"Man-made" Climate Change Lunathicks Out in Full Force

SafeSurfer · 24-11-2018 9:24pm

Akrasia wrote: »

Pa ElGrande wrote: »

There is no such thing as revenue neutral, imagine a politician putting their hand in your pocket and taking out 3 x €10 notes, she gives you €10 back, €10 to your neighbour for the upkeep of their electric car and €10 to herself to cover the overheads of collection and redistribution.

You live in Ireland and you have to pay for food, heating, sick care and corporate and social welfare programs, which means you must work which means you must expend energy. Unless you live a self sufficient rural lifestyle from the 1940s or 1950s, everything you do involves the use of oil and gas in some form so when you levy new taxes on energy consumption you push up the prices of every activity in the economy, the higher the prices rise the more revenue government collects in taxation overall. If you look at your energy bills its is (cost x VAT rate) x carbon tax rate. (yes it is a tax on a tax). Because the general expenditure goes up caused by addition of the carbon tax overhead, the government collects more revenue by taxing the inflated prices, so even though they can give some of the money back in tax credits if fact it is a net gain for them and they keep increasing it until eventually productivity drops and the tax becomes a burden that drags economic activity down.

The point is to disincentivise the use of carbon intensive energy the whole way along the chain from raw materials to disposal of the finished good. Goods that incur carbon taxes at every step along the way will be less competitive compared with goods that use low carbon alternatives.

It's basic market economics. The carbon tax is to account for the cost of the pollution rather than just ignoring it. You're not a socialist are you? Why do you hate market economics so much?

You are now describing the imposition of carbon taxes as basic market economics?

Pa ElGrande · 24-11-2018 10:08pm

Akrasia wrote: »

Do you understand what a market failure is?

A market failure happens when either buyers or sellers abandon a market. The most obvious examples being stock market crashes when there are lots of sellers but no buyers.

Akrasia wrote: »

It happens when producers can externalise their costs of production. . . .

If I as a conscientious citizen get on the bus at 7AM rather than peak time so there is space for you to get on at 8AM that you arrive at your workplace on time this is a positive externality that you benefited from even though you had no part in the original transaction.

If I piss in the swimming pool and you get red eyes after swimming in the same pool then that's defined as a negative externality.

To be clear externalities are defined such that the person seated with the cost or benefit has not acted in the original transaction. They are about as relevant to market functions as the alignment of the planets to a fortune tellers musings. In the case of global warming you cannot prove any negative costs since practically all metrics are positive, the welfare of the human population has generally improved over the past century, there are more trees than there were a century ago, no islands have been sunk and the ice caps remain in robust condition, you can't even show the negative effects of any sea level rise. Ultimately you cannot quantify the costs or benefits to yourself of man-made global warming even if only because you don't know what the natural component of that warming is.

Akrasia wrote: »

Its absolutely nothing like a command economy. Its a market based mechanism to address market failures that undeniably exist at the moment.

Playing market absolutely is a socialist command economy, the perverse incentives created will eventually lead to a market correction.

Akrasia · 24-11-2018 10:39pm

Pa ElGrande wrote: »

A market failure happens when either buyers or sellers abandon a market. The most obvious examples being stock market crashes when there are lots of sellers but no buyers.

No it isn't. Go back to school and learn something about economics

Pa ElGrande · 24-11-2018 11:56pm

Akrasia wrote: »

No it isn't. Go back to school and learn something about economics

dense · 25-11-2018 1:38am

Akrasia wrote: »

Here's where I stand on the carbon tax issue

1. It should be much higher
2. It should be income and revenue neutral

This means that the tax should be balanced by a payment to those tax payers equal to the average tax collected per tax payer.

If there are a thousand people and the average carbon tax is expected to be a thousand euros per person, then each person should get a grant of a thousand euros to spend as they like, and they pay their carbon tax based on their usage of carbon polluting products.

It works brilliantly because the people who pollute more than average are paying more than a thousand euros in tax and have a higher incentive to reduce their pollution, while people who pollute less get rewarded for being more efficient. The average person will break even but will still be incentivised to emit less carbon because doing so would be financially beneficial to them. If they are given a choice between a high carbon product and a low carbon product, all other things being equal, they'd choose the lower carbon product.

People can also choose to spend their grant to invest in energy efficiency so that their carbon tax bill is lower the next year.

