Climate Change

[S485122]

Originally Posted by __HRB__

But even if Global Warming wipes out 99% of humans, that's not the end, since there will still be 60 million left. That's still about 100x more than there were after the last ice-age.

And you would be amongst those left and that means it is no problem ?

I rest my case.

Jacob

[MooooMoo]

The government agencies tracking issues related to global warming have been making an awful lot of mistakes recently.

First, there was the error where September temperatures were copied over for October, making October the hottest on record:

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/a...ttest_october/

Then, a similar error occurred when co2 levels for November were copied over to December:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/1...n-its-history/

After that, Arctic-ice cover was underestimated because of sensor-drift, and no one at NSIDC (the agency tracking polar ice cover) noticed it until several readers emailed them:

http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?.../02/19/0420255

Now, I think I've spotted another error - global temperatures for February 2009 was reported to be 0.60 degrees above average:

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gi...s=1200&pol=reg

but the same agency (GISS) has a graph that shows the temperature anomaly for February at only 0.4 degrees above average:

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/


What's going on?

[MooooMoo]

Originally Posted by MooooMoo

Now, I think I've spotted another error - global temperatures for February 2009 was reported to be 0.60 degrees above average:

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gi...s=1200&pol=reg

but the same agency (GISS) has a graph that shows the temperature anomaly for February at only 0.4 degrees above average:

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/


What's going on?

Update - It looks like that wasn't an error after all. The 0.60 degrees above average only referred to what the weather stations measured, while the 0.41 degrees above average was the land+ocean temperature anomaly:

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.C.txt

Thanks to the guys at GISS who pointed that out.

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by __HRB__

But I think, that for a bunch of apes we're actually doing pretty good, so the 'mankind is evil' conservationists really piss me off.

Your definition of "good" appears to differ from mine, then - "fouling one's own nest beyond belief, and doing so knowingly" isn't part of mine. Your "medieval priest analogy" is specious - while definitions of "sin" are rather arbitrary and "God's punishment" assumes (a) God exists and (b) God behaves according to the non-verifiable claims of one or another cabal of religious zealots, things like "overpopulation", "deforestation", "habit degradation", "air, water and soil pollution", "human-caused mass extinction", "unique capability for engaging in mass violence" are most certainly not religious-belief-style concepts - they are verifiable or disprovable via observation and measurement. Did you miss out on the "scientific method" portions of your basic science education?

Also, I don't believe that mankind is inherently "evil" - nor that we are inherently "good", for that matter, nor that life is inherently "precious". I do believe - and would say that the evidence strongly favors this claim - that despite all of our social complexity and scientific/technical prowess, in terms of our reproductive, consumptive and conflict-resolving behavior we have advanced distressingly little beyond the behavior which worked so well to help our species survive when we were just small bands of hunter/gatherers. Perhaps that should not be surprising, since in evolutionary-history terms "civilization" is a relatively new concept, but as far as I'm concerned it does put the lie to your "we`re actually doing prettry good" assertion.

[__HRB__]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Your "medieval priest analogy" is specious - while definitions of "sin" are rather arbitrary and "God's punishment" assumes (a) God exists and (b) God behaves according to the non-verifiable claims of one or another cabal of religious zealots, things like "overpopulation", "deforestation", "habit degradation", "air, water and soil pollution", "human-caused mass extinction", "unique capability for engaging in mass violence" are most certainly not religious-belief-style concepts - they are verifiable or disprovable via observation and measurement. Did you miss out on the "scientific method" portions of your basic science education?

Nope. And I'd be a little more careful with the cheeseheading, if I were you.

While 'population' is an observable and measurable quantity, 'overpopulation' assumes that

a) there is an equilibrium
b) the equilibrium is below the observed state

By measuring 'overpopulation' you are making a) unfalsifiable, since the only measurable thing is the distance to the equilibrium. And if your measuring stick only has positive numbers b) is also unfalsifiable.

Did you miss out on the "Philosophy of Science" portions of your basic science education? You can do all the scientific methoding you want, but you've got to give the opposition the tools to poke holes in your theory, or the whole thing is not even academic.

Real scientists fit things like logistic functions to population data to generate a prognosis. Global warming alarmists fit

x(t)=exp(t) if t<doomsday, x(t)=0 if t>doomsday

to data and go ape, because the model agrees with well with observation.

Any equilibrium will depend on our technological abillities, but as technological progress might be impossible to model (precisely because our ability to model reality is limited by our current technological abilities), we'll only be able to have an equilibrium when our abilities have plateaued for more than a generation.

Tell Douglas Hofstadter, I said 'hi'.

If you ask me, trying to look past a singularity is probably a good definition what a religious-belief-style concept is.

Current natural resources are only important as long as they are a limiting factor of population growth, but for all we know, we humans will be able to take a pill, grow leaves, and stand in the sunlight for a couple of hours, to generate enough energy to keep our brains going.

Needless to say that then, our governments will be promising (and failing) to raise CO2 emissions, and all the advanced parts of the world will accused of selfishly stealing CO2 from the air to suppport their bloated bio-masses. Those greedy bastards!

