Guest post by Thomas Fuller
Climate Central’s interview with Harold Shapiro, head of the InterAcademy Council which reviewed the IPCC, had the money quote–but it didn’t come from Shapiro, it came through him.
Shapiro reported that John Christy said, “if they do this, if they adapt both the letter and the spirit of what you’ve said, things would be a lot better. ”
One can hope.
In the spirit of assessment, we can offer a sort of ‘back to school’ look at climate change as a cultural and political phenomenon at this point. Let’s at least try.
Shapiro’s team at the IAC provided lots of meat and potatoes advice and recommendations to the IPCC on how to do its job better.
The jury’s obviously still out, but they could improve dramatically in time for their fifth assessment report. But there’s no doubt that the IPCC has been put on notice and that they understand that some of the things that got them in trouble in their 4th Assessment Report cannot be repeated. This should lead to a more centrist, consensus-driven look at the evidence.
The United States Congress is clearly not going to pass Cap and Trade. However, they are evidently not going to kneecap the EPA, which will be free to force utilities and very large emitters to reduce emissions. Also a centrist move.
Bjorn Lomborg has switched the emphasis of his message, in time to help get publicity for his new film, and is now stepping up his calls for concrete action (and concrete sums of money) to fight climate change. It’s a move back to the center for him. This time around, the heatwave in Moscow and floods in Pakistan and China were only briefly blamed on climate change, before cooler heads made it clear that at worst they served as previews of coming attractions.
And the transition between El Nino and La Nina is actually being discussed in fairly reasonable tones–this year’s heat is not being extravagantly pronounced an irrevocable tipping point, and next year’s cooling may be the reason why. We all know it’s coming, and we all know it’s La Nina, not the ultimate end of global warming.
Is there a center growing for discussion on climate change? It would be certainly nice to think so. In the blogosphere, more bloggers and commenters on the ‘skeptic’ side seem willing to preface their criticism with a frank admission that the physics of CO2 acting as a greenhouse gas is not very controversial. On the ‘warmist’ side, there are some who are beginning to examine some of the claims made in their name, and to admit that people like Steve McIntyre or Anthony Watts are not devils incarnate.
As a ‘lukewarmer’ I’ve been in the middle for a while, with some very good company, people like both Pielkes, Lucia Liljegren, and more. It’s tempting to think people are moving in our direction.
But being in the middle doesn’t automatically make us right, and some of this movement is illusory, end of summer tolerance in all probability. Joe Romm will certainly launch another tirade against the existence of Roger Pielke Jr. on this planet, and Keith Kloor will call out Michael Tobis and we’ll probably be back at each other’s throats by Labor Day.
Kind of a pity–there’s a lot we could be doing. We could be agreeing to let wind kind of rest for a couple of years and pushing for solar power to get more attention. We could be trumpeting the energy efficiency gains from LED lighting. We could be examining in closer detail the new nuclear power plant designs and the specification sheets for the new electric cars.
When the advocates for a better climate are all busy ripping each other apart (and I have been as guilty as any in this regard) the people making the decisions are a more detached lot, who may not feel the same sense of urgency.
Hard core skeptics may say that’s okay. But even they think that better technology will supplant, or at least supplement, fossil fuels as it becomes cost-effective–and most would cheer it if it came.
I read elsewhere that ‘We’ll never have a kumbaya moment. Too much bad blood.’ But the Palestinians and Israelis have just agreed to face-to-face talks. This puts some of our quarrels in perspective.
Thomas Fuller http://www.redbubble.com/people/hfuller
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Here you go Mr. Mosher- in order that you may desist from your absolute talking point that ‘nobody says ghg cools the atmosphere’, allow me to acquaint you with the physics of a heat pump. In such a system, any addition of heat capacity to the working fluid IMPROVES HEAT TRANSPORT (that means cooling, ok?) CO2 adds heat capacity to the working fluid, therefore it improves the efficiency of cooling of the planet. The physics is well known, proven, not a matter of opinion. If you want the numbers I can get them from any first year chemistry text.
When you mischaracterize a heat pump by stripping away all physics but the bright red candy colored funding hot button ‘co2’, you have dropped all context and are no longer dealing with reality or truth. You are promoting an agenda that requires destruction of values for the sake of mollifying the insane – at my expense. You are playing the very same game as the other frauds.
