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Comment on Week in review by Brandon Shollenberger

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Steven Mosher, thanks for explaining:

If you’re refering to Zeke’s paper, then you are wrong.

I’ll have to try to remember this approach in the future. Whenever someone suggests the equations I use to model something have substantial uncertainties in them, I’ll just say, “You’re wrong.” I’ll also try developing telepathy so I can be like you:

To recap. Those who want to kill gas as a bridge fuel want to focus on the next 20 years. we think the literature suggests that the damges 100 years out are more important.

apparently Brandon disagrees.. on some un known and un cited basis.

I haven’t said anything to suggest this. Claiming someone overstates the certainty of their analysis in no way indicates you think the opposite position is true. The only way this could be “apparently” true is if you could read my mind.

Then again, you say:

As for his ham fisted handling of the damages argument.. he just doesnt get it.

But don’t actually quote or reference anything I say to indicate what I got wrong. I don’t think telepathy could explain that one. Maybe I’m wrong though. I could just be underestimating the supernatural forces you have at hand.

That, or you could just be hand-waving away things you don’t want to actually address, like you’ve done time and time again.


Comment on Week in review by Jim D

Comment on A precautionary tale: more sorry than safe(?) by HAS

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I hadn’t intended it to be all that complicated, and it doesn’t turn on collective vs private goods. Perhaps an example will help you.

If a community decides to be precautionary about uncertain/unknown sea level rise and puts hazard lines all the along the coast line to protect the private interests of future buyers, other private interests immediately see a very certain loss in their property values.

My point was: Why not apply the precautionary principle back the other way to protect current owners from loss when it is all so uncertain/unknown?

I only threw the comment about collective interests in because so often the precautionary principle is rolled out to protect “the environment” (which is by definition an externality :)) and neglect the mischief that is being done to real people.

Comment on A precautionary tale: more sorry than safe(?) by Jim D

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US coastal flood insurance works that way, where it is nationally subsidizing the risk taken by a few. It is not very popular to subsidize a risk of choice. They should pay their real actuarial rate, or we encourage even more risk taking.

Comment on A precautionary tale: more sorry than safe(?) by Joshua

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HAS –

==> “My point was: Why not apply the precautionary principle back the other way to protect current owners from loss when it is all so uncertain/unknown?”

Thanks for the follow-up.

How would that work in practice – without there being a similar loss in property values or some other metric (at least to someone)? In your example, how are you suggesting that current owners be protected from loss?

AFAIC, the precautionary principle, like “no regrets” policies or statements that we should avoid “unintended consequences” are great concepts but extremely difficult to implement in a polarized context.

Comment on A precautionary tale: more sorry than safe(?) by Joshua

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==< "US coastal flood insurance works that way, where it is nationally subsidizing the risk taken by a few. "

Which would then suggest to me that there is a loss to someone (taxpayers who subsidize that insurance).

There is no free lunch, folks.

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Comment on A precautionary tale: more sorry than safe(?) by Jim D

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Actually there is a proactionary principal when it comes to new energy and fuel technology. Industries are encouraged to move this very new area of industry forwards, and risk-taking can be made possible by having public-private partnerships and government incentives. As in every new industry, not every effort will succeed, but the pay-off for those that do is a large incentive, because non-carbon energy and fuel are guaranteed needs. A lot of wealth is to be had by early wise investors. Like they say, a crisis is an opportunity (although the often-quoted idea of Chinese words being the same is unfortunately a fallacy) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_word_for_%22crisis%22

Comment on A precautionary tale: more sorry than safe(?) by Skiphil

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“regulating” incalculable, unverifiable, implausible risks is nothing more or less than a power play in favor of certain anti-freedom values held by some intellectuals

Comment on A precautionary tale: more sorry than safe(?) by beththeserf

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‘We must arrest all change’ … now where have we
heard that before?

H/t Plato’s ‘Noble Lie.’

