Asymmetrical Information

And as I understand it, the sun's output is approximately only two-thirds what it was when the Sahara Desert was formed. We're in for hotter weather even if we revert to caveman days.

And I'm sure Bush and Halliburton behind it, too.

The King's English strikes again. Bloody sceptics...

There are 4 cases to consider:

1 - global warming does not exist (subtext is global temperatures have not changed).
2 - global warming exists, and its all mankind's fault.
3 - global temperatures are changing and it has nothing (or very little) to do with human effort/emissions.
4 - global temperatures are changing and more than a little is caused by people.

Historical evidence shows that cases 1 and 2 are false. One can look at the crops Romans grew to see that it was warmer 2000 years ago than it is now. One can look at the maunder minimum to see that it was much colder 300-350 years ago than it is no.

The real research belongs in trying to figure out just how much is done by people. The real tragedy would be if little to no warming is caused by people (case 3). That would mean that we are totally at the mercy of solar output. If maybe half of the warming is human driven, then it means we can survive future maunder minimums without tragic economic/social/agricultural crashes. Although it would take some effort to undo what we have been doing if case 4 were the cause.

People who are virulently opposed to the kyoto accords better be willing to bet their life that case 3 is the correct one. If the correct case is number 4, we stand to lose a lot of agriculture in the world in the next century.

The recent core samples from antartica seem to indiate that global warming , beyond the normal cyclic changes is real. The cause and what we do about it is still unknown. Either way, carbon reduction is such a long temr project we need to start soon. See New Scientist for the effects on carbon deposits in the ocean.

Peter: Fine post, except for the last bit; Kyoto won't change anything, even by its own assumptions.

It'd take a lot more than 1990 carbon emission caps to actually reverse warming, if most of it was human-caused. And since Kyoto exempts China (and I think India?), and they burn a lot of coal...

I'n willing to bet that Kyoto's implementation would cause more damage in the long run than a lack thereof, since implementation would essentially cripple the world economy.

What we need for a more "environmental" future is a strong global economy that can support environmental research and development and implementation of new technologies. Such as, say, crops that can cope with changed temperatures, or ways to can suck up and sequester huge amounts of carbon.

Peter wrote:

People who are virulently opposed to the kyoto accords better be willing to bet their life that case 3 is the correct one. If the correct case is number 4, we stand to lose a lot of agriculture in the world in the next century.

Thorley, I think that the humans-did-it-all crowd usually (correctly) point out that the improved ag yields will be in places without a lot of population - Argentina, Canada, Russia - while the ill effects will be felt across the tropics, where there's precious little reserve capacity for any kind of disaster.

Devilbunny,

What disaster?

Experiments with plants show that increased CO2 causes the plants to be "greener." But as I recall, the "greener" plants provided less nourishment to herbivores. I don't understand the mechanisms involved, but the fact that green plants will increase their utilization of CO2 augers well for the biofeedback arrangement we call Mother Earth.

I also recall reading that humans account for 5% of all CO2 emissions, and that includes the effects from breathing. So, does anyone really think that drastically reducing or limiting industrial CO2 is going to have a significant effect on the environment? The real question is just how sensitive is the biofeedback mechanism to changes in the variables, and how long does a changed environment take to resume a relatively "stable" state?

Appropos of nothing at all, at least one author/physicist has examined the problem and determined that if we really want to reduce the temperatures on Earth, the cheapest way would be to send rockets into the upper atmosphere to disgorge tiny particles of carbon (powdered coal). The result would be a drastic reduction in the sunlight reaching the ground a la the Krakatoa or Mount St. Helens eruptions. Remember the "nuclear winter" scenarios? Much cheaper than rolling back emissions!

Don't we have the Martian atmosphere to study also?

ABC News had an article about Martian global warming.

I suppose the Martian parliment needs to pass stricter requirements on the amount of greenhouse gas Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulators emit.

One thing is certain, the Sun is a young star and its luminescence is increasing. In 50 million years or so, the earth is burnt charcoal. The tough question that has already been pointed out here several times, is to what degree is humanity responsible for global warming, compared to how much natural factors are responsible for global warming. Both sides of the global warming debate have respected scientists making convincing arguments, so much so that this is one of the most difficult issues to determine truth vs spin.

The only thing I know for sure is Kyoto disproportionately punishes the US, and does nothing to curtail the emissions of the rapidly growing Asian nations. We are already competeing with many of the unaffected by Kyoto nations on an uneven playing field due to wage, enviromental and workplace laws, if Kyoto were passed we would manufacture nothing here, and prices would rise on everything thats shipped. I need to see better evidence of our responsibility for global warming before I could embrace a treaty like Kyoto. And even with that evidence I would need Kyoto to account for third world emissions on a basis that isnt so economically painful for the US.

