Climate Change

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by __HRB__

It follows from basic population ecology that resources will not wasted in the long term, therefore reduced per-capita consumption will be compensated with higher population growth, and limiting population growth leads to more consumption per capita.

I don't see those following at all - give (for example) a female cat less food and it will tend to have reduced litter sizes as a result. As to the latter, sure, it is a basic animal (and especially human) tendency to make maximal use of available resources, so far as said usage improves survival/reproductive odds. But (using food as a particular example) gorging to the point of vomiting isn't natural ... it is the space between "subsistence" and "gluttony" consumption levels where self-limitation based on awareness of the costs of overconsumption is the name of the game, and that is also one of the key differences between a person and a wild animal.

[__HRB__]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

I don't see those following at all - give (for example) a female cat less food and it will tend to have reduced litter sizes as a result. As to the latter, sure, it is a basic animal (and especially human) tendency to make maximal use of available resources, so far as said usage improves survival/reproductive odds. But (using food as a particular example) gorging to the point of vomiting isn't natural ... it is the space between "subsistence" and "gluttony" consumption levels where self-limitation based on awareness of the costs of overconsumption is the name of the game, and that is also one of the key differences between a person and a wild animal.

In a darwinistic reality being able to over-consume a scarce resource has a selective advantage, because this behavior leaves fewer resources to potential competitors. As long as the advantage outweighs the cost, this behavior will be part of reality.

Naturally, human ingenuity is constantly searching for ways to lower the cost or increase the benefit of over-consuming. We have invented gyms so we can eat too much and waste energy on a tread-mill. Then we fly 12000 miles in airplane to look at a painting of a woman in a peculiar mood. We let our computers search for ridiculously large primes instead of switching them off.

Human curiosity and ingenuity are the root of all evil! To survive we must cure the cancer of intelligence! Right?

BTW, the cost of over-consumption is different for every individual, because it is a necessary condition for evolution to work that the individuals are different, i.e. every individual has different preferences and different evaluation functions, s.t. different environmental constraints. Individuals can smooth out some of the variance by asking people with similar preferences and constraints, but you shouldn't be surprised if a 500lbs. black female Scientologist disagrees with you on some topics.

Originally Posted by Mark Twain

Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.

[mdettweiler]

Originally Posted by __HRB__

Last but not least, any regulation to achieve the 'goals' would require totalitarian control which is not only unsustainable in the long term, but also sets artificial limits on human ingenuity, which will find solutions vastly superior to anything that can be even imagined today.

Though I often find myself disagreeing with __HRB__'s statements in the Soap Box, he's dead on here. Requiring people to live in a certain type of house, drive a certain type of car, or eat certain types of food just for the sake of a negligible contribution to preventing the highly debatable premise of global warming is, indeed, totalitarian. Forcing people to submit to such collective regulations on how they live is the worst kind of micromanagement, and it stifles any bit of imagination, individuality, and freedom just in the name of "saving the planet".

To put it another way: is this planet really worth saving if everyone has to submit to oppressive regulation to maintain it? (Disclaimer: I am NOT saying that oppressive regulation is necessary to maintain our planet, just throwing it out hypothetically.)

[garo]

@mdettweiler: Ah come on, global warming is not a highly debatable premise. Not if you call yourself a scientist. And I don't think Ernst talked about forcing people to live a certain way. A simple way to achieve what he says is to cost the environmental impact of everything and charge accordingly. You gotta look at the long-term costs of certain behaviour instead of the immediate monetary cost.

[__HRB__]

Originally Posted by garo

[...]Not if you call yourself a scientist. And I don't think Ernst talked about forcing people to live a certain way. A simple way to achieve what he says is to cost the environmental impact of everything and charge accordingly.

That is not a simple way if you call yourself reality bounded:

When my GF is on a diet, the smell of my neighbor BBQing food in his back yard makes her hungry, which annoys her and sex is lousy. Please tell me the cost of the environmental impact of my neighbor's behavior so that I can send him a bill.

