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shickingbrits wrote:he bases his guiding principles on ignorance
and that he demands answers when he provides none.
shickingbrits wrote:I don't see what's to discuss. You are quite happy with people shouting climate change with a near zero knowledge of it,
calling for widespread economic change and in some extreme cases suggesting we whittle the population down to 50,000,000.
You're quite happy to post that 97% of scientists agree on global warming. How many scientists would agree with your 2-3 degrees per doubling of CO2?
Why since this has been known since 1900 have scientists consistently failed to forecast warming based on CO2? Aren't they all using basic algebra?
If it increases by 2-3 degrees per doubling, then the significance of the change of a 40% increase should be rather transparent, there should be all sorts of measurable results.
I know some simple algebra. Let's start at your base level of 250 ppm. Half equals 125, 62.5, 31.25, 15.625, 7.8125, 3.9, 1.95, .975, .4875 (tell me when to stop). So 9 doublings times 2 or 3 equals 18-27 degrees. That's celsius, so 64-80.6F.
Feeling happy with that answer for trace amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere and resulting temperature difference from what would be experienced at 250 ppm? Cuz I'm not.
It's a joke of an answer. And yet that is the "accepted answer" by "most" "mainstream" "scientists".
shickingbrits wrote:I'll be nice and max out your figures -20 - 15, a 35 degree difference. And I'll take the lesser of your figures for temperature derived from the total greenhouse effect of CO2, 18C. That leaves 17 degrees to be made up of other gases. I haven't added the 60% increase from 250 to 400ppm. You have an elementary physics problem with your equation.
Water vapor is the most important atmospheric greenhouse gas. Carbon dioxide is the second most important greenhouse gas.
Radiation and Climate, Vardavas & Taylor, Oxford University Press (2007)
If CO2 is contributing as you say at least a 2 degree C per doubling, it must be contributing at least more than water to temperature, now if only the global temperature would raise itself to satisfy your simple subtraction that would be sweet. You should really do some basic math before tackling algebra. Start with some addition of the other gases.
I know damn well why they sell this blatant perversion of basic established fact, they are in it for the money, status which is being proffered by the state for helping them enact further state control.
shickingbrits wrote:My point to Degaston was twofold: that he bases his guiding principles on ignorance and that he demands answers when he provides none.
Maybe you can clarify what the apple represents to you here, but you seem to be saying that you prefer ignorance because you don't like some of the ideas that evolution has given rise to. I'm a little curious as to how you feel about all of the negative ideas that have come from religion. I guess that fruit is just fine, right?shickingbrits wrote:Evolution is a tree and from that tree we've sampled several of its fruits. Social Darwinism, eugenics, genocide. You recognize that these are the fruits and yet keep offering me the apple. I don't want the apple and I don't care much about the poetic sales pitch of the serpent who convinced you to eat it.
i am merely concerned with the fact that it has proven itself poisonous. If you would like to dissuade me that it is poisonous, the best way isn't to say the Nazis are the best example of it. Letting you try to convince me that that wasn't a poisoned fruit is not a torment that I would wish upon myself.
shickingbrits wrote:Degaston,
I am not a climatologist either. Can climatologists say how much heat is absorb per unit of CO2? Can they say the saturation point? What suggestions of theirs do you think provides the best solution to counteract this poisonous product?
And you wonder why I wasn't interested in trying to have a "debate" with you?shickingbrits wrote:Degaston,
So you don't even know the very base of the problem and yet you are trying to tell people they should be afraid.
"A political shift in will" to do what? To bring down CO2 emissions? by how much? how?
You lack a beginning and end. Your story sucks.
universalchiro wrote:@degaston: whatever dude you win, you have it all figured out. You have out smarted even God.
shickingbrits wrote:Math is the foundation of physics. You state something which is mathematically impossible, that CO2, the second most important greenhouse gas is responsible for more of the earth's temperature than the water vapour, the most important greenhouse gas.
Just how much more important water vapour is (25,000 ppm at 25C and 80% RH compared to the 400 ppm of CO2) you have completely neglected.
When reports are published stating not only that water vapour is more important as a greenhouse gas
When I point out that placing all your figures in your favour results in an impossible situation, you claim it's cuz I didn't read your post. Well, I definitely read it well enough to calculate your figures, which you don't dispute and which quite clearly are wrong.