The notion that humanity will adjust its lifestyle based on the speculative case for "global warming" is absurd. If it comes to pass, mankind will adapt somehow - by a general migration north, or whatever. It may not be the best approach but it's all we are capable of.

It's just not human nature to address such problems until the need is obvious. I mean we can't summon the will to reform social security, and the demographic facts driving that problem are a whole lot clearer than for climate change.

Begbee:

Both sides of the global warming debate have respected scientists making convincing arguments, so much so that this is one of the most difficult issues to determine truth vs spin.

As others have noted, there is really no serious doubt any more that global warming is real and that it is caused in part by human activities. The serious debate is over how much of it is due to human activity, and the probabilities of various different warming scenarios over the next 100 years or so.

Begbee:

The only thing I know for sure is Kyoto disproportionately punishes the US, and does nothing to curtail the emissions of the rapidly growing Asian nations.

How do you "know" this? One argument for different standards is that the industrialized world has already benefitted enormously from decades of uncontrolled emissions, and it would therefore be unfair to impose the same emission restrictions on countries that have not yet received that benefit.

We are already competeing with many of the unaffected by Kyoto nations on an uneven playing field due to wage, enviromental and workplace laws,

Huh? How is it unfair to Americans and other first-worlders that the people of third-world nations are willing to do the same work for much lower wages? How is it unfair that the U.S. has chosen to enact strict domestic environmental and workplace safety laws while third-world nations have not? America is free to repeal its environmental and safety regulations if it wishes to do so. It doesn't wish to do so.

Thorley Winston:

I am curious though why you think we would (assuming number 4 is the correct case) think we would stand to lose a lot of agriculture. It seems to me that a warmer climate could just as likely be a boon for agriculture.

Because agricultural productivity depends on far more things than just average global temperature. Temperature changes will be different in different parts of the world. Some places will become more fertile and others less so. Some will experience greater natural plant growth and others greater desertification. Weather patterns will likely change, disrupting natural precipitation and supplies of fresh water needed for irrigation. Global warming will also likely disrupt natural ecosystems and food chains, causing a rise in pestilence and crop diseases in some areas. If major crop-producing regions are adversely affected, the results could be catastrophic.

How do you "know" this? One argument for different standards is that the industrialized world has already benefitted enormously from decades of uncontrolled emissions, and it would therefore be unfair to impose the same emission restrictions on countries that have not yet received that benefit.

If we're talking about saving the planet, why would fairness come into it? It wouldn't be "fair" for me to have to undergo painful chemotherapy to treat cancer, but I sure as hell would if I knew I was dying otherwise.

OTOH, I wouldn't subject myself to a therapy that was untested, expensive, and horribly painful if I didn't have any evidence that it would prolong my life. That's about where we stand with Kyoto. Since we don't even know if humans are contributing to global warming 5% or 95%, and we don't know that Kyoto will actually reduce that amount (wouldn't we have to import things we couldn't make here, thus burning fuel to get it here?), then why in the hell would we subject ourselves to the global recession that would surely follow?

shell:

If we're talking about saving the planet, why would fairness come into it?

If fairness doesn't matter, then his complaint that Kyoto "disproportionately punishes the US" is irrelevant.

OTOH, I wouldn't subject myself to a therapy that was untested, expensive, and horribly painful if I didn't have any evidence that it would prolong my life. That's about where we stand with Kyoto.

What evidence would persuade you sufficiently to endorse it that Kyoto would do the equivalent of, in your analogy, prolonging your life?

Since we don't even know if humans are contributing to global warming 5% or 95%, and we don't know that Kyoto will actually reduce that amount ...

Requiring that we "know" (i.e., have proof) of some threat before acting to mitigate or accommodate it is unreasonable. I don't "know" that my house will be burglarized or damaged, but that doesn't mean the cost of homeowner's insurance is unjustified. It's not a matter of knowledge and proof, it's a matter of risks and probabilities.

(wouldn't we have to import things we couldn't make here, thus burning fuel to get it here?), then why in the hell would we subject ourselves to the global recession that would surely follow?

Oh please. How do you know that Kyoto would cause a global recession?

Uh, Peter,

What if we have actually entered a period of global cooling masked by the heat island effect at some long term temperature monitoring stations. Which means that you have left out half the possiblities.

