[andre]

What if they are wrong?

Whilst I don't even wonder about the fallacies that will be put up to dismiss this, I see that just about all thoughts I had are there.

Quote

They will note that the theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) proceeded much like any scientific theory (cf. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions) in that it was modified and patched up and adjusted to fit empirical challenges until it finally collapsed altogether under the weight of incontrovertible evidence. But, the scientific historians will have a new phenomenon to consider, and that is the social and political context of this particular scientific theory.

Maybe a little amplification on that, Kuhn studied the way science was conducted about continental drift initiated by Afred Wegener, who was a total outsider to the field of geology. Obviously it took a generation to trash the inferior theories. People don't change their mind, they just die and it takes a new generation to implement the new and improved theory. Now laymen couldn't care less about overtaking other failed theories, like phogiston or eugenics or lysenkoism since there wasn't a world to save then, so just let the scientists quarrel and time will prove who is right.

But now we have the herd instinct, the enemy image building and groupthink, aka politics, which makes it orders of magnitudes more impossible to accept, how many more fuel poverty and failed renewable projects are needed?

This post has been edited by andre: 18 February 2012 - 13:22

[Andy Mayhew]

You mean what if soot really isn't causing global warming and we get people all around the world (it's not just an issue in developing nations) to use cleaner, more effience, fuel for nothing? Well, they live longer in a cleaner world. And even get to see blue skies ..... Is that really so bad? Oh, and the orang u tang doesn't become extinct in the wild. And most of us have more moeny too because using less energy is cheaper than using more energy. Believe it or not.

That's the thing - most of what we can/should be doing to reduce AGW is stuff we should be doing anyway but don't because we're more interested in today than tomorrow and don't care about anyone but ourselves. Of course, certain oil and coal concerns have an ulterior motive to make us continue using the stuff that's killing us. But is that a reason not to stop?




Edit: although the more cyncial answer is: if they are wrong then life for future generations on an overcrowded, heavily polluted planet with dwindling resources, will be very slightly less miserable than it will be if they are right.

[andre]

Andy Mayhew, on 18 February 2012 - 13:38, said:

You mean what if soot really isn't causing global warming and we get people all around the world (it's not just an issue in developing nations) to use cleaner, more effience, fuel for nothing? Well, they live longer in a cleaner world. And even get to see blue skies ..... Is that really so bad? Oh, and the orang u tang doesn't become extinct in the wild. And most of us have more moeny too because using less energy is cheaper than using more energy. Believe it or not.

That's the thing - most of what we can/should be doing to reduce AGW is stuff we should be doing anyway but don't because we're more interested in today than tomorrow and don't care about anyone but ourselves. Of course, certain oil and coal concerns have an ulterior motive to make us continue using the stuff that's killing us. But is that a reason not to stop?




Edit: although the more cyncial answer is: if they are wrong then life for future generations on an overcrowded, heavily polluted planet with dwindling resources, will be very slightly less miserable than it will be if they are right.

Is that the save the world syndrone again? Maybe some times read about the OODA loop
In essence it means that you can only take accurate decisions (politics) about improving the situation (save the world) based on sound accurate analysis (science). If it would be a great help to reach that goal, if something was to be right, that cannot help to make that something right to facilitate reaching that goal. And when that something turns out to be wrong, you may be in deep trouble.

[John Mason]

Fun question that I have little time to answer or I'll miss too much of Wales v England in the rugby!

However, I can give a brief rundown. If we are wrong:

* nothing will likely have been done about climate change, if current trends of ineptness are anything to go by. Worldwide economic collapse occurs on an unimaginable scale due to liquid fossil fuel depletion and having left it too late to mainstream the alternatives.

If you are wrong:

* the above plus the sixth mass extinction claims most of Humanity too, the remainder living an Iron Age existence.

If we are both wrong and the Tea Partiers are right:

* God brings along a spare and pristine Planet Earth, parks it close by so that the billionaires can go colonise it (despite raucous Tea-party protests at being abandoned once their usefulness was no longer required), then once established they nuke Earth and put Earth 2.0 in its place. And the game starts all over again.