The fact that it is revenue neutral means the 'government just want to increase taxes' brigade have nothing to whinge about. The fact that the bigger polluters pay more uses market forces to encourage them to change their behaviour and invest in green alternatives.

This has been tried in British Colombia and has been successful so far
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421515300550

Can any of the 'skeptics' on here point out the inherent flaw in this system?

This can also be combined with regulations on industry and capital investment to modernise national infrastructure.

It hasn't gone to plan and your study is out of date.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/b-c-government-drops-greenhouse-gas-target-for-new-2030-goal-1.4653075

"But environmentalists were less convinced. Despite the name of the new Climate Change Accountability Act, Ecojustice's Alan Andrews says it stills leaves the government unaccountable for hitting GHG targets that are more than a decade away.

"In the 10 years since B.C.'s climate law was first introduced, we have had a succession of broken promises and missed targets — and nothing in today's announcement suggests the next 10 years will be any different," said Andrews.

"If the government of British Columbia truly wants to get the province 'back on track' and regain credibility on climate, it will need to do more than simply introduce targets."

Andrews called on the government to set more accountable targets.

"B.C.'s climate laws need a complete overhaul to ensure that politicians and industry are accountable for taking action that delivers real progress in tackling climate change."

--

Akrasia · 25-11-2018 11:10am

Pa ElGrande wrote: »

Right, Eddie Murphy has me convinced

Wait.. no!. Screw you Eddie Murphy, words have meanings. In economics, Market failure means something. Here's the definition according to investopedia

Market failure is the economic situation defined by an inefficient distribution of goods and services in the free market. Furthermore, the individual incentives for rational behavior do not lead to rational outcomes for the group. Put another way, each individual makes the correct decision for him/herself, but those prove to be the wrong decisions for the group. In traditional microeconomics, this is shown as a steady state disequilibrium in which the quantity supplied does not equal the quantity demanded.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/marketfailure.asp

You also don't understand what externalities are. Externalities are fundamental aspects of how markets function. Pollution is the most common example of a negative externality. If I'm a chemical plant and I can make a chemical at €5 a tonne but I'm dumping 10 tonnes of toxic waste into the local river for every tonne of product I make, that pollution is an externality and the producer is externalising the true costs of production of their product and there is a market failure.

The solution is to force the producer to pay for the cost of treating the waste water or find a less polluting way of producing that product. This can be done through the courts (like the environmentalists you accuse of abusing the system) or through government regulation, or by taxation or subsidies. If dealing with the pollution raises the cost of production to €20 per tonne, then this is the true cost of production, and selling that product for anything other than that because the water isn't treated is a market failure as the costs of production are being paid by the public instead of the consumer or producer of that product.

With carbon taxes, the carbon tax needs to be high enough that it accounts for the costs of emitting that carbon. the market can then decide whether it is worthwhile to produce that product at that price, or the producers can find new production methods that reduce the pollution and therefore the cost of production.

The alternative to carbon taxes are regulations that impose very strict environmental standards on industry. Would you prefer the sledgehammer of onerous regulations which could hamper innovation, or the use of market mechanisms which can drive innovation as entrepreneurs compete to provide sustainable solutions to the energy demands of industry?

Akrasia · 25-11-2018 11:18am

dense wrote: »

It hasn't gone to plan and your study is out of date.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/b-c-government-drops-greenhouse-gas-target-for-new-2030-goal-1.4653075

"But environmentalists were less convinced. Despite the name of the new Climate Change Accountability Act, Ecojustice's Alan Andrews says it stills leaves the government unaccountable for hitting GHG targets that are more than a decade away.

"In the 10 years since B.C.'s climate law was first introduced, we have had a succession of broken promises and missed targets — and nothing in today's announcement suggests the next 10 years will be any different," said Andrews.

"If the government of British Columbia truly wants to get the province 'back on track' and regain credibility on climate, it will need to do more than simply introduce targets."

Andrews called on the government to set more accountable targets.

"B.C.'s climate laws need a complete overhaul to ensure that politicians and industry are accountable for taking action that delivers real progress in tackling climate change."

--

The policy is sound. Industry are doing everything they can to sabbotage it because their interest is in passing on costs to everyone else and they are used to being able to pump out CO2 into the atmosphere without paying for that cost.

