An Email to Climatologist Roy Spencer on the Basis for Climate Change Concern

On March 6, I sent the following email to climatologist, and former NASA scientist Roy Spencer. It goes to a very common fallacy underlying the issue of climate change — one that seems to be widely held by the media, and by some scientists.

[Introduction]

I just briefly perused your website, and found it both interesting, and well presented. I do take issue with several of the assertions and assumptions, but I thought it more relevant here to take issue with one very significant, in fact central, statement which you make, and for which, you have some apparent support [Edit: The word support is a bit misleading here; what was meant was that the idea is held by others.] Namely, on this page here:

http://www.drroyspencer.com/research-articles/satellite-and-climate-model-evidence/

“Since computerized climate models are the main source of concern over manmade global warming.”

I don’t think that they are. The great science historian Naomi Oreski has correctly noted, for example, “Indeed, one could reject all climate models and still accept the consensus position because models are only one part of the argument—one line of evidence among many.”

For some people, they may be the main source of concern. There are a few reasons for this. Perhaps the most important is the overwrought desire to achieve a level of precision and exacting prescience, which makes it far easier to convey that this is a problem than does the more conceptually difficult idea of a range of risks in combination with a range of probabilities as to what those risks are based in turn then again upon a known set of factors.

Models also give a potentially powerful way to further our understanding, and begin to test certain ideas. (Unfortunately, however, models DO NOT give us a way to test the idea that our activities now will have a very strong effect on future climate, and I believe confusion over this is prevalent.) They give a way to further refine, and work with, data.

They provide a starting point rather than an ending point; namely, this is a problem, here are the ranges, we can update and possibly further refine with further observation, but there’s not much else without something approximating modeling. They hold out the ideal of that much else. They are obviously an invaluable aspect of the study of this phenomenon, and are heavily focused on for the reasons just stated (and perhaps others). This DOES NOT, however make them the basis for concern.

Some over-reliant statements by climate scientists upon models notwithstanding (and quite consistently I believe), I would strongly assert to all those who do claim that computerized models are the main source of concern over climate science, that this view is highly mistaken. I don’t believe that computerized models are even close to the main source of the most legitimate concern over manmade climate effect. I also believe there are plenty of leading scientists who, for the most part, agree. (Not that, as you I am sure are well aware, general agreement or disagreement proves or disproves the vitality of an assertion, but it is often relevant to note.)

Of course, we could now examine the actual causes for (for lack of a better word) “concern,” but then that would make this email untowardly long. But I wanted to emphasize to you that this idea that models form the basis and rationale for why our atmospheric greenhouse gas altering activities pose a robust long term problem, is highly mistaken.

Of course, to accept this, you might have to re work some of the approach you have taken to the issue. Thus you might not accept it. But I believe you would then be in grievous error on the issue.

[closing]

As of yet, I have not received a response; any responses received will be duly noted.

Unblemished Risk Assessment on Climate Change Reduction.

Cornell economics Professor Robert Frank offers up a solid op-ed in today’s New York Times on the economics of climate change. (Calling it a big step up from this recent climate monstrosity in the Times is an understatement):

Organizers of the recent climate conference in Copenhagen sought, unsuccessfully, to forge agreements to limit global warming to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. But even an increase that small would cause deadly harm. And far greater damage is likely if we do nothing.

The numbers — and there are many to choose from — paint a grim picture. According to recent estimates from the Integrated Global Systems Model at [M.I.T.], the median forecast is for a climb of 9 degrees Fahrenheit by century’s end, in the absence of effective countermeasures.

The gist of the piece is that based upon non political, objective, logic based risk assessment, and basic economics, there really isn’t a decent case against immediate climate change redress. Summarizing, Frank notes:

In short, the cost of preventing catastrophic climate change is astonishingly small, and it involves just a few simple changes in behavior.

The real problem with the estimates is that the outcome may be worse than expected. And that’s the strongest possible argument for taking action. In a rational world, that should be an easy choice, but in this case we appear to be headed in the wrong direction.

(A few quick examples of how the market could be motivated to effect much of this change on its own, while preserving personal choice and promoting growth at the same time,  are here.) Ironically, the piece could have painted a stronger picture for action and been more objective and accurate at the same time.  For example, it concludes:

Most people would pay a substantial share of their wealth — much more, certainly, than the modest cost of a carbon tax — to avoid having someone pull the trigger on a gun pointed at their head with one bullet and nine empty chambers. Yet that’s the kind of risk that some people think we should take.

First, and more controversially, this follows the common and likely erroneous presumption that addressing climate change sensibly “costs” money rather than simply serves to shift what constitutes GDP.   But more pointedly, Frank’s assessment is based upon a probability of 10 percent of a rise of 12 degrees or more.  Yet the same M.I.T study Frank relies upon for this, as noted earlier in the piece, projects the median rise to be 9 degrees. (In other words, half of the projections come in above 9 degrees, half lower, if no remediation action is taken.)  Thus, to continue the analogy, the other chambers are not “empty.”

Frank notes this himself earlier:

Essentially, the risk is that if current estimates turn out to be wildly pessimistic, the money spent to curb greenhouse gases wouldn’t have been needed to save the planet. And yet that money would still have prevented substantial damage. (The M.I.T. model estimates a zero probability of the temperature rising by less than 3.6 degrees by 2100.)

Thus, NONE of the chambers are empty; and half of them are not that far off from the 12 degree “bullet.” But what was left out of this assessment is that if current estimates turn out to be wildly pessimistic, there are still other significant reasons why the expenditures would not have been a waste.