=============================

Begbee says:

The only thing I know for sure is Kyoto disproportionately punishes the US, and does nothing to curtail the emissions of the rapidly growing Asian nations.

How do you "know" this? One argument for different standards is that the industrialized world has already benefitted enormously from decades of uncontrolled emissions, and it would therefore be unfair to impose the same emission restrictions on countries that have not yet received that benefit.

+++++++++++++++

OK Fine. So Kyoto will do practically nothing for carbon emissions but will hobble the economy of the USA. You expect to sell this how? The Senate vote on the Treaty was 95 to 0 against. Even if you got a favorable President how are you going to get it ratified? Clinton said nice words and didn't even try. Bush has decided even nice words are not required.

Don P,

We do know that poor people get hurt the most in a recession.

True we don't know that Kyoto will hurt the economy. We know it won't help. Thus because we honor our fellow man the first rule is to do no harm.

Since the gain is aproximately zero and the risk is substantial the best thing to do is to do nothing.

M Simon:

We certainly do not know that the benefit of Kyoto would be "approximately zero."

Maybe Kyoto as currently formulated would not be the best approach. But the point is that the fact that acting to mitigate or accommodate the effects of global warming will impose certain costs for uncertain benefits is not a reason to refuse to act. It's an insurance policy. The benefits of insurance are always uncertain.

However, you'd expect an insurance policy to actually pay out when the stipulated circumstances arise. Since Kyoto as currently formulated doesn't actually rise to that standard (as mentioned by others above, it wouldn't actually have much of an effect on the level of carbon dioxide emissions), we're essentially looking at a very expensive insurance policy that isn't likely to give any benefits if/when needed. Why would anybody "buy" such a thing?

The biggest benefit to be derived from Kyoto would be peace of mind for those who can't stand the thought that humankind might be negatively affecting the planet. And in that context, Kyoto is even worse than no Kyoto at all, since it would likely breed complacency about the issue. (Hey, we've ratified Kyoto, we don't need to worry about carbon dioxide anymore, right?) Which would be terrible in case it turns out that the human component in global warming is indeed a major factor. And if the opposite is true, then Kyoto would destroy a whole lot of wealth for no gain at all. Lose-lose all around.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad the issue is being discussed, but reflexive deferrence to the Kyoto accords actually seems counter-productive to me as it's such a flawed treaty. Proponents of proactive (preemptive?) approaches to global warming would do well to stop brandishing the whole thing as though it's their personal Excalibur.

Don P I never said that there was no evidence of global warming, only that both the pro and anti Kyoto arguments have merit and arent based on 'junk' science. I think I stated pretty clearly that the main question on global warming is how much humanity has contributed to or accelerated the process.

Don P Im not in the least concerned about whats "fair" to the rest of the world. Im much more concerned with raising the standard of living for the poorest Americans than the well being of the third world. Imo the average working American has been taking it in the chops since 1980 or so, good benefits and single working parent families are all but gone. We've lost enough.

I think Kyoto would be very damaging to the economy. Its been a while since I read much on this, but if memory serves our gas prices will rocket in order to stay within the pollution paremeters Kyoto requires. That will substantially raise the price of everything trucked a long distance. Embracing Kyoto without real proof that the changes required by Kyoto would solve the problem is bad policy. If the changes dont work your needlessly hurting the average American. I think people sometimes forget the average American isnt a college graduate, and has really seen his or her access to the American Dream diminished over the last 20 years.

What a refreshingly good debate about global warming. Congrats all 'round. I accept ground temps are rising & that humans are producing more greenhouse gases. Not convinced of anything else, and am certainly not convinced that Kyoto has a net benefit.

Requiring that we "know" (i.e., have proof) of some threat before acting to mitigate or accommodate it is unreasonable. I don't "know" that my house will be burglarized or damaged, but that doesn't mean the cost of homeowner's insurance is unjustified. It's not a matter of knowledge and proof, it's a matter of risks and probabilities.

That works well enough with individuals working to secure personal property with clearly defined risks and costs, but it doesn't work so well when the context is a bit larger -- say, global environmental politics. The property to be defended is a commons, the risks are often much more vague, and the costs are ill-defined.

In short, you have a collective action problem writ large, and getting everyone to move in the same positive direction typically requires them to be running from something (a threat) rather than towards a goal. An action like the Montreal Protocol was pretty easy, because the consequences of continued CFC (ab)use were the stuff of a B-grade SciFi/horror flick and the alternatives were readily accessed (organic propellants in sprays instead of CFCs, chlorine-free fluorocarbons like R-134 instead of R12 in refrigeration, etc.).