Comment on A precautionary tale: more sorry than safe(?) by angech

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Safety helmets for bike riders in Australia is an example of risk assessment overkill.
Cannot get visitors who ride bikes at home to hire them in Australia as prohibitive cost. Nor will locals use hire bikes.
No answer here. I believe that people are entitled to make their own risk assessment and choose to wear one or not.
On the other hand I have fallen off and been saved from serious injury by a helmet.
Overall though I still hold to individual responsibility.

Comment on A precautionary tale: more sorry than safe(?) by Skiphil

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I don’t claim to be able to sort out these issues of risk, but I think that Judith’s “Proactionary Principle” deserves to be considered in relation to debate about collective vs. private goods, negative vs. positive externalities etc.

i.e., IF there were significant value in the “Proactionary Principle” then that principle would surely affect how alleged “private” only goods and “negative” externalities are to be judged. I am not trying to prejudge the debate about the Proactionary Principle, merely trying to observe that the outcome of that debate will (I think) shape important aspects of how one defines “private” goods and “negative” externalities vs. their putative opposites.

“So, if we are to dismiss the precautionary principle, then how should we proceed. Well, we can proceed with caution. Or better yet is the Proactionary principle: The proactionary principle valorizes calculated risk-taking as essential to human progress, where the capacity for progress is taken to define us as a species.”


Comment on A precautionary tale: more sorry than safe(?) by NW

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But there’s an externality here–the loved ones of the decision maker (DM) will suffer if the DM is hurt, and we really cannot expect the DM to properly take this into account, given all that heuristics and biases wisdom you know. And so the DM needs to be regulated. Also the DM is driving up the price of scare medical resources for everyone, and since we’re all paying for that, we can’t let the DM do whatever he d-mn well pleases can we?

Comment on A precautionary tale: more sorry than safe(?) by HAS

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Jim D, we are dealing here where the risk is unknown/uncertain (including whether there even is a risk) but the consequences are high. If you live on a coast that gets flooded every decade then that is your look out (and if the US subsidises that as you say it is inequitable).

But in my example we are talking about an event that (say) depends on exaggerated emissions scenarios, CO2 sensitivities at the high end, GCMs being accurate and consequent accelerating sea level rise, aided and abetted by the collapse of the Antarctica sea ice shelf, and the risk is to a structure with a 50 year life getting washed away in 100 years time.

A sensible insurer would put in an exclusion and a sensible owner would accept it. Rational management would be “wait and see” and do something when the fog starts to clear (if called for), just like with other highly uncertain progressive events.

Joshua “how would current owners be protected from loss”. The loss I was referring to was the arbitrary loss of value as a consequence of regulatory fiat. You protect against that by not regulating based on precaution.

Comment on A precautionary tale: more sorry than safe(?) by NW

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HAS you are assuming that everyone knows that regulatory constraints affect the market value of the regulated assets. Expect a denial that this is so.

Comment on A precautionary tale: more sorry than safe(?) by Dagfinn

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I haven’t read Indur Goklany’s book on the precautionary principle, but I think it might have interesting perspectives.

“Environmental scholar Indur Goklany disagrees with both the UN and the EU visions. In his new book The Precautionary Principle: A Critical Appraisal of Environmental Risk Assessment, he makes a powerful case that many environmentalists have misapplied the plain language of the precautionary principle, a concept he argues was intended originally to be a general notion recommending that policymakers choose rules to produce net reductions in environmental and public-health risks. Instead, environmentalists have turned the precautionary principle into a regulatory nightmare, transforming precaution into something quite different.”

Comment on A precautionary tale: more sorry than safe(?) by Jim D

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It has to be sticks and carrots. You can’t just punish the wrong energy behavior through regulation, you have to reward the correct behavior. This is the idea behind carbon taxes and carbon trading. If someone is delaying their CCS transition, they are paying into a fund that helps others to adopt it, for example.

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