Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The Prisoner’s dilemma is a games theory scenario which explores cooperation in difficult circumstances. The classic description, there are two prisoners accused of a crime. Their options are:
- They both keep quiet, and when convicted they both receive moderate sentences.
- One prisoner rats on the other prisoner. The prisoner who betrays his fellow villain receives a light sentence, the other prisoner receives a heavy sentence.
- Both prisoners rat on each other – they both receive heavy sentences.
So how does the Prisoner’s dilemma apply to carbon dioxide mitigation?
The answer of course if that, if CO2 matters, it is a prisoner’s dilemma on a global scale.
Of course, if CO2 has minimal impact on global climate, then it makes no sense to reduce CO2 because it is a waste of resources. But lets consider the interesting scenario – what if CO2 is every bit as dangerous as the IPCC claims it is?
Consider two countries, country A and country B. Both countries have the following options:
- They can both attempt to reduce CO2 – both countries will accept moderate to severe economic damage.
- Country A could attempt to reduce CO2, while country B continues full steam ahead, maximising economic growth. Country B gets the advantage of an unencumbered economy, and the full benefits of industrialisation – they can afford to switch on the air conditioning, when the weather is too hot. Country A not only gets slammed with the costs of climate mitigation, and the economic damage of trying to compete with country B from a position of permanent structural disadvantage, but any benefit from reduced CO2 thanks to country A’s sacrifices are mostly enjoyed by country B.
- Both countries could ignore the issue of CO2. Both would experience equal pain from climate disruption, but with maximal economic development, both countries would be able to switch on the air conditioning, when the weather outside was too hot.
Of course, in the real world we’re dealing with more than two countries – there are hundreds of countries. If just a handful of those countries decide to break ranks, to ignore CO2 mitigation, openly or covertly, the countries which betray the effort will receive most of the benefit which accrues from the sacrifices of everyone else.
In the paranoid swamp which is global politics, no serious attempt at altruism could survive the first economic recession it caused. Voters would quickly reject the pain, especially if they saw everyone else was accruing any benefit to be realised from their sacrifices.
So it never, under any circumstances, makes sense to be the sucker. Even if the IPCC is right about CO2, your sacrifices will mainly benefit the people who don’t make an effort.
It makes much more sense to steam full power ahead, maximise economic growth, and use the full resources of your expanded industrial base to mitigate any problems which arise from the consequences of climate change.
It’s not that complicated….
Say there’s 300 countries….
10 countries pay……..290 countries get paid
…and they vote on it
‘Voters would quickly reject the pain, especially if they saw everyone else was accruing any benefit to be realised from their sacrifices.’
Oh, how I wish that were true. Voters didn’t reject the pain in 2012.
A vast majority of folks in my “circle of acquaintance” can’t feel where the pain is coming from -yet. They feel the climate change issue is very low on the scale of reasons to vote, just like the poles show. I hang with “middle-of-the-roaders” mostly, who haven’t looked into the science beyond what the media tells, and are largely unaware of resolutions at the international level promoting a global governance.
Those who have known me all my life know that I have always been a conservationist and steward of the environment, so my questioning the green motives is a change of perspective. Yet some still insist that if anthropological climate change is not real, the people they put in office will figure that out, so why should they have to really educate themselves or even be concerned?
While there are so many more “fight-or-flight” inducing stimuli in the media to take priority, it is easy to “slip things by the populous” under the rationalization of “erring on the side of caution”
“…the people they put in office will figure that out, so why should they have to really educate themselves or even be concerned?”
Jonestown
No, they re-elected him.
Thanx to plenty of lies, voter fraud, and Obamaphones…
Yes, but only after Obama pushed out the implementation of the painful parts of Obamacare to beyond Election Day.
And let’s not forget how the MSM hyped Sandy just before the US election.
“CAGW” indeed.
Could Eric’s point be that the Western leaders, India and China at the urging of the UN have ALREADY agreed to a defect/cooperate strategy, and thus the game is lost from the start? For example, Obama’s agreement with China allows the latter to proceed unrestrained until 2030 and then they will CONSIDER leveling off;while the US starts cutting back on CO2 immediately. (He is so proud of that achievement he’s declared he wants the same agreement with India.)
Our reductions can’t possibly stay even with China and India’s increases, so the whole exercise is pointless with respect to any attempt to reduce worldwide CO2 levels (regardless of you opinion on the impact of CO2 on warming).