Originally Posted by garo

You gotta look at the long-term costs of certain behaviour instead of the immediate monetary cost.

...because the longer the term, the larger the uncertainty and the more you can replace concrete facts with vague speculation, to justify arbitrary amounts of spending, right?

[mdettweiler]

Originally Posted by garo

@mdettweiler: Ah come on, global warming is not a highly debatable premise. Not if you call yourself a scientist.

Really? There are plenty of real scientists out there who raise perfectly valid points against global warming. It's just that the media doesn't give them the time of day, thus creating the illusion of it not being highly debatable.

Here's an example of one article presenting some convincing anti-global-warming evidence that had the amazing fortune of being allowed to surface:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/...662092,00.html
My point of bringing this up is not as much to argue against global warming as to demonstrate that the matter is far from closed. Legitimate, scientific debate on it is as lively as ever.

And I don't think Ernst talked about forcing people to live a certain way. A simple way to achieve what he says is to cost the environmental impact of everything and charge accordingly. You gotta look at the long-term costs of certain behaviour instead of the immediate monetary cost.

How about this:

Originally Posted by ewmayer

My Comment: One more reason why the first and foremost goal should always be to reduce consumption. I suggest that as the second and third options, as well: First one should strive to reduce per-capita consumption; second one should strive to limit population increases worldwide, third, one should strive to make each unit of consumption serve more people (e.g. an apartment block is cheaper to heat than separate houses).

I'll address the third option first. Obviously, there is a huge number of people out there who will not want to give up their individual homes to live in a jam-packed metropolitan apartment block. Yet, without unilateral changes such as that, pro-global-warming scientists agree that we won't be able to stop global warming. How do you propose that be enforced without resorting to totalitarian means?

The same goes for the other two options. In order to reduce energy consumption by a sizeable amount in a population who's largely reluctant to do it voluntarily, the government would have to force people to do things such as driving smaller cars, buying smaller TVs, turning off their PCs at night instead of searching for primes, etc. Again, the only way this could be unilaterally enforced is by totalitarian control.

Of the three options ewmayer presented, reducing population increases worldwide is perhaps the one that would require the most oppressive and totalitarian control. How would this be accomplished without resorting to measures not unlike China's one-child rule, which I'm sure everyone here agrees is oppressive?

Of course, all this assumes that we agree on the definition of "totalitarian control", which I suspect we don't given your comments. I would define it as something that attempts to force people to--willingly or unwillingly--submit to a particular rule or condition. Note that monetary pressury, such as taxing "un-green" lifestyles to prohibitively high amounts, would fit under this definition as well. After all, the government would still be forcing a lifestyle on people, whether it be by prohibitive taxation or by force in the more traditional sense.

[philmoore]

Max, your post is wrong on so many levels that I will respond in some detail.

Originally Posted by mdettweiler

Really? There are plenty of real scientists out there who raise perfectly valid points against global warming. It's just that the media doesn't give them the time of day, thus creating the illusion of it not being highly debatable.

Here's an example of one article presenting some convincing anti-global-warming evidence that had the amazing fortune of being allowed to surface:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/...662092,00.html
My point of bringing this up is not as much to argue against global warming as to demonstrate that the matter is far from closed. Legitimate, scientific debate on it is as lively as ever.

The correlation between global average temperature and sunspot cycle has been well documented at least since the early 1970s. Why would this article compare global temperatures between 1999 (one year before sunspot maximum) to 2008 (sunspot minimum) unless they were deliberately trying to debunk the global warming idea? Smells like bogus science to me. (Could it have been funded by the oil companies? Nah, I'm just a conspiracy nut.)

2009 was the first year in recorded history that cargo ships sailed from Korea to Europe through the Arctic Ocean. Coincidence? I think not!

As for the argument that even though the arctic has heated up, the rest of the earth has not heated up as much, I hope that anyone who has taken a freshman physics course can remember the latent heat of the ice-water transition. (Summary for those who skipped that lecture: you have to heat ice a long time before it turns to water and finally starts to heat up.)