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Enneagram says:
September 3, 2010 at 12:58 pm
The purpose seems to degrade it from a belief to a scientifically reasonable doubt, which by the “precautionary principle” would anyway lead to exactly the same previous goal: Making carbon market (and, what is more important, profit) possible.
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That is so wrong. If a loony says the Moon will collide with the Earth in 10 years, then the precautionary principle would compel us to run out and build a star ship in order to escape this alleged catastrophe. Now I’m not saying all climate scientists are loonies, but the point is that one must have a reasonable assurance that the proposed catastrophe will happen before spending resources on the solution. We don’t have a reasonable level of assurance that warming will even happen, much less be catastrophic. The so-called climate scientists who predict this catastrophe will have to, as others have said here, lay all their scientific cards on the table. Once everyone has a chance to see their hand, then we can all decide if we want to divert precious resources to what probably amounts to nothing at all.
tallbloke says:
September 3, 2010 at 12:43 pm
“In the spirit of assessment, we can offer a sort of ‘back to school’ look at climate change as a cultural and political phenomenon at this point. Let’s at least try.”
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Why bother? Get the science right and all else will follow quite easily…..
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But only if we kneecap the corrupt politicians at the voting booths and let the newbies know the game is up, we are on to them. Otherwise we will get the irrational made into law whether we like it or not.
We already have the House and Senate resolutions:
“Salazar was joined by 33 other Senate members from both sides of the aisle in supporting the resolution, which calls for 25 percent of the nation’s energy needs being met with renewable resources from farms, forests and ranches by 2025. The resolution also reinforces the 25x’25 principle that the U.S. agricultural and forestry industries, while producing renewable energy, will continue to produce safe, abundant and affordable food feed and fiber.” click
This is idiotic plan to starve people is still moving forward despite the science.
“In terms of energy output compared with energy input for ethanol production, the study found that:
* corn requires 29 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced;
* switch grass requires 45 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced; and
* wood biomass requires 57 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced.
In terms of energy output compared with the energy input for biodiesel production, the study found that:
* soybean plants requires 27 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced, and
* sunflower plants requires 118 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced. “
There are many layers to the AGW debate but one thing is clear to me, after the gruelling job of reading much of this literature, climate science is an immature discipline and very little in practice is settled. Unlike physics it is not an experimental science – there is no laboratory where theories can be confirmed or refuted. In many respects climate science is closer to economics than it is to physics. True there is an element of physics in the properties of CO2 but much of the debate has been about the significance of historical data and various attempts to model the climate. In this respect Climate Science is almost identical in nature to the theory of finance within economics and Climate Scientists would do well to reflect upon and learn the lessons of how finance developed. Finance too relied upon the analysis of large volumes of historical data, and on extensive mathematical modelling of financial systems. Like AGW a dominant position developed – in the case of finance around the ‘Chicago School’ – and in particular in the core belief that markets are driven by rational expectations, exhibited high degrees of information efficiency and could be mathematically modelled to a high degree of precision. So much so that in 1976 the editor of one of the principal journals in the field proclaimed that submissions denying the efficient markets hypothesis were very unlikely to be published. We have all seen how this core financial paradigm – based upon deeply suspect empirical and theoretical assumptions – led to the development of quantitative finance and ultimately the banking crash.
One of the enduring traits of scientists of all disciplines is that in the main they believe in Ockham’s Razor. Our understanding of the world is driven by theories and where those theories compete Ockham tells us that the simplest one is to be preferred. Scientists, again of most disciplines, believe that complex things can be reduced to simpler things and it is this reductionism that leads them in one field to attempt to capture all human and market behaviour in simple mathematical axioms of rationality or, in another, to reduce the complexities of the global climate to a simple theory of CO2 forcing and a mechanism of positive feedback.
The problem with Ockham’s Razor is that the simple theory is not necessarily the true one. But sticking to the simple theory in the face of counter-evidence and poor predictive outcomes can lead to disaster. The banking collapse is a warning of how a simple theory can go wrong. What a disaster for humanity if we divert billions of dollars to the task of micro-managing the climate rather than tackling the three environmental P’s: population, poverty and pollution. Climate Science has a very long way to go on the path to maturity before I become convinced that such a huge diversion of resource is necessary. Hence I am with the skeptics.