Of course, if your goal is actually a global redistribution of wealth…….
George,
Thaut’s exactly what it is.
May I say “encarserated” for a “clrical” error? Now how many times does THAT happenen?
Dammit! “Clerical” error!
you can say “incarcerated” if you mean put in prison, or you can, maybe, “encapsulated”, which means surrounded, completely coated, or put in a capsule.
Spelling aside, you get the message.
[after playing out all possible outcomes for Global Thermonuclear War]
Joshua: Greetings, Professor Falken.
Stephen Falken: Hello, Joshua.
Joshua: A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?
😎
Since the increase in atmospheric CO2 has been greatly beneficial to life on this planet, we should add that the crime they are charged with is helping less fortunate people after the government ruled that helping less fortunate people was a crime (akin to EPA’s ruling that CO2=pollution) (-:
On a human timescale, there is no such thing as global warming, or global climate. On a geological timescale; the globe is either in a galcial or interglacial state.
The fact is that climate is regional (and temperature is only one of many different components that go to make up climate). Some parts of the globe are warming, some are cooling and some are not experiencing any significant chage in temperatures. Every country experiences climate change/changes in temperature differently.
For some countries a warming climate would be a God send (eg. countries in high northern latitutes such as Canada, the UK, Scandinavian Countries etc). For some sea level rise would be no problem at all, eg Switzerland (in fact there are almost 50 landlocked countries) and countries like Norway that have high rising cliff/mountain coastlines, for other countries sea level rise would be an inconvenience (possibly even a serious one; although sea level rise is gradual).
The big con in all of this is the globalisation of the scare. It is a political conscript; we are all in it together, we need a global solution. This is wholly untrue. But if the IPCC/UN was honest, then every country would evaluate its own self interest, and would assess whether (so called) Global Warming was a problem for that country, or a benefit and would then act in its own self interest. Some countries would therefore not be concerned about their own (or indeed others) CO2 emissions, and would wish to maximise their own industrial and economic strength.
There is a global power grab, and this is why cAGW is presented as a global problem requiring global solutions.
The obvious ‘solution’ would be adaption, and if a country adversely affected by Gloabl Warming cannot afford the expense of adaption and if it is a low CO2 emitter, possibly there is a case that high CO2 emitters who have benefitted economically from not curbing their CO2 emissions should assist the low CO2 emitting country that has been adversely impacted.
The real application of the precautionary principle points strongly towards adaption; since the real disaster scenario would be that the developed countries bankrupt themselves by curbing CO2 emissions and reducing their energy production/dependence and thereby losing industrially and economically, AND cutting global CO2 has no effect (because CO2 is not the control knob) such that the world continues to warm (because the present warming is of natural origin) AND this warming has negative impacts and the developed world no longer has the financial capacity or industrial resourse to mobilise the adaption work required in the developing world that has suffered the adverse consequences of the naturally warming world, and the developing world does not have the financial or industrial wherewithal to deal with matters because the UN prevented it from industrialising and developing itself because of the fear of CO2 emissions. The upshot is that all countries are too broke, lack the infrasture/industrial capacity to meet the challenges and needs required.
When changes occur, the meaningful impacts are always local. Any kind of change, industrial, disease, economic, or climate requires strong leadership. Instead we have corruption, ignorance, and incompetence. A case in point is when foreign competition changed the auto industry, Detroit never adapted and slid into ruin.
What is bizarre about climate politics, is they are arguing climate is not relevant locally. It is a “global” issue, ignoring that over millenniums changing climate has both enhanced and diminished life depending on what part of the globe it inhabited.
Adapt or die is the way life on Earth evolved, I didn’t think the UN is changing that. Evolution does not preclude having compassion, it precludes acting stupid and expecting good results.
If I had to sum it up, climate change is the biggest ego trip since we thought the universe revolved around the earth.
This article points out the third leg of the climate change farce. Below are the three legs.
1. Data collection has been and still is inconsistently collected and tabulated. Too much data correction, too much massaged data, and too many massaging techniques. Input is unreliable.
2. In terms of the earths, land, life, air, and water system the models are incomplete, They simplify a much more complex system. Output would remain unreliable even if the input from number 1 above became fully trusted.