It's not so easy to do that with global warming, either in framing the poblem or adjusting to potential solutions.

Don P,
While global warming is proven (i.e. the planet is warmer than it was a hundred years ago), it's debated whether this is significant. The only reason for concern is the possibility that warming will continue. If the trend doesn't continue, then nothing's wrong. What will be in the future has not been proven, just guessed.

Regarding study of Mars's atmosphere:

It was just such study that led astronomer Carl Sagan to contemplate the effects of dust in the atmosphere afecting planetary temperatures upon a global scale -- and warn of "Nuclear Winter".

For the younger audience, Nuclear Winter, (NW) arises when a war delivers enough explosives and subsequent fire -- nuclear weapons being cheap, but Dresden-style firebombing via conventional weapons being possible as well in sufficient numbers - to kick up so much smoke, ash, and dust that Earth's albedo is raised; incoming solar energy is reflected away; and global temperatures drop. Then the ice caps grow, and since ice, too, has high albedo, even more sunlight is reflected and temperatures drop even more.

This was quite seriously debated for a decade or so during the anti-war, pro-Soviet, unilateral(US first and perhaps only) disarmament debates. Nuclear winter leading to never-ending ice age, based on interplanetary atmospheric study...

So.

I wonder why, if the CO2 problem gets to be too much, why we should simply set off a few nukes? Not in cities, of course, but in selected isolated locations. This could kick up dust (maybe, too, if set off in arctic and antarctic regions) ice and water wapor to conteract the greenhouse effects. That is, instead of retaining solar heat under a CO2 blanket, it would be reflected away by cloudes of (very slightly radioactive) dihydrogen monoxide...

Carl Sagan has, to my sorrow, departed the scene. But surely such planetary climatologists could extend his work and show how many kiloton of nuclear weapons it would take to lower temperatures by any given number of degrees. That is, assuming the models are as exact as is claimed, and also assuming the interplanetary study of Martian, Venusian and Earthly atmospheres are generating the quality of theory upon which nuking ourselves would require...

But is nuking ourselves any worse than deliberately hobbling our economy?

I belatedly notice "Rex" has already raised the "nuclear winter" option and defer to his early post.

However ... Let us return to the study of Mars, other planets in general, and the question of albedo.

It is often asserted that C02 emmissions could be reduced by conversion of fossil fuel burning systems to various bio or electronic "solar energy" collection systems.

But, CO2 reduction is NOT the point. The point is to reduce global warming. May we agree that IF atmospheric CO2 concentrations go down while warming continues, we'd have wasted our efforts?

But converting otherwise barren surfaces of the Earth to solar-enery-collection points involves a "green house" effect independent of C02. While ice or white sands reflect incoming solar energy, as light, back thru the atmosphere into space, a field of biomass green crops, or an array of black silicon chips, traps that energy on Earth. It would be as if we opened a few panes of glass at the top of our greenhouse (reduced atmospheric CO2 ) while we painted the previously white floor of the greenhouse black.

I'm unaware of any climate models that estimate the global temperature if BOTH changes are introduced -- reduced C02 and reduced albedo. (So far as I'm aware, no models properly handle the problem of cloud formation during hurricanes and typhoons, which arise from ocean over-heating and which some climatologist suggest as albedo-raising, insolation reducing, temperature offsetting process by which relatively stable long term temperatures are maintained. )

ANYHOW, short version. Solar panels are black and get hot; and there's no such thing as a free lunch.

>It seems to me that a warmer climate could just as likely be a boon for agriculture.
The 4-corners region of the US had a very long drought. The indians who used to live there (we call Anasazi, they were the ancestors of the Hopi and Navaho) died out along with their agriculture. The climate in that region of the US has never recovered from that decadeS (deliberate emphasis on the plural there) long drought 500 years ago. Much of northern africa was grassland during the Roman era, it was where they grew most of the grains for the bread they handed out as welfare. Climate changes, over grazing and bad agricultural procedures changed that grassland into what we call the Sahara desert.

Sure, the Romans grew wine producing grapes as far north as York in the UK, back around 2k years ago. And the northern limit for growing those grapes (with the technology they had back then) is creeping back to where it was in roman times. With modern technology, I am positive you could grow wine grapes in antarctica, but that's not a reasonable comparison.

