
97% environmentalist - rndn
http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2316
======
lern_too_spel
Never skip Aaronson's comments on his blog posts. They're often as good as the
posts themselves. Here's a great example:

"Whenever I hear this style of argument, I’m reminded of Marcia Clark’s
closing argument in the OJ Simpson trial: 'We have proved that OJ Simpson is a
murderer. The defense has proved that Mark Fuhrman is a racist.'

"Likewise, in this case: 'We have proved that climate change is a grave threat
to the survival of human civilization. You have proved that rich, do-gooder
liberals can come off as annoying hypocrites.'

"Unfortunately, the human mind is wired in such a way that, just as 'Mark
Fuhrman is a racist' actually worked to get OJ acquitted for murder, so 'Al
Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio are smug elitists, flying around in their private
jets' is considered by millions to be a strong argument for climate inaction."

~~~
briandear
If Al Gore were so profoundly afraid of climate change, he wouldn't fly in a
private jet or have a huge mansion with massive electrical consumption. Since
he does those things, then he's obviously not convinced that human activity
affects climate. Interestingly, if he donated the billions in profits he has
made from his climate change "investments" then perhaps he could be taken more
seriously. Al Gore invests in "green" companies. He uses his platform to scare
the world. He becomes a billionaire. He continues living his life exactly as
he did before. Anyone that attempts to give Al Gore any credibility whatsoever
has none themselves.

It's interesting because Warren Buffet is often cited by leftists because
Buffet supports raising income taxes. See the Buffet secretary story from 2011
where he complained that his secretary pays a higher income tax rate than he
does. Interestingly, Buffet did not call for a raising of the capital gains
tax -- the form of income from which Buffet derives his wealth. The relevance
of this example is that these marquee people that try and influence public
policy ALWAYS act rationally towards their own best interests. Al Gore
promotes AGW and becomes a billionaire. Buffet suggests raising income taxes
to potentially deflect calls to raise capital gains taxes.

This "settled science" bullshit is exactly that. No science is "settled," yet
there are those that want to fundamentally alter civilization based on
politically-influenced mathematical models. Interestingly, even the IPCC
admits that "we redistribute world's wealth by climate policy." Looking at the
AGW issue objectively, given all of the scandal, the misrepresentations, the
outright lies (i.e. the polar ice cap will be completely gone by 2016,) and
the Chicken Little aspects, a person with no political opinions at all would
be suspicious. The idea of human-caused global warming has been trumpeted with
a zeal equal to that of the Eugenics movement -- and we all know how that
turned out.

As an example, Charles Davenport had a PhD in biology from Harvard and later
was a Harvard professor. He also was the director of Cold Spring Harbor
Laboratory. At the time, one could say his scientific credentials were beyond
reproach. One of his statements (among others) was, "I believe in such a
selection of immigrants as shall not tend to adulterate our national germ
plasm with socially unfit traits." This highly respected scientist helped and
supported the Nazis, their scientific programs were based on much of
Davenport's work. Yet, in 1911, he was elected to the National Academy of
Sciences because of his eugenics work. Eugenics inspired Margaret Sanger to
found Planned Parenthood, not to save society from unwanted pregnancies, but
to prevent immigrant "inferiors" from breeding. A member of the National
Academy of Sciences who laid the groundwork for the extermination of millions
of people. All based on "settled science."

So pardon me if I'm a bit skeptical when a billionaire politician like Al Gore
tries to sell the world a bill of goods. We could argue that divestiture or
the elimination of fossil fuels might be "good," but then again similar
arguments for "goodness" were made in the justification eugenics. I'm
certainly not comparing oil to genocide; I'm elucidating the potential rabbit
hole down which we may go when we confuse the scientific with the political.

~~~
Rangi42
_" If Al Gore were so profoundly afraid of climate change, he wouldn't fly in
a private jet or have a huge mansion with massive electrical consumption.
Since he does those things, then he's obviously not convinced that human
activity affects climate."_

Nobody is claiming that climate change is a threat just because Al Gore says
so, so the sincerity of his belief is irrelevant. Politicians are not the ones
"selling the world" on climate change; they're the ones being persuaded (to
varying degrees) by scientific evidence of a man-made threat, and they're in a
position of power to do something about it.