3. Even if 1 or 2 are both proven true, as this post shows there is no politically practical way to reduce CO2. Going further even if by some miracle there was a combined political will, the amount of CO2 reduction required to get back to pre-industrial levels would require civilization regressing to the 17th century.
Actually, due to natural variation, CO2 could well increase after we shutdown all of the power plants and oil rigs. Boy, wouldn’t that suck. All those environmentalists having to give up their iPhones, Starbucks, and easily available energy for no reason at all.
Further to my comment above the point I was making is that:
The ultimate disaster is that the world bankrupts itself/fails to develop because it employs an ineffective strategy of mitigation (because it turns out that CO2 is not the control knob and the warming is of natural origin) and is then incapable of adapting because it has run out of cash and/or de-industrialised and/or not developed.
Further adaption is preferable to mitigation because CO2 brings with it many KNOWN benefits, eg., plant food and the greening of the plant, and also, it may well be the case that a warmer world benefits the majority of countires/the majority of the population (most people prefer to live in warm locations), and is a detriment only to a minority of the world. Historical evidence suggests that a warmer world is a good thing (the advent of civilisations and technology, the move from the bronze to the iron age can be traced in accordance with warm temperatures), and we know that greater bio diversity is to be seen in warm/wet locations and least bio diversity in cold/arid locations; historic, archaeological evidence and commonselnse all tell us that warm is preferable condition, and personally, I consider that this (ie., the fear of warmth) is an area where the ‘warmist’ have very seriously gone off the rails
“The ultimate disaster is that the world bankrupts itself”
Some see this as a feature, not a bug.
Richard. Your comment reminds me of what I consider wrong actions taken by many countries prior to WW2 to prepare for the approaching storm. I think the whole disaster could have been avoided if different preparations were made. If the US would have had a strong military, if France would have used the money and effort it put into the Maginot lines fixed fortifications (monuments to the stupidity of man- Patton) into mobile systems then Germany probably would have been deterred.
Wastfull wrong actions were taken then and the results were horrendous. Let us not do the same kind of wrong action again.
My understanding is that in the past C02 levels have been a lot higher than 400ppm (8000ppm is one figure that I heard) and since we are discussing this, after CO2 reached these unprecedented levels, then CAGW is a non-event.
We need to maintain economic growth to continue to feed, clothe and defend ourselves, eventually replacements for fossil fuels will be discovered so that economic growth can continue (hydrogen fusion springs to mind. Renewable power sources (apart from hydro-electric) are unreliable and will not provide modern computer driven economies with the necessary stability of power.
To me, this is all reminiscent of the calls by the political left in the 1980’s of unilateral nuclear disarmament in the deluded belief that the USSR would disarm too. I can guarantee that if USA, UK, Australia and EU were to cut back our emissions the rest of the world wouldn’t and we would become the new Third World.
Andrew,
Your understanding is correct. Evidence that CO2 was much higher in the past can be seen everyday in every commercial greenhouse around the world. Growers use various methods to raise CO2 concentrations to 1500 ppm. In doing so, one can practically watch plants grow before his very eyes, so fast is their progress. Why? Plants evolved when CO2 was much higher; now they are starving!
Indeed, CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Just not in the way cAGW morons think.
BTW, I wonder if there are any marijuana growers who believe in cAGW. That would be ironic, to say the least. Pot calling the kettle black 😉
Ha Ha Max!
Also my understanding is that if CO2 falls below 170ppm plants will be unable to use it and of course if the plants die off so does every other living thing.
Yes, at less than 170 ppm CO2, plants get all yellow and spindly … kind of like warmunists.
(Perhaps it would have been funnier if I had said, “Pot calling the kettle green.”)
The Prisoner’s Dilemma assumes that both are guilty, or the system will get them no matter what. With CAGW the system is corrupt so everyone gets screwed, NO MATTER WHAT! The only difference is timing and method.
I have long thought about the Prisoner’s Dilemma that is self-evident in the ‘reduce CO2’ construct, so I applaud this article. (Incidentally, the simple graphic is very nicely done.)
Something to always keep in mind about cAGW — and I know it’s been stated directly and indirectly countless times by others in myriad ways — is that there is nothing rational about cAGW. It’s not intended to be rational. It is meant to be destructive, and to that end it is certainly a success!
Sure it is meant to have the appearance of great output from great minds, but, much like the idiotic Quantity Theory of Money, it is an emotionally-potent oversimplification — a catchy (infectious?) metaphor.
