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Comments 45801 to 45850:
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Mark Bahner at 15:43 PM on 3 May 2013Global Warming: Not Reversible, But Stoppable
Oops, that should have been: 1) Cutting the cost in half to $500/TONNE of CO2,
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Mark Bahner at 15:40 PM on 3 May 2013Global Warming: Not Reversible, But Stoppable
[DB] To retain any credibility, those points needing responding to can be found here.
I have already addressed this issue. Even if the amount required was double the 7.8 Gt CO2 per ppm could be addressed either by:
1) Cutting the cost in half to $500/Gt of CO2,
2) Increasing the GDP by a factor of two,
3) Running twice as long,
So even if the value is 138% more, that does not fundamentally change the issue. Solomon and Matthews are wrong, because they ignore the possiblity of human beings reducing the atmospheric CO2 concentration by capture and sequestering atmospheric CO2.
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Chemware at 15:38 PM on 3 May 2013Participate in a survey measuring consensus in climate research
I just did the survey, rated them 8 neutral, 2 implicitly endorse.
BUT
The response I got at the end was:
Survey Results Received
Your survey results have been successfully saved. Thank you for your participation. If you have indicated interest in receiving the results of this survey, you will be emailed the results as soon as they are available.
Of the 10 papers that you rated, your average rating was 3.8 (1 being endorsement of AGW, 7 being rejection of AGW and 4 being no position). The average rating of the 10 papers by the authors of the papers was 2.7.
WTF ???Moderator Response:chemware, see Kevn C's comment below. The 1/4/7 numbers refer to how the different ratings are given a numeric score, not what the actual ratings were that you assigned to your papers. The wording of the response was certainly unclear and John Cook has reworded the response to make the meaning clearer.
Thanks for taking part in the study and letting us know about this possible source of confusion. [GT]
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Mark Bahner at 13:13 PM on 3 May 2013Global Warming: Not Reversible, But Stoppable
Mark, perhaps you should try addressing the points made against your argument by Tom in particular.
I'd be happy to on my blog. You or he could point me to the particular comments y'all would like addressed.
Moderator Response:[DB] To retain any credibility, those points needing responding to can be found here.
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scaddenp at 12:53 PM on 3 May 2013Global Warming: Not Reversible, But Stoppable
Mark, perhaps you should try addressing the points made against your argument by Tom in particular.
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Warren Hindmarsh at 12:50 PM on 3 May 2013Roy Spencer's Catholic Online Climate Myths
#13DIkran to correct your rather weird analogy further, if you are a skydiver freefallling from 10,000 ft you first of all accelerate until you reach a terminal speed ie stop accelerating due to gravity but, what would you think if you actually measured that you had not only stopped accelerating but actually stopped falling and then even maybe started to drift away from the earth. Wouldn't you think other factors were in play other than gravity????
your snap shot of the falling sky diver does not show what factors will act on him.
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Sceptical Wombat at 12:15 PM on 3 May 2013Participate in a survey measuring consensus in climate research
Oriolus Traillii @5
The reason for the low endorsement percentage seems to be that most of my papers answered a narrow question and thus substantiated only one step in the AGW hypothesis without supporting the others. This --to my mind-- does not constitute an endorsement).
If you were asked whether a tradesman had contributed to the building of an office block would you require that he had worked on the foundations, the scafolding, the plumbing, the electrical work, the interior fitout etc?Obviously only review papers are going to cover all the steps of proving dangerous anthropogenic warming - any original research is only going to deal with one aspect.
To put it another way would you see a paper comming up with a large negative estimate of the cloud feedback as contradicting Global Warming if it did not at the same time deal with all the other feedbacks and show that the total was not significant? -
Mark Bahner at 12:07 PM on 3 May 2013Global Warming: Not Reversible, But Stoppable
(moderation kvetching snipped). Such a environment exists at my blog. I'd be especially happy to discuss this matter with Rob Honeycutt, KR, Andy Skuce, Jason B., and others.
This is my blog post regarding the "irreversibility" (or lack thereof) of global warming.
In particular, it addresses Jason B's commment that, "Not ony that, but the total number of units that need sequestration will of course also increase under BAU..."
I'd also be interested in discussing discount rate with Andy Skuce, who might be able to fill in some of the estimates that Jason Pontin (at Technology Review magazine never did. See: "What is the morality of the less-well-off sacrificing for the better-off?
Moderator Response:[DB] Note that Moderation Complaints are always off-topic.
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Synapsid at 11:39 AM on 3 May 2013Leave It in the Ground, Climate Activists Demand
Correction:
U232 produces decay products which are intense gamma emitters.