First off, as noted above, they won”t serve as “true” expenditures in the long run — but will shift what we do spend our GDP dollars on. So if they “do nothing,” we probably would have preferred having more flat screen TVs (metaphorically speaking) and instead we will have more historically stable CO2 levels.  But since in the long run happiness is not correlated with absolute levels of wealth, but rather an ongoing increase in growth and job opportunities, even this is fairly trivial, again, in the long run. (Implementing cleaner, less destructive fuels prompts jobs and GDP growth the same as building a few extra flat screen TVs does.)

But they won’t do nothing, even apart from the climate change issue.  Much of the climate change challenge stems from fossil fuel use.(The rest stems from deforestation, changing agricultural practices and grazing ruminant livestock, and other sundry causes.) We have to get off of these anyway. They are finite. Extremely so in the case of oil. We might as well get off of them now.

And in addition, fossil fuels also cause considerable harm in addition to being largely responsible for an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to levels that on a sustained basis may well be unprecedented in the past fifteen million years:

They are responsible for a large proportion of our atmospheric pollution, CO2 (which is not a “true” pollutant), aside.  In the case of coal, they are also responsible for a majority of the toxicological poison mercury that is bio-accumulating in our food chain. Also in the case of coal, they are responsible for a significant amount of degradation to the natural landscape and watersheds where coal is mined. (Sometimes even causing the irreversible destruction of entire mountain tops).  And in the case of oil, they are responsible for unnecessary national security vulnerabilities created by relying upon, and sending hundreds of billions of dollars to, foreign oil selling regimes overseas that we often view as hostile to our interests.

Another interesting aspect of the piece is when Frank notes that we may be “headed in the wrong direction.” Quoting Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert, Frank notes:

“Global warming is bad, but it doesn’t make us feel nauseated or angry or disgraced, and thus we don’t feel compelled to rail against it as we do against other momentous threats to our species, such as flag burning.”

But we’re also headed in the wrong direction for a few other reasons. Number one is an incessant parade of nonstop misinformation on the topic, along with poor media coverage of it.

Number two is that climate change is abstract. We can’t feel it, touch it, taste it, see it, or smell it. Sure, we see and feel the weather everyday, but climate change is a decades long process; the weather at any particular time is all but irrelevant, and of course, all over the board.

Number three is that, perhaps given a natural desire to believe such conclusions, people tend to confuse the lack of precision or absolute certainty on climate change with the certainty of the physics that underline the phenomenon; including the certainties that heat drives climate (ultimately through the oceans), heat trapping gases trap heat, and levels of heat trapping gases have ratcheted upward at geologically breakneck speed to extremely high levels — and are still climbing.

Number four may be the most infrequently mentioned, yet, after misinformation, perhaps the most important.  An increase in atmospheric trapped heat is ultimately going to warm or otherwise alter the planet, and produce some sort of radical change (likely warming) through the oceans.  It takes an extremely long time to heat up oceans. (And, as we would expect, oceans are slowly retaining more and more heat.) Decades, if not more.  For this reason, among others, there is a considerable lag in climate change between cause and effect.

That is, given natural variability, we won’t “know” the effects of climate change (as opposed to mere, bizarre, variability) for years. And even then we still won’t because there will be multiple decades of effect built up in the pipeline.

It’s abstract, it’s in the future, and there are considerable cause and effect, and potential variability lags on top of that.  Those things, however, do not make it any less real. We are, however, very counter productively, treating it as if they do.

If we purchase a stock at 100 dollars, and we knew it had an 80 percent probability of going to zero, and a 20 percent probability of going to 125, we would sell it in an instant. And at a steep discount from 100 dollars, also. We would never go “but we don’t know with certainty that it is going to go to zero” as a rationale for doing nothing.

But that is precisely what we are doing, with respect to climate change.  The precise number of the effect is all but irrelevant when it comes to future harm.  What matters is the range of likely outcomes, their expected probabilities, and likely, attendant harm for each.  Somehow — perhaps through natural confusion over the science, and the four reasons listed above along with the one posited by Gilbert and Frank — we are completely confusing this.

The suspicion here is that misinformation driven by ideology is in fact playing the leading role, with the other factors merely facilitating the process and allowing for easy and in many cases, perhaps even earnest, confusion and misinformation promulgation on the issue.

Creating Jobs, Spurring the Economy, Solving Energy Problems, and Lessening Government Dictate, with One Same Swift Strategic Approach

The best way to create jobs is to solve another problem at the exact same time.

Tax the crap out of gasoline. Yeah, unpopular; but Dems have the majority in Congress, and tend to support it (as do some moderate Republicans). Just do it, sell it, it’s about national security and getting off of sending billions to hostile foreign regimes.

Do it more as a value added tax in addition to just end user tax. Take all the funds from this tax and use thusly: Give hardship relief, but only on a well communicated sliding scale so that people begin AND CONTINUE to make adjustments themselves. All of this will go right back into the economy while encouraging the market itself to further adjust and create.

Next, bag the tax credit idea and instead do immediate credits for solar penal installation on roofs. Make it a big credit too, so that anyone living in a sunny area is getting some power from the sun, and almost no environmental cost, increasing further development and economies of scale in this industry, and transitioning us over to cleaner, more independent, fuels.

No tax credits; they are abstract, and the full value is never realized.