This is why we need global agreements on climate change with targets that have penalties attached to them if they are missed. It needs to be more costly to not act than to act (It already is, we're just passing the bill onto the next generation)

Pa ElGrande · 25-11-2018 12:42pm

Akrasia wrote: »

Wait.. no!. Screw you Eddie Murphy, words have meanings. In economics, Market failure means something. Here's the definition according to investopedia

A free market is simply the voluntary exchange of private property rights.
If the exchange fails due to one party not upholding their word or terms of contract then they have recourse to arbitration or the court system to resolve this. Investopedias definition focuses on particular view that people end up worse off as a result of the exchange where such a group either incurs too many costs or receives too few benefits.

Interestingly they also mention the free-rider incentives problem that arise for any group, especially political groups wanting to influence State policy, which is the objective of the rent seeking special interest environmental groups currently abusing the court system.

Akrasia wrote: »

You also don't understand what externalities are. Externalities are fundamental aspects of how markets function. Pollution is the most common example of a negative externality. If I'm a chemical plant and I can make a chemical at €5 a tonne but I'm dumping 10 tonnes of toxic waste into the local river for every tonne of product I make, that pollution is an externality and the producer is externalising the true costs of production of their product and there is a market failure.

That is not an example of market failure. It is the degradation of property rights and in your example the costs are mostly quantifiable and can be levied on the company which in turn passes those costs to the consumer of their product if they are willing to pay. Any market failure happens when the producer or consumer does not uphold their contract agreement.

Akrasia wrote: »

With carbon taxes, the carbon tax needs to be high enough that it accounts for the costs of emitting that carbon. the market can then decide whether it is worthwhile to produce that product at that price, or the producers can find new production methods that reduce the pollution and therefore the cost of production.

The alternative to carbon taxes are regulations that impose very strict environmental standards on industry. Would you prefer the sledgehammer of onerous regulations which could hamper innovation, or the use of market mechanisms which can drive innovation as entrepreneurs compete to provide sustainable solutions to the energy demands of industry?

Taken in aggregate overall human population welfare can be shown to be much better over the course of the last one hundred years on almost every conceivable metric. There is no evidence whatsoever that CO2 emissions have had a negative effect on humans well being in fact the opposite is the case. You cannot quantify the costs or benefits and therefore by your definition of market failure the carbon tax is irrational.

Akrasia · 25-11-2018 1:51pm

Pa ElGrande wrote: »

A free market is simply the voluntary exchange of private property rights.
If the exchange fails due to one party not upholding their word or terms of contract then they have recourse to arbitration or the court system to resolve this. Investopedias definition focuses on particular view that people end up worse off as a result of the exchange where such a group either incurs too many costs or receives too few benefits.

Interestingly they also mention the free-rider incentives problem that arise for any group, especially political groups wanting to influence State policy, which is the objective of the rent seeking special interest environmental groups currently abusing the court system.

First of all, the investopedia definition is just a quick introduction to a concept that everyone who has ever studied economics should already understand. It's taught in secondary school never mind university level. If you don't even understand this and need to get your information from that investopedia page, then you're clearly not as informed as you think you are on what capitalism actually is.

And you use the word rent seeking but again, you don't seem to know what it means. Economic rent is by definition, when companies or individuals trade and make inflated profits greater than what the true market value supports by either offloading some of their operating costs to third parties, or by artificially inflating the sale price. In the modern world, the energy industry are the rent seekers, they're the ones who are generating excessive profits because they've decided that they can just pump billions of tonnes of pollution into the atmosphere for free. If they paid the actual true cost of production that included the cost of their pollution, then they would be uncompetitive compared to alternative energy that emits zero carbon.

The term rent seeking is nonsensical when applied to non profit environmental groups seeking to use the courts to prevent activity that they view as unnecessarily harmful to the environment.

That is not an example of market failure. It is the degradation of property rights and in your example the costs are mostly quantifiable and can be levied on the company which in turn passes those costs to the consumer of their product if they are willing to pay. Any market failure happens when the producer or consumer does not uphold their contract agreement.

Pollution is the archetypal example of an externality. It's the textbook example that is used because it absolutely is an externality. Rivers and water sources are public goods. Remember, we don't live in your loony libertarian utopia where someone owns every molecule of air and water (and doesn't just own them to use as a private dumping ground)

Taken in aggregate overall human population welfare can be shown to be much better over the course of the last one hundred years on almost every conceivable metric. There is no evidence whatsoever that CO2 emissions have had a negative effect on humans well being in fact the opposite is the case. You cannot quantify the costs or benefits and therefore by your definition of market failure the carbon tax is irrational.

