THAT, is the larger overall point that you are missing

 

Thus far science hasn't come close to proving that warming is a catastrophe. Massive sea level rises? Not happening. Droughts no more no less than any other time period in human history. So Cal has been semi arid since the end of the last ice age. Farming there has always been heavily dependent not on rainfall but on irrigation. They are currently running into water issues almost entirely because the environmental community has shut down almost all water retention projects. The worst drought the country's ever scene remains the dust bowl era of the 1930's whenwestern Ok and the Texas panhandle were without substantial rain for nearly 5 years if memory serves.

 

You are kidding right? Never heard 'the science is settled'?

 

I suspect you misread my post. The fact that global warming afficianados constantly call it "settled science" is precisely my point.

 

Ah, of course.

 

First sentence: I pointed that out, so we agree on that, right? Actually, science doesn't hold anything as irrefutably true - certainly not a climatological model. That is NEVER going to happen. Waiting for an irrefutable model is just plain stupid - it won't happen and we don't make public policy on certainty. So, "irrefutable model" is a nonsense term from ALL standpoints.

Second sentence: I disagree- there are people who have suggested certain aspects are settled. And, rightly so. In some cases, scientists in the field (such as Judith Curry) disagree with some conclusions, but join the majority on others. When she and others get cited as detractors it should be remembered that their detraction is not across the board by any means. Also, it's not ALL about "the models".

Third sentence: I'm not sure what you think I missed.

 

So, you are waiting for predictions of catastrophe.

I will point out that bills are coming in at present. The Pentagon, the Chesapeake Bay, NOLA, agricultural failure in Bangladesh, ocean acidification impacts, etc.

The concern isn't about today's bills, of course.

One of the problems is that we have almost no way to plan for the time frames necessary for this issue. In high tech, a 5 year plan is never going to live to completion. But in climatology, the issue is a 50 year plan.

So, we see a few bills come in and we just don't have a good way of even thinking about it.

 

First Sentence....You pointed it out yes, however being that the point of the OP is to attack the notion that man made global warming is settled science, I felt as if you pointing it out was sidetracking the intent of the thread

Second sentence....I hear the notion that man made global warming is settled science constantly. Perhaps you take a more reasoned approach in parsing that statement, but very few leftists in this room do the same

Third Sentence. The point that I think you missed, is the the intent of the OP was to attack the silly all encompassing notion that global warming is settled science

 

Ah, the settled science fallacy that deniers rely on. It's atrociously bad logic.

NASA just launched a rocket this morning. Yet gravity isn't settled science. So, by denier logic, it should have been impossible to launch that rocket. Humans shouldn't even have tried space travel, being that our knowledge of gravity is so incomplete.

Back in the real world, there's such a thing a settled _enough_. Gravity is settled _enough_ that we can launch rockets. We don't know the exact mechanism that brings about cancer, yet medicine is still settled _enough_ that we know smoking cigarettes causes cancer. Climate science is settled _enough_ that we know that our CO2 emissions are warming the planet strongly and need to be curtailed. That's proven by the decades of remarkable success in every prediction of climate science.

In direct contrast, the deniers and lukewarmers have a track record of near-total failure on everything. That's why their only option is to flat out lie about everything concerning the science. It worked for a while, but everyone is wise to them now, all of their myths have been debunked, and now their cult is collapsing. Hence their hysteria. The whole world is just ignoring them now, and it's not because of a vast secret global socialist conspiracy. It's because their science stinks.

Oh, it's funny to see anyone call Curry a lukewarmer, being that she's now a hardcore denier kook. She just lies about being a lukewarmer because she craves her precious victim status. These days, she blindly parrots every debunked denier mantra, and then acts all shocked that people are laughing at her.

 

I agree that people who say that wonderful phrase "settled science" need to be specific about what they are suggesting is settled. That was my point about Judith Curry and others - their dissent is not across the board.

It's settled that human action is causing earth to retain more heat than it has in the past. But, it isn't necessarily settled as to where that heat is going on earth or the exact affects it will have. For example, it appears that some of the extra heat has been soaked up by the oceans - a relatively new understanding.

 

You seem to approach the subject from a reasonable standpoint. I think the gist of the anti global warming crowd is that the planet is self sustaining, and has mechanisms that we do not even remotely understand to handle carbon excesses etc. For this notion, the pro global warming crowd labels the former as flat earthers, anti science etc., and insist that it is settled science and any dissent is born out of ignorance. Nothing could be further from the truth.