[__HRB__]

Part II

Originally Posted by ewmayer

I do believe - and would say that the evidence strongly favors this claim - that despite all of our social complexity and scientific/technical prowess, in terms of our reproductive, consumptive and conflict-resolving behavior we have advanced distressingly little beyond the behavior which worked so well to help our species survive when we were just small bands of hunter/gatherers.

I think you should reconsider.

Females can reproduce for 40 years and are in heat every month, but the global replacement rate is only 2.33. In absolute terms this isn't so bad, and alarmists would be making the same racket even if this were 2.1 (or 2.8).

Now, are you complaining that our conflict-resolving behavior is not good, or too good? I mean, we can't have a net-population growth, if we were bumping each other off faster, than we can get our females pregnant, can we?

According to: http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/05cius/data/table_16.html only about every 200th American commits a violent crime every year. Most of us are decent apes. Even the friggin' socialists are decent monkeys.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...27/ai_55820853

"Anti-utopian philosophers find their pessimism about human nature vindicated by the thuggish common chimpanzee, whose basic social unit resembles the Hell's Angels, complete with murderous raids on other troops and frequent gangbangs."

This was obviously written by a conservative. What's so bad about having frequent gangbangs? Anyway, there is only a 1% genetic difference between them (chimps, not conservatives - ok, not all conservatives) and us, and I think you are simply expecting too much.

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Perhaps that should not be surprising, since in evolutionary-history terms "civilization" is a relatively new concept, but as far as I'm concerned it does put the lie to your "we`re actually doing prettry good" assertion.

New? We've been wiping out cultures since after the beginning of time. Neanderthals, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Mayans, Inkas, Native American, Aborigine...,Colonialism, Socialism, Communism, Faschism...

Why do so many consider wiping out inefficient cultures a bad thing?

Btw, Consumerism is probably the next to go, so good riddance. I buy way too much junk, anyway.

[philmoore]

Originally Posted by __HRB__

Part II
I think you should reconsider.

Females can reproduce for 40 years and are in heat every month, but the global replacement rate is only 2.33. In absolute terms this isn't so bad, and alarmists would be making the same racket even if this were 2.1 (or 2.8).

Now, are you complaining that our conflict-resolving behavior is not good, or too good? I mean, we can't have a net-population growth, if we were bumping each other off faster, than we can get our females pregnant, can we?

According to: http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/05cius/data/table_16.html only about every 200th American commits a violent crime every year. Most of us are decent apes. Even the friggin' socialists are decent monkeys.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...27/ai_55820853

"Anti-utopian philosophers find their pessimism about human nature vindicated by the thuggish common chimpanzee, whose basic social unit resembles the Hell's Angels, complete with murderous raids on other troops and frequent gangbangs."

This was obviously written by a conservative. What's so bad about having frequent gangbangs? Anyway, there is only a 1% genetic difference between them (chimps, not conservatives - ok, not all conservatives) and us, and I think you are simply expecting too much.

New? We've been wiping out cultures since after the beginning of time. Neanderthals, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Mayans, Inkas, Native American, Aborigine...,Colonialism, Socialism, Communism, Faschism...

Why do so many consider wiping out inefficient cultures a bad thing?

Btw, Consumerism is probably the next to go, so good riddance. I buy way too much junk, anyway.

You're kidding, right? This really is pretty funny once I realize this is all tongue-in-cheek! (Recommendation to others: read the previous post on your favorite intoxicant and laugh!)

[__HRB__]

Originally Posted by philmoore

You're kidding, right? This really is pretty funny once I realize this is all tongue-in-cheek! (Recommendation to others: read the previous post on your favorite intoxicant and laugh!)

Only half is tongue-in-cheek. The other half is dead serious.

Two ways to interpret the following results of googling:

"global warming" -- 56,500,000 hits.
"gangbang" -- 21,000,000 hits.

1. Geez, we humans are so advanced. We're so interested in our environment that this has become is more important than gangbangs.

2. Geez, we humans are so retarded. All the time we spend worrying about climate change could be spent gangbanging.

Pick either one. I'll be happy to argue the other one.

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by __HRB__

While 'population' is an observable and measurable quantity, 'overpopulation' assumes that

a) there is an equilibrium
b) the equilibrium is below the observed state

No it doesn't - equilibrium is not a requirement, any more than a steady-state universe is required for "stable" solar systems to evolve. My definition of overpopulation pretty much can be summed up as

"A population level which shows itself incapable of existing without serious degradation of its natural habitat."

Now, are you complaining that our conflict-resolving behavior is not good, or too good? I mean, we can't have a net-population growth, if we were bumping each other off faster, than we can get our females pregnant, can we?