— More CO2 = higher temperatures; less CO2 = lower temperatures.
— More $$$ = higher prices; less $$$ = lower prices.
Both the Quantity Theory of Money and the Quantity Theory of CO2 are socialist weapons designed for one purpose: to destroy society.
Go ahead and argue logically against cAGW. We must. But always be aware that doing so is — in part — playing into their hands.
Tch. Very poor equivalence, there.
There is no equivalence between CO2 and temperature (at least at the levels it has taken for most of geologic history). This is due to the inverse logarithmic nature of it’s effect.
Your second one is a valid criticism, but only when ignoring production. More money, with production held constant = higher prices. Less money, with production held constant = lower prices. And this is a linear relationship. The consistent inflation we suffer under is simply that money is increasing without a corresponding increase in production.
Which the invention of green scams (along with all of the other scams that have a neutral, or negative effect on production) only exacerbates.
You are entitle to your opinion, but QTM is demonstrably false several times over, not the least of which, the money supply cannot even be defined. However this is a not a money-related site, so I will drop the issue.
“It makes much more sense to steam full power ahead, maximize economic growth…”
Its stories like this that make me think oil and coal companies love the issue of global warming because it distracts from the issue of pollution. Some parts of China are living in a pollution haze that is shortening lives drastically, 25 years shorter by one report in parts of China. Many other parts of the world too are living in air quality that is most likely causing health problems and shortening lives. I live near Los Angeles and I see the smog dome over the area that has existed for decades it has always concerned me. I do not worry about global warming, I think its a non-issue. When I read stories that imply the only reason to cut carbon fuel usage is to curtail global warming I think coal producers and oil companies are smiling ear to ear, thinking “This global warming thing is brilliant! Threaten them with sea level rise rate of half an inch per year and people aren’t even THINKING about us taking 25 years off their lives RIGHT NOW! Simply Brilliant!”
Economic growth in all its forms has increased life span greatly. The problems it creates certainly have a minor negative effect on that large lifespan increase. Nothing is perfect.
The average lifespan of a person living in Los Angelos has gone way up from horse and buggy days. Even in China there has been a huge increase in lifespan in the last fifty years (if you ignore direct government killing of its citizens — Mao undoubtedly had a negative impact on the average Chinese lifespan of his times – but, hey, that communism for you — comes with the territory)..
The law of diminishing returns implies that as long as we use fossil fuels we are going to have some level of pollution. Any more money spent on eliminating it would have a bigger impact spent somewhere else on some other REAL problem (not global warming).
Eugene WR Gallun
Come on man. Include reality when creating the scenarios. The silly prisoner dilemma problem ignores the key issues.
Consider two countries, country A and country B. (Reality is all countries are affected by the choices. Reality is the choices are different than the warmists are telling us.) Both countries have the following options (note physical reality is taken into account when defining the scenarios.
1. Both developed countries (Reality is the warmists are trying to get all developed countries to spend trillions and trillions of dollars on green scams that do not work and send billions and billions of dollar to developing countries to be spend on climate change).
Warmists Fiscal Magic Wand:
Note the warmists assume there is a magic wand in their scenario. There is only so much GDP to spend on everything. Is that or is that not true? Where is the magic wand to create trillions and trillions of dollars to spend on green scams. What are the consequences of spending trillions and trillions of dollars on green scams that do not work and what are the benefits?
Warmists ignore imported goods
Roughly 40% of CO2 emission is from consumption. The warmists ignore the CO2 that is produced from goods that are produced in Asia and imported into the developed countries. i.e. Developed country CO2 emission drops as we have lost manufacturing jobs to Asia and South America.
Consequences of spending money that we do not have on green scams
Electrical power costs will triple (Germany electrical costs are three times higher than the US, Germany has reached the limit of the green scams (15% reduction, a significant portion of the German CO2 reduction is that they now import goods manufactured in Asia and they purchase high energy bulk products from the US and other countries, that is a fact not a theory) and is now constructing coal plants.
To truly reduce anthropogenic emissions by let say 70% (note under the IPCC paradigm we must get to zero), airfare must be banned, consumption of all goods must be forced down, and all electrical power must be produced by nuclear. Without converting to nuclear power (i.e. Ignoring engineering reality the green scams are intermittent power sources) there will be brown outs and further loss of jobs to Asia, government expenditures on health care, roads, education, aid to developing countries and so on must be reduced to free up trillions and trillions of dollars of GDP to spend on green scams that do not work.
