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

McTag wrote:

BTW I enjoyed Thomas' post by Matthew Parris, an interesting comparison of modern doom-mongers with the mediaeval sky-pilots. But our experience now of global warming is rather too real, I think.

Glad you liked it! I think the center of Matthew Parris's point isn't about doubts whether global warming is real. Rather it is summed up in his immortal four-worder: "I don't believe in nature." It is about the belief in the innate goodness of what nature was like before the industrial revolution, and the innate wickedness of changing anything about that state of affairs.

An anecdote in Steven Landsburg's Armchair Economist offers another favorite illustration of the point. When his daughter went to elementary school, the teacher made some remarks about Christmas, Santa Claus, and how school children were supposed to behave well or else Santa wouldn't come to them. Landsburg called her teacher and informed him that his family was Jewish and did not believe in Santa Claus. Therefore, Landsburg pointed out, it was unacceptable that the teacher gave his daughter the idea that the Santa wasn't coming coming to her was because she was a rotten child. The teacher was extremely apologetic and promised not to do this again.

A few years later a different teacher at a different school made it a point to teach his daughter about the importance of recycling, of using mass transportation, saving energy, and other items in the environmentalist catechism. Again, Landsburg called the teacher, informed him that his family didn't believe in environmentalism, and asked him not to indoctrinate his daughter with an ideology she was too young to evaluate for herself. This time, the teacher was completely puzzled how nice people could hold such horrible opinions. As many people today, he had failed to notice that environmentalism is a religion, not a science, and that some of us don't believe in it.

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Thomas, recycling isn't just about environmentalism. If that were the case, then foundrymen and scrap iron dealers would be environmentalists.

I don't believe in environmentalism either, but without recycling, there could be no industrial age. Without public transportation, you sit in gridlock. And today, if you don't save energy, you certainly won't save any money.

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Quote:

I think the center of Matthew Parris's point isn't about doubts whether global warming is real. Rather it is summed up in his immortal four-worder: "I don't believe in nature." It is about the belief in the innate goodness of what nature was like before the industrial revolution, and the innate wickedness of changing anything about that state of affairs.

thomas

And that is what makes the bit a straw man. Is there anyone on this board, for example, who bows down to the Gaia hypothesis? Is anyone here advancing the notion that 'nature' is sacred? To be concerned with the consequences of massive ice melting, for example, is not to heave over to some Rousseau-like notion of the sinless primitive, it's merely prudence and moral concern.

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blatham wrote:

And that is what makes the bit a straw man. Is there anyone on this board, for example, who bows down to the Gaia hypothesis?

The bowing is implied in all the argument on whether global warming is for real or not. This argument is completely unnecessary if you are indifferent between a globe with today's temperatures and a globe that is ten degrees warmer than it is. The "prudence" argument cuts both ways here: We don't know what we will have to sacrifice when the globe is ten degrees warmer than today. We also don't know what we will have to sacrifice in order to prevent the globe from warming by ten degrees. Prudence is meaningless to decide a tradeoff when the risks of both sides are unknown. And "moral concern" reduces to empty posturing when we cannot predict the overall consequences of our actions either way.

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thomas

I don't think that is accurate. We already know how fragile some ecosystems are (coral reefs) and there is good reason to postulate chain-reaction die-offs are possible if not likely. By your argument, you could put a big wedge under your house and tilt it to 45 degrees and all you have as consequence is a new life environment with who-knows-what advantages to balance the negatives.

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I have just seen the coral reefs in Lakshadweep, between 70 and 80% of which died when the ocean warmed during the El Niño event in 1998-9. They will take hundreds of thousands of years to recover - if the next event doesn't carry them off - and with them dies a huge ecosystem. At the moment, all that replaces them is sand and weed.

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blatham wrote:

I don't think that is accurate. We already know how fragile some ecosystems are (coral reefs) and there is good reason to postulate chain-reaction die-offs are possible if not likely.

