Tuesday September 12th, 2006. 1:00 pm by frog
Last night, Campbell Live made the admirable decision not to run a 9/11 anniversary story as its lead, but to focus on a much bigger threat than terrorism - global warming. Campbell flew to Sydney to interview Al Gore on the eve of the Australasian Premiere of his climate change documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. You can watch the interview online here.
Posted in Environment & Resource Management | Media | by frog | Tue, September 12th, 2006 |
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September 12th, 2006 at 2:36 pm
Right, John Campell - and presumably a producer and cameraman - drove from central Auckland to the airport, flew to Sydney, took a taxi from Kingsford Smith to their hotel, from the hotel to the interview venue and did it all at in reverse to get home again.
Two questions:
1) Was there any hard content in that interview that couldn’t have been achieved by a video link from the studio in Auckland to another one in Sydney?
2) And does Campbell have any idea how much carbon dioxide was produced by his junket, or ancillary environmental impacts?
Pretty environmentally irresponsible way to promote a documentary making the case that (as you put it) global warming is a bigger threat than terrorism, don’t you think?
September 12th, 2006 at 2:51 pm
fair call craig..but it’s a ripper interview..eh..?
gravitas you could bottle…
he’s the next president..eh..?
(getting there by the back door…tee-hee..!..)
but i reckon he is the man for the times..
and this will become clearer and clearer over the next little while..
the comment he made that had the most impact on me was where he noted whoever is the next president has the job of restoring americas’ democratic ideals..
(subtext..stop the wars..stop the torturing..stop spying on americans..stop feeding/fanning anti-muslim hate…)
all the things you would hope the next president of america would do/say..
eh..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
(shame about tipper..but there you go…)
September 12th, 2006 at 3:28 pm
Craig: well, he could always buy an offset for the travel. That’s what Gore is doing, and its what I’m doing as well.
I suggest Ebex21, since they’re working in New Zealand, rather than overseas.
September 12th, 2006 at 3:36 pm
Craig, I reckon…
(1) No
(2) No
If there were a price put on emissions which reflected the harm done, would these things be taken into account? Probably yes.
More important questions: do you support putting a price on emissions as an instrument to prevent such behaviour, which you’ve correctly identified as harmful? Is the K protocol the only multinational agreement that does this? Would national governments have the ability to implement a domestic emissions pricing scheme in the absence of Kyoto? Does the party you support have withdrawing from Kyoto as a policy? Does National’s line on this put pressure on the current Government to delay implementing an effective emissions pricing scheme?
Voting for an anti-Kyoto party makes it harder to get emissions policies in place, making it rational for TV crews to screw the environment.
September 12th, 2006 at 3:38 pm
Sorry,
“would national governments have the POLITICAL ability to blah blah”
was what I meant to say. ie could they implement such a scheme unilaterally or would the chorus of ‘don’t sacrifice our jobs when those dodgy foreigners are doing nothing’ be too strong?
September 12th, 2006 at 4:58 pm
I think the political will and ability is slowly building:
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7884738
Bush’s stance is looking increasingly untenable: and if he changes tack, expect Brash and Howard to follow.
September 12th, 2006 at 10:52 pm
Yeah, if even The Economist finally gets global warming, then even actual economists will get it eventually…
But we’ve got to build pressure on the politicians through public opinion.
Clark and Cullen aren’t stupid : they get it. They are even well-intentioned enough to vaguely do something about it if they can do it. I even think that if GW and peak energy had been higher-profile at the time of the last election, we might have a red-green-brown government now, even with the same electoral result… it’s all a question of priorities.
The current NZ non-coalition government is a disaster with respect to doing anything about global warming, but a huge electoral gift to the Greens. The next election theme is dead easy : you want something done about these issues, you can trust nobody but the Greens.
September 13th, 2006 at 7:39 am
hold on to your hats…rupert murdoch has gone green..
i’ve reported this morning how ‘the sun’..generally cosidered to be ruperts’ mouthpece…has admitted they were wrong with their years of nay-saying on climate-change…
and are running a series on “how to green the world..”
whoar..eh..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
September 13th, 2006 at 11:56 pm
wow! that is big news. hat tip phil.
http://www.crikey.com.au/Media/20060912-The-Sun-admits-we-were-wrong-o n-global-warming.html
September 15th, 2006 at 4:38 pm
> “Yeah, if even The Economist finally gets global warming, then even actual economists will get it eventually…”
Even if an economist “gets it” and believes the worst-case global warming scenario, he may still reasonably conclude, on the basis of a cost/benefit analysis, that nothing should be done to combat it:-
http://www.reason.org/commentaries/boudreaux_20060907.shtml
What makes no sense at all is to believe the global warming theory and to advocate radical change without attempting as thorough a cost/benefit analysis as possible and being guided by its conclusions. The possibilities of doing vastly more harm than good are huge.
Lomborg attempted just such a cost/benefit analysis and was (predictably) crucified for it because it produced the “wrong” result: The b***** argued instead for the money to be spend on clean water etc for hundreds of millions of people.
Now, whilst you might dispute the assumptions or method he used in the analysis, what you cannot reasonably do is argue against the absolute necessity of undertaking such an exercise.
Those who are sceptical of natural climate change and who cannot quote a plausible cost/benefit analysis which supports their proposed program can be safely ignored. In my experience this is 100% of you.
September 15th, 2006 at 8:03 pm
Your proof is a politically-motivated web site and so should be taken with a five-kilo grain of salt. Can you provide us with something a little more apolitical?
Lomborg has been widely discredited, not for producing the wrong results but for writing ideologically-driven polemics that pretend to be works of science. The Skeptical Environmentalist is no more a work of science than All The Trouble In The World (which at least is humourous) or Worlds In Collision (which is just sad).
> Those who are sceptical of natural climate change and who cannot quote a plausible
> cost/benefit analysis which supports their proposed program can be safely ignored. In
> my experience this is 100% of you.
100%, eh? Making a few assumptions about the entire readership of Frogblog, aren’t we? Who’s “sceptical” of natural climate change?