As for what happens when politicians _don 't_ pay attention to climate change,
just look at Florida: [http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-
mix/wp/2015/03/09...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-
mix/wp/2015/03/09/florida-state-most-affected-by-climate-change-reportedly-
bans-term-climate-change/) Their senator and governor don't believe global
warming exists, and they're already having to deal with rising sea levels.
It's the politicians who _don 't_ take action that are harming their
constituents, not those who do.

~~~
jdhzzz
_they 're the ones being persuaded (to varying degrees) by scientific evidence
of a man-made threat_

Personally I am in the camp that global warming is almost certainly real. What
I haven't seen is an estimate of what percentage is due to human activity. Do
you have a citation for what that might be? It strikes me that appropriate
action differs depending on humanity's contribution, e.g. < 40%, do nothing to
alter consumption, it won't appreciably alter the result, > 100 % (Hey,
without human intervention we might actually experience cooling) throttle it
down as best as practical.

~~~
dragonwriter
The amount of the change that's due to human activity and the amount of effect
viable changes in human activity could have are, at best, very loosely
related.

------
doctorpangloss
The greatest irony is that a preponderance of oil actually made energy stocks
go down. In that sense, Scott Aaronson gets the relationship between oil in
the ground and long stock in energy companies completely backwards. Indeed,
the S&P energy sector index, for example, has been strongly positively
correlated with oil prices for at least the last two years that I've checked.

This is sort of a pedantic point: selling your shares in Shell substitutes,
not reinforces, pumping more oil out of the ground. In that sense, divestment
achieves its goal of keeping oil in the ground, for sure. But sometimes, if
your company can pump more oil from the ground, and Saudi doesn't also pump
more oil, you've made money and your stock rises. Sometimes, if you pump more
oil from the ground, everyone's stock falls. It's complicated.

What's most persuasive? If you had listened to the divestment folks back in
2012, when many of these movements took off, you would be on a great big pile
of cash right now.

So it actually makes a lot more sense to pitch big academic endowments:
"You'll make a ton of money if you divest from energy stocks." There's just no
way you could have known that would work in 2013, especially in the midst of
an oil boom.

My recommendation: Make as much money as possible, and lobby for cap-and-trade
pollution credits. Then you can buy all the credits you want, and simply not
use them. It is a far more direct and economically predictable way to achieve
environmental change.

~~~
WalterBright
The cap-and-trade thing never made much sense to me. If you want to reduce
something, simply tax it.

~~~
YokoZar
Cap-and-trade systems offer more directly defined caps. If you have confidence
about how much of something is "correct", a cap-and-trade regime can just set
its cap to that amount and let the price be whatever it may be. Cap-and-trade
also has the advantage of being sometimes politically easier to implement as
the status quo -- just set the cap to whatever current usage is, hand out
credits to whoever is currently using the resource, and then no current
stakeholder loses as a result of turning on the policy.

Taxes, by contrast, require some amount of tweaking the tax every time you
think the resource is being overconsumed. Even if there's political consensus
to do something now, there's a very real danger of undershooting, the resource
being still overconsumed in the future, but the political will to raise the
tax again no longer being present (example: imaging trying to raise consumer
gas taxes in the US today).

Both regulations have the same basic goals -- raise the price of the thing to
reduce usage, maybe collect some revenue in the process. Which regulation
makes more sense depends a bit on the political reality (and future reality),
and the relative diffculty of administering a tax vs a cap. It depends on
context.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Your criticisms of a carbon tax seem to apply directly to cap-and-trade if the
incorrect amount is chosen. Later governments can change the cap upwards or
accelerate it's downward descent too, and may well need to if the science
changes or other governments do nothing.

And if you want to hand billions in tax credits to current carbon polluters so
they don't fight the tax, you can do that with a carbon tax too. I'd actually
recommend doing this for ordinary people, so that you don't hurt people with
current high-carbon lifestyles too much, but still offer an incentive to save
carbon/money, possibly a phase in would be required as is generally proposed
for cap and trade.

