Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

georgeob1 wrote:

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parados wrote:

There is a difference between probability and predictability. Chaos theory means I can't predict where the ball on a roulette wheel will fall on a given spin. But probability theory tells me the likelyhood of it falling into the 00. If I put a second 00 on the wheel, I still can't predict based on chaos theory but I have changed the probability of the ball falling on the 00. I can quite easily figure that probability.

Not all random variables have Normal distributions (I mean the statistical definition of that term) - or even symmetrical ones.

Parados - anyone as thoroughly discredited as yourself on probability theory would do well to stay away from that topic, at least on the selfsame thread.

Our host, Blatham, will tell you about our poker-playing expedition (on an evening when Lola was out of town) in which he discovered there ain't no chaos theory involved - just that some of us will only bet on distributions we estimate to be Poisson; alas, you can't even tell binomial from Cauchy <G>

I think this is rather hyperbolic. My 'side' of the debate are those who are concerned with climate change, whether it's AGW or not.

Cycloptichorn

Our host, Blatham, will tell you about our poker-playing expedition (on an evening when Lola was out of town) in which he discovered there ain't no chaos theory involved - just that some of us will only bet on distributions we estimate to be Poisson; alas, you can't even tell binomial from Cauchy <G>

Cycloptichorn wrote:

I think this is rather hyperbolic. My 'side' of the debate are those who are concerned with climate change, whether it's AGW or not.

Cycloptichorn

Then we are on the same side.

(hyperbole?)

Perhaps I should have been more clear: my side are the ones who are not only concerned, but who think we should start taking preventative measures before the problem grows out of control.

We've discussed different ways to do this before; I don't think the chicken littles should discount the good argument that it's never too early to start preventative medicine. For example, standards which force newer production facilities to be cleaner than old ones used to be, while grandfathering the old ones in - allows society to plug along just fine, but makes changes for the future.

Yet, when this is brought up, you see the worst sort of attacks against those who propose such initiatives, that they are 'anti-business.' I hate that, how people who are concerned about the future of our world are portrayed as some sort of controlling haters.
Cycloptichorn

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Perhaps I should have been more clear: my side are the ones who are not only concerned, but who think we should start taking preventative measures before the problem grows out of control.

So far we are on the same side.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

We've discussed different ways to do this before; I don't think the chicken littles should discount the good argument that it's never too early to start preventative medicine. For example, standards which force newer production facilities to be cleaner than old ones used to be, while grandfathering the old ones in - allows society to plug along just fine, but makes changes for the future.

Yet, when this is brought up, you see the worst sort of attacks against those who propose such initiatives, that they are 'anti-business.' I hate that, how people who are concerned about the future of our world are portrayed as some sort of controlling haters.
Cycloptichorn

I think I agree with the principle you state here, but am confused by the conclusion you draw from it.

For example -- the Bush Administration proposed a relaxation of certain provisions in the Clean Air Act which required that any significant modification to the coal fired power plants that were 'grandfathered in' under the Act, would automatically require that the plants be brought into full compliance with measures enacted long after they were licensed and built. The Bush Administration proposed that modifications that would inprove the plant's efficiency (and therefore reduce its fuel consumption and emissions be allowed, without also requiring full compliance (which in most cases would be both economically and prectically infeasible). The fact is that many such innovations had been deferred by the power companies precisely because of the disincentives built into the act. The environmental community, the AGW zealots and the Democrats rose up in universal condemnation of this proposal, characterizing it as a license for business to make more profits at the expense of the environment -- a bald lie.

Who here is misportraying whom?

I'm not exactly sure - that's a complicated situation, lol, let me think about it for a minute.

Of, course I have to keep in mind the possibility that it is you who are mis-portraying some portion of this story,

Cycloptichorn

A North Pole expedition meant to bring attention to global warming was called off after one of the explorers got frostbite.

"They were experiencing temperatures that weren't expected with global warming," Atwood said. "But one of the things we see with global warming is unpredictability."

Actually what this 'scientist' meant to say was, "But one of the things we see with the weather is unpredictability."

georgeob1 wrote:

Actually what this 'scientist' meant to say was, "But one of the things we see with the weather is unpredictability."

A scientist who need a failed Arctic expedition to see that "weather is unpredictable" should be given the igNobel prize.
This year, the prize would go to another who realized the Earth is spinning.

... or that the climate of the earth has never been stable over geologic time.