Synapsid
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chriskoz at 11:25 AM on 3 May 2013Participate in a survey measuring consensus in climate research
My issue about this survey is similar to what Oriolus Traillii@5 has said.
It is that most papers focus on very narrow aspect of GW, and often the short abstracts don't specify anything that endorses AGW, therefore they must be classified as "Neutral". I think lots of those "Neutral" papers would be reclassified as endorsements if first few paragraphs of the body were reveiled (where the authors usually describe the context).
As this survey allows to read the abstracts only (which provides not enough information about authors' stance), therefore this survey is, as Matt Fitzpatrick said: "about the perception of consensus" rather than the consensus itself. Most papers will be classified as "Neutral", while most of the rest will be the participants' guesses and opinions.
In my case, it was 5 Neutrals, 4 implicits endorsements (my best guess) and only 1 explicit endorcement stated in the abstract. Interestingly, my sample included exactly the same "Agaves" ("Neutral") paper that Oriolus Traillii mentioned @5, how probable is it? John, please make sure that the survey selects truly random selection for all participants (i.e. check your random generator).
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Tom Curtis at 11:23 AM on 3 May 2013Global Warming: Not Reversible, But Stoppable
Andy Skuce @72, the most practical way to bury "CO2" is to allow some life form or another to convert it into a cellulose, proteins or lipids; and bury those. Doing so significantly increases the proportion of Carbon by mass in the product buried, and more significantly, turns it into a solid which escapes burial far less easilly than pressurized gases. Although research is still being conducted into it, I believe the direct sequestration of CO2 is a dead end.
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Synapsid at 11:22 AM on 3 May 2013Leave It in the Ground, Climate Activists Demand
Climate Change Extremist:
In the 12 December, 2012 issue of Nature an article by four British nuclear engineers describes the proliferation hazard of thorium reactors.
Neutron bombardment of Th232 starts decay chains that produce U233, which is fissile and can be used in reactors and for weapons, and U232 which is an emitter of intense gamma radiation. In the 1950s the US looked into U233 for a weapon and found that gamma radiation from U232, an impurity which is difficult to separate from U233, triggered premature ignition and reduced yield, so U233 was not followed out in weapons research. The article mentioned above describes the chemical removal (two separate schemes are laid out) of the precursor to U233, Pa233, which has a half life of about 27 days, from the already-formed U232. The separated Pa233 can be allowed to decay into very pure U233, which could be used in a properly-working bomb.
A power reactor or research reactor can be used to irradiate the Th232. Yes, thorium reactors represent a proliferation hazard, though they are widely declared not to.
Synapsid
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Andy Skuce at 11:08 AM on 3 May 2013Global Warming: Not Reversible, But Stoppable
I should add that if we try to rebury, in the form of carbon dioxide, the carbon that we have exhumed since the Industrial Revolution, the mass that we have to inter is about three times the mass that we have dug up and burned; because we have to bury two oxygen atoms along with every carbon atom. The hydrogen from fossil fuels is mostly already safely buried at sea.
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Matt Fitzpatrick at 10:35 AM on 3 May 2013Participate in a survey measuring consensus in climate research
Hmm, this could be of sociological interest as well. The results should reveal at least as much about the perception of consensus as about the existence of consensus.
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Tom Curtis at 09:37 AM on 3 May 2013Global Warming: Not Reversible, But Stoppable
Mark Bahner @70:
"In fact, the vast majority of CO2 that is absorbed is not absorbed as gaseous CO2 into the ocean."
Most CO2 dissolved into the ocean is converted into other forms, as described in Doug Mackie's Reservoir Dogs article -part 5 of the OA is not OK series (see side bar) which I recommend to everyone. In fact Mackie claims that less than 1% of CO2 absorbed in the ocean is not converted to carbonate or bicarbonate. That is, however, irrelevant for all forms of Dissolved Inorganic Carbon (DIC) maintain equilibrium with each other. Therefore, if dissolved CO2 outgasses, the reservoir of dissolved CO2 is replenished by drawing down the other forms of DIC. Consequently the full amount of excess CO2 initially dissolved into the ocean can be outgassed. As such, Bahner's bringing it up is a complete red herring.
Even the excess carbon absorbed by the biosphere, to the extent that it is due to the CO2 fertilization effect, will be returned to the atmosphere if CO2 is returning to former levels. That means that for all intents and purposes, if we wish to return CO2 concentrations to preindustrial levels, we need to remove as much CO2 as we have emitted (give or take a small percentage). In the more likely event that we wish to only remove some of the excess CO2, natural reservoirs can be expected to retain some substantial fraction of the excess carbon, but we will need to draw down far more CO2 than the excess resident in the atmosphere.
