| Tuesday,
June 9, 2009
Dyson
There is also a fine book review by Freeman <http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21494>
on the subject of Climate Change; that is, a review of an economics study/modelling
run by Nordhaus. It projects 100 yrs (200 was about the same, so not used)
of costs and benefits of the various mitigation schemes, taking AGW as
given.
Gore's and Stern's draconian measures fare worst;
Kyoto and 'doing nothing' are about net neutral, cap-and-trade is moderately
negative; a moderate carbon tax is moderately positive. The only strongly
positive option is a hypothetical "low-cost fallback" alternative energy
source. (As I've mentioned, my personal candidate for that is Focus Fusion <http://focusfusion.org>
, now funded and moving into proof-of-concept experiments as of this month.)
Elsewhere, Dyson makes the point that if you MUST
manipulate CO2 levels, modification of horticultural and agricultural and
silvicultural practices gains far more results, faster and cheaper than any
possible "industrial" scale or style modifications of the economy.
Brian H.
The review is certainly worth
reading. It takes close reading to see something: the economic model
assumes that the effects predicted by modelers actually will happen, then
does a cost/benefit analysis.
It does not, I think, take into account the one
CO2 effect that may well be worrisome. See next letter.
==
A few months back I attended a lecture from a
scientist who was fairly well versed in the subject of climate change (the
actual title of the lecture was "Physics for future presidents") and his
talk had a lot of material in it that I have not heard in the general
media.
(I should note for the record that I believe what he
was saying.)
One of the things that he showed was a slide detailing
the variables that go into the current "consensus" climate model, and in
particular the magnitude of the error bars. Some of the variables, like the
amount of solar energy falling on the planet, we can measure with a great
deal of accuracy.
However, the error bars for the effect of cloud cover
on global temperature are large - large enough that if you plug them into
the model, it can fluctuate +/- 10 degrees either way. So on the one hand,
there is plenty of room for climate skeptics - because there is no way to
absolutely prove that the global temperature is increasing, as we simply
don't understand the effects of cloud cover well enough to be able to make
an accurate prediction.
On the other hand, when you plug all of the variables
and their error bars into the model and attempt to make a prediction, what
you get is an probability curve whose *center* is quite a bit warmer than
what we have today. So while there is room for skepticism, there is also
ample justification for believing that there is a serious problem.
If you believe this model, then both Freeman Dyson and
Al Gore are equally inaccurate, because they are implying a certainty that
is unjustified by the model. The problem is that error bars are a nuance
that doesn't play well with the media, all they can do is present various
"experts" who tell them either yes or no. It's easy to oversimplify.
There is another issue to be considered, which is that
global warming is a relatively minor problem compared to the *real* problem
of carbon emissions, which is ocean acidification. Half of the anthropogenic
carbon being pumped into the atmosphere is absorbed by the ocean. We can
mitigate the effects of a warmer planet through various technological means,
but if the ocean ecosystem crashes that's it.
(Greg Bear's idea of dumping iron dust into the ocean
won't work, by the way - they tried it and it creates toxic algae blooms.)
One other interesting point from the lecture: We
aren't running out of oil. Not at all. What we are running out of is the
very cheapest oil.
There are about 10 different kinds of minerals and
geological deposits from which we can extract petroleum. Canada, for
example, has far larger petroleum-producing deposits than the entire middle
east, but in a form that is simply too expensive to be worth digging for.
If, however, the price of oil rises to, say, $5 a gallon and stays there for
a while, then it starts to become a financially attractive prospect to go
get it.
At somewhere between $10 and $20 a gallon, it starts
to become economical to suck CO2 directly out of the atmosphere and use it
to create synthetic liquid fuels. Most of the cost involved is energy. At
which point, burning hydrocarbons becomes a closed loop, where every gallon
we burn is a gallon we reclaim later.
Unfortunately, one problem we have is the fact that
our society cannot react quickly to changes in the price of gasoline, and
that we are virtually compelled to buy it because our economy depends on it.
This creates a long lag time between demand and supply, which can cause wild
fluctuations in price. Expect a roller-coaster ride for the next few
decades...
-- Talin
Several points need making here.