There's this thing called 'the future' It's the part of time that hasn't happened yet.

All the scientific evidence tells us that the emissions which are on track to double the natural concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere will heat up the planet and cause huge problems costing Trillions of dollars a year

You're logic is like a heroin addict who has been using gear for a few months saying that he's had nothing but good times, therefore nothing can possibly go wrong

Pa ElGrande · 25-11-2018 3:04pm

Akrasia wrote: »

First of all, the investopedia definition is just a quick introduction to a concept that everyone who has ever studied economics should already understand. It's taught in secondary school never mind university level. If you don't even understand this and need to get your information from that investopedia page, then you're clearly not as informed as you think you are on what capitalism actually is.

What you are saying is you know nothing about market failure beyond what you read in the investopedia article. The concepts described as market failure are products of some economists idealised perception of the world. They don't match up with reality and you will find huge disagreements in the economics professions about them. Leaving cert economics is just learning by rote about the history of mostly dead economists and praising TK Whitaker and theoretical models about idealised situations that always break down when faced with the reality of human action.

Akrasia wrote: »

The term rent seeking is nonsensical when applied to non profit environmental groups seeking to use the courts to prevent activity that they view as unnecessarily harmful to the environment.

I look at what their objective is beyond all the gibberish about man made global warming and their downfall is the conceit then can live their lives subsidised by someone else.

Akrasia wrote: »

Pollution is the archetypal example of an externality. It's the textbook example that is used because it absolutely is an externality. Rivers and water sources are public goods. Remember, we don't live in your loony libertarian utopia where someone owns every molecule of air and water (and doesn't just own them to use as a private dumping ground)

Since water is essential to human survival the user of rivers and water are covered under well established Riperian rights. You are presenting water pollution as a negative externality and I'm not disagreeing with you on that. I pointed out the costs and damage are quantifiable and an equitable solution is possible because the technology exists to rectify the problem in an economic matter. I also highlighted the possibility of real market failure when the parties to the market exchange can no longer agree and fail to honour the contract.

Akrasia wrote: »

There's this thing called 'the future' It's the part of time that hasn't happened yet.

All the scientific evidence tells us that the emissions which are on track to double the natural concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere will heat up the planet and cause huge problems costing Trillions of dollars a year

You are acknowledging that there is no evidence of any negative externalities with regard to the C02 and climate change. The fact is historically human populations do very well in warming cycles, it the cooling cycles that wrought economic and social destruction and should be greatly feared. You are using unfounded scare tactics since those trillions of dollars a year costs cannot be quantified by you or others in any meaningful way especially when you cannot even quantify or price the effect of CO2 on economic system since the current warming cycle began.

The future is not known to either of us, the climate cycles will change we both know that, we disagree whether the causes are man made or natural. I put it to you we deal with the problems that are quantifiable and can be dealt with today like war and disposal of waste, trying to rearrange human social structures by playing market never ends well.

Akrasia · 25-11-2018 4:28pm

Pa ElGrande wrote: »

What you are saying is you know nothing about market failure beyond what you read in the investopedia article. The concepts described as market failure are products of some economists idealised perception of the world. They don't match up with reality and you will find huge disagreements in the economics professions about them. Leaving cert economics is just learning by rote about the history of mostly dead economists and praising TK Whitaker and theoretical models about idealised situations that always break down when faced with the reality of human action.

I look at what their objective is beyond all the gibberish about man made global warming and their downfall is the conceit then can live their lives subsidised by someone else.

Since water is essential to human survival the user of rivers and water are covered under well established Riperian rights. You are presenting water pollution as a negative externality and I'm not disagreeing with you on that. I pointed out the costs and damage are quantifiable and an equitable solution is possible because the technology exists to rectify the problem in an economic matter. I also highlighted the possibility of real market failure when the parties to the market exchange can no longer agree and fail to honour the contract.

You are acknowledging that there is no evidence of any negative externalities with regard to the C02 and climate change. The fact is historically human populations do very well in warming cycles, it the cooling cycles that wrought economic and social destruction and should be greatly feared. You are using unfounded scare tactics since those trillions of dollars a year costs cannot be quantified by you or others in any meaningful way especially when you cannot even quantify or price the effect of CO2 on economic system since the current warming cycle began.