Tell you what: try getting your scientific opinions from, I dunno, scientific periodicals. Try reading up on a variety of sources, rather than think-tank and industry-sponsored web sites. Avoid reason.org, eco-imperialism, and frontpagemag for a month or three. Concentrating your reading around material that agrees with your preconceived biases isn’t healthy and is in danger of turning you into a fanatic.
September 15th, 2006 at 9:33 pm
reason.org…ROFL!!!
no…stop…no more…my stomach muscles are aching!
September 15th, 2006 at 11:29 pm
Mouldwarp - I think it is safe for us to ignore 100% of “reason.org”.
“Reason Foundation has received $381,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998.”
You really really have to pay attention to the FACT that the big boys are using you. This isn’t even your ideology leading you astray, though it does that pretty much all the time anyhow…
You seem to think scientiest are in some sort of conspiracy to gain power over the global economy… (nonsense but would it be a bad thing even if it were true) but the guys who DO run the global economy… they’re not to blame for making all the money they can… even at the price of the only habitable planet we can reach? Who is more likely to be involved in an effort to sway public opinion? A whole lot of scientists independently reaching similar conclusions, or a whole lot of people being paid by the biggest oil company on the planet, a company that also funds such notable liars as Dubya and Cheney and Rummy…. (the Moe, Larry and Curly of statesmanship. Too bad they aren’t actually funny).
At least however, this thread is vaguely heading towards a vaguely environmental theme.
BJ
September 20th, 2006 at 1:31 pm
hey mouldwarp - I agree with you that we should do a cost-benefit analysis of climate change mitigation measures - can you point us to any?
I presume that such analyses consider the likely economic costs of climate change don’t they? I imagine they estimate that there will be trillions of dollars lost to storm damage, crop failure, lack of water, flood damage, hospitalisation costs, etc if we don’t do anything about climate change.
I imagine that cost-benefit analyses are what the insurance companies have done, hence why they are raising their premiums through the roof or refusing to provide cover for places at risk of climate change.
So, mouldwarp, you got those links to those cost-benefit analyses? Or not? I suspect that your favoured anti-AGW literature is also lacking in cost-benefit analyses as well as the pro-AGW literature you denegrate, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt for now.
September 21st, 2006 at 12:12 am
So I’m guessing from all the desperate mud-slinging and issue-avoidance above (some of it mildly hysterical) that, no, not one of you actually has a cost/benefit analysis to back-up your position?
That’s what I thought.
And what does this mean? Well, without one *you don’t know* what the best policy should be. You may *think* you do. You may even be *certain* that you do. But in reality, you don’t.
I’ll let that sink in through your egos.
The point is that there are *countless* problems in the world today, whilst the resources to tackle them are finite. It is therefore necessary to set priorities and only a comprehensive cost/benefit analysis can reveal what those priorities should be and where those scarce resources should be allocated.
Yielding to single-issue zealotry and misdirecting those resources to other, lower-priority (but still worthy) causes will have an opportunity cost measured in unnecessary suffering and death on a truly vast scale.
Now, it so happens that many of the major problems in the world are the direct result of just one thing: Poverty. It is entirely feasible that, even if global warming is assumed to be a significant threat, the eradication of poverty through continued economic growth will prove to be by far the best policy in terms of human wellbeing. To quote from the link I gave previously: “We mustn’t forget that industrial capitalism is history’s greatest life-saver. Over the past two centuries it has more than doubled life-expectancies and made our bodies cleaner, taller, stronger, better clothed, and more disease-resistant. Capitalism has also made available to us rich experiences and knowledge – including most of science itself – that were simply out of reach before the industrial age. Any heavy-handed assault on capitalism might well impair this magnificent institution and lead to human suffering worse than will be wreaked under worst-case global-warming scenarios.”
If you don’t agree with the logic of this argument then you should perhaps drop the pretence and recognise that your motives are purely selfish.
And if you can’t then produce a reputable cost/benefit analysis which demonstrates the case for prioritising climate change over today’s global poverty then you have precisely nothing. You are just a dangerous, single-issue zealot.
And speaking of dangerous environmentalist zealots causing death and misery on a genocidal scale, I was of course roundly condemned on this blog just recently for pointing out that DDT saves lives, has minimal environmental impact, and that its use should therefore be supported.
And yet you’ll have seen that the WHO has just this week come out firmly in favour of its use.
The question is, just how many millions of people did your avowed anti-DDT policy kill in the meanwhile?
How can you live with yourselves when the result of your blinkered green zealotry was millions upon millions of dead people? At the very least it ought to make you question your unconditional support for radical action on climate change, but I suspect that even that is too much to ask.
September 21st, 2006 at 1:08 am
Mouldwarp - I place a value on the survival of the human species, including giving my son and daughter a fair chance, of infinite dollars. That’s the benefit. You choose the cost and dio the math…
I’ve seen the crap that some jackasses are putting forward…. and their analysis of both risks and costs bears no resemblance to what the science is saying. My analysis, as casually stated as it just was, has more validity. You see, I actiually did work for NASA. I know the science. I did the math and designed the signal chains and collected the data.
Didn’t you notice the folks at the Economist scuffing their toes in the dirt and saying in effect ’sorry folks, there seems to be something to this and maybe we need to do something about it’??? … or Rupert Murdoch’s epiphany? Or Easterbrooks?
What does “capitalism” have to do with warming? I missed the part where we advocated the end to capitalism… we advocate an end to unrelenting unfettered growth. Yeah, there’s some anti-capitalist sentiment in the party, but that’s not what we’re on about and it isn’t what global warming is about.
There’s noplace to grow TO… it works until it doesn’t and we won’t get a second planet to live on or space habitats unless someone’s government actually does the hard work… spending taxes we vote on ourselves, and we aren’t talking about the shrub’s version of that work.
You keep calling us selfish… and that is just wrong.. It is also an indication of just how little you really know and how we should value your words. We aren’t damaged by your error, but we are a bit troubled that you seem determined to remain in ignorance forever.