Originally Posted by mdettweiler

I'll address the third option first. Obviously, there is a huge number of people out there who will not want to give up their individual homes to live in a jam-packed metropolitan apartment block. Yet, without unilateral changes such as that, pro-global-warming scientists agree that we won't be able to stop global warming. How do you propose that be enforced without resorting to totalitarian means?

I lived in the Netherlands for awhile, and many people there were living in such apartments out of economic necessity. Maybe you consider capitalism totalitarian?

Originally Posted by mdettweiler

The same goes for the other two options. In order to reduce energy consumption by a sizeable amount in a population who's largely reluctant to do it voluntarily, the government would have to force people to do things such as driving smaller cars, buying smaller TVs, turning off their PCs at night instead of searching for primes, etc. Again, the only way this could be unilaterally enforced is by totalitarian control.

Again, this assumes that economics is not an issue. If large cars are expensive enough, people will buy smaller cars. Don't assume that gasoline will always be plentiful and (relative to most of the rest of the world) cheap.

Originally Posted by mdettweiler

Of the three options ewmayer presented, reducing population increases worldwide is perhaps the one that would require the most oppressive and totalitarian control. How would this be accomplished without resorting to measures not unlike China's one-child rule, which I'm sure everyone here agrees is oppressive?

Of course, all this assumes that we agree on the definition of "totalitarian control", which I suspect we don't given your comments. I would define it as something that attempts to force people to--willingly or unwillingly--submit to a particular rule or condition. Note that monetary pressury, such as taxing "un-green" lifestyles to prohibitively high amounts, would fit under this definition as well. After all, the government would still be forcing a lifestyle on people, whether it be by prohibitive taxation or by force in the more traditional sense.

Oh, so captialism, which exerts "monetary pressure" is totalitarian. Maybe we aren't in such serious disagreement after all! Would people decide to limit family size because of economic considerations?

[mdettweiler]

Originally Posted by philmoore

The correlation between global average temperature and sunspot cycle has been well documented at least since the early 1970s. Why would this article compare global temperatures between 1999 (one year before sunspot maximum) to 2008 (sunspot minimum) unless they were deliberately trying to debunk the global warming idea? Smells like bogus science to me. (Could it have been funded by the oil companies? Nah, I'm just a conspiracy nut.)

2009 was the first year in recorded history that cargo ships sailed from Korea to Europe through the Arctic Ocean. Coincidence? I think not!

As for the argument that even though the arctic has heated up, the rest of the earth has not heated up as much, I hope that anyone who has taken a freshman physics course can remember the latent heat of the ice-water transition. (Summary for those who skipped that lecture: you have to heat ice a long time before it turns to water and finally starts to heat up.)

Actually, a good scientist should account for all known evidence, including evidence that doesn't support his position, when doing research--and in this case, when sunspot cycles obviously affect the Earth's temperature so much, to ignore that when researching global warming would be irresponsible. Unless, that is, you're deliberately trying to prove anthropogenic global warming.

And regarding latent heat of ice-water transition, that still doesn't challenge what the article stated: that temperatures had risen steadily for 30 years (which should be plenty to get some ice melting) and then plateaued, at which point we are now.

Lastly, let me remind you that my point of bringing up that article was not so much to argue against global warming as to simply illustrate that the debate is far from over on it.

I lived in the Netherlands for awhile, and many people there were living in such apartments out of economic necessity. Maybe you consider capitalism totalitarian?

No. There's a key difference between someone not being able to afford something because they simply cannot afford it, and having the government put someone in that position who otherwise would be able to afford it.

Again, this assumes that economics is not an issue. If large cars are expensive enough, people will buy smaller cars. Don't assume that gasoline will always be plentiful and (relative to most of the rest of the world) cheap.

If gasoline prices were to simply go up to that level on their own, then that would be perfectly normal economic pressure. But as I said above, that's different than if the government taxes gasoline heavily to accomplish this same effect when it otherwise wouldn't have been.