The future is not known to either of us, the climate cycles will change we both know that, we disagree whether the causes are man made or natural. I put it to you we deal with the problems that are quantifiable and can be dealt with today like war and disposal of waste, trying to rearrange human social structures by playing market never ends well.

I have studied economics at university level. I only used the investopedia link to show you what it means and you still haven't figured out what these words mean.

Your insistence on still using the words 'market failure' to describe breach of contract should be enough to show that you simply don't know what you're talking about.
And your gibberish about rent seeking makes me question if you're not just taking random words and throwing them into sentences in order to make it look like you know what you're talking about.

Pa ElGrande · 25-11-2018 5:09pm

Akrasia wrote: »

I have studied economics at university level. I only used the investopedia link to show you what it means and you still haven't figured out what these words mean.

Your insistence on still using the words 'market failure' to describe breach of contract should be enough to show that you simply don't know what you're talking about.
And your gibberish about rent seeking makes me question if you're not just taking random words and throwing them into sentences in order to make it look like you know what you're talking about.

You know nothing about market failure. A market is just a forum for buyers and sellers to exchange particular goods and services. Failure means that one or other party abandons the market or there is a breach of contract where either party fails to deliver. Every market transaction has consequences where the outcome is negative or positive does not define market failure.

When you use the term market failure you are talking about your perception of idealised conditions that do not meet your expectations such that state intervention in the outcome of the exchange is justified (i.e. intervention, subsidies etc.) This is why the free rider problem comes up because interest groups can and do hijack the state apparatus to steer the outcome in their own perceived rational self interest which just so happens to benefit them at everyone else's expense.

25-11-2018 5:21pm

Anyone remember "Acid Rain"? Scared the living sh*te out of me when I was a child.

Pa ElGrande · 25-11-2018 5:31pm

Edz87 wrote: »

Anyone remember "Acid Rain"? Scared the living sh*te out of me when I was a child.

There was no money in that scare and the scientists determined the reason had natural causes plus the socialists were on the back foot with the collapse of the Communist bloc and did not want to look too hard at the S02 pollution generated in their former socialist utopia. They did regroup though under the global warming banner and took the allowance trading legislation from the period and eventually turned it into carbon trading.

Pa ElGrande · 25-11-2018 7:00pm

CARBON DIOXIDE - The good news.

Foreword By Freeman Dyson

Indur Goklany has done a careful job, collecting and documenting the evidence that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does far more good than harm. To any unpreju diced person reading this account, the facts should be obvious: that the non-climatic effects of carbon dioxide as a sustainer of wildlife and crop plants are enormously beneficial, that the possibly harmful climatic effects of carbon dioxide have been greatly exaggerated, and that the benefits clearly outweigh the possible damage.

I consider myself an unprejudiced person and to me these facts are obvious. But the same facts are not obvious to the majority of scientists and politicians who consider carbon dioxide to be evil and dangerous.

The people who are supposed to be experts and who claim to understand the science are precisely the people who are blind to the evidence. Those of my scientific colleagues who believe the prevailing dogma about carbon dioxide will not find Goklany’s evidence convincing. I hope that a few of them will make the effort to examine the evidence in detail and see how it contradicts the prevailing dogma, but I know that the majority will remain blind.

That is to me the central mystery of climate science. It is not a scientific mystery but a human mystery. How does it happen that a whole generation of scientific experts is blind to obvious facts? In this foreword I offer a tentative solution of the mystery.

more

Akrasia · 25-11-2018 7:04pm

Pa ElGrande wrote: »

You know nothing about market failure. A market is just a forum for buyers and sellers to exchange particular goods and services. Failure means that one or other party abandons the market or there is a breach of contract where either party fails to deliver. Every market transaction has consequences where the outcome is negative or positive does not define market failure.

When you use the term market failure you are talking about your perception of idealised conditions that do not meet your expectations such that state intervention in the outcome of the exchange is justified (i.e. intervention, subsidies etc.) This is why the free rider problem comes up because interest groups can and do hijack the state apparatus to steer the outcome in their own perceived rational self interest which just so happens to benefit them at everyone else's expense.

Nope, I'm using the term as everyone who knows anything about economics understands it.

When you try to redefine basic terms you only embarrass yourself.

Akrasia · 25-11-2018 7:07pm

Pa ElGrande wrote: »

There was no money in that scare and the scientists determined the reason had natural causes plus the socialists were on the back foot with the collapse of the Communist bloc and did not want to look too hard at the S02 pollution generated in their former socialist utopia. They did regroup though under the global warming banner and took the allowance trading legislation from the period and eventually turned it into carbon trading.