Tax electricity. That’s right. Electricity, generated from coal. Sounds politically bad? Right now we tax hard earned income. That’s bad. Instead, we will be shifting some of that burden onto a revenue raising program that at the same time inspires the market, and ends the undue non true capitalism penalization of industries and end uses that don’t rely upon excessive externality cost electrical use or production.

Same hardship remuneration applies, while people incrementally, with six month at a time decreases in hardship assistance, learn to adapt with positive change:

We can’t ask what is perceived to be sacrifice of industry (though we are de-facto subsidizing some industries now too, with other ones right now unduly penalized because their lack of harm is not integrated into their price) yet just give handouts to the economically disadvantaged without asking them to learn to adjust also — and there is PLENTY of adjustment that can be made short and, increasingly, longer term, when money is at stake — at the same time.

DON’T pour money into R & D. This is a common call by many, but it is a waste. Let the market do it. Then the money not only inspires the research, but concomitantly the development and implementation at the same time, for no additional cost. It’s a waste to simply give industry money for “research, if they do x or y or promise to look at z.”

Take the same money, and later use for deficit reduction. Right now, trying to bring jobs back, use it for reward. Not as efficient as economic discentive (e.g, a tax on coal fired electricity) but choose broad behavior parameters that are already established, and again, grant immediate purchase and investment credits.

Not for bicycles or stuff like that that also has other uses (cool and helpful as bicycles are), that’s another waste. But for stuff which only serves to produce or use far cleaner energy.

Use the rest for direct stimulus in the way of immediate construction, but smaller scale that also indirectly enriches communities, towns and cities, and DOES NOT further support more fossil fuel based uses or needs. Bike paths can be construction ready anywhere, and have the opposite effect, encouraging biking. Don’t put up electric lights unless they are solar powered. Install solar charging stations, wind or geothermal powered, for local electric vehicles, bike and walking paths, tennis courts, etc.

And those are just a few quick examples.  Everything in such a jobs or stimulus bill needs to be designed to either discourage fossil fuel based behavior while encouraging the opposite, while not regulating people and letting them and the market decide, while inspiring the market further at the same time, all while stimulating jobs and the economy rather than further dragging it down.

If Dems with a solid majority can’t sell that, what can they sell? (Oh, yeah, I forgot:  Apparently nothing. But that can change when they learn not necessarily how to do it, but that they must do it. Who might teach them that?)

Use the market to solve the climate change, pollution and energy security problems all at the same time, without increasing government encroachment, and while creating jobs and spurring economic growth all at the same time.

New York Times Searches Far and Wide for the Most Qualified Experts

Space on the prestigious NY Times opinion pages is extremely limited.  And most of that space is routinely taken up by the paper’s own editorials and columnists.

So one imagines that on the rare occasions when the Times ventures to outside sources from among the constant inundation of submissions it normally receives, it chooses its pieces carefully — to represent a particular point of view or perspective, with careful, reasoned and logical support.

Thus, in its search far and wide for someone to provide  a provocative, informative, non misleading and relevant opinion piece on the timely and global issue of climate change recently, the Times apparently scoured the entire globe itself, finally settling upon an expert from New Zealand. A professor of philosophy named Denis Dutton.

Just below is how Dutton’s fantastic work of reason, logic, and coherency might have made its way onto the famed and highly selective pages of the NY Times.

Note that the following conversation is merely a simulation (one supposes) of a conversation that could have occurred, illustrating both the value of Dutton’s piece, as well as how it might have ended up on the highly influential and venerable NY times opinion pages:

DUTTON: I think some may be overreacting on climate change here.

So far, notice, this is a short, one sentence, unsupported suggestion, not an oped.  So how does it turn into one?

NY TIMES:   Why may some be overreacting?

DUTTON: because sometimes people overreact.

NY TIMES:  We know sometimes people over react to things.  That’s like saying that we are under-reacting to climate change because “sometimes we under react.” What’s your reason why some are overreacting on this issue?

DUTTON: because people tend to find apocalypses intriguing!!

NY TIMES:  That’s not an argument for saying climate catastrophe is overreaction, catastrophes do happen; that’s an argument for saying the world is literally coming to an end due to climate changer alone – an argument that maybe all of four people are making – and three for intended hyperbole.

When sometimes we under react to things, and other times we over react to things, saying that we are “overeacting” to climage change by giving a reason why sometimes people over react to things, which otherwise has not specific applicability to this particular instance, is tautological,and logically nonsensical.

It is like saying “I think my neigbor’s wife is having an affair;” we ask why, you say “because sometimes wives have affairs,” we ask why her, and you give a  reason why sometimes wives in general have affairs, such as “because they are lonely or bored.” You have done nothing to support why you think your neigbor’s wife is having an affair;  and you have done nothing to support why our response to climate change is an over reaction rather than an under reaction.

So do you have anything else more than “we overreact sometimes,” we under react other times, this time we are over reacting, based upon the reasoning that “we overreact sometimes”?

DUTTON: Yes, yes, of course I do.  Here goes. Here is my reason.  Drumroll please: “It seems to me.”

NY TIMES: Hey, that’s pretty good. In other words, you are not just arguing “sometimes we over react to stuff, sometimes we under react to stuff, on climate change we are over reacting, the end,” you are saying that, but with “it seems to me” thrown in.  As they say on the Guinness commercials, “brilliant!”

But do  you have anything else?  That, would make it even better.

