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Comment on State of the climate debate in the U.S. by Peter Lang

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Gees,

I see now you can’t let go of the price of production as your way of estimating the Gt C available. I told you in one of the earliest comments to drop that. It’s not relevant for the estimate of C because technology improves. Nordhaus was not talking about C that can be extracted economically over the next few decades. It’s about what may be extractable of 300 years or so. We have not idea how technologies might develop in future. I’ts very frustrating that you kept going swith this like of argument and ignored what I’d already said and never bothered to read the source documents. And you have not read ‘A Question of Balance’ so all your ad hominem’s simply show your ignorance. You have no idea about the basis of the cost benefit analyses on DICE and RICE.

Even if you use known resources as the basis for your argument, you should find what the known resources were 1800, 1900, 2000 and project the rate of growth to 2100, 2200 and 2300 and see what the result is.


Comment on Deforestation in the UK by captdallas2 0.8 +/- 0.3

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thomas, “If they burned dung it would be cheaper still.”

Nope. Dung can fall into the 1100 C combustion range requiring something like a plasma furnace to legally burn it in the UK/EU. It is cheaper to ship waste back to places like Asia, Africa and South America and import US wood chips/pellets because of regulations and (dis)incentives.

There is a trash triangle growing thanks to NIMBY. Sanitary incineration should really be on the top of the warm and fuzzy agenda, but it just ain’t as sexy as proper biofuel and solar is it?

Comment on Against ‘consensus’ messaging by Bad Andrew

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I think what he meant to say is that climate science is unable to establish any facts. Well, yeah.

Andrew

Comment on Against ‘consensus’ messaging by johnfpittman

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Andywest2012: First, his “bias” is representative of science in CC. In this respect, he is not wrong. My or your scientific opinion as to most likely may or may not agree with Dan’s. However, none of us may be right. That is the nature of CC science at this point.

You state “Principles he finds in some domains (e.g. creationism), he misinterprets in others, due to own heavy bias baked into his priors.” What is his heavy bias? This is similar to Willard’s request. I know he has a bias or opinion as to where in the broad range of scientific thought on CC he thinks is best. It is still in the range of most likely.

Comment on Against ‘consensus’ messaging by Danny Thomas

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Mike,

My understanding is “consensus” is an indication that global warming is occurring and man is the cause. However, “consensus” is being used as a tool (weapon?) against any who question any portion. Clearly “the consensus” wasn’t even a gleam in it’s daddy’s eye (H/t to Father’s Day) when today’s science is taking place and yet “the consensus” is purported to include that also.

Science guys should not be considered for most sales positions.

Comment on Driving in the dark by Rob Starkey (@Robbuffy)

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Willard writes –“Indeed, just as we have little reason to believe in insurers and reinsurers. They’re more likely guessing.
This ain’t just a guess.”

Insurers offer coverage for a relatively short period in the future and people can either pay the fees or not and take the risk if they think the cost of the coverage is deeded excessive.

Those fearing negative climate change due to CO2 worry that the changes in the climate that might occur at some unknown time in the future. somewhere maybe. They (you) want others to pay to do something now with zero knowledge that what they are proposing to be done will have a net positive impact.

So that makes sense to you huh?

Comment on Against ‘consensus’ messaging by andywest2012

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johnfpittman | June 19, 2015 at 1:18 pm

If you argue that bias is a position, not ‘wrong’, this is fine. If you argue that Dan, or anyone, can *without question* still measure the bias in a domain where they (and their tools therefore) are biased, then we will have to disagree. He may be able to, and he may not. There are ways of identifying, and therefore attempting to subtract, cultural bias about theoretically any topic. But can still be v hard if one is heavily biased in that domain, whether or not (e.g. in the CC case) this is simply inherited from the state of the science.

Distancing from ‘the most likely’ in CC (this is just a position like any other, as skeptic ‘very unlikely’ is just a position too), one *should* be able to tell from cultural structures *unrelated* to the topic domain, which ‘side’ most reflects cultural bias in a culture versus reality (e.g. science) conflict. Dan successfully does this in some domains. One *should* be able to do it no matter how biased one is, because the structures are the same. However, that’s different to saying this is easy for emotive beings, which we all are. Dan’s bias unfortunately sabotages his analysis in the CC domain.

If you read the post, this would be much clearer :)

Comment on Against ‘consensus’ messaging by Willard

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Come on, AndyW. That can’t be the proper referent to your:

The original point stands.