BJ
September 21st, 2006 at 8:41 am
Well this arguments getting interesting. But whats all this about a “cost-benefit analysis of climate change mitigation measures” ?
Thats just nutty. If we’ve never encountered a problem before how are we going to decide what the outcome could be. The idea might suit short range economic projections where a country might want to figure how the world will take what it wants to do but but on such a huge scale it’s just plain silly. Did the British do a “cbaccmm” before they went and fought the Germans at the outset of the second world war? No I don’t suppose they did because the threat was real and obvious. They had to take action. But they did do that kind of stuff on things they weren’t sure of like radar which meant they hummed and ha’d about it and it wasn’t until the scientist’s really started agitating that things started getting done. It was one of the really important things that won the war for them. But even that is beside the point.
This is a threat, and on a scale, that we’ve never faced before. A slow moving tsunami that is just going to blow away our precious comforts and change the paradigm back to the middle ages. But only if we act at the last minute. If we started now we might just make it.
We should go straight into a war economy and stop importing all luxury commodities and start buying up industrial methods and machines. Sell of all the livestock and start a massive campaign of replanting the forests and putting in crops. Sell all our cars as scrap and manufacture our own which would be tiny, basic and have tiny little diesel motors. Send all the economists, lawyers and accountants back to school to learn trades.
New Zealand is small enough to treat this as an experiment in disaster prevention that the whole world could benefit from.
And it might actually be alot of fun to completely change things and see what happens.
September 29th, 2006 at 9:17 pm
I agree with many of artyone’s points. What we do know is (1) climate change poses significant risks, and (2) to avoid the worst effects, we need to make significant changes - soon.
And now for something else I have written:
Carbon criminal
What in God’s name are we doing with energy
Progress on sustainability seems worse than a centipede
And some people said: let’s not fret,
Or expect us to reflect much on our mindset
Let us buy and drive what we like,
Give coal mines a divine right to thrive,
Hell - when the shit hits the fan, we won’t be alive!
Carbon criminal: his big old car just climbs this hill
And it’s far too difficult to police these streets
To stop all this greenhouse gas from being released
The economists said it was better for our pockets to keep using fossil
But it’s obnoxious, how can we want this
We’ve lost it, besotted with an economy
That’s gone wrong - quick, someone stop it!
Addicted to oil to make our pretty things,
Our food, our clothing, our diamond rings, we drive up and buy it
And look the other way, lest we hear someone say
Carbon criminal: her big old car just climbed this hill
And it’s far too difficult to police these streets
To stop all this greenhouse gas from being released
Respectable businessmen sell us their products
Without telling us what they’ve really cost us
In emissions from coal, oil, gas, or electricity
Which are an integral part of our legacy to posterity
Instead we get marketing screened to our TVs
Telling us “we’re cheaper, come and get these”
It’s cheap, I agree - but that lunch ain’t free.
Carbon criminal: his big old car just went down this hill
And it’s far too difficult to police these streets
To stop all this greenhouse gas from being released
We have known about climate change for decades
We know about the increasing frequency of hurricanes
But somewhere a fat man just got in his car anyway, and it amazes me
He goes about smiling, in denial, or pliable
To the message to consume and drive, sent by a society
In a schizophrenic state, its left hand doesn’t know the right,
Like it’s driving itself off a cliff in a bewitching twilight
Carbon criminal: she didn’t see the cliff at the bottom of this hill
It was far too difficult to police these streets
To stop all this greenhouse gas from being released
October 2nd, 2006 at 9:27 pm
artyone,
In response to the question of whether you have a sound cost/benefit analysis to justify your call for unprecedented and draconian action to deliberately throttle global economic activity, your answer is no, but instead here’s an allegory in which global warming is compared to Nazism.
It’s beyond parody really, isn’t it.
But I have to ask, what happens when you meet another single-issue zealot who also invokes the image of Nazism in support of *his* narrow-minded agenda? How do you set priorities when all you have to work with is bizarre my-dad-could-beat-your-dad rhetoric? Worse still, suppose he trumps your allegory by representing his supposed threat not as mere Nazis but as a vast invading Martian army complete with ray guns and flying saucers? Does he win the argument that way? Is that how it works?
So it always comes back to whether you have a solid cost/benefit analysis to justify your radical demands. As I said before, “without one *you don’t know* what the best policy should be. You may *think* you do. You may even be *certain* that you do. But in reality, you don’t.”
Lomborg concluded that addressing issues like the provision of clean water would be a better use of resources than mitigating climate change. Quite why that makes him a hate figure is beyond me.
When cornered by greenies bleating about global warming I sometimes ask them what percentage of the warming of the past 100 years was due to anthropogenic CO2. To this day not one of them has offered an intelligent reply. They just don’t have an answer. It’s like they’ve never thought about it before, yet they’re quite happy to deliver a lecture about it whilst poking you in the chest. One or two have bluffed but, when pressed, it is obvious that they just plucked a figure out of the air to avoid looking completely stupid.
I’m guessing I’d get the same rabbit-caught-in-the-headlights expression from 99% of the greenies that read this blog if I asked them that question: yet those same people don’t let their fundamental ignorance prevent them lobbying for radical and hugely damaging intervention in the economies of the world. Talk about religion. You are to Labour what the Brethren is to National.
I’d venture to point out that unless you have a very clear idea of what this particular statistic is then you have absolutely no business lobbying for radical countermeasures. And that is just one statistic from many that you need to marshall in order to construct an argument.
Now y’all here have recourse to Google to save your blushes, but who is going to be brave enough to post what they consider to be the influence of anthropogenic CO2 as a percentage of the warming of the last 100 years or so (i.e. since the depths of the Little Ice Age)?
What happens if others post significantly different figures (or, heaven forbid, will you collude?)? Won’t that illustrate just how little is known about the climate?
Suppose new research concludes that the true influence is significantly less that you supposed? Would you be honest enough to admit that radical intervention is no longer justified (and would indeed have disastrous effects on those relying on economic development to be pulled out of poverty)?