Also, one thing to keep in mind: quite often smaller "green" cars are just not practical. How the heck do you fit even a China-sized family in a Smart car? You don't. And you don't fit any cargo either. Ooh, nice way to kill the tourism industry--I wonder how many jobs that would throw down the drain.

Oh, so captialism, which exerts "monetary pressure" is totalitarian. Maybe we aren't in such serious disagreement after all! Would people decide to limit family size because of economic considerations?

See my clarification above on this.

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by mdettweiler

I'll address the third option first. Obviously, there is a huge number of people out there who will not want to give up their individual homes to live in a jam-packed metropolitan apartment block. Yet, without unilateral changes such as that, pro-global-warming scientists agree that we won't be able to stop global warming. How do you propose that be enforced without resorting to totalitarian means?

Ah, but here in the U.S. the government provides significant subsidies (by way of tax breaks and artificially-low mortgage borrowing rates) to "encourage home ownership". It does no such thing for apartment dwellers. What's so special about single-family home ownership that those of us who choose not to live that way (or cannot yet afford it) should be subsidizing it?

The same goes for the other two options. In order to reduce energy consumption by a sizeable amount in a population who's largely reluctant to do it voluntarily, the government would have to force people to do things such as driving smaller cars, buying smaller TVs, turning off their PCs at night instead of searching for primes, etc. Again, the only way this could be unilaterally enforced is by totalitarian control.

Again, you ignore the fact that the U.S. government is effectively subsidizing the gas-guzzling lifestyle at multiple levels. For example its longstanding propping-up of the Detroit automakers, going back to the first Chrysler bailout circa 1980, and bowing to pressure from Detroit with respect to fuel economy and emissions standards. (Those emissions have quantifiable environmental and public-health costs, so allowing someone to produce cars that use more fuel than they need to amounts to a stealthy subsidy.) Also, reliance on foreign oil has clear and huge national-security implications ad costs - probably something on the order of 1/4th the U.s. defense budget can be directly or indirectly linked to the cost of protecting our oil supplies in the Middle East. But this cost comes out of everyone's income taxes, and is not reflected in the price of fuel. Hence, it amounts to the fuel-efficient subsidizing the gas guzzlers.

Of the three options ewmayer presented, reducing population increases worldwide is perhaps the one that would require the most oppressive and totalitarian control. How would this be accomplished without resorting to measures not unlike China's one-child rule, which I'm sure everyone here agrees is oppressive?

Of course, all this assumes that we agree on the definition of "totalitarian control", which I suspect we don't given your comments. I would define it as something that attempts to force people to--willingly or unwillingly--submit to a particular rule or condition. Note that monetary pressury, such as taxing "un-green" lifestyles to prohibitively high amounts, would fit under this definition as well. After all, the government would still be forcing a lifestyle on people, whether it be by prohibitive taxation or by force in the more traditional sense.

You again present a straw-man binary choice (total freedom or totalitarian rule) where there are numerous middle ways which involve either not subsidizing environmentally costly and harmful lifestyle choices, or encouraging what are deemed (based on the best consensus of scientists and policymakers) "healthy" lifestyle choices. Maybe we should limit welfare payments so above a certain number of children, each added child produces no further increase in the monthly welfare check. Similarly we could limit the tax deductions (by way of the number-of-dependents computation) which amount to a subsidy of large families. You wanna have 20 kids, fine - but don't expect the rest of us to help pay for their upkeep.

[mdettweiler]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Ah, but here in the U.S. the government provides significant subsidies (by way of tax breaks and artificially-low mortgage borrowing rates) to "encourage home ownership". It does no such thing for apartment dwellers. What's so special about single-family home ownership that those of us who choose not to live that way (or cannot yet afford it) should be subsidizing it?