And this:

I think the right thing to be concerned about is whether that consensus is underpinned by the processes of science, or classic social processes.

is a false dichotomy to inject the usual “science ain’t about consensus,” which we could memetically render as:


Comment on Deforestation in the UK by AK

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America’s Real Criminal Element: Lead

New research finds Pb is the hidden villain behind violent crime, lower IQs, and even the ADHD epidemic. And fixing the problem is a lot cheaper than doing nothing.

An interesting read. I was especially struck by the careful way correlations were gathered and examined by US state, city (vs. rural), and nations. Even by neighborhood. Somehow, the difference between this attribution of mental problems to lead and the supposed “attribution” of climate problems to CO2 stands out to me.

Location, Location, Location

In New Orleans, lead levels can vary dramatically from one neighborhood to the next—and the poorest neighborhoods tend to be the worst hit.


Put all this together and you have an astonishing body of evidence. We now have studies at the international level, the national level, the state level, the city level, and even the individual level. Groups of children have been followed from the womb to adulthood, and higher childhood blood lead levels are consistently associated with higher adult arrest rates for violent crimes. All of these studies tell the same story: Gasoline lead is responsible for a good share of the rise and fall of violent crime over the past half century.

Comment on Deforestation in the UK by mosomoso

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Stephen, I fear that biochar is more for sustaining the seminar industry than anything else. It’s worth remembering that Christian Turney has been a prominent biochar salesman. We’d all like some terra preta from an ancient disused pottery, we’d all like to use genuine waste intelligently. I exploit then eliminate the cursed lantana by using it as ideal cover and companion for moso. But the lantana is already there. I don’t call in the big machines to create an environment for moso. And there is no way I would consent to stripping riverine areas out west of willow to make and transport biochar to be buried here on the coast.

Big Green has lately taken to creating waste at great cost to fit some theory of ‘sustainablility’. We see it in so many areas, Woodchips-to-Drax being perhaps the most scandalous example. My main objection to wind power in situ is not the bird-chopping but the clearing of ridges and slopes which, world-wide, need to be reforested.

I’m not saying there is no use for biochar or soil enrichment or for the kind of work you are doing. I’m saying that Big Green is a hungry beast which doesn’t seem to care how many Peters are robbed to pay a couple of Pauls. Its motto might as well be: You can’t incinerate an omelette without breaking all the eggs.

Comment on Against ‘consensus’ messaging by johnfpittman

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Andywest2012 I read the post when it came out. What you are highlighting is what certain persons are trying to do with bias or cultural cognition. I am looking at the science of it. I don’t disagree with your conclusions, necessarily.

“”Paul says (among other things): ‘The puzzle — if there is one– is a consequence of the thing to be explained being the opposite of what one would have expected.’ But what one expects depends upon one’s biases and assumptions.””

Where I disagree is not that Dan can be surprised, but that cognitive bias can explain. In this context, I understand Dan’s bias, as well as my own. The power of his work lies in recognition of different acceptance of risks or consequences of risk, IMO. To me, the big difference between the environmental activists and their opposites is not the CC science as much as the risk to different items/freedoms upon choosing a policy.

Comment on Against ‘consensus’ messaging by Steven Mosher

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Jim D wins the thread

As I said. ontology

“You can draw the line on “expert” in different places. From what I remember, Verheggen showed that those publishing most on climate science (in the upper quartile) also were almost all at the upper end on percentage manmade influence somewhat where Gavin is on the issue.”

You can draw different lines on ‘Expert”
You can draw different lines on ‘Consensus’

So, depending on your classification scheme you will come up with different answers:

Define the consensus broadly: C02 warms the planet, and draw your
expert class tightly ( top 10% of published scientists ) and you get 100%

An interesting approach would be to vary both..

In the end, it would still be a lousy communication strategy because climate science itself stands on firmer ground than squishy science about experts and their views.

Weaker science doesnt make stronger science look any better.
Weaker evidence ( everyone agrees ) doesnt make stronger science (the physics) look any better.

Comment on Against ‘consensus’ messaging by andywest2012

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johnfpittman | June 19, 2015 at 3:01 pm

Okay. And for my part, I have no problem at all with Kahan’s or anyone’s ‘recognition of different acceptance of risks or consequences of risk'; indeed balancing risks and consequences is key. And avid advocates of CC tend to ignore that balance, as you imply. BUT… this is essentially second stage in Kahan’s considerations. Necessarily so, because you can’t perform that consideration adequately without some idea first of the relative cultural bias that may be in play, to use as a weighting. And it is this part which goes wrong.

Comment on Against ‘consensus’ messaging by johnfpittman

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It may have been addressed before as part of uncertainty or wickedness, but I think just as in ecology or environmental one should trace the money before deciding if the issue is actually environmental, one should trace the moral acceptance of risk, before one decides if the issue is the science where in lies a wicked problem. IMO, the moral beliefs on the risk presented by such uncertainty and wickedness in science underlies both the problems with communication and the cognitive bias that inflates polarization.