>> “This is a threat, and on a scale, that we’ve never faced before. A slow moving tsunami that is just going to blow away our precious comforts and change the paradigm back to the middle ages.”
Get a grip. The climate changes all the time, sometimes radically and rapidly. It is the norm.
And is is completely ridiculous to suppose that the climate right now just happens to be poised at some sort of optimum and that any change - natural or otherwise - must inevitably be damaging rather than beneficial to humankind. A warmer planet with a wetter, CO2-enriched atmosphere sounds pretty damn good. Certainly better than the alternative - a colder, drier planet.
What was is David Bellamy called CO2? “The most important airborne fertilizer in the world.” That’s right. People buy those little CO2 generators for their greenhouses for a reason you know.
bjchip,
> “I’ve seen the crap that some jackasses are putting forward…. and their analysis of both risks and costs bears no resemblance to what the science is saying.”
Perhaps you could point me at what you consider to be a reliable cost/benefit analysis which supports your position, and also to the ones which you reject?
> “You see, I actually did work for NASA. I know the science. ”
No, you don’t. What you may have is some small, very simplistic understanding of how just a handful of factors (out of a countless number, natural and otherwise) influence a complex, chaotic and inherently unpredictable system.
Let’s take something big and obvious like the role of clouds as a climate feedback mechanism. If the “experts” don’t have a really good understanding of how “simple” clouds effect climate then frankly they don’t know very much at all about the subject. Yet it is my understanding that the influence of clouds is even now poorly understood, and even the global warming cheerleaders at realclimate.org admit that “consistent with previous studies, clouds were found to provide the largest source of uncertainty in current models.”
So on the one hand I’ve got you telling me “I actually did work for NASA. I know the science,” and on the other I’ve got the rest of the internet telling me that even something as fundamental as cloud cover is still “poorly understood.”
What seems to have spooked many people are the widely trumpeted results of climate computer models; models which in fact just represent the prejudices and ignorance of the programmers that wrote them.
> “we advocate an end to unrelenting unfettered growth”
Spoken like a true rich westerner whose only problem is trying to keep their weight down.
More than half the planet urgently needs more economic growth in order to achieve a half-decent standard of living, and here you are, from your privileged position in the rich west, saying that we’ve had quite enough growth thank you.
Why is it that you people don’t seem to give a damn about all the ways hundreds of millions of people have their lives cut short and made utterly miserable? Economic development will *save* these people. Why is it that your eyes only light-up when talk turns to the lurid possiblity of potential negative climate effects, whereas the millions of actual deaths each year from infectious diarrhea and typhoid - to name just two - elicit not the slightest concern? Where, I suppose, is the drama in that?
Fortunately India, for one, seems to have decided that today’s poverty is a more urgent issue than your climate-change scaremongering and is committed to economic growth for its billion-plus people. Bravo. A thousand new coal-fired power stations across the country would be a most welcome sign of progress.
October 3rd, 2006 at 5:47 am
Mouldwarp
Are you as entirely impervious to reason as you seem or are you just trying us on?
That WAS a cost benefit analysis. My planet vs a trillion dollars and the planet won… no surprise. The problem has to do with the benefit assigned. You can’t believe the extremity of the risk, which is only a fair guess at what drives you. I’ve read others, written by economists all.
I’ve posted links to the science that tells us how much of the CO2 is anthropogenic, and I gave you a cost-benefit analysis that should have shocked you out of your shorts but…
YOU DON’T BELIEVE THE SCIENCE. That’s the long and short of it. I could post forever and there isn’t a single word of it that you’ll believe because you’ve made up your mind that you know the truth, because your opinion and your ideology tell you that you can’t possibly be wrong.
Now, just for the record, here are a couple of links…. again…. to the data that shows the CO2 being “ours”. Just for the record, in the past 800,000 years there is NO record of anything
like the CO2 spike we’ve just put into our atmosphere
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/how-do-we-know-t hat-recent-cosub2sub-increases-are-due-to-human-activities-updated/
http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-58/iss-5/p16a.html
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/11/650000-years-of- greenhouse-gas-concentrations/
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/06/how-much-of-the- recent-cosub2sub-increase-is-due-to-human-activities/
That’s the science viewpoint. They aren’t paid by Exxon-Mobil. They aren’t politicians. They aren’t professional liars. They aren’t, by and large, political at all. They couldn’t create a conspiracy between themselves in a fit because trying to get them to all do the same thing, or reach the same conclusion, is like herding cats.
And is is completely ridiculous to suppose that the climate right now just happens to be poised at some sort of optimum
Really? Is it so ridiculous to consider that we’ve filled up every habitable block of land on the planet and can barely feed ourselves, in THIS climate, not some other? Change is going to be bad for us. If it opens up Antarctica, makes the bulk of the equatorial regions uninhabitable, and reduces the land area by 3-5% cause the ocean rises… you call that a wash?
Clouds… water vapour is a feedback not a forcing. The forcing comes from CO2 and solar insolation and a number of other things… but understanding the science means I understand its limitations too. We don’t know EXACTLY how the albedo will change as the CO2 forcing pushes the temperature and evaporation up, knocks back the arctic ice and a new balance of evaporation and condensation is reached…. we do however, know how temperature of the planet ultimately responds to CO2, and the clouds have been doing what they do for all that time as well.
If it weren’t for your posts we’d have little or no entertainment around here.
Once again you lumber us with problems faced by any overpopulation drowning in its own excrement and struggling to feed the parts of it that are no longer near the nutrient.
Put some bacteria on agar in a petri dish and close the lid. Leave it that way and watch. For a while they grow more and more numerous. Very successful growth. Then the centers of the growth start to die out, as the accumulated waste toxins finally overwhelm their adaptive ability and new food sources are no longer reachable. If you’ve kept it to one species, it simply dies in the end. Multiple species and the most efficient one lasts longest but STILL dies in the end. That’s unfettered growth….. and a question for the human species.
Are we smarter than bacteria?
Maybe.