How's that? BTW, response 3 is a joke - 1 and 2 are not!

Cheers - John

[scrapemedic]

If they are wrong then making people/politicians/countries think twice about what they do to the environment, i.e. by hitting them in the pocket will be no bad thing. A good outcome would be to stem the tide of over-consumerism, and maybe prevent the boom/bust economy that we live in. We don't always need to have "more" or "better" to exist. It would be a good thing if we could learn to live with what we already have, unless of course, "better" reduces pollution or improves on energy consumption.

Either way, it means we are asking the questions, which we weren't in the sixties when energy was thought of as an endless commodity and we though we would all live in an urban utopia. Or the eighties when we were all told we could all have.

We probably recycled more in the sixties than we do now. We didn't even have a bin in our kitchen when I was a kid. There just wasn't enough waste to justify one, Most things were re-used, milk bottles where put on the step, the liner from the corn flakes packet was used to wrap up the sandwiches for school, the vegetable peelings went on the compost, the cola bottles went back to the shop, the brown paper bags the vegetables came in were used to store every thing from spare buttons to seeds for the garden, and we ate everything that we brought or cooked. Clothes were made better and were passed down, and passed down again, then used as cleaning cloths or from re-stuffing the teddy bear. We used probably a third of the electricity that the average household uses today.

We have gotten so used to "convenience" living, that I think we have forgotten what the word convenience means. It did at one time mean having things that could do the jobs we were already doing better, quicker; now it seems to mean doing the things that we can't be bothered to do. Inconvenient things like cook a meal from scratch, because that might mean we have to stand in the kichen for twenty minutes instead of the ten seeconds it takes to stick something in the microwave and throw away the waste that it generates.

We even waste good plastic to throw away the rubbish, just to make it less inconvenient for the bin men to pick it up. Makes no sense really.

[John Mason]

LOL @ me! Wales-England is NEXT Saturday! I should assure everyone that I read climate science papers more carefully, twice or thrice through. Sure beats a glance after a couple of pints at a wall-poster in the pub two days ago, noting "Saturday"!!

Liz - great post. I discuss such things often with my parents and the locals here - especially those outside of my post-1962 existence. They have taught me a great deal.

Cheers - John

[andre]

John Mason, on 18 February 2012 - 16:12, said:

Fun question that I have little time to answer or I'll miss too much of Wales v England in the rugby!

However, I can give a brief rundown. If we are wrong:

* nothing will likely have been done about climate change, if current trends of ineptness are anything to go by. Worldwide economic collapse occurs on an unimaginable scale due to liquid fossil fuel depletion and having left it too late to mainstream the alternatives.

Okay now consider this, what if you you use a faulty hypothesis: fossil fuels cause CO2 to skyrocket and cause thermageddon and we all fry. Unfortunately, nature doesn't listen to us and there are no signs whatsoever of an impending thermageddon. So what is the outcome of the hypothesis? that you have tried to enforce a policy changes using wrong grounds, Even if tpeak oil was immiment, you have excluded workable alternatives, like shoal gas and clathrates and you have caused dreadful geo-engineering things like dimming the sun with aerosols or things in space, completely useless CO2 sequestation, that we need to feed the biologic food chains, etc.

You cannot enforce the right decisions on the wrong premisses and in the end, you're getting nowhere, since nobody is believing science anymore. Obviously if scientists say that the risk of nucleair power is several orders of magnitude less than fossil fuels, who is ever believing it, since they were wrong (and deliberately so) about AGW too.

OODA loop: You cannot take the right decisions with the wrong information and the wrong analysis.

[John Mason]

Dear me, Andre! And what if you are 100% wrong, eh? Semantics won't dig you out of that one! And WRT non-con oil sources, a favour you would do for yourself would be to look up the following term:

Rate-constrained

I'm astounded that you never before checked out what it means!. My God.