Physical reality A:
There has been no warming for 18 years. There has been no warming of the tropical troposphere at 8km. This fact supports the assertion that the planet resists (negative feedback) rather than amplifies (positive feedback) any forcing change. There is no extreme AGW problem to solve.
Physical reality B:
Planet cools due to the solar magnetic cycle interruption. It is a fact, not a theory, that there are cycles of warming and cooling in the paleo climatic record that correlate with solar magnetic cycle changes. Roughly 75% to 90% of the warming in the last 150 years was due to solar magnetic cycle changes which affect planetary cloud cover. If this assertion is correct the planet will significantly cool as the solar magnetic cycle has been interrupted.
This scenario is lose – lose. Do to physical reality A there is no extreme AGW problem to solve. Regardless, spending money on green scams that do not significantly reduce CO2 emissions is madness – a bad idea not a good idea – as the majority of the warming in the last 70 years was due to solar magnetic cycle changes, warming as opposed to cooling causes the biosphere to expand and thrive, anyway -warming with most of the warming occurring at high latitudes of less than 2C is a good thing not a bad thing. There is no extreme AGW problem to solve.
An alternative that is less lose for scenario 1 is for the developed countries spend money to convert to nuclear power.
1A) Alternative to scenario 1. Reality is that Salby’s hypothesis that the majority of the CO2 increase due to natural CO2 emissions rather than anthropogenic CO2 is correct. Planet cools and atmospheric CO2 drops. Changing anthropogenic CO2 emissions will have almost no affect on atmospheric CO2 levels.
2. Both developed countries (reality is all developed countries can stop this green scam madness) do not spend trillions and trillions of dollars on green scams and instead invest in advanced coal plants and energy efficient products with consideration of cost vs benefits. Electric power costs drop by 30% rather than increase by a factor of three. Trillions and trillions of dollars are freed up to address the developed countries problems (high unemployment and unsustainable spending which we in the US call kicking the can down the road). A portion of the money not spent on green scams that do not work can be used to address developing world problems such population explosion and access to electrical power (solution is to construct advanced coal plants).
Ok, just to point out the obvious here. In your argument CO2 would be a REPEATED prisioner’s dilema. The differnce of course being in the original game if you defect the other guy can’t punish you for doing so, therefore giving all the incentive to defect and no incentive to cooperate.
In your game if you don’t reduce CO2 then other countries will see this and say, “Hey, they’re not reducing their CO2 so lets stop reducing ours.” Therefore the only way to get the benefits of CO2 reduction is to also do so yourself.
And of course this is also why CO2 reduction has failed in real life. Because there will always be countries that don’t want to reduce their CO2 – even if everyone else did it, and therefore no country wants to because the other guys aren’t doing it.
And just to be nitpicky – because, why not – this is really a repeated voting game (sorry, I don’t remember the official name off hand). That’s where you have any number of people and each can vote either ‘yes’ or ‘no’. If you vote ‘no’ nothing happens. If you vote ‘yes’ you lose 2 points but everyone gains 1 point including you. You can make your own conclusions on what will happen…
The defection can be moderately subtle, such as the EU problem with carbon permits. In my opinion, all the national governments in the EU turned a blind eye to their own industries inflating the calculation of the number of free permits they were allowed, to give their own national economy a covert boost at the expense of the other EU member states. The problem is all the member nations had the same “clever” idea – the result was a glut of carbon permits, and a farce of a carbon market.
All skepticism aside, the carbon tax scheme can indeed be seen as a form of wealth re-distribution but with the potential to dwarf any other form of financial aid to those countries. If that happens the other forms of funding will dry up and as the developed world reduces their carbon use so will the collection of carbon tax which means that over time there are no funds going to developing nations. The “west” is keen to stop the financial aid to corrupt regimes and this will do so over time but by then they should not need it any longer either.
To get the developing nations to a better standard of living makes economic sense not only because it increases their demand for the few goods still produced by nations other then China and India but also as it will slow down (stop) the flow of people out of those countries seeking a life in the developed nations which is putting a huge strain on their own infrastructure and economic well being in the short term. A bit of a two edged sword that, these countries need the influx to stop the decline of their own “native” populations in order to maintain growth (tax revenue) but can’t deal with it. Europe in particular.