A would-be burglar wants all my stuff. I want to give him nothing. Obviously the “centrist” position is to give him half my stuff. WUWT?
How about this? A slave-owner wants an African to work for him 12 months a year. The African wants to work for himself 12 months a year. So the “centrist” solution is for the African to work for the slave-owner, say, five months a year? No sane person would do anything like– Wait a sec. If we replace “slave-owner” with “US government” (federal, state, local) then the “African” becomes…me.
Damn!
Steven Mosher says (September 3, 2010 at 10:54 am): “4. We split here between those who favor global action, national action, local action, and personal action.”
Well, I’m a lukewarmer (OK, a luke-lukewarmer), and I favor NO action. No wind/solar/biofuel subsidies/incentives/mandates, no IPCC, no limousine climate conferences, no @ur momisugly#$% carbon credits, no incandescent bulb bans, and especially no more insanity.
Yes, I realize history is against me on the last one.
Thomas, you make it seem that, battle-weary, both sides have started to desire a friendlier war with a little give and take. No! Things have moved toward a more reasonable centre only because of the horrible beating the AGW folks have taken since the Climategate affair which exposed the nefarious tricks, subversions and doctoring of data of the well-funded doomsters and also opened the door to a wave of objective science that had been denied an airing. It also opened up the books on the IPCC unscrupulous use of WWF and other club members grey literature in their assessments. This is not a move toward denoument but rather a trickle of desertion that has become a flood. Al Gore has gone out the back door to retirement in full silence and the other usual suspects are not so windy – Hansen will remain recalcitrant when the Hudson freezes over but he too hasn’t been seen lately lying on the tracks to stop the coal death trains. O there is a flurry of evermore fantastic papers coming out these days to trumpet the doom but they are not from the usual tenured set and senior gov scientists. They are all from grad students with their professors managing the stuff but keeping their heads down. Of course they want a truce. Of course they are casting about for ways to morph back into scientists. But say we went along. Whatever use would a born again Mann or Jones be to climate science? Gor Blimey, Kumbaya indeed.
Charles Higley says: September 3, 2010 at 7:22 am
Ouch! They sill don’t get it! Science is NOT “consensus-driven,” it is driven by the solidity of the science itself.
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Agreed. I thought that was the reason for being. Science is science. It is not democracy.
Ric Werme says: September 3, 2010 at 7:28 am
But the Palestinians and Israelis have just agreed to face-to-face talks. This puts some of our quarrels in perspective. —well, perhaps there’s a chance of reconciliation between Arabs and Israelis. Well, in a century or two.
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Don’t hold your breath – maybe a millennium or two – I think that this goes back to Jacob and Esau – anyway a long long time ago. As I remember Esau got the goats and Jacob got the pie in the sky. Nothing has changed (IMHO).
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DesertYote says: September 3, 2010 at 7:30 am
Can’t fix what is not broken. In stead of trying to “fix” it, the thing should be put down, as fixing it will not change its mission, just make the propaganda better.
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Sad to say I have come to this conclusion too after lurking here for a year or so.
Gail Combs says: September 3, 2010 at 7:39 am
I suggest you turn your energy towards pushing decent technology for nuclear energy. That gives the best return on invested money and effort. It is an idea many “skeptics” will get behind as well. Many of us are just as against trashing the environment, polluting and dumping megabucks into the pockets of the oil companies as you are. We are just against bad science as a disguise for a massive ripoff of the middle class and the poor by the wealthy.
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I guess you have summed things up pretty well here Gail. I think the focus upon a viable energy source is the only sensible way to provide the energy we need for the future (when oil and coal are gone). And the development of Thorium as a source seems to belong to that set. Wind and solar seem to be a diversionary tactic to soak up the cash – I see no solid evidence of either as being a viable alternative to a carbon based energy source.
Doug
Gary Hladik says:
September 3, 2010 at 3:49 pm (Edit)
Steven Mosher says (September 3, 2010 at 10:54 am): “4. We split here between those who favor global action, national action, local action, and personal action.”