Acid rain isn't a big problem for us anymore because sulphur dioxide emissions have been dramatically reduced in the main industrial regions of Europe and America

In places with fewer regulations on industry, like India and China, acid rain is still a big problem

dense · 25-11-2018 10:23pm

Akrasia wrote: »

Acid rain isn't a big problem for us anymore because sulphur dioxide emissions have been dramatically reduced in the main industrial regions of Europe and America

In places with fewer regulations on industry, like India and China, acid rain is still a big problem

A half a billion dollar US report found that it was never much of a problem.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2014/02/11/remember-the-acid-rain-scare-global-warming-hysteria-is-pouring-down/#6637e44c53fc

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/science/what-made-the-acid-rain-myth-finally-evaporate-1.900603?mode=amp

Pa ElGrande · 25-11-2018 10:40pm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpLVRPJnL4M

Nicholas Lewis, who blogs at Climate Etc. (judithcurry.com) questioned the data in a major study claiming oceans are warming much fast than previously thought. He was right, and the Journal Nature had to admit it. Bill Whittle Now talks about how politics has ruined science.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSH41wM-jPc

CO2-induced warming vs. increased plant growth

Prof. Gervais explained that sea level rise is represented by a sinus period over a period of approximately 60 years, which confirms the Earth's global mean temperature cycle. This cycle appears in phase with the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO). According to Prof. Gervais, the last maximum of the sinusoid coincides with the temperature plateau observed since the end of the 20th century. The beginning of the declining AMO phase, the recent surplus of the global sea ice anomaly and the negative global average temperature increase, which were measured from 2002 to 2015, point to the beginning of the declining phase of the 60-year cycle. Once this cycle is subtracted from the observations, the transient climate response is revised downwards in accordance with the most recent observations, with the most recent evaluations based on atmospheric infrared absorption and a general tendency for published climate sensitivity. Increasing the amplitude of CO2 seasonal oscillations, which is up to 71% faster than the atmospheric CO2 increase, focuses on the greening and yield of additional photosynthesis, further minimizing the impact of low anthropogenic contribution to warming.

COP24 in on in Katowice, Poland between Dec 3, 2018 – Dec 14, 2018 so you won't be surprised that the the PR agencies are hitting the newswires and the prestitute media are putting out articles about how we are all going to roast to death or drown and that if we don't give them money and power by 2030 it will be too late and humanity will be doomed.

dense · 26-11-2018 1:20am

Pa ElGrande wrote: »

COP24 in on in Katowice, Poland between Dec 3, 2018 – Dec 14, 2018 so you won't be surprised that the the PR agencies are hitting the newswires and the prestitute media are putting out articles about how we are all going to roast to death or drown and that if we don't give them money and power by 2030 it will be too late and humanity will be doomed.

Lewis has found more anomalies in the flawed 60% extra heat in the ocean paper.

While the issues relating to the calculation of ΔAPOObs have now largely been clarified, there remain unresolved issues with the calculation of ΔAPOFF and the uncertainty in it.

I shall be pursuing these.

https://judithcurry.com/2018/11/23/resplandy-et-al-part-4-further-developments/#more-24492

One commentator has now wisely suggested that Resplandy et al should invite him to co-author the required corrections for publication by Nature.

Which is a very good idea, because Resplandy18 and their peer reviewers now seem to be completely out of their depth.

dense · 26-11-2018 10:04pm

Akrasia wrote: »

Science is about isolating variables from the background noise, and using temperature anomalies rather than absolute values does this very well.

Akrasia wrote: »

Climate scientists deal in temperature anomalies not absolute global average temperatures.

Akrasia wrote: »

There is a reason climate scientists talk about global average temperatures, it's so we can separate the signal from the noise.

Which is it, because it keeps on changing depending on what idea you're trying to sell?

I've just realised you're making all this of this up as you go along.

Akrasia · 27-11-2018 2:26pm

dense wrote: »

A half a billion dollar US report found that it was never much of a problem.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2014/02/11/remember-the-acid-rain-scare-global-warming-hysteria-is-pouring-down/#6637e44c53fc

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/science/what-made-the-acid-rain-myth-finally-evaporate-1.900603?mode=amp

I'm glad you find official US reports credible. Have you had a read of the 4th US climate assessment report yet?