First, the notion of adding nutrients to the ocean to stimulate plankton
blooms didn't originate with Greg Bear -- I expect he got it from me, and
I was first told of the notion by Russell Seitz twenty years ag and you
can find mentions of it here -- but that's not what's important. What is
important is that it has only barely been tried. A great deal of
experimentation needs to be done with biological ways to reduce ocean
acidity. We also ought to know a lot more than we do about the effects. We
can begin by studying what happened in the past with higher CO2
atmospheric levels. I agree that "crashing the ocean ecosystem" would be a
major disaster, but perhaps it is not yet time to panic; surely we can at
least look at relevant technologies to stave that off. I am told that CO2
levels are higher than they have been for 800,000 years (according to
Antarctic ice samples); that's a long time, but I will note that we
survived it. That's not mean to be a cavalier dismissal, but I would like
to know just what did happen the last time CO2 levels went high. What
caused it (surely not industry) and what happened to the various flora and
fauna?
In other words, put some real funding into
finding things out, and do it quickly while we can afford it, because once
we start de-industrializing we may not be able to afford the new science
and we almost certainly won't be able to afford the new technologies to
remedy the situation.
Now while I do not doubt that Gore
and many of his adherents know little about error bars, one cannot say
that of Freeman Dyson.
And once more I point out: China
and India are not going to close down their coal fired plants.
If we must reduce CO2 levels -- and that may well
be the case -- then the only way we are going to do that is with some new
technologies, probably biological. Spending money on finding new ways
reduce atmospheric CO2 and/or reduce ocean acidity is more likely to have
a real effect than blowing up the western economies with expensive green
technologies.
We can survive, and with style. We won't do it by
going back to the gloom and doom days of small is beautiful and "Why we
have to get poor quick!" (Headline of an article in the World Future
Society journal).
As to a roller coaster ride, we can hope that at
some point it goes back up. I assure you that we won't get there with
windmills. I wish we could.
==
Climate Models
Reading the realclimate link for FAQ on Climate Models
was a little bewildering. It gave very little information on the basic
question: So how well do they work? See his section on Tuning. We all know
that you can fit a curve to any set of data points there is, as long as
you’re allowed to tune enough variables.
But Richard Feynman’s rule applies: The value of a
theory is that, in addition to fitting the data you already have, it
successfully predicts _at least one thing you didn’t know before_.
I wouldn’t have been surprised if, after all that
effort, the models could at least do a reasonable job for the last few
years. If I understand rightly, they don’t.
Now Hansen claimed (in response to the Dyson
interview?) that the main thrust of the theory is based on observation, not
on models. I’m sure he has a lot more experience than I, but that makes no
sense at all. He’d better have a model on some level or he dasn’t make any
predictions. Is he claiming that “CO2 up --> temperature up” is so
well-established that nothing else makes much difference?
I saw that Dyson said in his interview that a lot of
people around him feel the same way he does, but none of them is a climate
specialist. I wonder if he means that a lot of _physicists_ around him are
not sure that these climate specialists know what they’re doing.
Michoel Reach
I knew Feynman. He died before the
global warming debates became serious, and I don't recall ever discussing
the subject with him. We could use his cool headed analytical ability.
==
> ... I have never been told just what
> measures are taken to determine the temperature of the Earth.
I came across this one last year. They have a
satellite which looks down on the earth and graphs temperature. Actually,
they have two. When the readings started to diverge, guess which data set
they went with? :->
Look for the treatment of data for satellites NOAA-15
and NOAA-16 in the time around the last few months of 2006.
Andy Valencia
My question is, how well does the new measurement
-- satellite observation -- correlate with the old method which was an
average of ground, sea, and air temperatures which we use to establish
global temperature before we had satellites? I presume we do continue with
the old methods also?
Is it the case that the satellite temperature is
now the official temperature of the Earth?
==
Jerry,
Will 2009 be the Year Without a Summer? !!!!!!!!!!
nods: Drudge
http://www.accuweather.com/
news-story.asp?partner=netweather
&traveler=0&zipChg=1&article=9
HAVE THUNDERSTORMS BEEN MORE ELECTRIFIED THIS YEAR?
