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Comment on Week in review 8/11/12 by Beth Cooper

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dalyplanet,
Appreciate yer sensible comment, :-) :-) :-)


Comment on Week in review 8/11/12 by Pekka Pirilä

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The devil is in the details – again.

Peter is absolutely right in is his revised formulation and it is a serious concern. I would list this as a well established fact not merely an opinion.

I consider it also well established that government intervention is necessary and very important in many cases. There may be a little more opposition to this claim but I trust that most by far agree also on this.

That means that we cannot discuss meaningfully whether government intervention is good or bad without stating precisely the details, but how often is that done in web discussion?

And, what’s perhaps most problematic, we have often situations where government intervention seems to be necessary but where any specific intervention is likely to have serious problems, possibly serious enough to make the whole intervention futile as it’s expected net value may be close to zero and even negative. The need to intervene does not prove that we are able to intervene productively.

We have seen many examples where government actions have had a negative net effect. That by itself does not prove that they had a negative expectation value and there might have been many simultaneous positive experiences that dominate the net outcome. Unfortunately my own feeling is that much that is presently proposed and even implemented is on the wrong side of the borderline, i.e. the expected outcome is negative in comparison with realistic alternative policies of less government intervention.

The fundamental problem is that strong government intervention leads often to a larger increase in stupid solutions than in wise ones because there are always more ways to act stupidly than to act wisely. It opens also almost invariably also opportunities for outright fraud. The negative ratio is almost certain to grow highly nonlinearly with the strength of intervention. For this reason I’m mostly opposed to strong intervention but support many less strong actions.

Comment on Post Normal Science: Deadlines by SamNC

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Myrrh | August 11, 2012 at 11:09 am | Reply You’ve completely ignored the literature I pointed you to that discusses the absorption of sunlight by phytoplankton.

“Photosynthesis is the conversion of visible light to chemical energy, the creation of sugars, this is not conversion to heat.. I am questioning the base premise of AGW fisics which claims that visible light, Shortwave, directly heats land and oceans.”

This is where the AGW models went wrong and where K Trenberth to find the most part of his missing heat. So simple that the warmists such as J. Hansen, M. Mann and K. Trenberth etc. had no clues at all in their literatures and models. Or they knew it but to promote AGW to fill their pockets.

Comment on Post Normal Science: Deadlines by SamNC

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WHT,
Try to understand Myrrh and don’t be just dead stubborn blocking yourself unless you are on the AGW gravy train.

Comment on Week in review 8/11/12 by tempterrain

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” nobody will harm the environment as much as the environmentalists. QED”

Is this a general truism?

Can we also write QED after statements like:

Nobody will harm climate scepticism as much as climate sceptics?

Nobody will harm capitalism as much as the most pro-capitalist, climate denial libertarians?

Nobody will harm conservatism…………

Comment on Observation-based (?) attribution by Richard111

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Many thanks for this link. Going to keep me busy.

Comment on Week in review 8/11/12 by Latimer Alder

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@A Fan

Not being an academic I do not have general access to the paper you cite. So I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.

It is very strange that the cult of AGW buries its basic documents in places inaccessible to the ‘layman’. And writes them in dreadfully turgid and complex prose. Hence needing a ‘true believer’ to interpret them for us. Which is an interesting historical parallel with the need for a priesthood prior in the Catholic Church prior to the Reformation…..

Maybe the lack of access isn’t so strange after all……

Comment on Week in review 8/11/12 by andrew adams

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I would hazard a guess that the homeless would prefer a political solution that found them somewhere to live, the means to pay for it etc. to warming the planet to make their life a little less uncomfortable.


Comment on Week in review 8/11/12 by Peter Lang

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Tol has a new paper on carbon tax. http://econpapers.repec.org/paper/sussusewp/3312.htm

Given the complexity and the equity issues this paper reveals, I’d ask those who advocate carbon pricing to explain how and why they believe these issues can be overcome (given the reality of international politics, negotiations and agreements)?