If the Bacteria in the areas which are still healthy turn back to the starving ailing centers and aid them rather than limiting their reproduction and growth, it does NOT solve the problem for them any more than it will solve the problem for the human species.
Taking the lid off the petri dish and going out to get more food and flush the waste, that WOULD solve the problem, but we spend less on learning to live and work in space in a year than we do in a fortnight of JUST the war in Iraq.
Lemmings respond to population pressure and diminishing resources through a remarkable adaption. Whole herds of them commit ritual suicide.
Are we smarter than lemmings?
So far the answer seems to be a resounding “No”. Weapons of mass destruction are our answer to the pressure and war and disease are our natural allies.
We don’t have to like it… but it is a little smarter than the bacterium’s response. Taking the lid off and escaping the dish, would be smarter, but we apparently are NOT smart enough to do that as a priority. There’s no money in it in the span of one person’s lifetime… the cost benefit analysis isn’t worked out on a thousand year scale. Economic considerations… again.
Don’t use a business model to plan the survival of your species.
BJ
October 3rd, 2006 at 11:04 am
Mouldwarp
> Lomborg concluded that addressing issues like the provision of clean water would be a better use of resources than mitigating climate change.
What makes you think Lomborg has any expertise in anything he claims, other than the fact that you like his arguments? And where is the evidence that (say) the USA has ramped up its foreign aid spending?
> When cornered by greenies bleating about global warming I sometimes ask them what percentage of the warming of the past 100 years was due to anthropogenic CO2. To this day not one of them has offered an intelligent reply
I suspect a lot depends on what you mean by “an intelligent reply”. You may be after something like “76.3%” which would be way too exact given the limits of certainty. An answer that builds this in could be x% plus or minus y%, but of course the man on the Clapham omnibus doesn’t use statistics that way. A better answer might be that the vast majority of the world’s climate scientists agree that the majority of global warming is anthropogenic, and if you want a better figure to consult the latest scientific journals. It may not be a satisfying answer if you’re only comfortable dealing with absolutes.
> What happens if others post significantly different figures (or, heaven forbid, will you collude?)? Won’t that illustrate just how little is known about the climate?
It would illustrate that most of us aren’t climate scientists. If you asked us the mass of the Moon we’d give a load of wildly different answers, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t known.
Scientists provide society with the current state of scientific certainty — e.g. ingesting mercury is bad — and if necessary the politicians act on it. Sometimes the politicians try to dictate what the scientists should find, with predictably bad results.
> Suppose new research concludes that the true influence is significantly less that you supposed? Would you be honest enough to admit that radical intervention is no longer justified
If the vast majority of the world’s climate scientists concluded that anthropogenic climate change was close to negligible (say, an unforeseen mechanism countered the rise in CO2) then the Kyoto Protocol would no longer be necessary. Individual countries would still have their own reasons for taxing fuel as they always have, of course.
> (and would indeed have disastrous effects on those relying on economic development to be pulled out of poverty)?
You’ve lost me there. I’ve seen no evidence that the Kyoto Protocol is harming developing countries, and plenty that climate change has. However, as always I welcome unbiased evidence to the contrary.
> Get a grip. The climate changes all the time, sometimes radically and rapidly. It is the norm.
Natural disasters happen all the time, but you wouldn’t want to be the cause of a modern-day Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum with the associated mass extinctions.
> And is is completely ridiculous to suppose that the climate right now just happens to be poised at some sort of optimum and that any change - natural or otherwise - must inevitably be damaging rather than beneficial to humankind.
Humans had been around for a long time until ten thousand years of stable climate allowed the development of agriculture and a thriving civilisation — that certainly seems like an optimum, and tampering with it risky.
> A warmer planet with a wetter, CO2-enriched atmosphere sounds pretty damn good. Certainly better than the alternative - a colder, drier planet.
I’m unfamiliar with the model that predicts such an idyllic picture. Is this one that Lomborg did on his Casio?
Seriously, I doubt if you’d prefer a Cretaceous-style climate to what we have now unless you live in the Arctic Circle. And the upheaval as the world reaches that stage has the potential to be horrific.
> What was is David Bellamy called CO2?
How many climate science papers has Bellamy had published? Oh that’s right, zero. He’s a botanist.
October 3rd, 2006 at 10:03 pm
Mouldwarp -
I recommend Al Gore’s film. He discusses old points raised formerly by deniers of anthropogenic climate change. He also discusses consequences of climate change, graphically. I think that every science teacher in NZ should take their classes to see this film.
Cost-benefit analyses have unknowns. Ideological factors enter when valuing costs/benefits. (Personally I think that the value of avoiding potential mass extinctions outweighs anything else.) There is controversy about what discount rates should be used - if any. There is controversy about traditional economic measures that many would argue are outdated such as GNP - vs genuine progress indicators. Bhutan has been using something like total national happiness. At any rate, the MfE climate change site has some economic reports. There is no need to put the onus on the individual on the street to be familiar with all the reports out there - an impossible task; reasonably, we ask experts to do that.
I understand that David Bellamy published a paper a while back that (to my recollection) largely denied glacial retreat. I also saw an opinion that the basis of that paper may have been questionable.
BJ - I’d prefer to see humanity learn to live sustainably within its means on Earth first, before expanding outwards. Otherwise, I would I shudder to think of humanity wreaking destruction on the galaxy!
I see that the NZ govt is consulting the public on climate change policy going forward:
http://www.climatechange.govt.nz/resources/consultation/feedback-form. html
So send your suggestions in!
October 4th, 2006 at 12:22 am
Prim
I understand your view. There are two reasons for mine:
Firstly - I am an engineer, I know what can be done in space in the next decade if we were to put the same sort of resources into it that we put into killing people.
Second - I observe history and the solution you would like to see is one that human society has never permitted to continue. It was natural to the aboriginals of Australia and the American Indian tribes but both were invaded and overwhelmed.
Our societies do compete… and the capitalist methods are the most competitive. The problem is that to make a solution to this we have to evolve beyond the competition to cooperation, something that is astonishingly rare even among individuals.