Current crops can tolerate some changes for the warmer or colder. Farmers would have to plant slightly different things though. They don't plant the same wheat throughout the US, nor do they plant at the same time. If the changes were well understood, and the rate of change were also well understood, they can make decisions that won't affect the ability of you or I to walk into a store and buy food. If they can't make changes, because it is taboo (or some political groups are trying to make the subject taboo) to talk about, or discover what those changes are, we are in deep manure. A nice essay on that subject is:
http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

A decent, but out of print book on the fragility of modern agriculture is: Altered Harvests. Which also speaks to the dangers of betting your whole civilization on 1 or 2 crops.

Many people like to believe in the "beautiful people" myth. The fantasy that native peoples are tree huggers and live in peace and harmony in the world. Or that "they were giants back in those days." Historicaly, as well as today, people change their environment through over fishing, bad agriculture practices, over hunting, and stripping the land of its cover. One does not have to look far into the past to see such things. And failure to recognize what people have done in the past to screw things up is a fatal mistake.

Many other people like to live in a different fantasy world: that the end times are here, and it is heresy to save it from God's Wrath. Or that someone's wallet is more important than peoples' lives.

Pouncer, most of the models used by Sagan and others about nuclear winter have been disproved as bad science. The models they used were too simple, and had too many bad assumptions, like there is no day/night cycle, everything is twilight. They also left out things like oceans moderating climate.

>What if we have actually entered a period of
>global cooling masked by the heat island effect
>at some long term temperature monitoring
>stations. Which means that you have left out
>half the possiblities.
The last historical period where cooling such as you are thinking about is called the maunder minimum, it ended during the early 18th century. It was a period about 75 years long where there were no sunspots (historically, the Chinese believed that sunspots, as well as comets and novae, were messages from heaven and documented them rather well). Cooling of the sun will reduce and/or eliminate sunspots.

During the maunder minimum there were documented years where there was no summer. In the colonies in New England there was one year where it snowed all year long: even in July and August. That year, a spanish expedition turned back in what we would now call Kansas because of the snowfall that summer. How many crops do we grow in the US that can tolerate snowfall in July and August?

Current science shows that solar radiation seems to be up, but that atmospheric absorption of solar radiation is down (some studies show that 10% less sunlight hits the ground than it did 50 years ago even though the sun is putting out more light).

No. I did not leave out half the possiblities. Something is going on. I don't have all the answers. I don't like what I see: it makes me very uncomfortable. Our agriculture is balanced rather closely as it is, and a minor push either way can rip it up. I don't like the headless-chicken-dancing or the chicken-little-dancing. I don't like the head-in-the-sand/selective amnesia I see either. Most all of them are modern versions of "ghost dancing" where some ritual will exorcise the evil spirits causing problems, if only we get that ritual just right.

If we cut back on emissions, and later find out that humans have little or no effect (case 3), our economy can always recover (people have always been able to recover from stupidity, just look at the ex-soviet union, or the reformation). If we fail to do anything, and find out that we did have a significant effect, failure to identify and correct the causes will lead to extinction. The folks on Easter Island, were so busy cutting down trees for food, for levers to prop up those giant stone heads and to make fishing boats to feed themselves, they never stopped to plant replacements, when the last one was gone, so was the food and the ability to make boats to fish for more food. I can imagine a bunch of guys standing around the last tree, saying something like "well, thats the last one, shall we save it or cut it down?" right before they chopped it down. They collapsed into starvation and canibalization, the population ended up being around 1% of what it was at the peak of their civilization. Will we join them on the dustheap of history?

I wonder:

What if it turns out that humans haven't been causing global warming at all, that the sun will get a lot hotter and that it will raise temperatures 10 degrees in the next 50 years. Everybody seems to think a rise that big and quick would be harmful.

Do we just let it happen because it's natural? Or do we try to come up with ways to artificially reverse it?

I'm in favor of the latter.

"The only thing I know for sure is Kyoto disproportionately punishes the US, and does nothing to curtail the emissions of the rapidly growing Asian nations"...