Well, I’m a lukewarmer (OK, a luke-lukewarmer), and I favor NO action. No wind/solar/biofuel subsidies/incentives/mandates, no IPCC, no limousine climate conferences, no @ur momisugly#$% carbon credits, no incandescent bulb bans, and especially no more insanity.
Yes, I realize history is against me on the last one.
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so to the extent that currently in the USA we incentivize people to stay in areas where GW will likely cause damage ( say below sea level or in places that may be) you suggest that those incentives should stay in place? In short continue to let people build and devlop in areas that could be in danger and keep the federal disaster bailouts in place for this activity. No action?
to the extent that people are trying to tear down hydro projects, no action.
your happy with all the government surrounding nuclear licencing? no streamlining.
Basically, if you believe in market solutions then there are surely some actions you would take, NAMELY actions which would free the market. So simply saying ‘no action” wasnt thinking very long about the problem.
Its not that there has to be a middle. Rather, that the warmists need to find one soon or have nothing at all! Funny how there has to be some bad science to comfort the frauds and hucksters that, for some reason I cannot fathom, must still be given respect, or else! It is no coincidence that a middle is now being sought. Others have already stated the obvious; that science isn’t something to be negotiated. It is science, or it isn’t. QED.
What is a truce supposed to look like? Not checking assertions, data quality, analysis and algorithms? Not doing science they way it SHOULD be done? Sorry – not buying it.
But I DO bet that the ‘climate community’ really really wishes that it was like the old days when no one checked their work and Princes and Presidents came fawning at their doors.
I am glad to say that those days are gone. And all I want is for them to merely suffer the consequences of their malfeasance. That’s all. Or Mann up and apologize.
Tom Fuller, “more bloggers and commenters on the ‘skeptic’ side seem willing to preface their criticism with a frank admission that the physics of CO2 acting as a greenhouse gas is not very controversial.”
I don’t know why so many people, even some scientifically skilled, seem to think that radiation physics is an adequate theory of climate.
Earth to all such folks: It isn’t.
Radiation physics tells us that additional CO2 will produce an additional energy content in the atmosphere. Energy content is not necessarily sensible heat.
An adequate climate physics, not radiation physics, would tell us how that energy will be distributed among all the climate modes. Additional atmospheric CO2 may heat the atmosphere, may have an undetectable effect on heat content, or may even cause the atmosphere to cool.
The latter could happen, for example, if the extra energy went into a more vigorous hydrology that increased low cloudiness. Low clouds reflect off incoming solar energy and have a negative feedback.
Alternatively, one might expect to see an oscillation in cloudiness, in a feedback cycle between atmospheric energy and hydrology, as the energy content cycles up and down with cloudiness, and the cloudiness cycles up and down with energy, each not quite 180 degrees out of phase with the other (analogous to the phase relationship of insolation and atmospheric temperature). The net result of such a process could be no detectable change in sensible heat, but a marginally observable change in cloud dynamics.
The upshot is that the truth about Co2 does not necessarily lay ‘somewhere in the middle’ between two conflicting points of view. One, or both, may be wrong, with the right answer off somewhere else entirely.
In the meantime, the only valid position is to observe that, when it comes to climate predictions and where the truth lies, no one knows what they’re talking about.
Compromise eh? One group with their useful idiots have tried to steal from me, using propaganda, fraud and deception. Now when caught out they want a compromise? Of what ? To steal 20% less? I did not attack the bedwetting cliche of climate, or attempt to change their miserable lifestyle and demonise their freedoms. Nor do I debase the scientific method and then claim this as scientific proof of my ideology. There is no compromise possible with this type of nitwit. I propose a tax on all do-gooders. If you believe you can run others lives better than they, you can pay for it. Compromise indeed. Put up your properly done scientific proof and suppositions and we will consider that. Belief does not trump data. And I have no mercy for ambush attackers.
IPCC works very well, achieves stated policy perfectly.UN = useless nuts. I agree IPCC not broken.Also not useful to any sane individual on planet.
A pull back from the “science is settled, we need do something/anything, right now ” position would be a start.
Stop trying to jam this crap down our throats.
Weather does not make climate, but if you play it right, it can mean profits.