Cheers - John

[Nigel Bolton]

scrapemedic, on 18 February 2012 - 16:46, said:

If they are wrong then making people/politicians/countries think twice about what they do to the environment, i.e. by hitting them in the pocket will be no bad thing. A good outcome would be to stem the tide of over-consumerism, and maybe prevent the boom/bust economy that we live in. We don't always need to have "more" or "better" to exist. It would be a good thing if we could learn to live with what we already have, unless of course, "better" reduces pollution or improves on energy consumption.

Either way, it means we are asking the questions, which we weren't in the sixties when energy was thought of as an endless commodity and we though we would all live in an urban utopia. Or the eighties when we were all told we could all have.

We probably recycled more in the sixties than we do now. We didn't even have a bin in our kitchen when I was a kid. There just wasn't enough waste to justify one, Most things were re-used, milk bottles where put on the step, the liner from the corn flakes packet was used to wrap up the sandwiches for school, the vegetable peelings went on the compost, the cola bottles went back to the shop, the brown paper bags the vegetables came in were used to store every thing from spare buttons to seeds for the garden, and we ate everything that we brought or cooked. Clothes were made better and were passed down, and passed down again, then used as cleaning cloths or from re-stuffing the teddy bear. We used probably a third of the electricity that the average household uses today.

We have gotten so used to "convenience" living, that I think we have forgotten what the word convenience means. It did at one time mean having things that could do the jobs we were already doing better, quicker; now it seems to mean doing the things that we can't be bothered to do. Inconvenient things like cook a meal from scratch, because that might mean we have to stand in the kichen for twenty minutes instead of the ten seeconds it takes to stick something in the microwave and throw away the waste that it generates.

We even waste good plastic to throw away the rubbish, just to make it less inconvenient for the bin men to pick it up. Makes no sense really.

The paragraph in boldface is an excellent paragraph, and one which the individual can work towards, rather than always assuming that others will do for you. If one is really serious about being non wasteful, then the home is a good place to start.

All our kitchen scraps goes on the compost heap, what cannot be composted is left under the rook colony tree. I have glass jam jars I have kept for over 20 years. Each year, freshly made homemade jam or chutney gets placed into them and is subsequently consumed. Growing ones own veg means uber-freshness and no road miles. That we cannot grow, we try and buy fresh, and with no packaging if possible.

Before Patrick came along, we could put our two weekly output to the bin men in one supermarket carrier bag. It is a shame that no one has come up with an ethical way of processing used nappies.

N.

[Andy Mayhew]

andre, on 18 February 2012 - 19:33, said:

Okay now consider this, what if you you use a faulty hypothesis: fossil fuels cause CO2 to skyrocket and cause thermageddon and we all fry.

Then we're all wrong and we all fry. But I don't think that scenario is very likely. Why do you think it might be?

btw on the subject of nuclear power, it has sometimes been (disingenuously) suggested that Maggie Thatcher 'invented' AGW to justify nuclear power. Yet when she was elected we had 16 nuclear power stations in operation and 2 more about to be built. Construction of one more was started whilst Maggie was PM. Since the Hadley Centre, to investigate (or promote the scam as some would have it) AGW, was set up the number of new nuclear stations built can be counted on a whelk's fingers.

[StephenS]

Nigel Bolton, on 18 February 2012 - 21:59, said:

Before Patrick came along, we could put our two weekly output to the bin men in one supermarket carrier bag. It is a shame that no one has come up with an ethical way of processing used nappies.

N.

Ah, but they have (in New Zealand, anyway):
http://www.envirocomp.co.nz/

The really ethical way of course is not to use disposable ones in the first place (said the man who's never had to care for a small baby).

I've just been sorting out some plastics and metals for recycling, and I'm appalled by how much waste we generate. As others have said, that was a great post, Liz - exhorting us to recycle is all well and good, but it makes us even more complacent about what we consume in the first place and provides no incentives to manufacturers and retailers to reduce and reuse packaging.

[scrapemedic]

Chris Lloyd, on 19 February 2012 - 00:23, said:

That's all well and good Liz - IF the people know why they are paying the money in the first place.