DUTTON: Yup.  I sure do. I have even more. Since this is a scientific issue, why should we bother with any actual science, when instead we can botger with stuff that is even better than science; namely, science fiction.   Ready?  Mary Shelley Created Frankenstein.

Thus, you see, people are fascinated with this stuff, like Frankenstein, so we are over reacting on climate change!  And no one will ever pick up that we also tend to overlook other stuff, like actual science, or scenarios where there is a big lag between cause and effect, so we are underestimating climate change.  Instead, here, we are over reacting, because of Frankenstein, and fascination with Frankenstein!

NY TIMES:  Absolutely brilliant.  This is great stuff. No one will eve see what a hoax this logic is (including us!).

But allthough we know it says so much more, it might appear as if your argument says nothing more than “We are over reacting, not under reacting, this time, because because Mary Shelley created Frankenstein.”

Brilliant and relevant as that argument is, can you fill this piece with an otherwise also completely irrelevant yet excruciatingly detailed example of a time when we over-reacted as opposed to under-reacted, overlooking how that also illustrates exactly nothing — yet allowing you to essentially, and wonderfully, wasted your entire piece on it!

Since we already know we sometimes over react, just like we know we sometimes under react, giving us an example of a time we overreacted tells us nothing.  But it will come across to readers as if it does! Particularly if you spend almost your entire piece on it.  And that is what we want to do here at the NY Times. Print logically nonsensical pieces of garbage that might masquerade as something of worth.

So, can you not only give us an example of an otherwise unrelated time that we over reacted, but spend most of your at this point otherwise two sentence piece on it?

DUTTON: Sure, absolutely. Like what?  Like, maybe, talk about how many people and countries way over reacted to Y2K?

(Editor of ELA, not of the NY Times here. Ahem, Dutton, “ahem.”  Not many people but those of us that did; since the editor of this website  thought the entire notion of an unavoidable enormous Y2k breakdown just because the years on many computers were in double rather than quadruple digits, was ridiculous, and said so repeatedly.)

NY TIMES:  Exactly.

DUTTON: Done. Check  your in box.

Hard to believe, right?

NY TIMES: If you don’t believe this speculated mockusation, come read our pages, December 31, and see for yourself.

Simply saying “We overreact to some things, perhaps we are to climate change, here are some reasons why we are over-reacting here,” flawed as the conclusion that we are overreacting likely is, is fine. Dutton does not come close to doing that, however.  He suggests that sometimes we over react to things; he explains why he thinks we over-react to things sometimes (fascination with the eschatological), and then suggests that “we are over-reacting here” for no reason other than the completely tautological explanation that sometimes we do, along with the completely irrelevant reason why we sometimes do.

If anything, there would be far more driving the idea that we are under-reacting here.  Likely results are many years in the future.  The implications to many, of this, are extremely negative, because of the (flawed) perception that sensibly addressing this means we have to sacrifice our economy. There is a general lack of general scientific understanding among the populace. And our expectations are grounded in what we have come to expect, and the difficulty we seem to have grasping the ideas that 1) there is an enormous time lag here between both cause and effect, and 2) effects are very likely to be non linear (that is, potentially accelerating with increased input).

Whether that last paragraph, was a good or bad (but short) opinion piece for the Times, at least it offered reasons. Dutton offers none. What he offered is like suggesting “remember how in medieval times the plague hit, and people did not take it seriously enough;” then spending most of the time writing about how bad the plague was and how wrong everybody was; then offering up a bunch of reasons why in general people often don’t take things seriously enough (and they tend to number far greater than “fascination with eschatology”) and then concluding “it seems to me climate change is the same. The end.”  That would be a truly inane piece.  And, analogously, it is exactly the logic — and all of it — that the NY Times chose to publish.

The Other Part of the Greenhouse Gas Emission Equation – Science, and the Illusion of Cost

The other part of the Greenhouse Gas Emission Equation is the existence of carbon sinks — naturally occurring earth processes that absorb carbon dioxide in a relatively moderately (and very slowly) fluctuating cyle, in the absence of mankind’s recent greenhouse gas emitting activies.

A new study seems to confirm for Europe what has long been postulated as part of the global problem – anthropomorphic effected reduction in effective carbon sinks at the same time that specific anthropomorphic activities are contributing enormous net amounts of carbon dioxide (and some other greenhouse gases) to the atmosphere.

According to the EU-Integrated Project CarboEurope:

The new bookkeeping effort confirmed the existence of a strong carbon sink of -305 Million tonnes of carbon per year in European forests and grasslands. A sink of this magnitude could offset 19% of the emission from fossil fuel burning. However, agricultural land and drained peat-land are emitting CO2, which cancels part of this sink. The resulting net CO2 sink of the European continent is 274 Million tonnes of carbon per year – only 15% of the emissions from fossil fuel burning. But this balance is still incomplete, because all European ecosystems are managed and as a by-product of land management other powerful greenhouse gases are released – for example nitrous oxide from fertilizers applied to grassland and crops, and methane from ruminants and from peat-lands. These previously neglected emissions of greenhouse gases from land-use cancel out almost the entire carbon sink, leaving the landscape offsetting only some 2% of the CO2 emissions from households, transport and industry.

All that ultimately matters is the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases (with CO2 being by far the most important); what the levels are, and what direction they are headed in.  Sinks, after emissions themselves, are the next most important variable that ultimately goes into determing what these levels are.

We can’t solve the climate change challenge through sinks alone, but effective improvement in this area can help considerably.