After a similar debate two years ago, I decided to inform myself about this question. So I ordered a used copy of Essentials of Ecology. According to it, the concern about chain-reaction die-offs was raised in the 60s in the early 70s, and thoroughly researched in the 70s and 80s. (The copy of the book was from 1989 I think.) The result was that the food chain was massively redundant, and that the risk of ecosystem collapses was trivial unless you artificially removed a vast majority of all species in it. My guess, which the book does not address, is that the original concern made it into public opinion, but the eventual correction remained confined to academia.

blatham wrote:

By your argument, you could put a big wedge under your house and tilt it to 45 degrees and all you have as consequence is a new life environment with who-knows-what advantages to balance the negatives.

I don't see how my argument implies that. I know the cost of not putting a wedge under my house, which is zero. I know the benefit to me of not having my house tilted by 45 degrees, which is considerable. My argument was about the impact of uncertainty on our collective decision-making, and your example did not contain anything uncertain.

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No body is talking religion here Thomas. Well not me anyway. Climatology is a science. So is meteorology and ecology.

Personally I believe there is very little we can do to ward off the effects of warming. Its in the pipeline as a result of 200+ years of industrialisation based on fossil fuels. In that sense I might agree with you that its better to build better sea defenses than believe cutting back on emissions now will prevent sea level rise in the future.

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Steve (as 41oo) wrote:

No body is talking religion here Thomas. Well not me anyway. Climatology is a science. So is meteorology and ecology.

Our disagreement isn't about the science. I agree the globe is warming, that it is man made for the most part, and that it may contribute to species extinction. What I disagree with is the contention that there is something seriously wrong with a warmer globe containing fewer species. That part isn't ecology, climatology or meteorology. It's a value judgment that some people are casting and other people don't. You are correct in pointing out that nobody is explicitly articulating the judgement, but it is clearly implied by your choice of facts worth arguing about.

***

I haven't yet finished looking into Clary's point about the coral reefs. So far I have found out this from the reputable sources Google delivered: 1) El Nino has been occuring since the 1920. Therefore I don't see why a 1980 El Nino event would cause a sudden collapse. 2) Lakshadweep has a serious problem with overfishing and population increase, the latter of which causes more freshwater to enter the reef. These problems did emerge in the 1980s. Unlike global warming, these problems, unlike global warming reflect conscious choices by Indians and implies uncomfortable tradeoffs for them in the future. True or false, the global warming explanation has the benefit of blaming Lakshadweep's problems on someone else. At this point I am unconvinced that global warming is the major cause of collapsing coral reefs.

All that said, I am pretty sure that future inhabitants of Lakshadweep would rather inherit a world without coral reefs than one without internal combustion engines.

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Quote:

Future scenario

What can be done to save the reefs? fluman developmental activities have been responsible for the degradation of Lakshadweep coral reefs and there is an urgent need to stop the degradation and reverse the trend. Several suggestions and recommendations have been made (James & Pillai, 1989; Pillai, 1996; Rodrigues, 1996). Due to increased revenue from fish catch, improved medical care and other facilities, the life styles of islanders have improved over the years. Technology has been used to raise the standards of living and it must now be utilized to save the reefs. A study on the attitudes and perceptions of islanders towards reefs needs to he undertaken. If the coral reefs were to be destroyed, the fishery, which is the main source of income for islanders, will collapse. We thus need the reefs and tile reefs need our protection. Let us learn from the symbiotic relationship of coral polyps with zooxathellae which holds the secret of the high productivity of coral reef ecosystems.

source: Goa University, An analysis of the carrying Capacity of Lakshadweep Coral Reefs

Well, it's just expressing someone's view from today, not what future inhabitants would say.

However, this analysist doesn't look done bad to me, while I haven't seen any serious report about what surely will be said or liked in the future.

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Walter Hinteler wrote:

However, this analysist doesn't look done bad to me, while I haven't seen any serious report about what surely will be said or liked in the future.

I agree that this looks like a well-done paper. But note that it says nothing about El Nino, global warming, or anything like that. The dying of those coral reefs is a local problem by a local population that overused its local resources, and now needs better resource management. While there may not be a study of benefits, there must have been some good in the overall development of this group of islands. After all, there must be a reason why so many people have been moving there.