Metsfanmax wrote:About 2-3 degrees Celsius per doubling of CO2. We've known that since about 1900. What's next?
Metsfanmax wrote:You're misunderstanding the point. I was not saying anything about the actual increase of carbon dioxide that we have observed. shickingbrits asked for the following information, essentially: if we were to double the concentration of CO2, how much would the temperature rise as a result? I was giving him the answer to that question, without saying that the concentration has risen by that much.
Metsfanmax wrote:So if you then ask, how do we know what that number is if the concentration hasn't doubled? Then you're asking the wrong question. The amount "per doubling" is just a convenient yardstick we use. It didn't have to be "per doubling." It could have been "per increase by a factor of 1.429."
tzor wrote:OK let's break it down then. You have given a "prediction" (and a fairly detailed one) indicating a specific range for a specific concentration increase.
But you also admit that isn't based on imperial evidence because we have never observed a doubling of CO2.
And the earth is so exceptionally complex. The implication of such amounts on a biosphere that actually runs off of CO2 is difficult to determine precisely. This same biosphere also can have impacts on other elements that can impact global temperatures (and in the case of methane significantly more).
No, it's a stupid idea. You don't know the curve you can't extrapolate the data beyond what has been observed because you can't assume the curve is what you think it is based on the limited data. This is like a 19th century textbook on traveling between the stars before they realized that traveling beyond the speed of light was impossible, the linear curve's predictions had no relation with reality at speeds near the speed of light.
Metsfanmax wrote:You can extrapolate -- the curve isn't based on the data, it's based on elementary physics.
The process begins with the slight increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere known to be caused by human emissions. Because CO2 traps slightly more heat, it also causes more water to evaporate. Water vapor (H2O) is also a greenhouse gas, so that causes a feedback loop, in which the temperature increases further, causing more water to evaporate. In the summer months, the result is much hotter weather than you might expect from CO2 alone.
But H2O has an opposite effect in winter. As temperature drops, the increased amounts of H2O forms clouds, which block sunlight and thus cool the earth further. Winters will be even colder than one would expect, plus there would be increased precipitation, including snow.
tzor wrote:Metsfanmax wrote:You can extrapolate -- the curve isn't based on the data, it's based on elementary physics.
So does Newtonian physics, but it fails once you get near the speed of light. Why? Because other factors which weren't all that apparent in your original observation range kick in and overshadow the numbers.
Now that actually made several assumptions but it's besides the point. H2O can at times keep heat in and at times prevent heat from coming in. And that doesn't count the effect plants have on the H2O and the CO2 levels in the atmosphere (plants need both of these two elements).
Metsfanmax wrote:Not sure which one I gave you before. Here is the relevant intro from the 2007 IPCC report detailing their overview of the social cost of carbon. The 2014 report I don't think has published their updates to the cost-benefit analysis. Let me know based on the IPCC page if you want more links, I can get you the Stern, Nordhaus, etc. reports they mention.
Metsfanmax wrote:calling for widespread economic change and in some extreme cases suggesting we whittle the population down to 50,000,000.
I don't like that either. I'm not a hippie. I like capitalism. I like having air conditioners and the internet. I think that we can actually solve climate change without hurting the economy at all, since climate change is a negative externality -- that is, a market inefficiency -- and correcting the market failure through a simple and transparent carbon pricing mechanism will actually likely improve our economy according to a number of sources.
Either Pigouvian solutions are redundant because private actors would negotiate away the conflicts (in the case of zero transaction costs), or the Pigouvian solution is nonoperational (in the case of positive transaction costs, including information costs). If private actors are unable to glean the cost and benefits and bring them into alignment, then how are government officials to do so? Rather than measure that which we cannot reasonably assume we can measure, both Coase and Buchanan advocate an opportunity cost approach to public economics. The comparative institutional analysis that such an approach leads to would, as Coase put it, 'start our analysis with a situation approximating that which actually exists, to examine the effects of a proposed policy change and to attempt to decide whether the new situation would be, in total, better or worse than the original one.'
BigBallinStalin wrote:There's two big problems with standard Pigouvian welfare economics
(1) Its methodology can be used to equally justify pro-market or anti-market policies on the same issue, so this kind of economic 'science' is at the whim of the economists' ideology.