Given that the social solution will IMHO take centuries to happen and we have a window to do something measurable in years, maybe as many as 10 of those… it becomes a matter of buying time. It isn’t the first time we engineers have had to try to do this, but it is likely the most critical one… and it will take money and effort that is being squandered elsewhere.
That’s all, it isn’t that I don’t think you’re right. We really SHOULD figure out how to live sustainably, cause in time we’re going to have to… I am just observing the here-and-now problems and the lack of any appearance of progress on the social sciences solutions to the issues of sustainable civilization. Those observations tell me that technical solutions are the only ones available in time to save our collective butts.
… and they are NOT being worked on as a priority.
Which is the reason my children are here instead of in the USA.
respectfully
BJ
October 6th, 2006 at 3:18 pm
Baz,
>> “What makes you think Lomborg has any expertise in anything he claims, other than the fact that you like his arguments?”
I don’t think Lomborg makes any particular claims to be an expert in anything (except perhaps some familiarity with statistics.) He uses the expertise of others as the inputs to his argument; and yes, it’s his argument I like, and so should you. If his argument and his working assumptions are sound then his conclusions will be correct.
His argument, of course, is the economic one: We have only finite resources to tackle an infinite number of problems, so we have to prioritise in order to derive the maximum benefit. He recognises that everything is a trade off and that misallocating resources will be paid for in human misery and lives on a truly vast scale. So this is important stuff.
Inevitably his working assumptions are all incorrect to a greater or lesser degree. He did, for example, assume that the effects of climate change will be a big negative. I can see no reason to make such an assumption, although I would agree that there would be costs of adaptation, even if most of the climate change is natural. And to have any validity, this sort of argument must of course include all the benefits that accrue from economic activity.
So it’s his *argument* I like, not the particular conclusions he reached.
Contrast his effort with the green “argument” which amounts to little more than religious propaganda. Its main flaws are the complete refusal to admit that there will inevitably be certain benefits in a slightly warmer, moister, CO2-enriched climate, the complete refusal to acknowledge that climate change is just one of many issues affecting humanity and that there is nothing noble about their complete indifference to the terrible consequences of today’s global poverty, and the complete refusal to acknowledge the vast benefits of the economic development they decry.
It seems to me a perfectly reasonable conclusion that pursuing economic development to eradicate poverty is the best strategy.
Unless the greens have a better analysis of their own which validates their position then they are just a bunch of dangerous, sanctimonious, self-indulgent single-issue zealots. I’ve looked hard and I’ve never seen such a report…
>> “Humans had been around for a long time until ten thousand years of stable climate allowed the development of agriculture and a thriving civilisation — that certainly seems like an optimum, and tampering with it risky.”
The question is whether the benefits outweight the costs, and we know that the benefits of economic development are absolutely vast. What is needed is a calm and objective estimate of the costs of any anthropogenic climate change, and here the greens are their own worst enemies. They are so hysterical and biased that it is absolutely impossible for them to even approach the issue objectively (witness my pointing out some benefits of climate change). If they were to calm down and try and rationalise then a realistic and clearer consensus might begin to emerge.
And you say that when it comes to the Earth’s climate, “tampering with it risky.” So what to make of this NASA report?:- “LANDCOVER CHANGES MAY RIVAL GREENHOUSE GASES AS CAUSE OF CLIMATE CHANGE”
‘”Our work suggests that the impacts of human-caused landcover changes on climate are at least as important, and quite possibly more important than those of carbon dioxide,” said Roger Pielke, Sr., an atmospheric scientist at Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colo., and lead author of the study. “Through landcover changes over the last 300 years, we may have already altered the climate more than would occur associated with the radiative effect of a doubling of carbon dioxide.”‘
http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/20020926landcover.html
Assuming that this analysis is essentially correct (the effect may be greater or less than the scientists believe) the greens should, if they are to be consistent, lobby for radical changes in land use just as vociferously as they lobby against CO2 emissions.
Of course, that isn’t going to happen. They know they can manipulate people’s envy about “big business,” but if they tried to preach radical global reforestation (with implied depopulation) they’d be a laughing stock. More than that, people would suddenly realise that the climate is subject to all sorts of influences, including numerous anthropogenic ones, and that CO2 is just one agent on a very long list.
So the conclusion must be that there is no “correct” climate, that we can’t predict or control the climate, and that the only certainty we have is that economic development is an astronomical benefit for humankind which helps alleviate *all* problems, including those associated with climate change.
> “How many climate science papers has Bellamy had published? Oh that’s right, zero. He’s a botanist.”
So we can probably accept as true his statement that CO2 is “the most important airborne fertilizer in the world.â€??
bjchip,
> “That WAS a cost benefit analysis.”
No, that was a back-of-an-envelope piece of advocacy.
And to be honest, I have absolutely no respect for the opinions of the global warming cheerleaders at realclimate.org. Their infamous hockeystick chart has been shown to be the result of inappropriate proxies and statistical incompetence. Anyone can make a mistake, but the way those guys have responded to valid criticism is nothing short of disgraceful.
> “That’s the science viewpoint. They aren’t paid by Exxon-Mobil”
They work for free? I don’t think so. These people know full well that their future funding depends solely on their ability to tell a scary, sexy story of impending climate disaster.
So if you want to play the unworthy game of discounting contrary evidence because of sources of (partial) funding we should perhaps discount everything said by, oh I don’t know, everyone at NASA which is infamous for its lobbying agenda?
> “Just for the record, in the past 800,000 years there is NO record of anything like the CO2 spike we’ve just put into our atmosphere”
And?
I think you’d agree that throughout all that period of relative CO2 stability the climate was changing all the time, often drastically - witness the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age as just two very recent examples. So significant climate change is the norm.
That being the case, it is logically completely wrong to infer that the most recent variation in this endless sequence (and which largely consists of a welcome recovery from the Little Ice Age) was mostly driven by an entirely new agent, namely changes in CO2 levels. You just can’t make that assumption.
