
Facts about global warming that you should keep for yourself - joeyespo
http://lemire.me/blog/archives/2012/07/10/facts-about-global-warming-that-you-should-keep-for-yourself/
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kstenerud
"Let us look at the predictions made in 1990: they predicted an increase in
temperature of 0.3C per decade, plus minus 0.1C. Yet less than 0.2C of warming
per decade was observed. To be blunt, they got it flat wrong."

How much less than 0.2C was it? 0.3 +/- 0.1 means it can be anywhere from 0.2
to 0.4, so unless it was grossly under 0.2, it wasn't flat wrong.

"there are alternatives to banning oil production: solar radiation management.
We might be able to setup space mirrors or otherwise increasing the
reflectivity of our atmosphere." ... "But keep in mind that we will soon run
out of cheap oil in any case."

In other words, "Fear not, for we might just come up with some miracle
technology or something. It might just all work out in the end so just stay
the course and don't worry!"

If you're going to call out others for poorly reasoned arguments, at least
have well reasoned arguments of your own.

~~~
grecy
Even more ridiculous.. the full quote is:

"We might be able to setup space mirrors or otherwise increasing the
reflectivity of our atmosphere. Obviously, we cannot hope to both keep pumping
CO2 in the atmosphere, and correct for it afterward: this could quickly become
economically infeasible."

In the context of killing the planet and the entire human race, we still
mention a plan could be "economically infeasible".

Jeez.

~~~
CamperBob2
Sigh.

We're not going to "kill the planet," or the entire human race. Humans adapt.
That's what we do. That's why we won.

Such hyperbole endangers vital rational discourse on the subject.

~~~
mistercow
>We're not going to "kill the planet," or the entire human race. Humans adapt.
That's what we do. That's why we won.

That is very close to the "fine tuning" argument often employed by
creationists. It is entirely possible that humans have, in fact, merely been
phenomenally lucky to have survived so far, and that the fact that we find
ourselves as members of such a phenomenally lucky species is easily explained
by the anthropic principle.

If you take all of the intelligent critters out there in the universe that are
capable of discussing their adaptability, a pretty big chunk of those critters
are going to be members of civilizations that got very lucky over the ages and
managed to produce large cumulative populations, while a very small proportion
will be critters from short-lived civilizations. Indeed, holding constant
whatever level of adaptability we actually have, it is reasonable to assume
that we are among the luckier of the civilizations at that level.

So no, we can't just assume that we're going to leap over any hurdle that
comes our way.

------
inthewoods
I always find it troubling when someone with a computer science background
assumes that their knowledge naturally transfers to something like climate
science. Climate science is about probability and huge multi-factor models -
and most importantly - models that change as new knowledge and data appear.
It's just my opinion, but that seems to me to be the opposite of what most
computer scientists are taught. Obviously computer scientists incorporate new
data and new thinking - but I don't think it's quite the same as constructing
a statistical model of how climate works. And obviously there are exceptions -
but in general, I think it's just a different mindset.

~~~
dmlorenzetti
I agree that knowledge of computer science doesn't transfer directly to
climate science. However, there's a lot about computer science that may help
understand how climate models yield probabilistic outcomes (Monte Carlo,
anyone?).

On the subject, be a little careful equating probabilistic models and
statistical models. At least in my experience, "statistical models" generally
describes statistical fits to past data. Think of a polynomial whose
parameters are chosen by least-squares fit to previous observations. These
fits can be used to interpolate or extrapolate (to the future, or to different
combinations of inputs). However, they don't encode any domain knowledge, and
they can be extremely brittle when pushed outside the regimes from which they
were derived.

Most climate models, on the other hand, are deterministic, physics-based
models. Some of the sub-models may have statistical fits in them, but the
modeling is largely driven by some conceptual framework of how the physics
drive the dynamic system (e.g., expressing conservation of mass and energy,
and how spatial differences drive transport).