Of course, over the shorter run, growing more trees (the simplest way to improve sinks on any scale, from apartment balcony to continental wildlands) will only effectively help the problem if the carbon is then stored in those trees and not re-released; this is why long standing forests are helpful; forests tilled over for mono agriculture (where most of the trapped carbon is then re-released into the atmosphere) are not. 

But the real answer must address the real root of the problem. That is, the burning of fossil fuels, and thereby in a geologic time sense the emission, almost instantaneously, into the atmosphere of carbon that was accumulated over millions of years.

Thus the real solution is simple.  Stop using fossil fuels.  Start using alternative fuels.

Is this easier said than done?  Not nearly so much as conventional wisdom holds.  We just need to start prompting the market to respond far more favorably to fossil fuel alternatives, and far less favorably to fossil fuels themselves, and people will be amazed how quickly we can transform over.

In fact, there will be headlines exclaiming surprise that so many people, are now using so much alternative energy, instead of fossil fuel based sources. (That is, if we take the sensible market based policy steps designed to promote this  – which do not include throwing billions of dollars toward “development grants” and “studies,” but only to user and producer decisions. This approach will at the same time more fully promote and reward the same research and development, and do so far far more efficiently, while at the same time shift behavior through the accumulation of various individual and producer responses to the appropriate incentives and disincentives.)

How can this pronouncement be made with such certainty? Easy. It is the nature of markets, and the nature of mankind’s perception, to always lag behind anticipating what market induced, rather than just governmentally mandated or “conscientiously motivating” behavior, can do. 

Necessity is the mother of invention. The more necessity that is created, the more invention, adaptation, and evolution and advancement will occur.

The necessity is there from a scientific perspective, but it is abstract. This necessity needs to be reflected in the marketplace, as well as in this current, abstract –and often ideologically challenged — form.  And dollars are the highest form of practical immediate motivation, and inspiration. (Note also that giving out grants to “study” or to “develop” as a substitute for changing market behavior, does not do this.  This is not to say that we should cease giving grants, but that increasing grants is not an effective response to what is ultimately a broad market based technological and behavioral challenge.) It may sound crass, but capitalism and free markets are based upon this.

Where those markets invariably fail — the classic example being the externality of environmental impact — policies that properly inspire market behavior can have the same effect as otherwise draconian regulation and prohibition. And do so far less onerously, and at the same time, far more efficiently. Indeed, usually in the transitioning over, more new industries and modes of production — all contributing to growth, and jobs — are created than are lost.

Right now we are essentially letting this problem both linger and spin increasingly out of control, for one reason.  The perception of “costs.”  And those that don’t want to sensibly address climate change due to “cost” fall into one of two camps.

The first camp involves those who are attached to industries which will have to change, and which may even fade.  This prompts the idea that adjusting — which is in those industries’ advantage both on a personal and industry level — is far more sensible and efficient than fighting, which is disadvantageous on a personal level, and wasteful of capital on an industry level. Of course, the more effective such fighting becomes — thus the more effect entrenched greenhouse gas emitting industries can have upon our policy makers, the more rational, from a short term industry perspective, fighting any such movement toward climate change remediation, becomes. 

The easiest way to render this calculus moot is for policy makers to ignore the necessarily self interested pronouncements of entrenched interests, thus making it far easier for industry to save wasteful sums on fighting, and focus on what business requires; namely, adjusting to changing needs. The only difference here being that the changing needs are external to the marketplace — the great biological and ecological harm that crescendoing climate change is likely to cause (and ongoing environmental and pollution harm that many of these same pratices otherwise cause) — and are being integrated into it through sensible policy. 

The second camp consists of groups which confuse “cost” to addess certain environmentally and climatologically harmful sectors and attendant product usages and habits with net overall economic cost to society. This, while being a widely held (and often even unquestioned) presumption, is, as a basic law of economic mathematics, incorrect. In the long run, net economic costs to society will not go down, but will merely by redefined by the newer less harmful (in this case energy) sectors, attendant product usages, and habits.  We will have the same amount of growth but with far less damaging environmental externalities.  

It is just that the growth is slightly diffferent than we have gotten used to; and this is what many, including the IPCC, confuse with “true cost” — because we can see and measure the net cost to the present way of doing business, but can not see and measure the net benefit conferred by better, more efficient ways of doing business, which addressing harmful energy practices by definition will promote.

In essence, GDP does not go down, but money is spent on different things, which we somehow confuse with “cost.” If we do not “want” some of those things (efficient energy sources and cheaper products that use them or less energy and more expensive products that use more, which will of course all iron out over time anyway), it has to be considered that what we “want” is still, on a societal level being increased each year (due to technology and accumulative production); and yet people’s happiness does not increase geometrically along with this increase.  Yet, curiously, economists, who tend to look at such things in “static” or two dimensional ways in a three dimensional word, speak of dollars being the ultimate measure of  ”utility” or happiness.  And yet with dollars increasing most years since the industrial age began happiness, or “utility” has remained relatively constant.  This does not mean that growth is bad, it just means that as an absolute it has value not in where we are at any one point in time, but in the fact that we do continue to grow. 

Thus how we grow, ultimately matters, not whether we stay with this or that product set or consumer or industry habit because of entrenchment,  simply because we can grasp the immediate “utility” or happiness benefit of what we have become used to rather than an alternative. (Turning up the heat in winter instead of putting on a sweater and saving money, which then just prevents our body from adjusting properly to the outside enviroment, and so we are less comfortable, is just one of literally millions of such examples where such choices are our right to make, but that we look at as complete benefits, which are completely arbitrary and in some cases counter productive).