How do you "know" this? One argument for different standards is that the industrialized world has already benefitted enormously from decades of uncontrolled emissions...
~~~~~~~~~~~~

1) The US is "punished" relative to European and other countries because its equipment is the most modern and puts out substantially less CO2 than that of other nations' per unit of production, this becoming ever more so as one moves eastward across Europe (not to mention into other less developed areas of the world). Thus those nations get "credit" for just retiring and replacing old equipment with modern equipment at no real cost, while the US must genuinely increase cost and reduce production.

2)Kyoto-ists who were genuinely concerned about resolving this problem and those re the developing nations world would have been happy to take an effective approach towards doing so by embracing an emissions trading program. Instead they fought it tooth and nail until after the US left negotiations. That reveals their true interests and motives.

3)Trying to control emissions levels without trying to control the biggest future increases from the biggest future emitters is a nonsensical exercise...

4) Which leads to the best peer-reviewed cost-benefit analyses of Kyoto indicating it would, at a permanent cost of 4% of world GDP temorarily delay the course of emmission effects by only 5%. (E.g., restraining warming by 0.15 degree C out of 3, sea level increase by 2.5cm out of 50cm, etc.) So what we'd get without Kyoto in 2100 is what we'd get with it in 2105 anyway.

As one of many studies notes...

"...major conclusions are: (a) the net global cost of the Kyoto Protocol is $716 billion in present value, (b) the United States bears almost two-thirds of the global cost; and (c) the
benefit-cost ratio of the Kyoto Protocol is 1/7.

"Additionally, the emissions strategy is highly cost-ineffective, with the global temperature reduction achieved at a cost almost 8 times the cost of a strategy which is cost-effective in terms of 'where' and 'when' efficiency..."
http://www.econ.yale.edu/~nordhaus/homepage/Kyoto.pdf

Great deal, eh?

One argument for different standards is that the industrialized world has already benefitted enormously from decades of uncontrolled emissions, and it would therefore be unfair to impose the same emission restrictions on countries that have not yet received that benefit.

And "fair" CO2 molecules trap much less heat than "unfair" ones do, right?

If we're really in a global crisis, "fair" is irrelevant, and the developing nations have to do their part. If we're allowed to ask questions of "fairness", then we're not in a global crisis, and questions from the USA regarding cost-benefit analysis and disproportionate economic impact are just as valid. You can't have it both ways.

"There are 4 cases to consider ... People who are virulently opposed to the kyoto accords better be willing to bet their life that case 3 is the correct one. If the correct case is number 4, we stand to lose a lot of agriculture in the world in the next century."

And people who are supportive of Kyoto in any degree have the obligation of showing, in the light of the cost it would impose in this century, if number 4 is true Kyoto then would actually have any significant beneficial effect in the next one. Delaying the conditions of 2100 to 2105 wouldn't seem to be it.

The logic of Kyoto is...
1) Global warming exists
2) Is largely caused by human activity
3) Has a very large negative net benefit (Note that Putin's science advisors are openly talking about warming being beneficial for Russia. And was is it really so bad to have wineries in England in the Middle Ages? In spite of the thought of English wine.)
4) Humans are capable of taking actions to halt or reverse it
5) In a manner that that will be cost-efficient so as to make the human situation better rather than worse.
6) And Kyoto is that manner.

Stepping from 1 to 6 we move from a high order of probability to nil.

That being such, all the politicking in favor of Kyoto is just that, partisan politics coupled with the posturing of "good intentions" (and perhaps we remember what road they lead down).

People who seriously believe in the need to reduce CO2 emissions will be the first to junk Kyoto and look to propose an alternative regime for doing so that serious studies will find promise a benefit-to-cost ratio a heck of a lot better than 1 to 7.

Two proposals I'd expect such folk to embrace enthusiastically and unambiguously are worldwide emissions trading covering everybody on the globe, and a big push towards nuclear to get coal out of power generation. Which could be done economically right now -- they should be taking the lead proposing it.

People who cry alarm! alarm! about global warming but who remain reluctant (or, as so often, outright opposed) to gathering even such low-hanging fruit of CO2 emission control I have a hard time taking seriously.

As to the insurance analogy...

"We certainly do not know that the benefit of Kyoto would be 'approximately zero.'"

For a net benefit, "approximately zero" would be extremely optimistic.

"It's an insurance policy. The benefits of insurance are always uncertain."

Not true. Insurers can project risks with really remarkable accuracy, and insurance products are priced to provide a net welfare benefit to all those insured. (For instance, homeowners insururance is priced at a fraction of a home's cost -- not a multiple of it.) Kyoto is priced to promise a big net welfare cost.

"I don't 'know' that my house will be burglarized or damaged, but that doesn't mean the cost of homeowner's insurance is unjustified. It's not a matter of knowledge and proof, it's a matter of risks and probabilities."