Central and South Americans easily crossing into the US and Africans and Asians even more easily crossing into Europe. China and India in particular are already outsourcing production to Africa where possible (making economic sense, i.e. cheaper that is).
While CO2 is the nonsense argument it has always been it is about a world which was told already in the 70’s that carbon fuels would be running out within our life time. Two oil crisis’s and that prospect together with general pollution, China is still a good example, left a world that needed to change. Not sure which bright marketing consultant suggested to use AGW and CO2 as the enemy needed to unify all peoples, but anyway. It is possible that the chemist prime minister in the UK at the time had something to do with it. The good Lord who writes here from time to time may be able to shed a better light on this, he worked with her at the time.
Now, 40 years later having used about twice the known reserves of the 70’s, of course we know that we still have at least another 150 odd years of conventional fossil fuel of the various kinds and if the potential of methane hydrates and possibly cold fusion can indeed be unlocked we can look a fairly reliable energy future in the face. But despite all euphoria over the next 10 billion barrel oil find we need to keep in mind that this only delays “world out of oil day (wood)” by 110 days at current consumption. (and not many of those finds around these days, the oil world is now happy to find 4 billion barrel, 43 days consumption, potentials). And oil, coal and gas are by far the cheaper to extract. Cold fusion has been the next big thing in 10 years for the last 60 years so it is possible that it stays that way. Methane hydrates are a long way off from being commercial, Japan does a lot of work on it at the moment.
Renewable of course makes sense on the face of it, except that it is not really renewable. We have to keep mining the minerals to make the turbine magnets, average lifespan about 12 years at the moment, solar panels etc to get to that point. Processing the rare earth minerals is a messy job with plenty of toxic (radio active) waste. Solar panel production leads to vast increases of SF6 in the atmosphere (talking about man made green house gas pollution, here is one). Best left to China as long as they don’t crank up the price too much and it keeps the environmentalists out of the streets protesting in the west just in case people start to realize that green is actually not green at all. Costs of these technologies is coming down and subsidies in 20 or so years will be a thing of the past, which means that the direct energy cost to the consumer will go up further, unlikely of course that the governments will reduce the tax rates to compensate for the fact that they now no longer pay these huge subsidies.
In the meantime we have to wish for never running out of carbon based fuels as it would mean a huge change in our industrial production methods as so much is based around carbon. And if we can only get to these carbons by getting it out of the first 30 cm of topsoil to produce these goods we are indeed scraping the barrel. Once that is gone no crop will grow there again unless we put C back in, which defeats the purpose.
In the end we have to look beyond 150 years from now and through “democratic” processes it will take about that long to change anything of this magnitude.
I long ago concluded from logic like this that the only way we could get the magnitude of CO2 emissions reductions alarmists say we need is to have a unitary global dictatorship. Democracies will vote out leaders who impoverish them; individual nations play prisoner’s dilemma with each other, without much trust.
Even if the implications of continued high CO2 emissions are as bad as the most alarmed alarmists say it is, it will still be preferable to living under a global dictatorship.
Curt said:
“Democracies will vote out leaders who impoverish them”
Well, that is not quite true. The eco-brainwashed Germans for instance love their failed “Energie-Wende” still, though they pay the highest electricity-costs of all industry nations, because they believe strongly their noble sacrifice will save the planet from warmageddon…
Thus we see, many years of brainwashing by the MSM can be stronger than common sense, unfortunately!
But they are starting to wake up GT: Former German Minister Of Economics Calls Energiewende “A Disaster”…”Careened Completely Out Of Control” http://notrickszone.com/page/2/#sthash.iGUFVyVd.dpuf
when I was 8 or something I saw the the river in my home town in the UK entirely covered in 20-30 feet of soap suds from the textile mills. I thought, “that has got to be a bad thing”. But there also was the feeling “well that is industry, human progress must take precedence, I think that is why they do it “.
and so I’ve never really understood the decision to close the pits and the coal powered stations. I think, well if there is a problem with something let’s fix it. Not just throw it away.
After reading Joe Bastardi’s post ‘Megabust in UKMO temp forecast ignored’, it make me (again) wonder if the whole CO2 ‘debate’ continues simply because it stops people from thinking to look at the man behind the curtain.