Thus, it can be broken down like this. By increasing fossil fuel energy source prices (and decreasing, concomitantly, that of alternatives, thus inspiring the latter development, deployment, integration and usage far more rapidly) we now have to pay ”more” for things that traditionally came from cheap fossil fuel source, so we will start to substitute in other behaviors.  A long term look at economic trends and happiness shows us that this has no real meaning; it just “bothers” us because we think that it does. Thus the “harm” is that a gas powered lawn mower now costs more, and a lawn of wildflowers or even beans and tomatoes now less (and even less still, or more still, depending upon whether we consider the labor to put it in a joy and exercise, or a burden — and even then we might not really know). It’s all sort of random. Yet we “think” cheap energy is a “good” and if we desire cheap energy (as is very likely that we will) cleaner alternatives will thus be developed and deployed faster — all the while contributing to economic growth in the process, and yet not counterproductively beginning to slowly wreck havoc and destruction upon our biological and ecological world through radical atmospheric greenhouse gas increased climate change — which is, unfortunately, exactly what we are doing right now.

If we had no reason to not have cheap energy right now, one could argue that lacking any other information we might as well go with what we have chosen. But we do have reason.  Fossil fuels, which have artificially created cheap energy and dis-inspired the development of correspondingly inexpensive alternatives — by being subsidized in that their true costs are not reflected in their pricing — are causing a looming potential and highly counter productive ecological catastrophe. So now we have reason not to.  But we always want energy, and the process that has value — for creating true meaning and for creating economic growth — is in seeking it again, in far less destructive ways.

The bottom line is this, and it is fairly simple. There are a number of practical things that we can do, country by country;  independently, and to some degree, perhaps through some international “accords” or promises. But what is really required is the cessation of fossil fuel usage.  Since they are finite (let alone very polluting, otherwise) and this has to be done anyway, we might as well do it now.  The way to do this now is stop approving permits for new development, exploration, usage, employment, and saturation.

This sounds draconian, but it is not in the least.  Fossil fuel usage is the problem.  We are not going to simply destroy what is built in terms of energy production. But we have to shift over anyway.  So purposefully adding to the problem is extremely counterproductive.  Thus continuing in the acquisition and development of that which causes the problem is foolish. It increases supply, and in many cases (particularly in the development of new coal fired power plants, which under the current science is asinine yet we continue to do it anyway), our committment to it.  Increased supply only serves as market disincentive, rather than incentive, to move away and into cleaner alternatives. 

Remember, again, necessity is the mother of invention.  At the same time, use disincentivizing cost structures, and incentivizing cost structures, to prompt the increasingly rapid development (thus producing economic growth by so doing) of, and transitioning to, cleaner alternatives.

It’s not really that hard. We just need to do it and get rid of this archaic, misguided 20th century notion that simply expending “costs” to change over from something we are used to, over to something that we are not, is somehow a true “cost” and not simply a redefining of what constitutes GDP.

The George Will Disinformation Campaign

George Will has a thing against science.   I’d say I’m not sure why, but it wouldn’t be true. I am pretty sure why Will abhors the idea that on a practical level we should take sensible steps to arrest atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration buildup, among other environmental problems. (Update: see this typical comment to a Discover Magazine article exposing Will, where the reader can not fathom his motivations. This is why understanding what drives manipulations on the part of Will which obviously carry a lot of appeal — including to newpaper editors who seem to confusedly think that misrepresentation and falsity in the name of a “contrarian view” is balance and provocativeness — is so important. When it is understood what drives it, it can be sensibly addressed, rather than dismissed as inexplicable “lying” “manipulation” or “weirdness,” which does little to help inform those that have been so mislead and improve the level of the national discussion and debate on the issue.)

Will thinks these steps cost “money,” lots of money (in that estimation, a lot of other people agree). What he does not see is that “money” is just a reflection of total GDP, and that anything we “spend” also goes toward the GDP, just in a different direction.  Solving the climate change problem does not undermine long term economic growth. It changes the nature of it.  [Update:  See this link, which explores this concept further.]

Will, it would seem, can’t comprehend that at all. He also thinks it is an interminable violation of inherent rights to make polluting more expensive. He thinks there is an inherent right to pollute (since the earth is so “large” and all that, it all must simply disappear anyway), but there is no inherent right for every individual to be reasonably free of someone else’s pollution unduly impinging upon them.

Both are rights.  Heretofore, our approach has presumed the former is absolute, the latter abstract. But these presumptions were formulated and bred deeply into our mindset before we even had any sense of the possibility of environmental damage or harm, and when we were industrializing (an age we are rapidly moving from, into the information and services age.) Will simply can not adapt. And really does not want to.

Thus, like an impetulant child, he steadfastly refuses not only to refrain from writing on a  subject on which he is so biased it is almost comical, he also makes no effort to arrest those biases (and neither do those who continue to publish his drivel, either), or to try and learn.  As a result, he continues, time and time again, when it comes to matters of science or the environment, to mislead and misinform. And this is fairly significant, due to his national syndication and overwhelming acceptance by our mainstream media presses as a “commentator for the ages.”