It was released by the Trump administration last week (on Black Friday when he thought nobody was looking)

Here are some of the key findings (all taken from the Summary findings)
https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/

With continued growth in emissions at historic rates, annual losses in some economic sectors are projected to reach hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century—more than the current gross domestic product (GDP) of many U.S. states....

....Extreme weather and climate-related impacts on one system can result in increased risks or failures in other critical systems, including water resources, food production and distribution, energy and transportation, public health, international trade, and national security. The full extent of climate change risks to interconnected systems, many of which span regional and national boundaries, is often greater than the sum of risks to individual sectors....

...Rising air and water temperatures and changes in precipitation are intensifying droughts, increasing heavy downpours, reducing snowpack, and causing declines in surface water quality, with varying impacts across regions. Future warming will add to the stress on water supplies and adversely impact the availability of water in parts of the United States. Changes in the relative amounts and timing of snow and rainfall are leading to mismatches between water availability and needs in some regions, posing threats to, for example, the future reliability of hydropower production in the Southwest and the Northwest. Groundwater depletion is exacerbating drought risk in many parts of the United States, particularly in the Southwest and Southern Great Plains. Dependable and safe water supplies for U.S. Caribbean, Hawai‘i, and U.S.-Affiliated Pacific Island communities are threatened by drought, flooding, and saltwater contamination due to sea level rise......

.....increases in heat-related deaths are expected to outpace reductions in cold-related deaths. The frequency and severity of allergic illnesses, including asthma and hay fever, are expected to increase as a result of a changing climate. Climate change is also projected to alter the geographic range and distribution of disease-carrying insects and pests, exposing more people to ticks that carry Lyme disease and mosquitoes that transmit viruses such as Zika, West Nile, and dengue, with varying impacts across regions. Communities in the Southeast, for example, are particularly vulnerable to the combined health impacts from vector-borne disease, heat, and flooding.....

....over the next few decades, overall, yields from major U.S. crops are expected to decline as a consequence of increases in temperatures and possibly changes in water availability, soil erosion, and disease and pest outbreaks. Increases in temperatures during the growing season in the Midwest are projected to be the largest contributing factor to declines in the productivity of U.S. agriculture. Projected increases in extreme heat conditions are expected to lead to further heat stress for livestock, which can result in large economic losses for producers. Climate change is also expected to lead to large-scale shifts in the availability and prices of many agricultural products across the world, with corresponding impacts on U.S. agricultural producers and the U.S. economy.....

.....Infrastructure currently designed for historical climate conditions is more vulnerable to future weather extremes and climate change. The continued increase in the frequency and extent of high-tide flooding due to sea level rise threatens America’s trillion-dollar coastal property market and public infrastructure, with cascading impacts to the larger economy. In Alaska, rising temperatures and erosion are causing damage to buildings and coastal infrastructure that will be costly to repair or replace, particularly in rural areas; these impacts are expected to grow without adaptation. Expected increases in the severity and frequency of heavy precipitation events will affect inland infrastructure in every region, including access to roads, the viability of bridges, and the safety of pipelines. Flooding from heavy rainfall, storm surge, and rising high tides is expected to compound existing issues with aging infrastructure in the Northeast. Increased drought risk will threaten oil and gas drilling and refining, as well as electricity generation from power plants that rely on surface water for cooling......

So for the US alone, climate change will cause trillions of dollars of economic damage and will lead to food and water shortages and the need to invest further trillions of dollars in infrastructure just to mitigate and adapt to the new climate

The costs are higher the more we delay action.

The evidence for climate change is presented very well in this chapter
https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/chapter/1/

Those who are genuinely skeptical (ie: still have an open mind) should read it and inform themselves of the basis for why the vast majority of experts are very concerned about this

Of course, the pseudo skeptics don't have an open mind and won't bother reading it. That's fine. It's all a socialist conspiracy after all. Those damn communist americans.

Akrasia · 27-11-2018 2:29pm

dense wrote: »

Which is it, because it keeps on changing depending on what idea you're trying to sell?

I've just realised you're making all this of this up as you go along.

More quote mining dense?

Why don't you link to the posts instead of fragments so we can see the context in which they were used?

dense · 27-11-2018 6:49pm

Akrasia wrote: »

More quote mining dense?

Why don't you link to the posts instead of fragments so we can see the context in which they were used?