 

That's it in a nutshell.

 

Well, the "earth can sustain itself" thing is one of the several major points of departure.

For one thing, the earth doesn't care. Period. If ALL life died, that would be completely consistent with the earth "sustaining itself". The earth was fine with billions of years of no life. We assume earth is weird in that it has life at all. The earth doesn't care if there is oxygen. It doesn't care if there is water. It spent millions of years with the surface totally frozen over. Earth is fine with that. And, the earth is fine with the fact that the sun will incinerate the earth in a few more billion years.

Suggesting that there are new things to discover on earth is fine - I certainly agree. But, suggesting that we should DEPEND on there being major unforeseen ways for the earth to cover for our gross irresponsibility is actually insane, ignorant or whatever. We will pay heavily if temperatures very even by small amounts, and science says that IS going to happen within 50 or 100 years. Ignoring that is most definitely GROSS irresponsibility.

 

Thomas Gold, an Austrian astrophysicist, now diseased predicted many things correctly, such as what the dust on the moon would be like, also predicted our expenditure of carbon is only a blip in a long cycle of earth producing the same carbon. For instance, oil eventually seeps to the surface and turns to carbon anyway so we will not stop that.

 

I don't want to get into a long drawn out debate using the standard talking points. With that being said, I never claimed that the earth cares. The earth has been around for billions of years, and through many volcanic eruptions that have spewed enormous amounts of CO2, it has persisted in sustaining life. Just as higher CO2 concentrations create more plant growth that filters more CO2, the earth seemingly has mechanisms that keep the system in balance, and we haven't even scratched the surface in understanding the totality of these mechanisms..

The fact of the matter is, because of population growth, we do not have a realistic chance of lowering CO2 emissions. The best that could happen would be to slow its rate of growth. If global warming afficianados are correct, our fate is sealed regardless, and any efforts to curb growth would only serve to temporarily slow down the inevitable increases. Since the economic impact of slowing energy production is enormous, I believe the onus of proof for irreparable harm falls on the side of those wanting to curb energy usage. In my, and many others opinion, that onus has not even remotely been met.

 

He died 10 years ago at the age of 84.

How long ago do you think science stopped?

 

He predicted things no one knew. Now that the 'science', politically motivated, is deviating from observed science, how long do you think that denial of reality will last?

 

Yes. You don't believe science. AND, you don't believe in humans. That would seem to end the conversation, I guess!


But, NO our fate is not sealed. It's not an all or nothing situation. Moderating the temperature increase reduces impact and increases time available for adaptation.

I remember when we thought the cost of "environmentalism" would be too high - that we couldn't afford to clean up rivers, require reduction in air pollution, etc. In retrospect, what nonsense!

As with environmental changes, I think a lot of it is a matter of individual responsibility - we all change a little, making a large difference. And, one of the "big ticket" items (fuel tax) is a matter of moving taxes away from some things and toward fuel - not simply increasing tax. This is NOT an excuse to increase total tax load. Plus, we've seen every other first world nation move to having high fuel tax - yet some here claim there is no way that America could do that!! Really? Others can do it, but America Can't??

 

Well, I don't see any reason to believe your guy over the total of climate science being done the world over. I might point out that he was old when he died 10 years ago, and science has not stopped.

And, I TOTALLY disagree with your charges of political motivation or deviation from "observed science" - regardless of what you think that might mean.

Like with origin of the species, I believe there will always be those who doubt science. Like with the environmental movement, I think there will be resistance, but that progress will be made.

You didn't answer how long ago you think science stopped. But, that's OK.

 

Nothing that I have said remotely supports either one of those conclusions

If we were having a conversation about whether to clean up a dirty river, we would be in agreement. To use that as an analogy to bolster your point about curbing emissions based on a partial understanding of man made effects on global temperatures however, is disingenuous, and does absolutely NOTHING to further this debate. In fact, I think one could accurately title that a strawman argument.

If you want to individually reduce your carbon footprint based on your beliefs of mans impact on climate....have at it. Don't however, mandate that I reduce mine, based on YOUR beliefs, that you have admitted yourself are incomplete in regards to their impact.