(2) There's also the decades-old critique of Pigouvian economics by James M. Buchanan and Ronald Coase (both are Nobel Laureates):Either Pigouvian solutions are redundant because private actors would negotiate away the conflicts (in the case of zero transaction costs), or the Pigouvian solution is nonoperational (in the case of positive transaction costs, including information costs). If private actors are unable to glean the cost and benefits and bring them into alignment, then how are government officials to do so? Rather than measure that which we cannot reasonably assume we can measure, both Coase and Buchanan advocate an opportunity cost approach to public economics. The comparative institutional analysis that such an approach leads to would, as Coase put it, 'start our analysis with a situation approximating that which actually exists, to examine the effects of a proposed policy change and to attempt to decide whether the new situation would be, in total, better or worse than the original one.'from Boettke's Living Economics, which partly summarizes Buchanan's Cost and Choice and Coase's "The Problem of Social Cost" and The Firm, the Market, and the Law.
In short, Pigouvian welfare economics is trapped between being either redundant or nonoperational.
Still, its adherents for decades have hardly addressed the logical problems of their 'science'. After all, the state still needs its 'solutions'. This is a huge problem for economics because many economists promise that which they cannot provide. People then get frustrated at economics, which is improperly being used, but most don't realize this (and they're more than happy to rely on the economic science when it conforms to their worldview).
Recall Easterly's complaint about the 'tyranny of experts'. It's a global problem which has long been out of hand.
Metsfanmax wrote:BigBallinStalin wrote:There's two big problems with standard Pigouvian welfare economics
(1) Its methodology can be used to equally justify pro-market or anti-market policies on the same issue, so this kind of economic 'science' is at the whim of the economists' ideology.
What do you mean by the distinction between pro-market and anti-market policies? My thinking about it has been that this is about correcting for an externality. That didn't have to be pro-market; it could be that there are unintended consequences that make the resultant policy damaging to the economy on balance. My point was only that some people who have run the numbers predict that in this particular case the net effect on the US economy is positive because of the transition away from fossil fuels. But that only happens if the revenues are returned. So understand that I'm not coming at this from a pro-market or anti-market perspective. I'm merely arguing that one can attribute the problem of global warming to an externality that has not yet been internalized, which is true regardless of the optimal solution to that problem.
(Are you referring to the arguments that are made for using Pigouvian taxation for subsidy purposes?)
Metsfanmax wrote:(2) There's also the decades-old critique of Pigouvian economics by James M. Buchanan and Ronald Coase (both are Nobel Laureates):Either Pigouvian solutions are redundant because private actors would negotiate away the conflicts (in the case of zero transaction costs), or the Pigouvian solution is nonoperational (in the case of positive transaction costs, including information costs). If private actors are unable to glean the cost and benefits and bring them into alignment, then how are government officials to do so? Rather than measure that which we cannot reasonably assume we can measure, both Coase and Buchanan advocate an opportunity cost approach to public economics. The comparative institutional analysis that such an approach leads to would, as Coase put it, 'start our analysis with a situation approximating that which actually exists, to examine the effects of a proposed policy change and to attempt to decide whether the new situation would be, in total, better or worse than the original one.'from Boettke's Living Economics, which partly summarizes Buchanan's Cost and Choice and Coase's "The Problem of Social Cost" and The Firm, the Market, and the Law.
In short, Pigouvian welfare economics is trapped between being either redundant or nonoperational.
To me, the strongest part of this critique is essentially the argument that it is difficult for the policymaker to know the true external cost that one would need to correct for. However, what they are saying does not seem obvious to me, in particular "if private actors are unable to glean the cost and benefits and bring them into alignment, then how are government officials to do so?" When it comes to this particular issue, perhaps part of the problem is that private actors on both sides of the issue have tacitly agreed to ignore the issue.
The standard model that Buchanan and Coase must be considering is that the actor knows what their private cost is and what the social cost is, but the fact is that for large-scale environmental issues like global warming that is not a very good assumption. A large fraction of the public refuses to accept the reality of the situation, and many more accept the reality but likely underestimate how much global warming will affect Americans, both indirectly and directly.