I'm also wondering how a carbon cap and trade system could be effective and
yet not result in a raise in gas prices in the US? That's surely the whole
point?

~~~
SilasX
>Your criticisms of a carbon tax seem to apply directly to cap-and-trade if
the incorrect amount is chosen. Later governments can change the cap upwards
or accelerate it's downward descent too, and may well need to if the science
changes or other governments do nothing.

In fairness, this can be a _lot_ more difficult politically than raising or
lowering a tax. Compare:

"Oh jeez, if we don't issue enough taxi medallions, we can just issue more
later, or remove the requirement altoghether." (And have people who bought
them scream bloody murder.)

------
maceo
As much as I admire many of the people working towards divestment from fossil
fuel companies, I think the whole movement is defeatist. Great, you convince
your university endowment fund, pension fund, etc to divest -- now what? Now
those shares will be bought and controlled by an institution that is immune
from popular pressure. Who wins here? Nobody.

On the other hand, if instead of agitating for divestment, the
students/workers/activists were to ask for proxy votes, then we could put up a
real fight at shareholder meetings. Sure, we might not have enough power to
elect board members in the early stages, but nothing builds a movement more
than meeting up with like-minded people and confronting the enemy face to
face. It would provide a forum for activists to make connections with one
another, grow the movement, and get excited about the possibility of fighting
climate change by being an engaged citizen.

It's heart-breaking to me to see so much support given to this divestment
movement -- I've never seen any of the major figures involved give a
justification for why we should be divesting rather than fighting the
corporations head on. Especially since proxy fights have a history of driving
movement growth in the US. Divestment is a retreat. If climate change is
really as much of a threat as most of us know it to be, then retreating should
not be an option.

~~~
Brakenshire
I have had a similar reaction before. But I think the alternative you offer is
too rosy. There seems very little chance that shareholder activism will be
able to stop oil companies looking for oil - that is their sole purpose and to
a large degree their sole expertise.

And there is a point to make that many fossil fuel assets will be stranded,
and made worthless, if we do manage to limit emissions enough to stay below an
increase of 2-3 degrees Celsius. The Bank of England and the IMF are both
talking about this being another subprime issue. The divestment of pension
funds, major charities and other similar organizations gives a better, more
accurate sense of jeopardy – 'by all means, invest in these stocks, but bear
in mind that you are taking a gamble, and don't be surprised if your
investment goes belly up' and it also means that if such a retrenchment takes
place the burden will fall on speculative private capital rather than
important and structural social institutions.

I would like to read more discussion about the issue, though.

------
DanielBMarkham
Three things seem true to me.

1) The debate around climate change is the worst piece of rhetorical garbage
that has ever been foisted on mankind in the last couple of decades. Look at
the terms in this essay, which is admittedly a more balanced judgment. We have
environmentalists and _anti-environmentalists_. Who that breathes does not
like breathing? Are there folks who wish to poison themselves? Please, spare
me the "rich folks are out to destroy the planet on the backs of the poor"
argument. Everybody is an environmentalist, at least when it comes to being a
living human. Political groups which have no logical opponents do not add
productively to the public discourse.

2) The more energy and freedom poor people have, the better we all are. Poor
workers with cars can drive to find jobs. Poor people without water can use
energy to extract water from deep in the ground, the air, or the ocean. Poor
people with cheap energy can rebuild houses, move, go to school, live a better
life. More freedom and cheaper power to as many poor people as possible.

3) Intelligent carbon-based creatures that exist in dry areas of the habitable
zone of solar systems will evolve into their intelligence based on the backs
of millions of years of built up hydrocarbons. These creatures will release
this energy by burning -- this is as natural as a fish swimming in the ocean.
Is such a release part of The Great Filter? Or is such a release part of the
inevitable journey from the swamp to the sky? I don't think we have enough
evidence to say one way or another. I am concerned by those who feel
otherwise.

I think worst-case scenarios around climate change emphasize the need to
productively develop all of mankind as quickly as possible. That probably
means hundreds of new nuclear reactors being built. Worldwide. I see no effort
anywhere for that to happen. Instead I see various proposals that always end
up with expensive energy for poor people. This is only going to make the
problem worse. We are going to take away the tools that poor people and
nations need to grow capabilities to deal with things when they change. And
while we're doing it, we're going to rob them and their children of a better
future. It's a solution that's worse than the problem.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> I think worst-case scenarios around climate change emphasize the need to
> productively develop all of mankind as quickly as possible. That probably
> means hundreds of new nuclear reactors being built. Worldwide. I see no
> effort anywhere for that to happen. Instead I see various proposals that
> always end up with expensive energy for poor people. This is only going to
> make the problem worse. We are going to take away the tools that poor people
> and nations need to grow capabilities to deal with things when they change.
> And while we're doing it, we're going to rob them and their children of a
> better future. It's a solution that's worse than the problem.