“a Bust of 1C ( forecasted plus .5 actual -.5). Do you realize the implication of a 1C cooler temp as far as water vapor goes in that area, vs the rise of the same amount in the arctic. It blows it away! It was in effect forecasting the eternal enso, the dream of all AGW pushers.”
CO2 is pushed time and time again, simply because it’s not the problem; it’s a convenient strawman.
http://www.weatherbell.com/premium/joe-bastardi/megabust-in-ukmo-temp-forecast-ignored/
Anyone with even a modicum of business acumen realizes IPCC’s CAGW “solution” of massive economic destruction to keep CO2 induced warming below 2C by 2100 is a deal made of the idiots, by the idiots and for the idiots…
The physics and empirical evidence indicate ECS will be around 0.5C~1C by 2100, which isn’t even CLOSE to being a problem. Conversely, the positive effects of increasing CO2’s levels (50% increase in crop yields and forest growth, plants’ decreased water requirements from leaf stoma shrinkage, extended growing seasons from slightly warmer global temps, increased arable land in Northern latitudes, etc.,) offset any possible negative effects possible from higher CO2 levels.
Moreover, China now expects to have commercial Thorium reactors ready by 2024, which makes this entire CAGW scam moot.
Rather than wasting about $80 TRILLION on insane CO2 sequestration programs (UN’s estimate) it’s far cheaper to do NOTHING and enjoy 0.5C of CO2 induced warming its other benefits.
China is playing this CAGW farce beautifully. They’ve negotiate a special dispensation to continue business-as-usual CO2 emissions until 2030, so a second wave of industrial production will shift to China as the West wastes $trillions on CO2 programs, then China’s thorium reactors start rolling out from 2025, leading to a 3rd wave of production moving to China to take advantage of the cheapest energy in the world…
The West has gone temporarily insane…
…their is no cure for that kind of greed.
Hmmm… The situation is far more like the “Gambler’s Dilemma.” If you haven’t heard of that one…
Several gamblers (of equal ability) are having a game (it needs to be a long one, or several with the same players).
Possibilities:
1) All of the gamblers are honest. Over the long run, nearly all of them leave with no more money than they came with (unless one or more had an especially bad run of luck).
2) One or more (but not all) gamblers cheat. Over the long run, the cheaters leave with more money (the amount primarily depending on how many cheat); the honest ones need to find a heat vent somewhere.
3) All of the gamblers cheat. Over the long run, nearly all of them leave with the same money they came with, unless they are especially good at cheating, or especially bad (note – the initial supposition is that they are all equally good gamblers, not equally good cheaters).
Now, what we have in the world economy is approximately a four or five handed poker game – US, EEU, China, and India. Possibly Russia as the fifth hand. Every other player that can focus on a single economic policy has too small of a “stake” to influence the game in any significant way.
In this game, we have two players that are probably honest (for certain values of “honest”) – the US and EEU. We have one player that is not real certain, they would like to be honest, but will regretfully cheat to keep themselves from being cleaned out – that player is India. Then we have two players that will cheat in any way they think they can get away with – and some that they really can’t get away with, but the honest players are afraid to call them out on it.
So – in this game – what should we do?
There is a fifth option. Do nothing and fix the damage as it occurs, if it occurs. Bjorn Lomborg has publish articles that claim that this is a much more effective course of action.
As a Model “Prisoners Dilemma” is too simple, the Economics and Politics involved are nearly as complex as Climate Change itself is and are completely intertwined with it. Two variables my a**, it’s not modelabel.
It most likely works the other way.
If all countries produce plenty of “the precious air-fertilizer” (as Scientific American accurately called CO2), then all countries will benefit from much improved agricultural productivity.
If most countries produce plenty of CO2, all countries will benefit from improved agricultural productivity, including the freeloaders who aren’t contributing to global CO2 levels.
If only a few countries produce plenty of CO2, they’ll experience little of the improvement in agricultural productivity which their CO2 production should gain for them.
Reality is not a game. Real people suffer in poverty and in order to survive destroy the enviroment they live in. Real people and real enviroment suffer abuse at the hands of unrestrained ‘development’. Real profits enable better living. Real profits enable war, gluttony sand debasement of all that make us human.
In all of this there are real people and a real environment. It is not a game. To reduce it to a game is to render yourself a cipher in a mathematical code. Once you do that, is there any meaning to anything?
If you can’t understand the reasons for something, even if attaining that understanding requires a level of abstraction and modelling of the situation, then there is no hope for improvement.