Agreed, there's no reason we should be subsidizing it. The government's providing subprime, artificially-low-rate mortgages to encourage people to buy homes who couldn't afford them was not a smart move. But nonetheless, by the same token, it is not good to penalize people who can afford them.

Again, you ignore the fact that the U.S. government is effectively subsidizing the gas-guzzling lifestyle at multiple levels. For example its longstanding propping-up of the Detroit automakers, going back to the first Chrysler bailout circa 1980, and bowing to pressure from Detroit with respect to fuel economy and emissions standards. (Those emissions have quantifiable environmental and public-health costs, so allowing someone to produce cars that use more fuel than they need to amounts to a stealthy subsidy.) Also, reliance on foreign oil has clear and huge national-security implications ad costs - probably something on the order of 1/4th the U.s. defense budget can be directly or indirectly linked to the cost of protecting our oil supplies in the Middle East. But this cost comes out of everyone's income taxes, and is not reflected in the price of fuel. Hence, it amounts to the fuel-efficient subsidizing the gas guzzlers.

First of all, an automaker isn't a magical genie; it can't squeeze 30 MPG out of a full-size pickup or van no matter how hard it tries. So, should we outlaw those vehicles? No, of course not--that would make things rather hard for the people who need a big vehicle like that (construction companies, or even big families who can't fit in a smaller vehicle for that matter).

As for emissions standards, there's an important difference you're missing: the difference between particulate emissions and carbon emissions. Particulate emissions do have quantifiable environmental and public-health costs as you said, and those are quite well regulated. The harmfulness of carbon emissions, on the other hand, is still not a closed case as I explained in my last couple of posts. One could just as easily argue that there's no subsidy to be had in allowing an automaker to produce cars that do something that isn't actually harmful.

As for the bailouts of automakers, yes, I would agree that those have been quite overreaching. Much of that was due to pressure from unions, who are quite entrenched in the automaker industry. I wholeheartedly agree that those subsidies should not have been provided.

You again present a straw-man binary choice (total freedom or totalitarian rule) where there are numerous middle ways which involve either not subsidizing environmentally costly and harmful lifestyle choices, or encouraging what are deemed (based on the best consensus of scientists and policymakers) "healthy" lifestyle choices. Maybe we should limit welfare payments so above a certain number of children, each added child produces no further increase in the monthly welfare check. Similarly we could limit the tax deductions (by way of the number-of-dependents computation) which amount to a subsidy of large families. You wanna have 20 kids, fine - but don't expect the rest of us to help pay for their upkeep.

But that's the thing--it's not the government's place to tell citizens how they should live "healthy" lives. If someone wants to eat a bunch of French fries and get really fat, that's his problem; the only way that would be a burden on everyone else is if you put him in a forced health care system like the ones currently proposed, which are another topic for discussion entirely that I won't go into further. If someone wants to have 20 kids, yes, as you said, fine. I would agree wholeheartedly that a family of that size should not be supported on welfare, but if one can afford to have 20 kids without needing government help, that's their business. To penalize that just because someone in the government decides that it isn't "healthy" is, indeed, totalitarianism. The key is that it's a small group of people believing that they know better than the masses, and then forcing their will on them "for their own good". That is the essense of totalitarianism.

[CRGreathouse]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Ah, but here in the U.S. the government provides significant subsidies (by way of tax breaks and artificially-low mortgage borrowing rates) to "encourage home ownership". It does no such thing for apartment dwellers. What's so special about single-family home ownership that those of us who choose not to live that way (or cannot yet afford it) should be subsidizing it?

Nothing. I'm opposed to these subsidies -- though as a US homeowner I'm 'part of the problem'. (I knew I'd have to pay for subsidies for others so I decided I might as well take one for myself.)

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Again, you ignore the fact that the U.S. government is effectively subsidizing the gas-guzzling lifestyle at multiple levels.

This is even more important to me. Fortunately I'm no longer a part of this problem. But a few years ago I spent 11 hours a week commuting, thanks to the generous effective subsidies on gasoline. (At least I've always driven fuel-efficient cars.)