Global Warming

[jfortun]

Well, yes, that is a problem.

But we do have many laws that are based on preventing probable future harm rather than waiting for the actual harm to occur. Drunk driving laws are a good example, or to be more extreme you are not allowed to fire a machine gun at random on the street. Should all such laws be abolished?

In your example the possible near term effect of drunk driving is well known. There is no speculation on the effects driving drunk or about what happens when you hit someone because of it. This is hardly the same scenerio as abolishing chemical X or manufacturing process Y because of speculation about their possible effects 100 or 1000 years down the line.

[Godless Capitalist]

I don't really see the difference. Lots of people drive drunk but don't actually hit anyone so the results are by no means a certainty. We just make a prediction about what is likely to happen. Same deal with the chemicals.

[Godless Capitalist]

Another thought on this: it's illegal just to seriously plan a crime; the police don't have to wait until you actually commit it to arrest you.

The point I am getting at is that a lot of police/legal action is based on prevention of probable future harm, not absolute proof of actual harm. Now perhaps that should not be the case; I am certainly open to argument on it.

[jfortun]

In all such cases the laws are there to prevent something known to be harmful. That cannot be said of the scenerios you speak of.

[Godless Capitalist]

Now who is asking for omniscience? None of these things are known for sure. A great example is high school kids arrested for writing stuff about killing classmates. How do you know if they were seriously planning to kill or just expressing their frustrations?

Back to drunk driving: there is no magic line where someone is guaranteed to hit someone else; the probability just goes higher and higher the more someone drinks.

[jfortun]

Drinking alchohol has very well know effects. Driving under the influence of alchohol removes the ability of the driver to react quickly enough to operate a car safely. Drinking and driving does not guarantee an accident but it increases the probablity of an accident.

You're comparing the above with the as yet completely unknown 100 year-old effects of dumping a hitherto known-as-safe chemical?

Putting aside the argument of whether the law should properly govern future scenerios- the real crime here is in suggesting that the unknown has equal epistemilogical status as the known.

[Godless Capitalist]

You're comparing the above with the as yet completely unknown 100 year-old effects of dumping a hitherto known-as-safe chemical?

Oh, I see what your objection is. No, assume that the chemical is currently safe but is known to slowly break down into a poison. Thus the future harm is quite predictable.

[jfortun]

Oh, I see what your objection is. No, assume that the chemical is currently safe but is known to slowly break down into a poison. Thus the future harm is quite predictable.

Yes, if the chemical is known to degenerate into a poison then I can imagine some sort of law or civil case being legitimate.

[Capitalism Forever]

Let's make it a little more realistic: Suppose you live on a farm with a well. I dump into it a substance that will very slowly decay into a poison that 100 yrs from now (after I am dead) will kiill your greatgrandchildren. Do you have any recourse against me now (aside from charging me with trespassing)?

[jfortun]

If the dumping was performed by a business then yes, you would have recourse against the business (assuming it still was one). If the dumping was done by an individual and that person was dead, you could not of course hold the decendants of that person accountable for his actions.

If the chemical is known to turn into a terrible poison wouldn't it already be illegal to just dump it anywhere?

[Godless Capitalist]

Yes, it would. But note that the ban would be solely due to the prediction of future harm, not to any actual present harm.

The relevance of this to global warming is as follows: let's say that you could show scientifically that humans dumping X amount of CO2 into the atmosphere per year would be very likely to eventually lead to a significant changes in Earth's climate that would be catastrophic for human life (an ice age, say). Wouldn't it be appropriate to legislate limits on the amount of CO2 that could be released, in order to prevent the harm to future humans?

(My position is that we do not have enough evidence to make such a prediction, and that such legislation would also have disastrous effects, but I think it is at least possible that such legislation might be justifiable in the future.)

[gnargtharst]

An only-somewhat-relevant aside here:

I have been a National Geographic subscriber for about 20 years. When yesterday's issue came in the mail, the fiery cover touted a piece on the catastrophe of global warming. An editor's blurb near the front said that, while he is well aware the issue might cause some to cancel their subscriptions (that always happens when we offend someone's beliefs, he explained), he felt compelled to go ahead with it anyway. He had to look at himself in the mirror, after all, and he couldn't live with himself if he didn't warn us while he still had the chance.

(National Geographic's phone number, for cancelling subscriptions, is 1-800-647-5463)

[Godless Capitalist]

previous comment on the NG article:

I read the editor's self-congratulatory preface in which he basically said that he was being heroic and publishing this important new story in the face of possibly losing a few subsribers who dogmatically cling to the myth that there is no global warming.  Of course, global warming is hardly a new story (and a story is all that it is), and the dogmatists are the vast majority of people who believe in it without being able to provide a scrap of evidence for it.  So the editor's preface is b.s. on several levels.

I then skimmed the article, but it was just the same old thing where they trot out a bunch of pseudo-scientists in a weak argumentum ad verecundiam and cite a few out of context statistics that don't prove anything anyway.

[erik]

This is absurd. Anything can be dangerous in a certain context. Lets get back to Global Warming.

I think most of us can agree the climatology used to create the Kyoto treay was pretty suspect science. Certainly not anything to base any argument on. In fact I have yet to see any proof that warming is actually happening. They keep saying it is but global temperatures are not going up like they say they are. The timeline over thousands of years say its pretty stable overall in fact.

I've also seen studies where an increase in CO2 would be good for human life. It is certainly good for plant life and since we eat plants there would be more food.

[Capitalism Forever]

I've also seen studies where an increase in CO2 would be good for human life. It is certainly good for plant life and since we eat plants there would be more food.

...Which environmentalists would absolutely HATE!