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thomas

I confess I am surprised by your evisceration of any moral component as regards extinguishing other life forms. That is where you end up, isn't it? For example, if the last mating pair of some rabbit species was in the way of a housing development or some such, then they are done away with and it's just an 'oh well'? Is that really your position?

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blatham wrote:

That is where you end up, isn't it? For example, if the last mating pair of some rabbit species was in the way of a housing development or some such, then they are done away with and it's just an 'oh well'? Is that really your position?

My position is that your attatchment to that rabbit species is essentially a religious one, and some people don't believe in that religion. As I see it, you are a baptist of that religion, while I am a very moderate Methodist, the kind that only goes to church on Christmas and never prays. I find it sad that the Dodo is extinct. It would have been nice if McDonalds had gotten the chance to serve me a bite of Dodo wings together with their french fries. But no society is perfect, and if all is said and done, I would rather live in a world without Dodos than in a world without the civilization that extinguished them in the process of discovering Madagascar.

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blatham wrote:

thomas

I confess I am surprised by your evisceration of any moral component as regards extinguishing other life forms. That is where you end up, isn't it? For example, if the last mating pair of some rabbit species was in the way of a housing development or some such, then they are done away with and it's just an 'oh well'? Is that really your position?

At the very least, thousands of species were rendered extinct before homo sapiens ever entered the biological picture.

Any number of these extinctions were the direct or indirect result of the behaviors of other species.

There is nothing inherently immoral about the end of a species. The last mating pair of some rabbit species could just as easily bite the bullet because of a virus as human encroachment.

Yes, yes, I know...We with our minds and souls can remove ourselves from the harsh calculus of evolution and see the world in a grain of sand, and heaven in a wildflower.

So where does it begin and end?

Bunnies are cute, Are snail-darters? Are dung-beetles? Are bacteria? Are viruses?

If there is compelling reason to preserve rabbits, why isn't there a compelling reason to preserve the AIDs virus?

Personally, I find it very sad when any mammalian species is rendered extinct, and I would stop the construction of my house if it meant shrews or elephants might never roam the world again. I also find it sad when reptilian, amphibian, large fish, and colorful bird or raptor species are rendered extinct, and I probably would stop the construction of my house to save them as well.

But of course, from your lofty heights, you find the extinction of the deer tick to be as tragic as the extinction of the snow leopard. Right?

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Blatham, Species disappear every day, and usually not due to human causes. Moreover our record at intervening to "save" particular species is not all that good. Very often the salvation of one species yields the extinction of another. Logging in many of the forests of the Pacific Northwest was halted some years ago by the action of environmentalists using the Spotted Owl, an officially designated "endangered species", as their legal weapon. Wherever evidence of Spotted Owl habitation could be found, logging was prohibited - even on private lands. A result has been increased undergrowth, a denser forest with smaller trees, more fires, and surprise! -- even fewer spotted owls. It turns out the new forest conditions favor the Brown Owl which out competes the Spotted variety in the now changed habitat.

Besides, how can a dedicated Darwinist oppose the extinction of non-competitive species?

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hmmm... Are all environmentalists also Darwinists?

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I think we'd each hold that there is a moral argument to made against beating a dog with a tire iron. But its difficult to understand how you three might defend that moral claim. The dog, like all individuals and most species, will die. Is it a religious notion that dogs should not be beaten?

And why not consider humans in the same light? Do biologists working with seriously virulent biological agents have a moral duty to keep those agents from getting out and killing humans off? Why? Our species will certainly go extinct at some point.

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blatham wrote:

Is it a religious notion that dogs should not be beaten?

Yes. Not that it's a problem for me -- I'm an atheist myself, but I have nothing against religion.

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And humans, thomas?

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blatham wrote:

And humans, thomas?

My religion of natural law holds that humans have a right to life, liberty and property, the first of which your careless biologist violates. But just because this is a religious proposition I agree with, that doesn't stop it from being a religious proposition.

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

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