Finally, the figure of 57% of CO2 emissions retained in the atmosphere commonly used, and reflected in Sabine and Feely's figures (55.6%) only account for industrial emissions. When emissions due to deforestation and land use change are included, only 42% of total emissions are retained in the atmosphere on average. That probably means Bahner's estimate was still of by 100%, and possibly more depending on the extent of the draw down as the airbourne fraction is 42% of total emissions, not 50%. In the scenario of a rapid draw down of CO2 concentrations to pre-industrial levels, he is of by 138%
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Michael Hauber at 07:13 AM on 3 May 2013Roy Spencer's Catholic Online Climate Myths
Most climate researchers simply assume recent warming is manmade, but human causation is only one possible explanation out of several
Many 'skeptics' seem to argue from an unwritten assumption that warming happened, climate scientists saw it, asked 'what caused this warming', discovered Co2 as a good candidate and the AGW theory was born. From this assumption it is not as unreasonable to point out that there are still things about solar and natural variability such as AMO that we don't understand, and perhaps these are viable alternative explanations for the warming we have seen.
However the reality was that AGW was predicted before the modern warming period even started, with multiple reports commissioned by the government around 1980 to investigateg climate change all finding Co2 likely to cause significant warming in the future. -
jdixon1980 at 06:28 AM on 3 May 2013Participate in a survey measuring consensus in climate research
I meant to say, "If on the other hand [the abstract indicates that] the article simply summarizes ~," since obviously the survey didn't involve reading the whole article.
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jdixon1980 at 06:25 AM on 3 May 2013Participate in a survey measuring consensus in climate research
OPatrick @2: Disclaimer - I am a patent attorney, not a climate scientist, but since you are asking for other readers' opinions I am chiming in.
For situation 1), did the abstract actually state that the model prediction accounts for anthropogenic greenhouse warming trend, or are you just assuming that because practically all models do?
So the abstract mentions a prediction of that model without defining a confidence interval within which the prediction falls? I'm curious, do you remember why the model prediction was mentioned? If the abstract indicated that the model prediction is used in the article as a basis for recommending a particular action (mitigation or adaptation) or drawing some further conclusion, I would say it's at least an implicit endorsement. But I doubt you would be wavering if it were that straightforward.
If on the other hand the article simply summarizes what the model predicts, and/or the assumptions on which the model is based, without adopting those assumptions, then probably I would have to say it is neutral.
For situation 2), it sounds like what you are describing literally fits the "endorsement without quantification" category, and that's how I think I would have classified it.
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jdixon1980 at 04:35 AM on 3 May 2013Participate in a survey measuring consensus in climate research
I got 6 neutrals, 3 explicitly endorse without quantifying, 1 implicitly endorse. From one of the explicitly endorsing w/o quantifying abstracts, it seemed highly likely that the article itself would have explicitly stated that human emissions account for more than half of the warming, since I believe the abstract stated that the article was going to quantify the projected impacts of a mitigation scheme that involved reduction of GHG emissions. But rules are rules, and I could only assess the abstract based on its text.
In light of which, it might be interesting to add a category of "explicitly endorses and suggests mitigation." I suppose one objection to that approach could be that there would be no counterpart category for the "rejects" side, which could lead to a topheavy categorization scheme with more "accepts" than "rejects" categories. To the extent that suggesting mitigation has a denier counterpart in the extreme view that we need to emit *more* GHG's, people who hold that view most likely explicitly accept (or at least do not reject) AGW, but assert that GW is a good thing - so that would also be categorized as an "accepts" position.
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Dikran Marsupial at 04:13 AM on 3 May 2013Roy Spencer's Catholic Online Climate Myths
Ray yes Spencer and Monckton are using pedantry to allow them to say something that is technically true (we can only look at observed temperatures in the rear view mirror) to make a claim that isn't true "we don't know whether it is warming or cooling". This is part of Monckton's trick of counting the true statements in Spencers interview, just because they are pedantically true, doesn't mean they actually support the argument presented (counting irrelevant statements such as Dr Spencers qualifications is another example of inflating the count).
Sadly the climate debate is full of this kind of rhetorical device, and is generally an indication that the science doesn't actually support the argument - if it did, they would stick to the science. Likewise Monckton's personalisation of the issue.
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silence at 03:24 AM on 3 May 2013Participate in a survey measuring consensus in climate research
In my case, a lot of the neutrals were paleoclimate papers, which I wouldn't expect to say anything at all about what is happening now.
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Composer99 at 03:15 AM on 3 May 2013Participate in a survey measuring consensus in climate research
Not just Skeptical Science readers - I'm emailing an invitation to 58 of the most highly trafficked climate blogs (half of them skeptic), asking them to post a link to the survey.
