timg56 said on May 1, 2013 at 12:44 pm
Max,

Close your windows.

Should keep the smoke out.
______

Of course, that’s what we have to do. But we don’t like keeping our windows shut. We like fresh air, especially when we are sleeping. So when we have to close the windows because of the odor from a neighbor’s fire place, we have trouble getting to sleep.

Would the libertarian position be (a) the neighbors aren’t breaking any law and the freedom to use a fireplace is guaranteed in the constitution, or (b) the inside of our house is our space, and our neighbor has no right under the Constitution to invade our house with the fumes from his fire place and deprive us of the right to enjoy our home ?

Myrrh rhetorically asked: “Gosh, what changed with Wagner? From his confident: ‘The majority of the stomatal frequency-based estimates of CO2 for the Holocene do not support the widely accepted concept of comparably stable CO2 concentrations throughout the past 11,500 years.’ ”
Nothing changed. That study purports to derive from stomata proxy reconstructions some centenial timescale 30ppm signals that may be smoothed over in the ice cores. (That may or may not be valid. I’m not competent enough to judge the validity of that study). It doesn’t, however, purport to display any systematic discrepancy from ice cores over multi-centennial timescales; it seems to simply assume that CO2 is well mixed; and it doesn’t hint at the rather larger swings that would result from ignoring the error bars from individual proxy measurements — what your ice-core ‘debunker’ had done.

willard (@nevaudit) | May 1, 2013 at 11:58 am |

I’m very much the wrong guy to invite to the Climate Etc. Book Club. Here goes why: though I deplore the following method, I recognize it’s more likely to be relevant than my own:

Pair Wheelan’s Naked with Perkin’s Confessions of an Economic Hitman;
Balance Ballve’s Essentials with Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations.
Follow Hazlitt’s One Lesson with Keynes’ General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

I know these seem like wonky match-ups, and highly diverse in seriousness and sanity, and you’d likely get every bit as much technical information about Economics from the Khan Academy (which also works).

I haven’t read all these books in detail, but the point is Economics doesn’t have a single taproot, nor a single time. Objective distance helps demonstrate where an author was caught up in a narrow agenda of his time, while readers might be too close to present issues to understand when they’re seeing a biased framing.

Contrast with the way I did it: I did it. I did the math. Textbook after textbook, thesis after thesis, journal article after journal article I did the math. I programmed computers to do the heavy lifting, and I used tools to make it easier, but I did the math.

I looked at the demographic data. I looked at what actually went on in the buying and selling and distribution channels and size and shape of firms and technology transfer and inputs and outputs and finished goods and partial inventories and industry ratios and I did the math. It would have been easier if I had something like R back then, and something like the internet when I started, and those days are long, long past me, but I did the math. So should anyone who wants to learn Economics as more than a dilettante.

That’s how you learn winning chess, too. You do the math, and you play the games, both. Over and over and over with as much diversity and seeking all the insight you can while you do it, but you do it. You do it like calisthenics. You do it like piano practice. You do it until you win games. You do it until you’re a chess player. Or a piano player. Or fit.

And whatever you do, don’t even imagine picking up the likes of Hayek until you’ve done the math and have some idea of what’s what.

And then, if you’ve done the math, you’re equipped to comment on Economics at the BA or BSc. level, if when tested you pass muster to graduate, on the balance of probabilities. Or, if you’re really slick, if you pass muster by making it work at a trading desk or running models for big firms, or in actuary.

After that comes the hard stuff, and no half-dozen books by Economists will get you even part of the way there. Reading a book, even a book by Ballve or Keynes, gets you no further to being an Economist than reading a recipe book turns you into a loaf of bread.

“Restrictions on CO2 emissions large enough to bend downward the temperature curve from its current trajectory to a maximum of 2 or 3 degrees Centigrade would have large economic effects on many businesses.”

Nonsense. This depends entirely upon the estimate of sensitivity and Nordhaus has never, unlike Held, done a sensitivity analysis on the importance of ECS uncertainty. This uncertainty, as Held notes, can best be narrowed by spending more on Mann’s type of work, and I concur. I’d co author with Mann in a heart beat.