It's a matter of *quantifying* risks and probabilities. If someone tells you there is a 100% certain chance that your house will suffer $10k of damage many years from now but you can avoid that by paying $70k current value worth of insurance premiums up front, will your reply be "Sign Me Up Now!" ?

"the point is that the fact that acting to mitigate or accommodate the effects of global warming will impose certain costs for uncertain benefits is not a reason to refuse to act."

The fact that a certain insurance cost will produce uncertain benefits is no reason to not take on that cost?

C'mon, you don't really believe that for a minute in your real life. If you do, I'll sell you for only $1,000 right now an insurance policy that will provide you uncertain benefits if you get hit by a meteor. Just send me the money.

It seems you've already made an assumption in your mind that the cost-benefit ratio of Kyoto is beneficial on the whole. But that is the thing to be proven and quantified -- just like we wouldn't want the premium cost of homeowners insurance to exceed the entire value of a home.

No type of insurance should be peddled on the basis of wishful thinking (or of fear mongering, either). And looking at the actual studies that compare the miniscule physical benefits promised even by Kyoto's strongest proponents to the really significant costs involved ... well, it's enough to give even well intentioned wishful thinkers pause.

Something better is needed.

And Kyoto would only cover the #2 greenhouse gas, leaving the #1 greenhouse completely untouched.

For an interesting analysis using real DOE data, visit:

http://www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html

And you should take this global warming quiz, developed by real climatologists!

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/GlobWarmTest/end.html

If we cut back on emissions, and later find out that humans have little or no effect (case 3), our economy can always recover.

Peter, I'm amazed that you provided such a lucid and well-evidenced post and then stuck in something as wantonly simplistic as that. It may be tempting to think of 'reduced emissions' and 'later economic recovery' in terms of "everyone has a little less for a while," but in the real world economies don't work that way. IIRC the US' most recent recession was ~3% of GDP. Now imagine you impose costs on the economy that make such a thing permanent. You get higher unemployment in the short term and reduced R&D in the long-term because there's less of a market for "stuff" to generate revenue for future investment, whatever that stuff may be (pharmaceuticals, for example?).

In the end, greater costs of human suffering are realized, the very thing we were supposedly trying to dodge in the first place.

"Pouncer, most of the models used by Sagan and others about nuclear winter have been disproved as bad science. The models they used were too simple, and had too many bad assumptions, like there is no day/night cycle, everything is twilight. They also left out things like oceans moderating climate."

But 20 years later, all those problems are fixed and the current models are so unassailably wonderful with such impeccable assumptions that, 15 years from now, we will look back in astonishment at how accurately the models predicted outcomes?

And those current models indicate we could, theoretically, set off nukes at will in any quantity at any location at any time of the year with no impact at all upon climate? BUT a change of tenths of a percent in C02 emissions, (regardless of location, time of year, etc) WOULD make a major change in climate?

Oh.

Well then, if that is the case, then nevermind.

"Global Warming" (like it's lurid predecessor, "Global Cooling") is a political problem, not a scientific one. Bjorn Lomborg has much to say on this matter, and prudence is his advice: we should avoid needlessly polluting, but we need to weigh costs & benefits. For a small fraction of the costs of Kyoto, we could provide potable water for everyone, saving millions of lives annually (this he considers to be a good thing). For my money, the argument that the sun is the primary cause of variations in temperature carries a lot more weight than does the output of politically-motivated "models". (If you tell me what your inputs are and what you want the output to be, I can build you an appropriate model).

It looks as though the Telegraph article you cite is exaggerating the implications of Prof. Solanki's work. Here's what Solanki himself has to say:

This comparison shows without requiring any recourse to modelling that since roughly 1970 the solar influence on climate cannot have been significant. In particular, the Sun cannot have contributed more than 25% to the steep temperature increase that has taken place since then.

(from the abstract to "Can Solar Variability Explain Global Warming Since 1970?" published in Geophysical Research Abstracts, October 2003, authors N.A. Krivova and S. K. Solanki).

So Solanki isn't saying that "global warming isn't caused by carbon." Indeed, if you read carefully, you see that nothing he is quoted as saying in the article implies that.

Rather, a Murdoch paper is misrepresenting Solanki's findings. What a surprise.

I believe it is traditional about at this point in this kind of thread for someone, usually me, to point out that the models which forecast huge economic costs from Kyoto are every bit as speculative as those which forecast serious dangers from global warming. Also that anyone who believes that there is a sensible economic case for maintaining first-world carbon emissions at or near their current level should perhaps try to get a few quotes for long-dated flood insurance on property in London or New York.

"... We are already competeing with many of the unaffected by Kyoto nations on an uneven playing field due to wage, enviromental and workplace laws ..."