And for anyone who’s not aware, with regard to the celebrated longer term correlation between climate and levels of amospheric CO2 (as revealed in ice cores) it is *very clear* that the climate change *preceeded* and drove the change in CO2 levels, not vice versa (because warming oceans can store less CO2 and so release it into the atmosphere),
> “Is it so ridiculous to consider that we’ve filled up every habitable block of land on the planet and can barely feed ourselves, in THIS climate, not some other?”
Yes, actually, it is ridiculous. You’re just making this stuff up. “Barely feed ourselves” indeed. Just google for “global obesity epidemic” for a start. On top of which, GM promises to unleash a second green revolution which will vastly increase yields *and* allow food to be grown in what have previously been considered unproductive regions.
The real problem is how millions of small farmers will cope with the falling food prices.
> “We don’t know EXACTLY how the albedo will change”
What do you mean “EXACTLY”? The truth is you have *no idea* whether this will turn out to be a positive or negative feedback mechanism. Yet if it is a negative feedback - where increased evaporation increases the cloud cover which reflects back more sunlight - we have a largely self-regulating climate. I should add that the scaremongering case relies heavily on there being a runaway reaction of positive feedbacks as a warmer climate itself forces yet more warming. Yet we know that the Medieval Warm Period was at least as warm (and probably warmer) than today, and there was obviously no runaway feedback loop then, so the assumption must be that the net feedback is negative and self-regulating.
The bottom line is, if you don’t *know* how this fundamental mechanism works (and it is just one of many important variables) then you have absolutely no business spreading your hysteria. All you have is a little knowledge and a hell of a lot of speculation.
Prim,
> “I recommend Al Gore’s film.”
Maybe if it’s downloadable for free on the Internet.
And may I recommend to you in return Lomborg’s “Skeptical Environmentalist.” Maybe it’s available from the library. It really is written in very measured tones and in no way tries to say that everything is fine with the environment. What is does do is try and measure the true extent of the many problems and put them into some context, all using official figures. Only then can we see where action is most required. And here’s Lomborg writing about An Inconvenient Truth:-
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/lomborg6/English
> “Cost-benefit analyses have unknowns.”
Clearly many assumptions and estimates have to be made, but what is the alternative? A cost/benefit analysis using best effort science and assumptions is all we’ve got. I’m not saying that Lomborg is right, I’m saying that his approach is right and that, in the absence of anything more convincing, he conclusions must carry some weight.
> “Ideological factors enter when valuing costs/benefits.”
I suggest that this is much more of a problem with single-issue advocates. At least someone honestly conducting a cost/benefit analysis does so specifically because he is aware that there are competing claims for limited resources.
I’m sure that if Lomborg’s effort had concluded that tackling climate change was the way to go he would have been an instant green celebrity and his work presented as solid support for the green agenda. The fact that he is so demonised for the “wrong” conclusion tells you a lot about the greens.
October 6th, 2006 at 10:47 pm
Mould warp:
I have been observing your interactions on this blog for some time now.
You obviously have a good intellect, and are trying to communicate and get your (often well expressed) arguments across …
However, the following ( just a few examples of your sporadic addenda) show a disturbing lack of judgement, and thus do nothing to enhance your otherwise sterling efforts.
Maybe you just can’t help yourself … BUT this type of attack completely destroys any impact your well presented material may have had.
Is that what you want to happen?
QUOTE:
” … and here the greens are their own worst enemies. They are so hysterical and biased that it is absolutely impossible for them to even approach the issue objectively (witness my pointing out some benefits of climate change). If they were to calm down and try and rationalise then a realistic and clearer consensus might begin to emerge… then they are just a bunch of dangerous, sanctimonious, self-indulgent single-issue zealots. I’ve looked hard and I’ve never seen such … ”
“Winning hearts and minds” Mould warp? I don’t think so!
The Greens are tolerant and kind. So far they are tolerating your outbursts … but for how much longer?
eredwen
October 7th, 2006 at 12:36 pm
Mouldwarp -
The Green party’s policies cover a wide range of issues. I have no doubt that they care deeply about land use issues, e.g. thinking back to native forests and Timberlands. I believe that they are also aware of possible benefits from climate change, but like the vast majority, think that the negative impacts will far outweigh these. Again, I recommend you see Al Gore’s film.
One of my own areas of interest has been energy. I’ve seen a few economic reports in the energy area, which feeds into climate change. Reports on the EECA site have predicted economic benefits from various energy efficiency measures. Reports discuss payback periods for solar water heating. The government also consults, e.g. as I noted above, and recent public consultation with stakeholders to optimise the approach going forward with solar water heating. Officials are well aware that programmes need to provide good value for taxpayer dollars, and proceed with some care. However, I think that these reports tend to undervalue climate change effects, if they include them at all. In my view, they also tend to use rather high discount rates and traditional economic measures which are increasingly controversial. Even then - economic benefits are predicted. It would be interesting to see economic projections for NZ that use very different sets of assumptions around these variables and measures.
The costs and benefits of climate change may be more difficult to quantify than effects of various energy-related measures. However, BJ’s cost estimate of infinity may be sufficiently near the right answer.
Climate change presents a challenge for governments. There is a need to act quickly, combined with a need to act prudently. This in an environment where it takes time and expertise to gather information, run programmes, measure results and iterate. Such time may become a luxury. The UK Prime Minister has said that we only have seven years to avoid climate crisis. Many would say that governments are moving too slowly and carefully for their liking. We may need a paradigm shift. Prudence may be increasingly aligning with rapidity.
BJ - I agree with you that technology is a big part of the answer. Sometimes I am not sure whether it is more part of the problem! (Eg increasing car use in China - and yes, there is the beneficial side to that also.) Once use of a technology causes a problem, then updating the technology may also become part of a solution.
I recall that an energy efficiency expert wrote recently that we have the technology now to fix a lot of energy issues; the problem is getting people to adopt the technology. It is as if they apply a high discount rate. It is hard for me to watch this happen. Many say that they care about the environment, but their actions discount it, in my view recklessly.