Those deterministic climate models can be driven probabilistically-- meaning
the uncertain inputs and parameters can be sampled from distributions of
likely values. Aggregating all the results gives a probabilistic prediction. A
lot of climate reports take this one step further, and aggregate results
across multiple models. Most computer scientists will immediately "get" this
part, even if they don't understand all the physics represented in the
individual packages.

~~~
inthewoods
Excellent points - and important not to generalize about model construction.

I have a degree in computer science, and most of my training consisted of
solving problems where there was a single outcome - e.g. "does the compiler
work?" When I moved into financial modeling, I really had to shift from the
idea of one answer to the idea that the real world is exceptionally complex
and difficult to model. I had to get comfortable with the idea that I might
have an idea of the outcome based on a model, but, as you point out, this is
probabilistic outcome.

I found this article to have all the marking of someone with a similar
background trying out a different profession without understanding
probabilistic modeling, and, as you rightly point out, not understanding the
deterministic portion of the models - the domain knowledge.

Moreover, I think he expresses doubt in any model that doesn't turn out the
right answer 100% of the time - to me, not understanding the complexity of the
systems that are being modeled and definitely not understanding that it is, as
the name "climate science" implies, science - you experiment, you gain new
knowledge from new data, etc.

------
saraid216
Global warming is one of those topics I've always withheld judgement on
because it's such a huge topic that, even ignoring politics, it seems very
hard to get a solid understanding of the science.

~~~
bryanlarsen
Unfortunately, by deciding to be "neutral" on the issue, you're exactly where
the climate change deniers want you to be.

The deniers don't have to be proven correct to prevent action on climate
change, they just have to put out enough FUD to create doubt.

~~~
TheAmazingIdiot
Most of the real changes would require many people to die.

Going back, worldwide, to a pre-industrial civilisation would be a
possibility. However, We're looking at 90% fatality rates to get to that point
due to lack of food production. Probably would be even less than that. No
chance in happening, unless forced by catastrophic event.

Another possibility is tremendous rationing. We see what having even simple
healthcare is in this country. Instead, we would look at rationing everything
in the world, including determining who lives and dies by how much resources
they use (carbon debt). With 2 high input/output countries, good luck on this
happening either.

And we have to look at all the smaller ways to handle global warming. One
proposal is to dump megatonnes of lime in the ocean?! Or perhaps this carbon
credits scam: it makes the rich richer (Well, where DOES the money go?). At
least sources of energy like solar or wind make sense... Until you realise the
amount of energy to make a solar panel is greater than the total energy you
will get out of it. Bummer.

And underlying is this assumption that global warming == CO2 peak.. I've heard
of this law called thermodynamics. CO2 may trap heat, but heat generated
anywhere is still heat. We generate heat via our vehicles, electric grid,
generators, burn piles, and other human sources of heat. Is this not a direct
consideration as well?

~~~
DennisP
A study about a year ago claimed that we could get to half the reductions
required to keep us under +2C just by halting all fossil fuel subsidies
worldwide (not that that's feasible).

A little googling on solar panel energy cost found, for example, these links:

<http://solarbus.org/documents/pvpayback.pdf>

<http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3910>

which claim that energy payback of solar panels takes about three years.

For various reasons I think we'd do better with advanced nuclear, such as
integral fast reactors or molten salt reactors. Either would be safer than
what we have now, proliferation-resistant, and produce a lot less nuclear
waste with a much shorter lifetime. We could have a very energy-rich future
without carbon emissions.

As for carbon credits, a lot of economists advocate a "fee-and-dividend"
scheme. Instead of trading credits, major source emitters simply pay a flat
fee per ton of carbon, passing on the cost to the rest of us. The money is
divided among all citizens, equal amount per person. Most people come out
ahead (since the median emissions are less than the average), but since the
dividend is constant and the new cost variable, everyone has more incentive to
conserve.

I've seen calculations for the contribution of waste heat and it's very minor
compared to greenhouse gases. However, if our energy usage continues to grow
exponentially on this planet it'll be a real problem in a couple hundred
years: [http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-
scale-e...](http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale-
energy/)