Now, perhaps Nordhaus thinks that companies have some sort of nefarious intent. I dont know, when Shell gave money to CRU, where were you? In the end companies dont care about limits on emissions. you limit C02, they make money on solar or bio fuel or whatever.
Of course they would like a less painful route, but in the end, they dont care. there is a demand for energy. they are best suited to deliver it.

willard (@nevaudit) | May 1, 2013 at 11:58 am |

As to what I recommend be done about the topic at hand, were I an advisor in Lomborg’s position?

I’d recognise that these committee hearings have a structure. There’s a BMOC, and that in this case was Chameides, because he could bring the ACC to the committee and sum it up and personify it for their questioning. All other witnesses not the BMOC have a support role, and ought understand that and present accordingly, speaking to the BMOC’s topic, not dragging their own tired old tale in and dropping it on the table like a half-feral cat with some limp vole’s carcass.

Where Chameides stopped, I’d hope to take up his thread and move forward in a trajectory of use to the members. I’d hope if they’re concerned about maintaining material competitiveness with China that I’d bring the figures that would remind them they fell behind in that race a decade ago, and are far, far behind on research spending and innovation spending and capturing hold of the technology of the future — I might even remind them of the rumors that China has moved the bulk of its intelligence efforts into industrial espionage to augment that research and innovation lead and cement their advantage over the rest of the world while America’s attention has been diverted otherwise, but that’s not my area of expertise, I’d say.

I’d point out that America’s one advantage over China is that government research and innovation is invariably slower — planned government innovation and science is invariably worse — than enterpreneurial research and business innovation motivated by building something as the owner of the idea from the ground up. If America wants to regain the lead Capitalism gave America, then America must return to Capitalism.

Which means an end to all subsidies other than those supported by the infant industry argument. Which means privatization of all resources that are administrably feasible to privatize where they are scarce, rivalrous and excludable. That means a carbon dividend and fee. Conversely, it also means strengthening educational and scientific institutions, with government at arms length while it trusts the value proposition that a science education is worth having.

> Nonsense.

Chewbacca awakens.

Perhaps this voice would tame Moshpit:

> That metric is worth trillions. Trillions of dollars per degree.

http://judithcurry.com/2013/03/31/uk-msm-on-climate-sensitivity/#comment-308087

Oh, and yes, that’s GM’s logo at the bottom of the page there:

http://www.ceres.org/bicep/climate-declaration

This is one of those areas where I disagree with people I respect.

(Which is actually the same as every area.)

Bonfires on beaches, where the smoke blows into no houses, takes away the issue of children with asthma or anyone with emphazema or lung cancer or pneumonia or cystic fibrosis in the path of the smoke. Those cases, by the way, I imagine to be clear and sufficient reasons to bar even the most libertarian rugged individualist from callously killing a stranger so they can party in the sand.

Bonfires on beaches, in a world where the smoke wasn’t joining the smog of a city with the population of most countries, so polluted you can look at the sun at noon without fear of damaging your eyes, and the sky is orange from dawn to dusk, and the air is brown if you escape it and look back in disgust, that would be without the issue of being part of a hazard and a pity, where the population must balance what rights it holds more sacred because it can’t have both liberty to burn and liberty to breath.

Bonfires on beaches in California, even half a mile apart, would vie in number with the population of Switzerland. Swiss beaches on the Pacific coast, though I’m sure must be as beautiful as unicorns, do not compare to California beaches and there’s no way people who have never seen the one ought compare them to the other or think they’re equipped to opine intelligently about them.

And if every Californian pissed on his neighbor’s strawberries, the NOx emitted would choke Switzerland.

@Max_OK…

Would the libertarian position be (a) the neighbors aren’t breaking any law and the freedom to use a fireplace is guaranteed in the constitution, or (b) the inside of our house is our space, and our neighbor has no right under the Constitution to invade our house with the fumes from his fire place and deprive us of the right to enjoy our home ?

AFAIK, neither, although libertarians hardly agree on such things. The classic position would be that the neighbors have a perfect right to use their fireplace, as long as the smoke doesn’t cross the property boundaries where it can enter your house.