In such a situation I don't think any individual firm could attempt to match the private and social costs because there's a free rider problem where a company that is willing to sell at a lower price will get away with it due to all of the people who neglect the long-term concerns of global warming in their short-term decision making. So I think this is one case where one could make the argument that government officials do actually have more information on average than the individuals making the transactions. It's not like the simpler externalities that economists normally have to deal with, like noise pollution from a factory, etc. The social cost is borne among every person on the planet, but most people have no idea what the social cost really is or how much they should want to pay to avoid it because the impacts are decades down the line.
What do you think?
Metsfanmax wrote:Still, its adherents for decades have hardly addressed the logical problems of their 'science'. After all, the state still needs its 'solutions'. This is a huge problem for economics because many economists promise that which they cannot provide. People then get frustrated at economics, which is improperly being used, but most don't realize this (and they're more than happy to rely on the economic science when it conforms to their worldview).
Pigouvian taxation: the worst solution to the problem except all of the others? When your practical alternatives are command-and-control regulation and subsidies, I'd at least go for the most transparent and predictable one.Recall Easterly's complaint about the 'tyranny of experts'. It's a global problem which has long been out of hand.
It is valuable advice to consider but I know too much about physics to think the experts are wrong on the problem. The solution is admittedly another issue.
A new report published in the journal Climate Dynamics corroborates previous studies showing that the climate will warm less from carbon dioxide emissions than claimed by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The report found that doubling carbon dioxide concentrations would only cause 1.64 degrees Celsius of warming in the long term.
“Our results, which use data from this year’s IPCC fifth assessment report, are in line with those of several recent studies based on observed centennial warming and strongly suggest complex global climate models used for warming projections are oversensitive to carbon dioxide concentrations,” said the report’s co-author, Nic Lewis, an independent climate scientist.
Nic Lewis, an independent climate scientist
BigBallinStalin wrote:RE: the first and second paragraphs, it's not that it's difficult; it's rather the case that government has hardly any idea. Individuals know to some degree, after trial-and-error, their specific marginal benefit and marginal cost curves for various activities (e.g. grocery shopping). The problem with PWE is that it postulates a representative individual, whose utility curve + constraint represents the MB and MC curves of all society. (This is impossible to know; it's simply assumed, so the knowledge problem is assumed away by the economist).
The Pigouvian economist can simply imagine huge negative and huge positive externalities which do not exist in reality (e.g. education). Furthermore, individuals don't know the long-term costs of pollution, so there's no way to graph that social MB and MC curves in order to determine the magnitude of the negative externality.
Pigouvian solutions are redundant in the zero TC cost world if people can simply pay polluters to reduce pollution (or if polluters would have to pay others for the right to pollute--on the margin). Without that agreement, there'd be no market prices on marginal amounts of pollution, so we'd get inefficient amounts of pollution (hence an externality).
The Pigouvian solution is nonoperational if governments don't know what people don't know (i.e. the MB and MC of varying amounts of pollution in various places across time. The marginal cost is not the global warming information and its uncertain range of consequences, but rather ). PWE simply assumes that it does know--through the guise of its cute models. The transaction costs are too high for people to come to some agreement on (a) who's rights are being violated (e.g. who owns the river? No one, if it's owned by the government), and (b) monitoring costs. For example, if you're my neighbor, and you like to place music real loud at midnight, that's a negative externality. If possible, we could engage in Coasian bargaining where I pay you to limit the noise to only weekends, or you'd pay me for the right to do so (depending on how the court rules). Hopefully, the inefficiency is reduced to zero since the monetary payment reduces the inefficient level of noise pollution.
RE: the third paragraph, if governments actually did have that information, then all they'd have to do is make it available,
and to let the courts figure it out (in a zero or low TC world).
To some degree, firms are already addressing the issue by 'going green', and many consumers are demanding products which result in lower carbon footprints.
So, if a Pigouvian tax is proposed, you'd have to consider its impact on the rules of the game within the US economy and its consequences. If a carbon credit system is imposed, same thing. When considering a policy, you'd want to estimate the opportunity cost (e.g. if the Pigouvian tax is too high, much wealth is destroyed, and it could've been better had there been no tax. How so? The carbon credit system could've been more efficient, or the destruction in wealth eliminates more efficient ways of production which would have reduced carbon emissions better than the Pigouvian tax). Or, local governments can build bigger levees (another opportunity cost of Pigouvian taxation).
Napoleon Ier wrote:You people need to grow up to be honest.
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