Like you, BJ, I think that cooperation is the key. Legislatures can impose a certain degree of cooperation on people, and/or set up frameworks for doing so. (Energy efficiency regulations for example.) As between nations, that’s difficult. Even the Kyoto Protocol looks to be far too weak. You have made good points about the destructive effects that competition can have. Perhaps it needs to be channelled in the right way for the necessary level of cooperation to emerge. I am still thinking on it.
I do note that some individuals are seeing opportunities and benefits of leadership in the climate change area, e.g. the Governor of California and Richard Branson. I think that such pioneering individuals often have a habit of pulling the rest of humanity along with them. We can do our best to encourage these individuals, and our MPs.
Prim
October 9th, 2006 at 3:44 pm
Mouldwarp
> I don’t think Lomborg makes any particular claims to be an expert in anything (except perhaps some familiarity with statistics.) He uses the expertise of others as the inputs to his argument; and yes, it’s his argument I like, and so should you. If his argument and his working assumptions are sound then his conclusions will be correct.
That’s where peer review comes in. He can get papers reviewed and published in the appropriate journals — as can anyone. If he’s claiming that his approach is more statistical, he can publish in statistical journals. If they find errors, he can correct them and resubmit. He has done this before back in his professorship days, so he know the drill. But he doesn’t do that anymore, so the layman doesn’t know how sound his arguments are.
Even the fact that he uses the expertise of others as input to his work is no guarantee of quality. For example, he might cherry-pick his studies, or place undue emphasis on flawed studies. He might quote out of context. He might use lots of secondary sources (newspapers, web sites etc). He might reach the wrong conclusions from good studies — there are dozens of logical fallacies that could be the culprit here.
> It seems to me a perfectly reasonable conclusion that pursuing economic development to eradicate poverty is the best strategy.
Some problems are best tackled by prevention rather than “let’s clean up later” (as anyone who has tried to get offspring to brush their teeth will avow). It looks strongly like global warming is one of these — this viewpoint has the support of numerous right-wing parties, businesses and economists. I don’t expect to see Dubya or Exxon changing any time soon, though.
> So the conclusion must be that there is no “correct” climate, that we can’t predict or control the climate, and that the only certainty we have is that economic development is an astronomical benefit for humankind which helps alleviate *all* problems
As you pointed out, CO2 and land use changes the climate, so we are able to exert control over it. Prediction of the climate is the best it has ever been, and improving all the time with new research and additional computational power. And the certainty of economic development would take a pounding if more extreme weather, coastal flooding and loss of property, bankrupt insurance and other financial institutions became the norm.
>> “How many climate science papers has Bellamy had published? Oh that’s right, zero. He’s a botanist.”
> So we can probably accept as true his statement that CO2 is “the most important airborne fertilizer in the world.”?
Maybe we should get the statement peer-reviewed?
Personally, I find it an odd thing to say as CO2 doesn’t meet the definition of fertilizer, a bit like saying “oxygen is the best growth hormone”. I *think* I know what Bellamy means, but it’s a simplistic statement: some plants won’t benefit from increased CO2, and some will do worse if the local climate changes to something less favourable.
Baz
October 9th, 2006 at 4:54 pm
Mouldwarp
He did, for example, assume that the effects of climate change will be a big negative. I can see no reason to make such an assumption, although I would agree that there would be costs of adaptation, even if most of the climate change is natural.
There are several basic and substantial issues here. First, HE assumed the effects will be “a big negative”. His idea of a big negative reflects a strong bias towards the positive. The possibility that it could destroy human civilization is accorded no place in his analysis because he made the assumption that the worst case involved steady-state transitions, no tipping-points, no surprises and no wars.
YOU however, go way further than that. You have zero evidence to support that position, I have never even seen it proposed on the cheerleading “nuke the whales” sites, it is just your assumption. Something you use to annoy us even more.
Those two problems are REAL problems Mouldwarp.. it is impossible to take anything you say completely seriously after the second of them in particular.
Next, the land-use issue you cite may also be a contributor to the problems we face. We focus on the CO2 forcing because that part of the model is very clear. The land-use forcings have significant negative implications for economic growth, and since you haven’t really understood that part of it, just grasped the point that there’s more to this than simply CO2, you champion this as yet another way to divert our attention from a problem we know MUST be solved. Land use is considered in the models, but its inputs may need to be adjusted as our understanding increases. Your attribution of warming to one cause or another, and you are happy to use anything at all as a smoke screen, is more complex than one-or-the-other. The effects cross link. Land-use is vexed by desertification issues… and you cannot argue that making more formerly arable land into desert is a net plus for the human species.
No, that was a back-of-an-envelope piece of advocacy.
No, I was serious. You seem to think that the problems we cause ourselves can’t possibly destroy our civilization. You suffer this failure of imagination because if you accepted it you’d have to accept the need to actually do things about it that are distasteful to your political ideology.
As for global obesity, that hardly cuts well against your consistent argument that we should feed the starving people in the undeveloped world with our relative “wealth”.
Mouldwarp, you’re nothing less than a troll, and a major pita, and I am not doing this with you anymore. It doesn’t pay me to argue with a fool who is so implacably opposed to accepting unpleasant truths.
BJ
October 10th, 2006 at 12:38 am
“the only certainty we have is that economic development is an astronomical benefit for humankind which helps alleviate *all* problems”
ROFL!!!
(twice…two asterisks, couldn’t help myself)
BTW, does “astronomical benefit” mean it benefits NASA the most?
October 10th, 2006 at 4:24 am
Nope.. NASA gets nothing, that’s been the rule ever since Ronnie Raygun. Increases in the NASA budget don’t hurt if they lead us to CATS (Cheap Access To Space), cause from out there the engineering community can buy the species time to adapt it social structures and economic rules to manage its existence sustainably… or a way to escape its failure to do so.
Mouldwarp gets no more attention from me now. He’s proven to be impervious to science and logic, and devoid of imagination. He is unwilling and/or unable to consider a future with anything with anything but the best possible of all outcomes resulting from our excesses. Not an engineer either, or he’d know that you have to design for the worst case times two if you hope to have your structure survive.
respectfully
BJ