Not quite as ridiculous as it seems, since superheating the smoke and surrounding it with a shell of heated clean air could probably assure that it rose to well above the inversion, or into the mid altitudes.

However, the sort of solutions libertarians usually (in my experience) talk about involves the original partitioning of the land, and setting of such “rules of the road” into the deed. Thus, in some developments/subdivisions, it might be OK to burn (wood) in your fireplace whenever you want, while in others its isn’t unless it’s blowing into neighbor space where they’ve given permission. Perhaps for a fee. In many existing subdivisions, the decision is primarily up to some sort of “neighborhood association”.

My own studies in anthropology and historical societies suggest (to me) that such rules usually exist as social or cultural tradition. The key problems arise when societies change, or one takes over another. Then conflicts of rules arise that must be resolved. The resolution process is determined by the imperial polity, according to its rules of allocating power over such things.

The fundamental ideal of libertarianism is that each individual must be allowed to do whatever he/she wants, except for when it violates another individual’s “rights”. Despite a variety of objections raised by libertarians and America boosters, the definition of “rights” is a cultural artifact, in my informed opinion. But cultures change, and older and newer systems can and often do come into conflict.

In addition, only individuals have fundamental rights. Group, collective, or corporate entities only have what they inherit from some individuals, according the the rules of society and their own charters or whatever. This is a key distinction from socialism or communitarianism, where the community or collective itself is held to have fundamental “rights” beyond what it inherits from its individual members.
A final point I need to make, another often missed by libertarians and many others, is that the distinctions between socialism, capitalism, democracy, oligarchy, and monarchy tend to become much more evident as a community grows from a few hundred (small village) to thousands, myriads, and millions. A small community can be both democratic, in the sense that each member gets a “vote”, and oligarchic in the sense that most of the votes are cast according to the recommendations of important patrons. Similarly, “capital” can be individually owned and invested according to the individual’s choice, while fitting in to an overall community plan. It’s as the community grows larger that differences will grow faster (IMO), and a distinction between oligarchic and democratic processes, capitalist and socialist systems of allocating capital investment, will become unavoidable.

> chewbacca, black hat marketing, many ways to create effective arguments, arguments that work, but are deductively bogus.

One might think Chewbacca and our Black Hat Marketer take their moniker with the same kind of attitude that Steve ‘gadfly’ McIntyre took his moniker [1]:

> Tom Yulsman has stated that he consulted the dictionary prior to using the term, that the usage was considered and it is the non-pejorative sense that he meant. So I would like readers to take this at face value, as I will do with slightly arched eyebrows. Let’s leave it at that.

http://climateaudit.org/2009/01/09/tom-yulsman-the-gadfly-and-the-dim-witted-horse/#comment-172099

So let’s just say it’s for slightly arched eyebrows’ sake, not for arguments’.

Speaking of which:

http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/tagged/SteveDoesNickname

Yup.

[1] http://climateaudit.org/2013/04/29/more-kaufman-contamination/#comment-416819

Max_OK | April 30, 2013 at 1:47 am |

Here’s the math that happened in my head in the first 3 seconds of reading this malarky:

1.6 billion less (3 rounds/person * population of the USA) ~ 0.7 billion
0.7 billion/5000 practice rounds per DHS soldier = 140,000 DHS soldiers.

0.9 billion rounds /140,000 DHS soldiers ~ 6,500 rounds.

If the DHS is planning to make war on the US population with these numbers, then the DHS needs to hire someone who passed gradeschool math to point out the flaws in its plan.

Forgetting that even at these numbers, the “DHS army” would be outgunned in any city in the USA by private citizens.

Which really ought to disturb people who can do math, and understand demographics.

When he’ll act as a human being, sure.

Sucks to be you, GaryM. Since when did you start to believe government estimates? I thought you hated the government.

It appears as if the USGS is saying that the new total is essentially double the oil than they previously thought.

The new prediction is “7.4 billion barrels of undiscovered—but technically recoverable—oil”. That means that the previous prediction was about 7.4 billion barrels (if it is now doubled).

