When it’s a good thing:
Given that climate change is a mixture of curses and blessings, any policy addressing it is going to involve trade-offs. Slowing it down, for example, would hurt some, help others. It’s not clear why a cold, Arctic-reliant country like Russia whose economy is linked to the oil and gas trade would find a benefit in cooperating with efforts to stop climate change. It also appears that human activities like farming are better able to adjust to temperature variations than some pessimists would have us believe. Crops like soya, corn and wheat can be bred (or genetically modified) to grow in warmer and dryer conditions at a modest cost.
Greens, many impelled by emotional overreactions or a deep inner belief that unfettered capitalism is a terrible thing, have tried to simplify the discussion about the earth’s changing climate into a morality play. They’ve overstated the evidence that favors worst-case scenarios, argued for top down, bureaucratic solutions that don’t work, and when critics object to these policies they lash out at their critics as ‘science deniers.’
Because they have other agendas, and because for them, it’s a religion. You can pay for a hell of a lot of mitigation with all of the wealth that’s being opened up in the Arctic, but it doesn’t give them the requisite amount of control.
And also the belief that that which is natural is sacrosanct. Not to be changed or altered and intrinsically good. For much of the last several million years the earth has been locked in a cycle of ice ages lasting many 10’s of thousands of yrs. interspersed by rare interglacial periods lasting about 10-12 thousand years. Hardly good for humans or most other life in our so called temperate zones, most of which most of the time are covered by ice sheets, and inhospitable to all but the hardiest of life. The fact that it was natural doesn’t make it good. See to recall hearing that if it weren’t for large scale human caused agriculture increasing CO2 levels starting several thousand years ago, we might be in an ice age already.
As this XKCD comic demonstrate, we CANNOT survive Ice Age in our current location: http://xkcd.com/1225.
It’s probably worth noting that many of the mechanisms proposed to mitigate the new Ice Age we were entering in the 70s were… precisely the same as those proposed to mitigate ‘Global Warming’.
It’s nothing to do with temperature, and everything to do with justifying socialist scams that no-one in their right mind would acccept otherwise.
Indeed. If someone were to come out with evidence that the earth’s climate was settling down, to become even more temperate and boring than it was before 2000 or so, the One True, Merciless and Implacable Church of Gaia would fearmonger for exactly the same policies.
OT: Rand, for diagnostic purposes re the occasional phenomenon of TTM readers being served the mobile site regardless of browser, now it happens to me only when using Firefox on my laptop — never on my tablet or phone. And the last few times it’s been when I landed on the main page.
I’ve gotten the bogus misdirect in Chrome and Opera (the latest was earlier today). I would assume it affects everyone who uses the plug-in and that the programmer is getting feedback on it.
I get it with IE, so I think that covers most of the browsers recognized as mandatory to Windows per the EU.
I’m getting the misdirect in Firefox. Yesterday I noticed that when there were no comments in response to the
“What To Do About Global Warming/Cooling”
topic, I got the misdirect. Clicking on “desktop version” failed (404).
Once a comment appeared in the topic, I got the desktop version as I should.
I’ve never noticed the correlation before – I’ll be watching for it.
What plug-in?
Yep. The solution for all of these so-called crises (warming, cooling, population bomb, freshwater depletion, etc., etc. ) is always to impose the exact same Socialist economic fantasies.
And of course, take your current average temperature as the ideal that we’re trying so desperately to preserve. Call that T0. Climate deviations away from that (+-dt), are to be avoided at all cost, which must mean that all temperatures less than your T0 are bad, as are all temperatures greater than T0. But if that’s true, then warming would improve all the places where the local temperature is already less than T0, which statistically is most of the planet because people tend to live where its warmer than average.
Mexico, one of the top ten or so hottest countries on Earth, has a population density of 59 people per square kilometer. Canada has a population density of 3.75. Warm Canada the f*** up and it should be dandy for about 550 million people. Cool it down and it’s population density drops to that of Nunavut, 0.015 people per square mile, and Canada’s entire population drops to about 140,000 people. Meanwhile Mexico’s population probably goes from 59 people per square kilometer to Nigeria’s 174.
Edward M. Grant
June 23, 2013, 6:14 pm | # | Reply
It’s probably worth noting that many of the mechanisms proposed to mitigate the new Ice Age we were entering in the 70s were… precisely the same as those proposed to mitigate ‘Global Warming’.
cite please.
George Turner
June 23, 2013, 7:05 pm | # | Reply
Mexico, one of the top ten or so hottest countries on Earth, has a population density of 59 people per square kilometer. Canada has a population density of 3.75.
Niger has a population density of 12.1 people per square kilometer while Denmark has 130 people per square kilometer.