Will no longer takes to simply denying that there can be a phenomenon such as climate change — apparently convinced, not by the fact that heat trapping gas concentrations are rising at breakneck speed, geologically speaking, and that ultimately, heat drives climate, that climate patterns do not shift on arithmetic or neatly predictable curves, and that any data that would be probative would likely be after the fact, but by all the data in support of a very general warming trend,and projections that predict overall continued warming trends.

But what he does to is everything possible to play tortured games with the facts, with the logic, and with the science. That is, not to promote genuine disagreement, devil’s advocacy, and provocative alternatives, but simply to try and undermine in any way he can, any idea that widespread and  harmful long term ecological and biological change is likely to result from continuing to increase ambient atmospheric heat trapping gas concentrations; or, barring that, any idea that it is worthwhile to do something about it.

His latest effort, while not quite as horrific as some of this others, is still a veritable hodge podge of misleading insinuations and patently false reasonings. Essentially, Will finds great solace in the idea that some scientists are predicting shorter cooling trends because of ocean patterns, and takes great joy in what he seems to believe  is the clever idea that scientists and others concerned about climate change are very saddened by this seemingly good, but essentially irrelevant, short term news.

That is, Will misses the fact that it is speculative. Will misses the fact that it would likely be short term. Will misses the fact that climate is extremelycomplex, not a symetrically predictable mathematical equation. Will misses the fact that climate change does not and can not mean that underlying variability in climate, overall change aside, suddenly disappears. Will misses the fact, regardless of all the observations “supporting” climate change guestimations,and a few others questioning it ,  that heat drives climate, and in the long run, with more heat trapped in the atmosphere, climate will change — and Will misses the fact that this latter effect, while not on a straight, or short term symetrical, curve, will likely accelerate, as concentrations shift rapidly away from the norm.  And, most importantly of all, Will misses the fact that the evidence of exactly what this experiment is we are conducting on the atmosphere, as sure as the sun rises, will come after its cause has been long implemented, not before.

Vintage Will (emphasis added):

By asserting that the absence of significant warming since 1998 is a mere “plateau,” not warming’s apogee, the Times assures readers who are alarmed about climate change that the paper knows the future and that warming will continue: Do not despair, bad news will resume.

Suddenly 1) Will is the expert on climate change; 2) most science is thrown out the window, as the great bulk of scientific consensus is both hooey and irrelevant; 3) the underlying science — namely, greenhouse, “heat trapping” gas concentrations have risen by close to 40 percent since the start of the industrial age, with much of that in the last few decades>>they have risen and continue to rise, as a result of very specific anthropomorphic activities>>heat drives climate — is now also irrelevant; 4) the fact that ocean current and shorter global patterns play overwhelming roles on shorter term climate activity is now similarly irrelevant.

And why?  Because 1998, you see, was the apogee, of any ongoing radical greenhouse gas alteration’s effect!!  And it is so despite the fact that there is nothing to indicate this empirically. And most importantly of all, it indicates this despite the fact that there can not be, anything to indicate this empirically, because the effect is longer term, not geometric, and lags terribly behind its precipitating cause.

But somehow, Will, whose entire piece is filled with these little “innuendo” like and ridiculously misleading distortions, decided that the perceived –and still speculative shorter term ocean circulatory effect on climate, means that 1998 might mean we’re done. And, why if suddenly a rash of 20 or so years of increasingly wild, violent and hot weather ensues, but then for 5 or 10 or so there is little change, why, we’ll be done then too!

These formulations rely upon the work of Mojib Latif, who, as Will at least mentions, advocates policies to address climate change.  Joseph Romm — who writes the usually thoroughly researched climate blog, climateprogress.org — spoke with Dr. Latif on Thursday:

“We don’t trust our forecast beyond 2015″ and “it is just as likely you’ll see accelerated warming” after then . Indeed, in his published research, rapid warming is all-but-inevitable over the next two decades. He told me, “you can’t miss the long-term warming trend” in the temperature record, which is “driven by the evolution of greenhouse gases.”  Finally, he pointed out “Our work does not allow one to make any inferences about global warming.”

For more on what Latif’s work means, see Romm’s piece. And for the record, with all due respect, I don’t trust Latif’s formulations before 2015.  We can’t predict the weather very accurately three days in advance, and there are simply too many variables that interact, and too many amplifying assumptions, to be able to model anything climate wise beyond basic pattern parameters.

However, the underlying, and seemingly reasonable, gist of his work is that ocean current changes play a dynamic role, and may have a shorter term cooling effectd. What this also points to is something else, very elemental,  that Will not only completely misses, but uses his ignorance on therein, to essentially and ridiculously mock everything else. And that is, as noted above, climate change does not mean that shorter term variability in climate will suddenly cease. Will takes the ridiculous idea that it does, to create the novel idea that therefore 1998 (even though it has gotten slightly warmer since) might be the apogee, and the NY Times, by not “telling its readers this, is thus playing right into this crazy idea that almost all scientists have, that heat drives climate, and increasing heat trapping gases, long term, very likely drives climate increasingly upward.    

Romm, by the way, was an assistant Secretary at the U.S. Department of Energy in the 90s,  in charge of the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, and is the author of several books, including two on how businesses can reduce their environmental impact and improve profits.  His latest, 2006’s “Hell and High Water,” according to Technology Review, “provides an accurate summary of what is … a sensible agenda for technology and policy, and a primer on how political disinformation has undermined climate science.”

Will serves as a perfect example, of precisely this.