I'm no economist and I'm *certainly* no climatologist (or should it be, I'm no climatologist and I'm *certainly* no economist? ... either one works!) but the idea that any developing country or NIC has an overall economic advantage over the US strikes me as a bit counterintuitive.

Anybody care to elaborate?

John Humphreys wrote:
"What a refreshingly good debate about global warming. Congrats all 'round. I accept ground temps are rising & that humans are producing more greenhouse gases. Not convinced of anything else, and am certainly not convinced that Kyoto has a net benefit."

Let me add that the troposphere isn't rising in temperature. the satellite derived microwave evidence is also convincing.

The net implication is that either our climate warming models are quite flawed or there is some seriously unexplained surface-atmosphere decoupling going on.

Has anyone seriously suggested that the short 25 year span of satellite data is simply too short to imply anything?

Can't we all agree that with the U.S. Senate unanimously in rejection and Russia backing out that Kyoto is dead?

Rather than debate over the merits of something that will never be, can't we be realistic and discuss potential remedies that we might actually have a hope of implementing?

Aristophanes I never said third world nations have an overall economic advantage in competeing with the US for jobs. But they do have competitive advantages in that they dont have competitive wages, enviromental standards, or work place safety regulations. Restricting our emissions while doing nothing about their emissions give them a competitive advantage, and may even offset productivety advantages the US has due to superior technology if that technology creates alot of emissions. Look at the third world textile industry, and consider its impact on American workers with only the competitive advantages of low wages, enviromental and workplace laws.

Im all for the intelligent, voluntary reduction of our energy consumption. I think there are several very good ideas out there, like the building of massive windmills in North Dakota and the increase of nuclear power facilities. But imo Kyoto goes to far without having enough evidence that its implementation will succeed in halting or slowing down global warming.

It may all be irrelevant, and solar output be almost all of the cause of variation. A thousand years ago, Greenland was green. There were viking colonies there. As solar output dropped, the glaciers expanded, covering, or wiping out all of the viking settlements.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3869753.stm

http://www.cs.usm.maine.edu/~monfort/ast100.htm

I would rather not repeat the history of the Easter Islanders. Nor be acting out "The Sheep Look Up." I seriously distrust the motives of folks claiming that conservation is "anti-economic." It seems the lessons of Enron haven't clearly sunk in yet.

PS. Iceland is spelled Island in "Icelandic." and "iceland" is close to how the word "island" would have been pronounced in English about 1k years ago.

dsquared,

Good to see someone upholding tradition :)

It was my experience with large economic models that made me skeptical of the original global warming results. But ten years of additional data and much improved models makes me think it is more and more likely that there is human-caused warming. A lot less than the original scare stories said but still significant.

(It is also rather obvious that some of the higher estimates of how much Kyoto will cost are ridiculous. They assume no modifying negative feedback and are thus as wrongheaded as the Club of Rome's Limits to Growth model. But there is a sort of "Catch-22" problem with costing out Kyoto. Everyone--and I mean everyone pro and con--agrees that the limits in the present Kyoto treaty won't have much effect on global warming. They will make it come a little more slowly, e.g. the temperature that would happen in 2100 won't arrive till 2105. But everyone who favors Kyoto defends it as "making a commitment" and "creating a framework" which will later be "strengthened." In other words, it is hoped that the limits will get much more stringent and will apply to all nations. It is hard to argue that when that happens, the economic impact will be minor. If Kyoto doesn't do much economically, it also doesn't do much climatically. If it is restrictive enough to do much climatically, it will almost certainly have significant economic effects.)

Having agreed that there is some human-caused warming, that still leaves two questions.

One: Is it a good or a bad thing? The obvious, and useless, answer is that it will be good for some people and bad for others. Good for farmers in the Russian interior. Bad for people living a meter above sea level.

Two: What should we do? Try to "live with" it? After all, people are always moving and changing their way of life. Try to prevent it by doing less, e.g. burn less fossil fuel? Try to prevent it by doing more, e.g. imitate volcanic eruptions by releasing dust high in the atmosphere, thus intercepting some of the sun's rays and bouncing the energy back into space?

I seriously distrust the motives of folks claiming that conservation is "anti-economic."

Peter, that's a strawman in this context. How about answering the counterargument instead?

yep Orson... that's why I said ground temperatures. I've written a global cooling parody over on the libertarian blog if anybody is interested... www.libertarian.org.au

Two URLS on something I noticed a year or so ago. Mars is warming up. Either marsians drive SUVs, or there may be an additional mechanism causing Mars to heat up at the same time Earth is experiencing Warming.

http://www.canoe.ca/CNEWSSpace0112/06_mars-ap.html

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mars_ice-age_031208.html

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