What are you, some kind of history denier?
Interesting. So Niger, sitting in the middle of the Sahara desert, still maintains three times the population density of Canada. From both countries, as you move closer toward the equator, the population density skyrockets.
Denmark enjoys a nice climate because of all that warm water from Florida, as does Great Britain and the rest of Northern Europe. Take the warmth away and things would get very bad, turning places like Oslo into the North Slope of Alaska.
To be highly habitable, a place needs water and warmth. Do you really think the tree line on mountain ranges is because the air gets too cold, or is it because the trees would be too close to the heat of the sun?
They’ve overstated the evidence that favors worst-case scenarios, argued for top down, bureaucratic solutions that don’t work, and when critics object to these policies they lash out at their critics as ‘science deniers.
What Walter Russell Mead seems to fail to understand is that the description ‘science deniers’ is applied to people who deny the science, I’ve never heard it used to describe people based on their arguing that top down, bureaucratic solutions don’t work.
It’s used pretty broadly against anyone deviating from orthodoxy.
Point out that a standard thermometer (well-maintained, well-sited, well-observed, accurate -and- precise) is still only a proxy measurement for the large (sometimes 250×250 miles) gridcell temperature and that there’s a lengthy list of assumptions baked into that proxy (including invariant weather, invariant seasons, and invariant climate) -> denier.
The lengthy list of fixes do make for better proxies, but they don’t affect the necessary assumptions. But long before the discussion gets through half of the nearly-reasonable adjustments, “denier” is flung and there’s another follower flouncing off ‘victorious’.
Point out that a standard thermometer (well-maintained, well-sited, well-observed, accurate -and- precise) is still only a proxy measurement for the large (sometimes 250×250 miles) gridcell temperature and that there’s a lengthy list of assumptions baked into that proxy (including invariant weather, invariant seasons, and invariant climate) -> denier.
Not from my observations, what I’ve seen is “deniers” arguing that the surface temperature record is so full of holes to the point of being meaningless – except of course when the climbing surface temperature trend slows or stalls, whereupon the surface temperature record is suddenly transformed from being a fraud to being pivotal scientific evidence against global warming, a true skeptic would be consistently skeptical of the temperature record no matter what it was doing, a denier looks for ways to interpret the scientific evidence to support nonscience beliefs.
Andrew W,
but isn’t that kind of thinking what Libs always do?
It goes hand in hand with topics like guns or schools. They cherry pick the data, to support the theory [or fight of the sh1t storm] du jour. And if something pops up to refute or even destroy their theory, they just massage their theories or restack the numbers, minus the stuff they dislike, and start screaming the NON-believers are out to starve children, choke old people with smog and kill the red peckered pollywog with factory wastes…LOOK, it’s a SQUIRREL!
…and we looked away, so they win [especially given that the MSM is in on the subterfuge] because they shuffle the numbers or claim a majority of scientists are believers in the necessity of the red peckered pollywog in world water production [it pees three times as much as it drinks…].
[hey, it’s no more stupid than the crap they say!]
It isn’t -just- full of holes, it’s fundamentally bollux. Additionally, the vast majority of the time skeptics are arguing about the temperatures they’re using satellite records. Satellites are -still- a not-pristine proxy measurement, but at least they aren’t a point source measurement.
A thermometer if fundamentally rooted in the statistical measurement of temperature. The bulb is full of some compound with a high rate of thermal expansion, has very thin walls, and is intended to equilibrate quickly to avoid unduly influencing the local temperature. They’re tested, calibrated against NIST standards, and sent into the wild. Even the “old” thermometers are still sensible to the 0.1C error demanded of them.
Except their job isn’t to tell whether the airport runway is going to frost over anymore – they’ve been pressed into service as climatometers. And (1) they aren’t calibrated for that job, and (2) the error markings are for use as a point-source measurement.
An actual thermometer (-however- sited) is a better proxy than a tree for the gridcell temperature. But it is still a proxy – and the errors convert from “actual experimental errors” to “indications of internal self-consistency” silently at this point. But they’re still used as if we know the GMST to that accuracy.
IF climate change happened and warmed up Russia, I’m pretty sure what little infrastructure exists in far Eastern Russia would be in shambles. Like much of N. Russia, like C-eh-N-eh-D-eh and most of AK, rests on permafrost. Thaw that out and they’d have the same kinds of problem,s that the Al-Can Hiway Builders had during WWII, when they scraped off the topsoil.
We’re talking primordial mud to deal with.
I’m betting the inhabitants are ‘used to’ living cold. If some people didn’t prefer to live in such conditions, the frigid climes would be un-populated. I’d prefer to live somewhere colder. But I’ve gotten sorta used to sleeping next to Mrs. Der Schtumpy these 40 odd years, and she thinks NORTH Carolina is quite cold enough!