So far, 2009 has been a deadly year for lightning
strikes. <snip> According to Long Range Expert Joe Bastardi, areas from the
northern Plains into the Northeast will have a "year without a summer." The
jet stream, which is suppressed abnormally south this spring, is also
suppressing the number of thunderstorms that can form. The ones that do form
in areas of the Ohio Valley and West are forming in places with very cold
temperatures, which can lead to more electrified thunderstorms than normal
this year. <snip>
We watch and wait. My "model: says temperatures
have been rising for 200 years, so they'll keep on rising, but at some
point they'll fall again and we'll have another ice age or at least a
little ice age. Alas, I don't know when.
==
Jerry, you wrote: " Indeed, we were not so
interested in simulating reality as in making up models that worked and
were useful, and the simpler the model the better in the sense that it is
easier to solve a simpler model."
It may tickle you to know that, in modern terms, this
is what Billy Ockham actually intended by his famous razor*. He never said
that the simpler explanation was more likely true; he said multiplying
entities [terms in the model] was more likely to confuse us. The modern
phrase "KISS: Keep It Sweet and Simple" sums it up.
(*) The razor was used to scrape parchment clean --
(an "eraser") -- and he was "scraping off" unnecessary terms. The Principle
of Parsimony did not actually originate with him. Aquinas mentions it a
century earlier.
Mike
==
Earth's temperature
Hello Jerry,
In Monday's 'Mail' you said the following: "I have never been told just what
measures are taken to determine the temperature of the Earth."
Actually, that is only a small part of what we have not been told about
Global Warming and Climate Change.
We HAVE been told that the earth is warming, that the warming is almost
certainly caused by human activity of various sorts, but primarily due to
our emission of CO2, and that this warming represents an existential threat
to 'the planet'. We have also been told that we must IMMEDIATELY take
whatever measures necessary (including prosecuting people who question any
of the above for 'crimes against humanity') to reduce or cease our
production of CO2 and/or remove it from the atmosphere and sequester it.
Permanently.
We have NOT been told:
The ideal temperature of the earth.
Who determined it.
What factors went into making the decision.
What percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere would establish the ideal
temperature.
How plant life will react when atmospheric CO2 is reduced below current
levels (Presumably necessary, otherwise why the ongoing efforts to remove
CO2 from the atmosphere?).
That there is essentially NO actual, empirical data to support any of the
above.
A whole host of other information that one would think critical in making
such momentous decisions.
In fact, when you get right down to it all we HAVE been told is:
The earth is warming.
It is our fault.
Every side effect of warming is bad.
We have to establish governmental control over EVERY ASPECT of human
activity to avoid disaster.
It has to be done IMMEDIATELY.
Further discussion is not warranted and will not be tolerated.
Hmmm.... Now that I mention it, the last three items
represent the liberal solution to ALL societal problems. Purely coincidence,
I'm sure.
Bob Ludwick
Well, I would not put it that way. It is a matter
of concern. But the very importance of the discussion means that it should
be moved from partisan gotchas to the realm of serious scientific study --
and that means due attention to counter theories and particularly due
attention to evidence.
I understand the temptation to put it into the
partisan debate category and be done with it; heaven knows that many of
the Global Warming Disaster people act that way, and ruthlessly suppress
opposition; and many of them are doing very well from doing that.
But someone has to stand up for rational debate.
I think it's my turn.
==============
Jerry,
This has been one of "those" nights, but I hope this
nugget produced instead of sleep is worthwhile:
Woosley's trivial corollary to Pournelle's Iron Law of
Bureaucracy: One significant advantage of capitalism is that free enterprise
systems ruthlessly eliminate structure-dominated organizations through the
competitive process of creative destruction, maximizing both individual and
societal productivity. Naturally, structure-dominated organizations thus
seek non-capitalistic preferences to sustain themselves against such
competition.
Addendum: All other things being equal, ruthlessness
dominates creative destruction.
Jim
Not trivial. Note that wars change
things a lot too. The military is not always a bureaucracy.
Of course a definition of bureaucracy is that
there is generally no objective measure of output, and if there is, the
efficiency of output does not affect the careers of the bureaucrats. RAND
Corporation did a good series of papers on bureaucracy in the 1960's.
==========
Plagiarism?
This photo makes me think maybe someone lifted
something from The Burning City, without attribution:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/
3553/3610719564_491b3f63c5_o.jpg
Best wishes,
Stephen M. St. Onge
==============w
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