The context is alleged anthropogenic global warming, where the inconsistencies in the narrative force you to adopt different stances about the relevance of global average temperatures, depending on what point you're trying to make, when you're making it and to whom.

Akrasia · 27-11-2018 8:38pm

dense wrote: »

The context is alleged anthropogenic global warming, where the inconsistencies in the narrative force you to adopt different stances about the relevance of global average temperatures, depending on what point you're trying to make, when you're making it and to whom.

You could link to the full posts. For some reason I don't trust your interpretation of the context of those quotes.

Not that it matters. I have clarified what I mean. There's no guessing required. Climate scientists rarely use absolute temperatures for good reason, preferring temperature anomalies but where they do, the giss baseline represents approximately 14c. According to their own analysis.

Your attempt to discredit them by just finding random references to 288k that aren't even in relation to the gistemp baseline is yet another sad attempt at denying reality

dense · 28-11-2018 1:49am

Akrasia wrote: »

Climate scientists rarely use absolute temperatures for good reason, preferring temperature anomalies but where they do, the giss baseline represents approximately 14c. According to their own analysis.

Your attempt to discredit them by just finding random references to 288k that aren't even in relation to the gistemp baseline is yet another sad attempt at denying reality

They are not random references, they are part of the literature.

All you're really saying is that NASA has dropped what it previously described as the earth's "friendly" and "comfortable" temperature, 15°, down to a much cooler 14° because, chosen baseline...

What is really random is your claim that "climate change is measured in tenths of degrees".

That is patent nonsense, unique to you, Akrasia.

dense · 28-11-2018 2:23am

Akrasia wrote: »

I'm glad you find official US reports credible. Have you had a read of the 4th US climate assessment report yet?

It was released by the Trump administration last week (on Black Friday when he thought nobody was looking)

Here are some of the key findings (all taken from the Summary findings)
https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/

So for the US alone, climate change will cause trillions of dollars of economic damage and will lead to food and water shortages and the need to invest further trillions of dollars in infrastructure just to mitigate and adapt to the new climate

The costs are higher the more we delay action.

The evidence for climate change is presented very well in this chapter
https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/chapter/1/

Those who are genuinely skeptical (ie: still have an open mind) should read it and inform themselves of the basis for why the vast majority of experts are very concerned about this

Of course, the pseudo skeptics don't have an open mind and won't bother reading it. That's fine. It's all a socialist conspiracy after all. Those damn communist americans.

I wouldn't waste too much time worrying about it.

Empirical evidence shows that America has been remarkably successful so far in coping with catastrophic climate change.

Adapting to Climate Change: The Remarkable Decline
in the U.S. Temperature-Mortality Relationship
over the 20th Century

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/684582?journalCode=jpe

Akrasia · 28-11-2018 9:18am

dense wrote: »

They are not random references, they are part of the literature.

They're not referring directly to the NASA baseline so they're not directly comparable. You're taking references and misapplying them.

All you're really saying is that NASA has dropped what it previously described as the earth's "friendly" and "comfortable" temperature, 15°, down to a much cooler 14° because, chosen baseline...

What is really random is your claim that "climate change is measured in tenths of degrees".

That is patent nonsense, unique to you, Akrasia.

the temperature anomaly is measured in 10ths of degrees. If you need evidence, see every single monthly and annual climate report published in my lifetime

Akrasia · 28-11-2018 11:29am

dense wrote: »

I wouldn't waste too much time worrying about it.

Empirical evidence shows that America has been remarkably successful so far in coping with catastrophic climate change.

Adapting to Climate Change: The Remarkable Decline
in the U.S. Temperature-Mortality Relationship
over the 20th Century

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/684582?journalCode=jpe

As usual you know better than hundreds of the most highly informed experts in their respective fields.

Plus, we've had 1c warming so far. If we don't act asap, we could see 3 more degrees of warming this century. That's unprecedented in the history of the human species

patrickbrophy18 · 28-11-2018 11:09pm

When I came across this thread, the following video came to mind:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=silfiTY32xo

Think of it what you will. However, he does come off as quite convincing.

Nevertheless, the moving target he is talking about could be the results of continuous intervention where the point of no return is being postponed by changes we are making to tackle climate change.

Having watched numerous documentaries about the topic of global warming and in some cases, global dimming, it would take a lot more than the video above to convince me otherwise.

"Man-made" Climate Change Lunathicks Out in Full Force

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