The motives are all wrong. The government needs to completely rethink it's strategy.

Okay, so which strategy, getting their motives right or charging taxes in the first place?

[ldavidcooke]

Hey Andre,

What if we suffer thermageddon, and yet CO2 were not at the heart of the problem? We have to consider that in relation to the polar regions they are subject to thermageddn conditions this very minute. If we expand the observations to extreme synpotic events, they appear to be on the rise, as well. If we also consider precipitation distribution over the last 15 years, the indications are their is a massive change ocurring wrt large scale weather patterns.

[ldavidcooke]

Andy Mayhew, on 18 February 2012 - 22:21, said:

Then we're all wrong and we all fry. But I don't think that scenario is very likely. Why do you think it might be?

btw on the subject of nuclear power, it has sometimes been (disingenuously) suggested that Maggie Thatcher 'invented' AGW to justify nuclear power. Yet when she was elected we had 16 nuclear power stations in operation and 2 more about to be built. Construction of one more was started whilst Maggie was PM. Since the Hadley Centre, to investigate (or promote the scam as some would have it) AGW, was set up the number of new nuclear stations built can be counted on a whelk's fingers.

Hey Andy,

Were it not for the fear of air pollution, the two nuclear plants would never have been built. It was the defining moment for me in 1981 to actually create a cartoon character that was in essence an oppossum carrying an anti-nuclear sign saying that he was a nuclear actvist, (as opposed to an anti-nuclear activist), it was a slip up on the part of a news anchor suggesting that the British Green Brigade were nuclear activists as opposed to anti-nuclear activists.

Were it not for the issue over black carbon and NO2, the move was to go to oil fired power generation, this would have driven up the cost of transportation in Europe and especially, the UK. Hence, it is very unlikely that there was not a plan negotiated with President Reagan to force the plants through. Whether it was AGW or Oil Market price fixing I have not a clue. However, the issue wth the Green Brigade was clearly resolved in only a few weeks. I think it may be well wrth considering the conditions at the time by looking at the real recorded events and not a propaganda arguement.

[John Mason]

Chris Lloyd, on 19 February 2012 - 00:17, said:

I was just thinking of a thread I posted in years ago. I said something along the lines of "What if the planet was cooling? Would we be telling people to burn fossil fuels to offset the cooling" That would be a dilemma.

Another ice-age would solve your population-problem, but they develop very very slowly indeed, and given that the last decade has been the warmest on record, there ain't much sign of it happening! What would we do? Most likely have more wars to accommodate those who were displaced!

I'd certainly be very wary about even more geo-engineering (which is what AGW basically is) - we would need to be absolutely 100% certain of the outcome - which in science is never the case when looking to the future. If we were 97% certain that nothing would go wrong, would we justify gambling the whole planet on that??

Cheers - John

[Uskys]

John Mason, on 19 February 2012 - 09:54, said:

Another ice-age would solve your population-problem, but they develop very very slowly indeed, and given that the last decade has been the warmest on record, there ain't much sign of it happening! What would we do? Most likely have more wars to accommodate those who were displaced!

I'd certainly be very wary about even more geo-engineering (which is what AGW basically is) - we would need to be absolutely 100% certain of the outcome - which in science is never the case when looking to the future. If we were 97% certain that nothing would go wrong, would we justify gambling the whole planet on that??

Cheers - John

The part sentance I've highlighted.

From my research into world temperatures it does appear to me that the measurements used by the IPCC, UEA and others are not consistent with records preceeding the 1990's. I would wager that if weather station thermometer recorded temperature measurements were soley used to determine this (as they used to be) the results would be very different.

[John Mason]

Uskys, on 19 February 2012 - 10:11, said:

The part sentance I've highlighted.

From my research into world temperatures it does appear to me that the measurements used by the IPCC, UEA and others are not consistent with records preceeding the 1990's. I would wager that if weather station thermometer recorded temperature measurements were soley used to determine this (as they used to be) the results would be very different.

BEST seems to agree with the pre-existing datasets.

Cheers - John