It would seem, another “business model” has been created, finance supplied via the Ponzi Scheme.
Maybe I’m just confused, but apart from the poor speculation with pretensions of science, the real problem seems to be the adoption of the precautionary principle as a political meme.
Invoke any possible problem, then we must act, even if it makes no sense, because if the problem is real, not acting would have been wrong.
It really seems to me to be a restatement for “Just trust that I have your best interests at heart”
I don’t believe that we are children, needing the Master’s guidance. At least not self-appointed. nor elected masters.
@Charles Higley
Thanks for the concise description of your views and the time it took you to write it up.
It will be very useful to me if you could also share your views about
1. Does smoking cause health issues? Does second-hand smoking cause health issues?
2. The first (timid) scientific information on the health effects of smoking came in the early 1950s. The tobacco industry moved quickly, they hired Hill & Knowlton to discredit the scientists and publish ‘reports’ such as
http://www.tobacco.neu.edu/litigation/cases/supportdocs/frank_ad.htm
Due to their efforts, we only had effective measures against smoking in recent years.
Do you believe that there has been manufactured doubt against the scientists so that action on smoking is delayed as much as possible?
3. People claim that there is ‘manufactured doubt’ nowdays against climate scientists, with benefactors the oil and coal industry, with prime funders and organizers the Koch brothers,
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer
Do you believe that there is any ‘manufactured doubt’ against climate scientists?
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Like AGW a dominant position developed – in the case of finance around the ‘Chicago School’ – and in particular in the core belief that markets are driven by rational expectations, exhibited high degrees of information efficiency and could be mathematically modelled to a high degree of precision. So much so that in 1976 the editor of one of the principal journals in the field proclaimed that submissions denying the efficient markets hypothesis were very unlikely to be published. We have all seen how this core financial paradigm – based upon deeply suspect empirical and theoretical assumptions – led to the development of quantitative finance and ultimately the banking crash.
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Wallstreet was just trying to fund an out of control government program. Actually, there is more to the Chicago School than some models. Some of the basic tenets are individualism, limited government intervention, and small government. If you take an honest look at the history of government intervention in the housing market, you find that back in 1938 FDR, a Dem, set up Fannie May. Then Lyndon Johnson, another Dem, let it go public. The current problem stemmed from these actions. The last housing bubble would not have happened without the government backed mortgage programs. Government interference in the free markets created the problem. But instead of realizing (admitting!) this fact, the government just intervenes more and more. This is really stupid!! There is a lot more to the intervention in housing that even these actions.
“Fannie Mae was created in 1938 as part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal. The collapse of the national housing market in the wake of the Great Depression discouraged private lenders from investing in home loans. Fannie Mae was established in order to provide local banks with federal money to finance home mortgages in an attempt to raise levels of home ownership and the availability of affordable housing. ”
http://hnn.us/articles/1849.html
See also for more interventions: http://www.freedomworks.org/crisis
We all know how well social security is working out – more government intervention and more debt and broken promises.
Also, take a look at what happens when government does not intervene in a depression.
“The 1920–1921 Depression
This context highlights the importance of the 1920–1921 depression. Here the government and Fed did the exact opposite of what the experts now recommend. We have just about the closest thing to a controlled experiment in macroeconomics that one could desire. To repeat, it’s not that the government boosted the budget at a slower rate, or that the Fed provided a tad less liquidity. On the contrary, the government slashed its budget tremendously, and the Fed hiked rates to record highs. We thus have a fairly clear-cut experiment to test the efficacy of the Keynesian and monetarist remedies.
At the conclusion of World War I, U.S. officials found themselves in a bleak position. The federal debt had exploded because of wartime expenditures, and annual consumer price inflation rates had jumped well above 20 percent by the end of the war.
To restore fiscal and price sanity, the authorities implemented what today strikes us as incredibly “merciless” policies. From FY 1919 to 1920, federal spending was slashed from $18.5 billion to $6.4 billion—a 65 percent reduction in one year. The budget was pushed down the next two years as well, to $3.3 billion in FY 1922.