He is reluctant to take credit for the current focus on environmental matters. "Others have made their contribution and I hope we made ours," he says. That contribution, running to almost 700 pages, said the expected increase in extreme weather, with the associated - and expensive - problems of agricultural failure, water scarcity, disease and mass migration, means global warming could swallow up to 20% of the world's GDP. The cost of addressing the problem, it said, could be limited to about 1% of GDP, provided it starts on a serious scale within 10 to 20 years.
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Sir Nicholas has been given much of the credit for the fact that global warming now tops the public and political agendas. His review last October was hailed by Tony Blair as the most important document to land on his desk, and no discussion of climate change is complete without a reference to Sir Nicholas's headline conclusion - that it is cheaper to tackle the issue than to wait and deal with the consequences.
But there has also been criticism. William Nordhaus, the esteemed Yale University professor of economics, said Sir Nicholas's unambiguous conclusions brought to mind the one-handed economist demanded by former US president Harry Truman, who complained that they would always say on the one hand this and the other hand that.

There has been gossip about the reasons Sir Nicholas will leave the Treasury at the end of this month to return to academic life at the London School of Economics. And the review's support for action to curb greenhouse gas emissions, just as the government is pushing for domestic and international measures to do just that, has even been labelled as another dodgy dossier.

For either a green prophet of doom or a shady conspirator, Sir Nicholas seems relaxed. He admits that he flies too much and has yet to replace all the lightbulbs in his house with low energy versions. If all the attention has gone to his head, he does not show it.

He is reluctant to take credit for the current focus on environmental matters. "Others have made their contribution and I hope we made ours," he says. That contribution, running to almost 700 pages, said the expected increase in extreme weather, with the associated - and expensive - problems of agricultural failure, water scarcity, disease and mass migration, means global warming could swallow up to 20% of the world's GDP. The cost of addressing the problem, it said, could be limited to about 1% of GDP, provided it starts on a serious scale within 10 to 20 years.

The simplicity of this headline finding cut through the complications and caveats (the report itself warns the figures should not be taken too literally) and shifted the debate into new territory, at least in the UK. Although the report was written mainly for an international audience, it remains to be seen whether it, and Sir Nicholas's globetrotting, will kick start the stalled negotiations on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. He says: "Everywhere we went, people have been engaged in the discussion, which is very healthy. Now everybody has to find their own way to what they conclude from that."

The review has its roots in the 2005 G8 summit at Gleneagles. Sir Nicholas says: "There were two subjects, Africa and climate change. The previous year I'd written a report for the Commission for Africa. We got quite a long way on Africa and Gordon [Brown] felt this was very much on the basis of serious, careful analysis." The chancellor asked Sir Nicholas to perform a similar analysis to push forward the international effort on global warming. "Not to look for consensus, but to establish some of the basic issues and conclusions."

Chief among those is that a failure to cut emissions will be devastating. Critics such as Richard Tol of the Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin complain that the report's conclusions are "alarmist and incompetent" and argue that it should be seen as a political document, not an impartial assessment of existing knowledge.

Sir Nicholas says: "It's about providing an analytical basis for policy, whilst at the same time trying to be specific about policy. It's not a political document in the sense of making a narrow party case or a narrow case for a particular position. It's false to suggest there was any view on the way this should come out at the beginning."

Critics have focused on the way the report treats future generations, which will be most affected by decisions we make today because it takes time for the heat trapped by our carbon emissions to build up. Much of what is going to happen over the next 30 or 40 years is already determined.

So the policy decisions we take now in terms of reducing emissions will have implications in 50, 100 or 150 years. Sir Nicholas believes the damage future generations will suffer at our hands is greater than generally perceived. Other economists, including Professor Nordhaus, disagreed and an academic bun fight ensued.

Sir Nicholas says: "Many other economists have taken [our] position so we're not peculiar in this at all." Some climate change sceptics tried to portray these disagreements as undermining the case for action. In fact, even the most strident of his academic tormentors also stressed the need to reduce emissions.

Sir Nicholas says his team also took a different approach in the way they treated the scientific evidence. Rather than just working with the most likely scenarios, they took into account the smaller chances of far more severe events unfolding. And those events tend to be the most expensive. "You take into account the different probabilities and what kind of damages could follow," he says. "And at each stage where you've got a 'could', you've got a probability distribution. So you have to build that into the story. We're starting to be able to do that."

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in Belgium, Al Gore is looked upon as a hero, a superman, the only man in the world who can save the planet. And the discussion about climate change in the media and among politicians is not about the scientific data and conclusions, but only about the question whether we are doing enough to fight climate change and whether we are making enough new laws to save our planet
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