I really have to disagree with you. After reading about the decline in nuclear
power across the world, the inability to get traction on Thorium-based LFTRs,
and so forth, nuclear is not the answer. I mean, it _could_ be if we as a
species didn't suck so terribly at managing it as an energy source. We are not
that species yet (note we still keep a coal-fired generation plant operating
near Congress in DC due to politics).

If you'd like to debate this in depth, check my profile; my email is there.
The Earth Policy Institute (holla Lester Brown) has shown how quickly China is
bringing online solar and wind generation resources that already outpace their
nuclear generation capacity. Bloomberg reported Friday that the US is on track
to add an additional 35 percent of solar capacity this year alone.

Nuclear plants, coal plants, all of these central generation facilities all
require massive capital outlays, they require corporations to manage them,
staff to run. Solar and wind require none of these (except utility-scale,
there be a bit more work required there).

It's simple, so very simple! We should be build solar and wind flat out as
fast as possible, selling it to those who can afford it and giving it away to
those who can't.

Solar Electric Light Fund [http://self.org/](http://self.org/)

"SELF's mission is to design and implement solar energy solutions to assist
the 1.5 billion people living in energy poverty with their economic,
educational, health care and agricultural development."

Wind vs Nuclear in China: [http://www.earth-
policy.org/data_highlights/2014/highlights4...](http://www.earth-
policy.org/data_highlights/2014/highlights45)

Bloomberg Article I mention:
[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-26/solar-
as-f...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-26/solar-as-fastest-
growing-u-s-power-source-rivals-shale-boom)

Deutsche Bank Predicts Grid Parity Of Solar Across All Fifty States in 2016:
[http://cleantechnica.com/2014/10/29/solar-grid-parity-us-
sta...](http://cleantechnica.com/2014/10/29/solar-grid-parity-us-
states-2016-says-deutsche-bank/)

~~~
btoptical
Let's figure out just how much area we need for solar panels.

The US consumes about 19.05M barrels of oil per day. Each barrel of oil is
about 1.6 MWh of power.

So this is 31017210 MWh (3.1 x 10^10 kWh) of power just in oil every day..

The solar constant is 1.36kW/m^2 on average. Solar panels convert solar energy
into power with roughly a 14% efficiency or about 190W/m^2 or about 2.2kWh/m^2
in 12hrs.

Taking 3.1 x 10^10 kWh/(2.2kWh/m^2) I get 13 x 10^9 m^2. Converting this to
miles gives us about 5240sq miles of solar panels just to get the same amount
of energy we consume in oil.

Hopefully I did everything right above.

~~~
toomuchtodo
You're comparing a barrel of oil directly to electricity, a fallacy. Electric
vehicles are extremely efficient photon to road compared to combustion
vehicles.

"Tank-to-wheel efficiency of conventional Otto cycle car is only 16% as
illustrated fellow. Here, Otto cycle engine loss is 72%, standby /idle loss is
10% and drive line loss is 2%. Accessories loss, such as air conditioning unit
consumes 2% but for comparison purposes, it was assumed 0%."

That's right. You're losing almost 90% of your available energy to heat. In
all practicalities, you use less than 1% of energy available in a barrel of
oil to move a car forward.

[http://www.asahi-
net.or.jp/~pu4i-aok/cooldata2/hybridcar/hyb...](http://www.asahi-
net.or.jp/~pu4i-aok/cooldata2/hybridcar/hybridcare.htm)

"That’s right, an electric car is over four times as efficient at turning
energy into motion."

[https://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2013/02/22/wells-to-
whee...](https://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2013/02/22/wells-to-wheels-
electric-car-efficiency/)

Please see /u/Brackenshire's post
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9676675](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9676675))
regarding land required.

------
tribe
I have read similar perspectives before[1], and I am not sure how I feel about
them. On the one hand, much of the industrial pollution /is/ in response to
consumer demand and reducing personal consumption has some impact on that. But
on the other hand, it seems very clear that by and large the public will never
change consumption patterns to be more environmentally friendly ( sometimes
because they cannot financially, and often because they do not care ). So it
seems systematic changes are necessary.