On the monetary side, the New York Fed raised its discount rate to a record high 7 percent by June 1920. Now the reader might think that this nominal rate was actually “looser” than the 1.5 percent discount rate charged in 1931 because of the changes in inflation rates. But on the contrary, the price deflation of the 1920–1921 depression was more severe. From its peak in June 1920 the Consumer Price Index fell 15.8 percent over the next 12 months. In contrast, year-over-year price deflation never even reached 11 percent at any point during the Great Depression. Whether we look at nominal interest rates or “real” (inflation-adjusted) interest rates, the Fed was very “tight” during the 1920–1921 depression and very “loose” during the onset of the Great Depression.
Now some modern economists will point out that our story leaves out an important element. Even though the Fed slashed its discount rate to record lows during the onset of the Great Depression, the total stock of money held by the public collapsed by roughly a third from 1929 to 1933. This is why Milton Friedman blamed the Fed for not doing enough to avert the Great Depression. By flooding the banking system with newly created reserves (part of the “monetary base”), the Fed could have offset the massive cash withdrawals of the panicked public and kept the overall money stock constant.
But even this nuanced argument fails to demonstrate why the 1929–1933 downturn should have been more severe than the 1920–1921 depression. The collapse in the monetary base (directly controlled by the Fed) during 1920–1921 was the largest in U.S. history, and it dwarfed the fall during the early Hoover years. So we hit the same problem: The standard monetarist explanation for the Great Depression applies all the more so to the 1920–1921 depression.”
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/the-depression-youve-never-heard-of-1920-1921/#
Steven Mosher says (September 3, 2010 at 4:13 pm): “so to the extent that currently in the USA we incentivize people to stay in areas where GW will likely cause damage ( say below sea level or in places that may be) you suggest that those incentives should stay in place?”
Sorry, Steve, I thought we were discussing CAGW-related actions. I wouldn’t remove insurance subsidies to storm-prone coastal dwellers because of possible AGW. Now I do think there’s a good non-AGW case for phasing out subsidized flood insurance even if sea levels were unquestionably falling, but I see that as a different subject. I also see your hydro projects (who would remove hydro-power to prevent CAGW?) and nuclear licensing issues as something to be decided on their own merits, not on the current state of climatological knowledge.
As for the “free market”, I’m all for it, whether or not AGW is a real threat. Heck, if it were up to me, GM would be in Chapter 11. I’d even phase out US Social Security and tax deductions for mortgage interest. But unfortunately, despite the pleas of the voters, I will not be running for office in 2012. 🙁
BTW, I know that technically, abolishing the IPCC, anti-AGW subsidies, and such counts as “action”, but my point is that we should be doing nothing specifically about the “threat” of AGW. We should be doing everything to put our economic/political house in order, but that’s a separate topic.
“As a ‘lukewarmer’ I’ve been in the middle for a while,”
LOL thanks Tom, so you can’t prove it either……………
There is no lukewarm, fence sitting, middle of the road, wishy washy, BS nada
Science is not an opinion Tom, and only opinions can be wishy washy….
Damn. In my last post, where I wrote about GM and Chapter 11, I was not referring to our GM, but rather to General Motors. I apologize to He Who Dwells Beneath The Private Bridge for any confusion.
I am floored; the ‘cite’ to end all cites …
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Jim Barker says: September 3, 2010 at 4:52 pm
Maybe I’m just confused, but apart from the poor speculation with pretensions of science, the real problem seems to be the adoption of the precautionary principle as a political meme.
Invoke any possible problem, then we must act, even if it makes no sense, because if the problem is real, not acting would have been wrong.
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Jim. How true you observation is. We (ordinary people) have been caught up by this meme in so many ways. Politicians cannot escape from it because they become responsible for NOT adhering to it. This meme is extended everywhere, to all levels of government. Here it seems to be predicated upon an idea that has no proof whatsoever. It is effectively taking a precaution against the sky from falling in from what I can see. At what cost? At the low level, it seems to lead to a transference of blame to others and a refusal of people for taking responsibility for their own actions.
Doug
there sure is an uncommon amount of common sense in the replies to this article.
if there were a volume control, I’d crank it to eleven!
Tom,
Get away from this crowd – you’re not appreciated anyway. Move toward the powerful and spectacular real science that is being done by climate scientists worldwide. The science is solid, unlike the continually-reinforced paranoia on this site.