Now compare this number to what my blogger colleague DC modeled here recently: http://oilpeakclimate.blogspot.com/2013/04/bakken-model-suggests-7-billion-barrels.html

Kudos to DC, as he took the numbers from current production and then extrapolated and essentially nailed the 7 billion barrel number.

Great job.

The new numbers now include the Three Forks formation, which the USGS calls “undiscovered”. They have not discovered it yet, but claim that it is recoverable.

This is the fact sheet:
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2013/3013/fs2013-3013.pdf

“The geologic model for the assessment of the Bakken Formation and underlying Three Forks Formation is that oil generated in the upper and lower Bakken shale members migrated locally into low-permeability and variable-porosity reservoirs of the middle Bakken member, the Pronghorn Member of the Bakken Formation, and dolomitized units of the Three Forks Formation. Locally, oil was also retained in the low-porosity matrix and fractures of the upper and lower Bakken shale members. A hydrogen index (HI) value of 450 was used to define the boundary of thermally mature source rock in the upper Bakken shale member as indicated by recent USGS research.”

They classify two new “hypothetical” assessment units, Middle Bakken and Three Forks as conventional and estimate the total undiscovered in these two units to only contain 8 million barrels. That is piddly. The rest of the undiscovered oil is in what they call “continuous” units. I think this is the unconventional, tight oil which can only be extracted by hydrofracturing.

In any case, 7 billion barrels of oil will provide all of the USA’s oil demand for about 1 year, and this new undiscovered stuff another 1 year, if it pans out.

That’s the Bakken for you, lots of hype.
Not really a Black Swan, more like Black Ducklings.

Yes, willard the metric is worth trillions of dollars per degree, that’s Held’s number. Unlike Nordhaus he is both a climate scientist ( GCMs ) and an economist. And you can see how it is worth Trillions by simply looking at DICE. On the assumption of 3C per doubling you have to impose a cost (in trillions according to Nord ) to decrease emissions.
A typical figure might be 1% of world GDP per year. Thats based on an assumption of 3C per doubling. Run the numbers at 2.5C. Trillions.
Is that cost imposed on energy companies. Nope. Its imposed on their users. Can a multinational avoid taxes altogether. Yup. been there done that.

So not o horribly long until we’ll be back to what North Dakota is actually good for: loneliness.

Beth Cooper | April 30, 2013 at 11:38 pm |

In the last election, did you vote Romney, or Obama?

Oh. You’re not from America?

Well, that makes your opinions about the US Constitution so much more interesting.

Jim D | April 27, 2013 at 9:30 pm |
“……Miskolczi has made his own definition of optical depth in the IR window region, and it is no wonder he doesn’t see a CO2 effect there, by definition. ..”
I did not define anything for the IR windows regin, and in all my papers the IR flux optical depth is defined for the full spectrum. Just do not confuse the people. If you want to say something meaningful then try again.

Unfortunately the IR flux optical depth is not my invention. But seems I am the only one who can compute it correctly. There are tons of publications on this, but I suggest you to start with textbooks like:

Foundation of radiation hydrodynamics. (Mihalas & Mihalas, 1999 Dover Pub. Inc., )

Once you get to page. 361, we may talk about this.

Ferenc

Ben | May 2, 2013 at 2:33 pm |

The worst part about getting fired from a client for telling the hard truth, the prepared, evidence-based, backed up with facts relevant bleeding-edge unpleasant truth, when you’re an experienced consultant with a big enough organization, is getting promoted and given a better client and more responsibility on a bigger project. Work, work, work, work, work.

Virtue is its own punishment.

I once made the mistake of answering the question, when asked by the project director, “What could possibly happen to prevent us from completing on deadline?” I answered with a list starting, “Your vendor might be further behind on their development than they admit and could lose key personnel,” and ending, “the project team could all go out to lunch the day of the project launch and all be hit by a truck.”

Five possibilities out of six came true as if on script. Including the lightning strike on supposedly shielded equipment, and the 60 ft. flood intended as far-fetched examples of Act of God.

A memo from the governor’s office circulated forbidding state personnel involved in critical projects from travelling in groups larger than two outside the office.

The dirty looks I got.