[1] [https://orionmagazine.org/article/forget-shorter-
showers/](https://orionmagazine.org/article/forget-shorter-showers/)

~~~
VLM
"the public will never change consumption patterns to be more environmentally
friendly"

Gas / oil / coal / food are not free. In fact the poorer you are, the more
expensive they are relative to total lifestyle.

The financial markets are pretty messed up. The newspaper interest rate is
0.025% or whatever, but it doesn't matter. The real world interest rate for
poor people is 29.99% credit cards and loansharks and rent-to-own scams. If
that were fixed, so poor people could buy house insulation and solar panels at
bank level interest rates instead of loan shark level interest rates or no
operating financial markets at all...

"So it seems systematic changes are necessary."

We don't have the political organization at this time to do anything other
than mess things up worse than they are currently. The same folks who can't
provide a modern medical system, a sensible K12 or higher ed system, can't do
foreign policy without killing millions of innocent civilians, can't run an
economy to the benefit of more than 1% of the citizens, if, given more power
over environmental issues, are just going to find a way to make the rich
richer, the poor poorer, and kill a bunch of proles all while telling us its
for "our" own good. One has to be pragmatic, screwing up is the only thing
they've done for a couple generations. Given that historical record, its very
hard to support .gov intervention beyond the "put a green ribbon imported from
a Chinese factory on my car to raise awareness" level of action.

~~~
fennecfoxen
> The financial markets are pretty messed up... The real world interest rate
> for poor people is 29.99% credit cards and loansharks and rent-to-own scams.

Yeah, turns out there's a heck of a risk premium involved with making
unsecured non-recourse loans to people who don't make all that much money.
This sucks, of course, but what in God's name do you expect to happen instead?
Banks _willingly_ losing billions a year on bad loans? We do have charities in
this country, but banks aren't them.

> If that were fixed, so poor people could buy house insulation and solar
> panels at bank level interest rates instead of loan shark level interest
> rates...

Poor people buying home insulation? I thought we called it the Weatherization
Assistance Program. (Part of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.)
If that didn't work out, why not, and what exactly do you think _will_ work
out? (And anyway, do poor people generally own a house, or rent?)

~~~
WalterBright
I thought banks already tried loaning money to people who couldn't pay it
back. It produced the recent housing bubble and crash.

------
ziedaniel1
97% environmentalist -- the same way he called himself 97% feminist:
[http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2091#comment-326664](http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2091#comment-326664)

------
hobarrera
I'm all for getting rid of carbon fuels due to inefficiency, lack of
scalability, etc.

But, global warming? I would have expected better of educated people such as
these.

eg:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuj_tlRRQdQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuj_tlRRQdQ)

~~~
lern_too_spel
My first thought was to respond with
[https://www.skepticalscience.com/Monckton_Myths_arg.htm](https://www.skepticalscience.com/Monckton_Myths_arg.htm),
but we all know that hobarrera isn't actually interested in facts (or why post
a video of a non-scientist confronting other non-scientists about all the
things none of them know anything about)?

Scott dealt with him correctly.
[http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2316#comment-639452](http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2316#comment-639452)

~~~
hobarrera
> or why post a video of a non-scientist confronting other non-scientists
> about all the things none of them know anything about

Well, the origin post is also about someone not specialized in this area
speaking about the issue. I don't think "no being a scientist" disqualifies
anything you say: what we should care about are merely the facts that the
person exposes.

I actually went through the first link you posted. The first paragraph is no
more than a Argumentum Ad Hominem, while the rest is a lot of claims, with
many interlinked articles, but no strong raw data to back most of it up.

> Scott dealt with him correctly.
> [http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2316#comment-639452](http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2316#comment-639452)

He basically disregarded the information provided because the video was on
youtube. He made no reference to the data provided in various talks by
Mockton. He the procuded to another falacy: Argumentum ad populum. "Since most
people think it's right, it must be right".

\---

Here's one of several interesting talks on the subject, if you're interested
on the data:

[https://youtu.be/ppQl6KYyMqA?t=139](https://youtu.be/ppQl6KYyMqA?t=139)