Another great mistake Will makes is to stereotype the great bulk of the scientific consensus and concern over the issue, into nothing other than hand wringing alarm and panic — what he terms “Cassandras.”  I am not saying here that such alarm is assuredly wrong – I don’t know, nor do I think that anyone can know.  I do know that there is a reasonable probability that there will be multiple ecological “threshold” effects (or “tipping points”)  reached, where after long periods of seemingly little or random change, whole scale systemic change (typically very negative or destructive) will erupt or ensue;  it is the way nature works. And I also know, and it is fairly elemental science, that radically altering the heat trapping chemical composition of the atmosphere in what is, from a geologic perspective, an almost instantaneous period, is the classic type of system impact that would produce such effects.  (It also seems possible, since we are really not doing much about a challenge that needs to be relevantly addressed, that so called “Cassandras,” while perhaps playing somewhat into far right wing stereotpying, may at least be alerting people to the need to pay attention to the issue. )

But Will appeats to takes great comfort in such seemingly extreme, and or obviously hyperbolic statements as the following one he recites, with great glee, that Prince Charles, back in March, apparently uttered, stating therein that we had until 2017 to prevent ”catastrophic climate change and the unimaginable horrors that this would bring.”

For the reasons that have been exhaustively illuminated, in countless studies — not to mention basic common sense — the time to act on climate change is yesterday, and significantly.  (And what Charles was likely referring to is the fact that given current atmospheric concentrations,and the persistency of these gases in the atmosphere, our window for the most proactive period where we can still potentialy avoid a great deal of unnecessary harm, may be about 8-10 years or so.)  But Will otherwise misses the fact that the issue of apparent hyperbole in Prince Charles’ statement is irrelevant to the larger challenge that we face.  Thus, he instead, and falsely, and turns statements such as that by Prince Charles’ into THE issue, concluding his claptrap piece thus:

Charles Moore of the Spectator notes that in July, the prince said that by 2050 the planet will be imperiled by the existence of 9 billion people, a large portion of them consuming as much as Western people now do. Environmental Cassandras must be careful with their predictions lest they commit what climate alarmists consider the unpardonable faux pas of denying that the world is coming to an end.

So a few people (over?) hype the climate change thing — maybe they are right, maybe they are wrong — and suddenly the great bulk of scientists and others who have studied the issue, and contend, unlike Will, that it is foolish to continue conducting an enormous experiment on planet earth with geologically radical alteration in heat trapping (and thus climate driving) gases, are suddenly Cassandras charged, according to Will with the fervent and unshakeable belief that the world is coming to an end.  And an end that it is coming (silly as the first notion is) despite anything we try to do to try and improve the situation, which would be the point of the few true “climate change” Cassandras, of trying to prevent in the first place.  Will also misses the obvious metaphor. We will adjust, but why largely destroy the basic ecology of our environment, and possibly flood large swaths of continents?

In what is still the very same column, Will also commits yet another, fundamental, and quite extraordinary, error.  After raving on, with sarcastic, highly misleading, and even more misinformed, half quips every step of the way, Will tries to assert, essentiallly, that there is all this “conflicting” evidence out there and we don’t know what to do! So then he writes, thus:

America needs a national commission appointed to assess the evidence about climate change.

It is worded a little bit differently, but isn’t this easily recognizable? 

The basic driving scientific reasoning for action is the same today as it was nine years ago when the Bush Administration first took office — though perhaps with nine more years of continued rapid buildup the problem is simply grander, and somewhat more urgent given the increasing difficulty and not too far off impossibility of significant reversal. (And, overall, some short term empirical evidence has made this more evident to some.)

Bush had esssentially pledged to address climate change, then once in office decided, quite famously now, that the issue needed “more study.”  By the time Bush was close to leaving office, he had switched back.  Now, with nine more years of buildup, and the accumulation even of some rather compelling but unnecessary empirical data, George Will has finally graduated from the school of complete science denial, to the simple reactionary positions of nine years past.

And that is, “the issue needs more study.”

Will might not be enough of a scientist to grasp this statement, but for a newspaper editor who continues to publish’s his almost “religiously” driven anti science screeds, consider this:  By the very nature of this problem, by the time we will no longer need to “study it,” the problem will have manifested itself, and the earth will be very dramatically, and unalterably, different.

If Will wants to make the case that that “difference” is going to be exciting (and fun!) that is one thing.  While many might disagree, it is subjective, and people are entitled to their opinions regarding what “matters.”  Ecological havoc might not matter to Will, who seems to exist in a bizarre world (and this is a watered down version of the original version of this monstrosity of a piece).  But to play games with the complex nature of trying to forecast, with precision, what is, with precision, an unforecastable thing, and then leapfrog back in time to a position that was reactionarily ridiculous back then when the matter was pressing, but not as pressing as now — is voodoo logic.  Yet it is precisely the type of thing that Will, when it comes to matters of science, and the environment, has become quite practiced at the art of.

Perhaps he should consider writing about politics, instead. Or, and here’s just an idea — opening a few science books.  And reading them.

And then, maybe, throwing on a pair of jeans (see his closing parenthetical at the end, it just about says it all), and going out and doing some work with his hands, for once. Looking up at the sky, and mountains. Maybe it will open his eyes.  If it doesn’t, once again, hopefully those of the editors at our county’s municipal newspapers’ will be.  To borrow liberally from a Paul Krugman column back on September 10, 2004 regarding budgetary math, and apply it here, Will science: 2 – 1 = 4.  He’s not just wrong, he’s peddling misinformation, and detracting, not adding, to the discussion and debate.