[jfortun]

...Which environmentalists would absolutely HATE!

Which kind of brings up the point that we should not pretend environmental law exists to protect humans- that is certainly not the motivation driving most supporters of such laws.

[Thales]

Global Warming is purely part of an ideological movement. Science isn't the driving factor.

The temperature record has not shown any clear trend up or down since about 1920. From the mid 1800s, or so, to about 1920, there was some warming, but this was as we were coming out of the so called "little ice age".

The most accurate data comes from satellite measurements of the atmosphere. These are more accurate and cover a much wider area than do ground level measurements. Satellite data over the last 25 or so years has shown no trend up or down. Well, there had be a very slight downard trend, but that was very slight.

Balloon measurments are also accurate, though spotty. Balloon measurements match satellite measurments. Ground level measurements are where warming is being observed, and this are due to confounding factors, such as the "urban heat isle effect", where the concrete and bricks of buildings holds heat. Other problems are also the spottiness of the records. When the confounding factors are taken out, or where they are none existent, the ground level measurments match the satellite and balloon measurements.

There are also modelers who have predicted warming. However, the modelers have been wrong about the temperature trend, in both magnitude and direction.

Douglas Hoyt is a seasoned atmospheric scientist. He gives a run down on the modeler's success here : Greenhouse Warming Scorecard

Also, Douglas Hoyt on climate change. He used to have a much better write up, complete with graphs and charts, but this is the best I can do for now.

I"m not sure if there is any really top notch atmospheric scientists supporting the global warming theory. I do know that Richard Lindzen is perhaps the foremost atmospheric scientist in the U.S. and he doesn't agree with it. He believes there will be a very slight warming over the next 100 years, but nothing dramatic.

I think some here have referenced the SEPP website, which has much information, including petitions signed by scientists against the theory. This includes lots of atmospheric scientists. This is Fred Singer's organization. Fred Singer is an atmospheric physcist, IIRC.

There is also a site that was run by John Dayl, who just past away this year. But his site is still up. He used to keep track of the latest machinations of the global warming theory. His website is here: Still Waiting For Greenhouse.

[Thales]

I'm not sure how to edit a message... but a couple of glaring gramatical errors need to be dealt with in my posting above.

Balloon measurments are also accurate, though spotty.  Balloon measurements match satellite measurments.    Ground level measurements are where warming is being observed, and this are due to confounding factors, such as the "urban heat isle effect"...

That should read "this *is* due to confounding factors..."

I"m not sure if there is any really top notch atmospheric scientists supporting the global warming theory.

That should read "I don't know if there *are* any really top notch scientists..."

That's what I get for editing in the middle of my writing!

[Godless Capitalist]

This is absurd. Anything can be dangerous in a certain context. Lets get back to Global Warming.

I'm trying to establish that there is at least the possibility that dumping CO2 into the atmosphere could be as dangerous as dumping my imaginary chemical into someone's well. I don't think there is any solid evidence for that, but we also can't conclude that its impossible.

[AshRyan]

I'm trying to establish that there is at least the possibility that dumping CO2 into the atmosphere could be as dangerous as dumping my imaginary chemical into someone's well. I don't think there is any solid evidence for that, but we also can't conclude that its impossible.

Has anyone here concluded that it's impossible? I think they've just said that the claim is arbitrary, since, as you say yourself, there is no solid evidence for it.

(Although I would imagine that someone could conclude that it's impossible, if that were the case and they had the requisite scientific knowledge.)

[Godless Capitalist]

I think some people are coming pretty close to saying global warming is impossible. It's not a complete fantasy made up by radical environmentalists. I don't even think its fair to call it arbitrary, since there is some evidence supporting it, just not solid evidence. The problem is that we may never be able to have solid evidence and certainly not solid predictions about what will happen in the future. Do we just wait and see what happens and let our descendants take their chances? I think its going a little too far to just laugh the whole thing off as a "hoax."

[jfortun]

I think there are 2 issues:

1) Is global warming occuring?

2) If so, are humans to blame?

Since there is no real concensus on the first question how can it be remotely possible to answer the second?

[Tom Rexton]

I think there are 2 issues:

1) Is global warming occuring?

2) If so, are humans to blame?

Since there is no real concensus on the first question how can it be remotely possible to answer the second?

Actually, the issues are more:

1. Is global warming occuring?

2. If so, will it cause widespread destruction and death as claimed?

3. Is industrialization causing it?

4. Will severely halting or reducing industrialization now or early on stop global warming and/or mitigate its effects?

Number 1 is yet to be firmly established. And yet, many nations have already passed or are intending to pass laws and treaties hampering industrialization in developing countries and reduce gas emissions in developed ones.

[Thales]

It's one thing to make a hypothetical prediction about the globe warming, in a moment of speculation. It's another thing altogether to extrapolate wild doom and gloom scenarios and take them seriously.

Global warming, if occurring, is a pure triviality. It's not something to be concerned with, because the hype and hysteria over it are not driven by science. The science simply does not back up the absurd claims. Isn't that enough?

For example, the earth was warmer 1000 years ago, and nothing much happened.

Really, the only people who should be interested in climate to this degree are those who have it as their career or hobby. The rest of us have no reason to be so concerned with it.

There are actual important things to be concerned with in life. I mean, I'd like to see a cure for cancer, heart disease, scleroderma, etc. Let's not burn mental energy on phantom problems.

[stephen_speicher]

It's one thing to make a hypothetical prediction about the globe warming, in a moment of speculation.  It's another thing altogether to extrapolate wild doom and gloom scenarios and take them seriously.  

Damn, and I was just going to predict gloom and doom brought about by us entering into an ice age!