Comment on Driving in the dark by Vaughan Pratt

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@cd: The average range of estimates is 2 to 4 C warmer than some time in the past. (Bold mine)

The Summary for Policy Makers at the beginning of AR5 defines “the past” by referencing temperatures to the global mean surface temperature averaged over 1985-2005. According to WoodForTrees, the 20 years 1985-2005 averaged 0.273 °C above HadCRUT4’s reference point.

Using “today” it is closer to 0.8 to 2.5 C.

If you take “today” to be the ten years 2005-2015, those averaged 0.493 above the HadCRUT4 reference point, an increase of 0.22 °C over “the past”, while the 20 years 1995-2015 averaged 0.443 above it, an increase of 0.17 °C. That would decrease my 2-4 range to about 1.8-3.8, considerably more than 0.8-2.5.

However my 2-4 range was a bit simplistic. The projections depend among other things on what CO2 does. As I was saying earlier, according to Hofmann et al the excess of CO2 over 280 ppmv during the previous millennium has been very well modeled as having a constant CAGR of 2.155% and reaching 120 ppmv (as the excess over 280) in 2015. If that keeps up, the result during this century will be essentially the red curve labeled RCP8.5 (Representative Concentration Pathway) in this plot:

The surface’s response to this additional CO2 depends on many other unknowns besides CO2. By varying those unknowns a climate model will generate a range or ensemble of temperatures. And different models may project different outcomes even under the same assumptions, due to the variety of “equally plausible numerical representations, solutions and approximations for modelling the climate system, given the limitations in computing and observations” [AR5, FAQ 12.1, p.1036]. Taking all this into account, the most likely outcomes of RCP8.5 up to 2100 are projected by the red range in Figure SPM.7(a) on p.21 of WG1AR5:

Taking “today” to be about 0.2 °C as above, i.e. subtracting 0.2 from what Figure SPM.7(a) shows, the further increase for 2100 assuming RCP8.5 is 2.6-5.2 °C. For the much lower RCP2.6 (the green curve in my first figure) the corresponding range is 0-1.5 °C.


Comment on Driving in the dark by Vaughan Pratt

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@RS: <i>My request– Please cite the source of that conclusion.</i> Done (with corrections) immediately above.

Comment on Deforestation in the UK by RiHo08

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Capt’nDallas

“There is a trash triangle growing thanks to NIMBY.” I don’t know what you mean. What is a “trash triangle”?

I am familiar with urban trash incinerators that produce steam for large building heating and steam for the local electric utility. The important calculus is the plastic content of the trash. High plastic content produces your fossil fuel energy source which can not only reduce the transpiration of garbage out of town to a landfill miles and miles away, as well as provide revenue to your municipal utility.

Sanitary sewers take the effluent to a central processing treatment plant where the solids can and are be sterilized and sold as fertilizer. Are you saying that the dried solids can also be burned as well such as being done in Minnesota with turkey poop?

Comment on Against ‘consensus’ messaging by andywest2012

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Willard | June 19, 2015 at 1:56 pm |
Come on, AndyW

You seemed to be focusing at the last few passes in this sub-thread on my small sentence:
‘A consensus is measure of agreement, not a measure of reality.’

So I merely meant the original point wrt this focus.

But yes, the wider points stand too. A social consensus is a specific characteristic of cultural entities, and from an evolutionary perspective, it provides the advantage of common action, through belief, in the face of the unknowable. Social consensus is tied into gene-culture co-evolution, and has particular characteristics, b) above, and these are different to a more reasoned, less emotive, consensus about for instance, a science topic encompassing uncertainty, per a) above.

The Kahan point stands too, while you insist that a reasoned argument supporting the point will not do, but apparently an isolated silver bullet quote will, and hence don’t challenge the point.

Comment on Against ‘consensus’ messaging by andywest2012

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Willard | June 19, 2015 at 1:56 pm

Seem to have mis-threaded. See below, unless this also ends up below if the threading is broken ):

Comment on Against ‘consensus’ messaging by richardswarthout

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Dr Curry,

The encyclical is much more than climate change. It is about the human responsibility to care for all of creation; the planet, the poor and sick, and the young. It is a document about morality and moral standards, stuff that liberals usually do not agree with. On climate change it was obviously not fact checked. On this subject it starts with widely accepted notions of pollution and our responsibility to protect the planet, but leaves the track regarding global warming; AGW is a small part of the encyclical, but there is enough ammunition for the cherry-pickers, and it also appears to be a document ripe for equivocaters.

Richard

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