Another specious argument ... Just because net fecundity outstrips mortality due to interspecies conflict, does not mean both are within healthy levels ... and before you bless us with your predictable "healthy is a subjective term" quibble, one can make a reasonable (except perhaps to folks like you) definition about "unhealthy levels of violence" as being ones such that

0. The violence is not necessary to ensure survival of the species in question;

1. The species spends a significant fraction of its collective resources and efforts dealing with the violence and the consequences thereof, relative to similar species (America's prison population comes to mind);

2. The mortatility due to violence approaches or exceeds that due to disease.

Why do so many consider wiping out inefficient cultures a bad thing

Another one of your "interesting" definitions, this time of equating "lacking defenses against guns and germs imported by aggressive invasive species" with "inefficient". Extremist social Darwinism at its finest, HRB - I can only hope you're making a sick joke here, because to say such a thing in seriousness would be indicative of some rather serious sociopathic tendencies. (You would probably refer to them as "efficiency-oriented tendencies").

[__HRB__]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

No it doesn't - equilibrium is not a requirement, any more than a steady-state universe is required for "stable" solar systems to evolve.

I didn't necessarily mean a 'static equilibrium', but I don't think that's what you meant, either. Just in case.

Even if handling stochastic models that include all relevant parameters to make predictions such as "we're doomed in 50 years" were feasible, we also need to create models of how policies will work in order to prevent this from happening. Considering how good societies are at controlling things that are to 100% in their power such as public debt...

On the other hand, you could use this and base your policy on the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_best:

"For example, consider a mining monopoly that's also a polluter: mining leads to tailings being dumped in the river and deadly dust in the workers’ lungs. Suppose in addition that there is nothing at all that we can do about the pollution. But the government is able to break up the monopoly. The problem here is that increasing competition in this market is likely to increase production (since competitors have such a hard time restricting production compared to a monopoly). Because pollution is highly associated with production, pollution will most likely increase. This may actually make the world worse off than before."

If competition is fiercer in the USA, this would explain the higher carbon emissions per capita. Considering your attitude in econ2009, I think this puts you in a bit of a fix...consistency-wise.

As for using models...

Originally Posted by John von Neumann

With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.

Ok, today we have computers and lotsah morah datah: six parameters. But that includes ix-nay using those computers to bootstrap a "we're doomed!" via Akaike.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...fertility_rate

Practically all industrialized nations have a replacement rate below 2.0, trend: down, accelerating. Internet porn seems to be working everywhere but in the USA.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ons_per_capita

trend: up, slowing.

I think fitting two sigmoids to the aggregates would give you a pretty good idea what to expect in the next couple of years.

Note: the Norwegians are becoming as bad as the Americans. Most likely cause, the fierce competition in their second largest sector:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_death_metal

Originally Posted by ewmayer

My definition of overpopulation pretty much can be summed up as

"A population level which shows itself incapable of existing without serious degradation of its natural habitat."

That's at least something one can try to poke a hole into. As far as I can tell you are making 'natural habitat' an exogenous parameter. Now, I'm not arguing that this is a serious constraint for short-term analysis, but one of mankind's most prevalent traits is the ability to turn practically every environment into a 'natural habitat' by inventing the necessary tools to survive there.

Calling an Inuit in an Igloo 'natural', but an Astronaut orbiting Earth in the ISS 'unnatural' may be justified at present, but as long as a bunch of humans is willing to devote their limited time on Earth trying to make something like "Biosphere 2" work, this may not be the case in the future. Even Edison had to wait for a light-bulb to light up in his head first.

Personally, I don't think Biospheres are our best shot. But as controlling ecosystems doesn't get easier the bigger you make them, we're going to get one of these things working a hell of a lot sooner than we'll be controlling a system with a volume of 4/3*pi*6300 km^3. Just imagine the size of the oven-mitts you need to rearrange the magnetic fields to keep those pigeons in the air.

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Another one of your "interesting" definitions, this time of equating "lacking defenses against guns and germs imported by aggressive invasive species" with "inefficient". Extremist social Darwinism at its finest, HRB - I can only hope you're making a sick joke here, because to say such a thing in seriousness would be indicative of some rather serious sociopathic tendencies. (You would probably refer to them as "efficiency-oriented tendencies").

Unless you can supply better theories, even you have to accept that Darwinism is the way reality works, whether you like it or not. Even 'Social Intelligent Design' is subject to natural selection.

BTW, in this context efficiency simply means the ability to create entropy. And to preempt someone's retort "why we don't simply throw nukes - Keynesian style - to create entropy!", I'll point out for the 1000th time that one can create a hell of a lot more entropy by making copies of oneself until the heat death of the universe (assuming that it's impossible to pop some self-copying information through a singularity).

That is what 'life' does.

Mileage for the individual life-from will of course vary: your average antibiotic-resistant staph in a petri-dish will probably make it to the edge of said petri-dish and then disappear in an incinerator.

Poor bacterium. (I'm faking compassion - I must be a sociopath.)

P.S. The thread title is a loaded question (it contains a presupposition), so no matter how 'scientific' we attempt to be, it's no surprise that this is primarily an exercise in sophism, because we're adversely selecting individuals willing to participate in the discussion. My excuse is that my sociopathic tendencies include the symptom: "Inability to tolerate boredom" (see wikipedia entry). What's yours?

[petrw1]

Well...Western Canada had the coldest winter in 30-50 years depending on the exact area.