So, alas, here I stay.
Anyone who produces or believes Mann style hockey stick graphs :- science denier
Anyone who believes or uses the ’97 percent consensus nonsense : – science denier
Anyone who blames ‘climate change’ for individual storms, hurricanes or tornadoes : – science denier
Anyone who talks about ‘extreme weather’,especially ‘increases in extreme weather : – science denier
Anyone who talks about ‘rapid Arctic ice melting’, Greenland ice melting, Antarctic ice melting : – science denier
Anyone who talks about rapidly rising sea levels, coral islands being submerged by global warming etc. etc : – science denier
Anyone who constantly adjusts their ‘global temperature record’ such that the past gets cooler and cooler and the present gets warmer and warmer : – science denier
Anyone who talks about coal trains as ‘death trains’ : – science denier
Anyone who produces or believes Mann style hockey stick graphs :- science denier
Hockey stick is confirmed.
Anyone who talks about ‘extreme weather’,especially ‘increases in extreme weather : – science denier
Your evidence against this?
Anyone who talks about ‘rapid Arctic ice melting’, Greenland ice melting, Antarctic ice melting : – science denier
Depends on definition of “rapid”
Anyone who talks about rapidly rising sea levels, coral islands being submerged by global warming etc. etc : – science denier
Depends on definition of “rapid”
Judith Curry had a good post about a paper that appeared in the journal American Behavioral Scientist called Anatomy of Dissent: A Cultural Analysis of Climate Skepticism which focused on the dissenters in the scientific community. The author found that the dissenters were from mode 1 science where things like having a workable theory, and rigorously testing it, were important.
and
and finally
You can pay for a hell of a lot of mitigation with all of the wealth that’s being opened up in the Arctic
What makes you so confident that money earned in the Artic will be used for mitigation?
What makes you so confident that money earned in the Artic will be used for mitigation?
I am supremely confident that if the wealth isn’t allowed to be created, that it won’t be used for mitigation, because it won’t even be available. That’s the issue that the Warm Mongers don’t understand.
The also don’t even seem to suspect that whereas the current economy produces $100, the federal government takes in about $15 to $20 (and spends about $30 – Thanks China!), their imagined future economy will produce about $20, the government will only take in $5, send $3 to China as debt payments, spend $2 on mitigation, and have $0 to spend on liberal causes and special interests, like aid for the Third World.
And again, why would we have to spend on mitigation? It costs a fortune to live in a cold environment, unless you wear seal furs and live in an igloo. Whether that’s spending months cutting wood to get through the winter, mining coal, or installing vast networks of fuel pipelines or an electric grid, along with snowplows, salt trucks, canned foods, and the other technologies that keep people from becoming malnourished in the winter months, it’s not both cheap and easy. Yet anywhere with regular rainfall lets everyone can get through warm weather with little more than a flint knife and a water gourd, and thrive.
It’s so easy to thrive in heat that many equatorial countries don’t even have any infrastructure to speak of (by Western standards). Bangladesh has over 1000 people per square km. Rwanda, Haiti, and India have about 400 per sq km. Nigeria and Uganda have about 150, and Mexico has 60. The US has 35. Russia has about 8. Canada has less than 4.
Even within the US, Puerto Rico (whose relative poverty is considered an obstacle to statehood), has a density of over 400 people per square km, while the US Virgin Islands and Guam are at 300.
Based on that trend, and that we know colder would cost a lot more money to cope with (shorter growing seasons, much more home heating fuel), warming up should be cheaper than we’re presently spending.
Mitigation efforts would serve many other more likely purposes than surviving the AGW apocalypse. Some mitigation efforts we should be doing regardless of AGW fears.
In a related news it appears environmentalists are responsible for the recent increase in large hurricanes 🙂
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23743-want-fewer-hurricanes-pollute-the-air.html#.UciVs5zzPbo
Want fewer hurricanes? Pollute the air
18:00 23 June 2013
by Jeff Hecht
[[[Cleaning up our air in the West may have made us healthier, but it could also be behind the rise in north Atlantic tropical storms since the mid-1990s. A new analysis shows that the number of these storms falls when pollution rises, and increases when pollution drops.
Further tightening of present pollution controls “could reduce aerosols so quickly that we have record numbers of tropical storms for the next decade or two”, says Nick Dunstone of the Met Office Hadley Centre in Exeter, UK.]]]
So driving a Hummer helps prevents hurricanes – who would have guessed it?
All those along the Eastern Seaboard who weren’t washed away by Hurricane Sandy?
you’re welcome.