The economic assumptions that underpin the carbon price analyses assume there is a substitute for fossil fuels. They assume that as the price of fossil fuels rises, these energy sources will substitute for fossil fuels. However, there is no viable alternative at the moment. If we rely on a progressively increasing carbon price to get to the point where sufficient resources are directed to getting us a viable alternative, we’ll be waiting a long time before we start.

Tol’s latest paper and many others persuade me that the economic approach of carbon pricing is not viable. The carbon pricing approach depends largely on efficiency improvements. However, although efficiency improvements can achieve some reduction in emissions, the benefits are small compared with the reductions being advocated.

Therefore, I am further persuaded by Tol’s latest paper that carbon pricing is the wrong approach.

Instead, we need an engineering solution. We need to focus our efforts on what needs to be done to get nuclear power cost competitive with fossil fuels. This must be done for all countries, all sizes of economies and for all grid sizes. Therefore, we need small, factory built, modular nuclear power plants at sizes equivalent to gas turbine plants (20 MW to 300 MW).

To achieve this, I’d suggest the key things governments need to do are:

1. Educate the population to get over radiation phobia. This needs to begin with educating academics, students and school teachers.

2. Remove the legal and regulatory impediments that impede nuclear power. Remove all the incentives and disincentives that favour one technology over another.

3. Revamp the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The focus needs to change from striving for near perfect safety to providing a cost competitive alternative to fossil fuels.

Comment on Observation-based (?) attribution by Richard111

Comment on Philosophical reflections on climate model projections by Steven Mosher

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If you like scaffettas curve fitting I have a better one

Comment on Fuzzy dice by Brian H

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Fuzzy die are (generally illegal) objects that hang from a rear-view mirror and obstruct vision of the future.

Comment on Fuzzy dice by Brian H

Comment on Week in review 8/11/12 by climatereason

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Fan

As regards the ozone hole, as your link shows we do not know the historic measurements and do not know if we may have been trying to fix something that was not broken. Sounds familiar. James Hansen made his pronouncements on temperatures without knowing at the time that the figures he prduced for Giss merely plugged into the latest part of a long warming trend that, according to CET, was in motion by 1660 and according to BEST since 1753.

tonyb

Comment on Philosophical reflections on climate model projections by Paul Matthews

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Adam, perhaps statistics has changed a bit since you learnt it. Rather than using basic principles, probabilities are now sometimes assigned based on the opinions of ‘experts’, so-called ‘subjective Bayesianism’. This paper points out some of the obvious weaknesses of this approach (eg circular reasoning) on page 38.


Comment on ‘Consensus’ by exhaustion by Brian H

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As you yourself indicate, JC, “a useful role in the early synthesis of the scientific knowledge and in building political will to act” is indeed “useful” only if you assume the goals of the “will to act” are constructive.

Comment on ‘Consensus’ by exhaustion by Brian H

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The only hope of breaking such a defensive laager around those fields is persistent critiquing by qualified scientists around whom other forces may coalesce. But I immediately have to wonder if any such can exist, or survive. How can they gain a livelihood, much less a platform from which to be heard, or resources to do challenging research?

Comment on Philosophical reflections on climate model projections by blouis79

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Adam, I think you’re right. As far as I can figure, the most reliable statistical prediction of the future is a linear regression through all available data. Humans being the cognitively biased beings they are think they know better. People using computer models think they know better than everybody else.

I think bookies would have a better chance of predicting temperature outcomes that climate scientists because they have to put their money where their mouth is.

Nobody without a significant personal stake in prediction accuracy and the prospect of making a loss has the proper incentives to be right.

Comment on Fuzzy dice by Latimer Alder

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And in the same vein, Jim Steinman had it right.

‘Objects In The Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer Than They Are’

Comment on Week in review 8/11/12 by Peter Lang

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Of course I’ve read it. But your comments revealed you haven’t the slightest understanding about the complexities it makes so clear, nor the relevance to policy.

It is clear from your comments you have no idea about the implications of any of this for policy at all.

You clearly are not able to combine the Tol paper with the other material I’ve been presenting. As I said, your comments on the Tol paper are those of a simpleton, as is your discussion of policy.

It’s also clear your mind is tightly shut. You believe in Left ideology and can’t even seriously consider anything the Left does not endorse.

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