Based on the brouhaha over Lewandowsky's paper, I wonder how many of the self-styled skeptic bloggers will eventually claim they received no such email? Not to say they're being dishonest: I get dozens, sometimes over 100 emails a day every weekday - it's ridiculously easy to overlook (and then forget about) one or two, especially if you don't do something about it straight away. It wouldn't surprise me if that (a) is what happened with the solicitation to climate "skeptics" to participate in the Lewandowsky et al (2012) survey and (b) could very well happen with this invitation.
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Composer99 at 03:08 AM on 3 May 2013Roy Spencer's Catholic Online Climate Myths
Reading & addressing anything Monckton writes is a waste of time. He's been shown to be consistently wrong so often on so many aspects of climate science that at this point if he claimed that the Sun rises in the east each morning, I would video-record dawn each day for a week to verify before agreeing with him.
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Mark Bahner at 02:48 AM on 3 May 2013Global Warming: Not Reversible, But Stoppable
I have made one comment and you have conceded that your original estimate is off by at least 100%.
That is completely false. I made no such concession. I merely stated:
Regarding outgassing...approximately 50% of emissions have remained in the atmosphere for the last 3-5 decades. So even if all the CO2 that was previously absorbed gets re-emitted, the amount needing to be removed would simply double.
This in no way concedes that such a situation is even possible. In fact, the vast majority of CO2 that is absorbed is not absorbed as gaseous CO2 into the ocean. Sabine and Feely, 2007 provide the following best estimates for carbon emissions and sinks for the 1980-1999 period:
Emisions (fossil fuel and cement) = 117 PgC
Atmospheric Increase = 65 PgC (note that this is 56 percent, not 50 percent)
Ocean Inventory = -37 PgC
Net terrestrial = -15 PgC.
And even of the 37 PgC absorbed by the ocean, not all of it is absorbed CO2 gas. (As far as I know, much less than half of it is absorbed CO2 gas.)
Since you know your original proposal is off by at least 100%,
...once again, that is completely false.
"...why should I consider it until you include all the other costs you previously have not mentioned?"
What other costs do you think I have "not previously mentioned"? Also, why do you think I should be advising you on what you should consider? Do you have some power to either beneficially or negatively affect me of which I'm not aware?
Moderator Response:[JH] Please loose the snarky tone.
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dana1981 at 02:42 AM on 3 May 2013Roy Spencer's Catholic Online Climate Myths
Not much to say in response to Monckton's content. Most of it is just plain wrong and wholly unsupported with any evidence whatsoever. It's also mostly based on equating surface air warming with global warming, even though only about 2% of global warming goes into heating the atmosphere. Overall, just a waste of time to read that tripe.
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Tom Dayton at 02:31 AM on 3 May 2013Roy Spencer's Catholic Online Climate Myths
Jim, Spencer would disagree even with that. Roy Spencer is driving a Corvette. On flat land. Pedal to the metal. Speedometer is racing up steadily, 30, 31, 32, ..... When it hits 80, his passenger freaks out, "Take your foot off the accelerator!" Roy calmy replies "We don't know if we are accelerating right now! We were a second ago.... And a second ago.... But maybe we are decelerating at this moment. God would not have given me this Corvette if he had designed it to allow me to kill us in it."
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dana1981 at 02:27 AM on 3 May 2013Roy Spencer's Catholic Online Climate Myths
It's hard to even get past the title of that WUWT post. The words "factual" and "Monckton" do not belong in the same sentence. Once I got past the headline, I was barraged by ad hominems. Very professional.
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Oriolus Traillii at 01:46 AM on 3 May 2013Participate in a survey measuring consensus in climate research
OK, I get 8 neutrals and 2 endorsements (one cites and thus implicitly endorses the 2001 IPCC report, one says that global warming is among the dominant impacts of waste water treatment). While ten abstracts don't tell you that much about the consensus yet, the low endorsement percentage took me by surprise.
The reason for the low endorsement percentage seems to be that most of my papers answered a narrow question and thus substantiated only one step in the AGW hypothesis without supporting the others. This --to my mind-- does not constitute an endorsement).
Step 1 and 2. Humans have raised the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases and it will stay at an elevated level for a long time (the survey implies we accept this --which I think I do, but only a posteriori, having looked at numerous scientific sources)
Step 3. Following lab experiments we expected this to lead to a radiation imbalance, which we observe via sattelites and on the Earth's surface.
Step 4. This leads to warmer average temps.
Step 5. Feedbacks are expected to amplify this.
(Step 6. Warming has overwhelming negative impacts)
I also got a borderline case: "Agaves can benefit from the increases in temperature and atmospheric CO2 levels accompanying global climate change". I call this neutral, because correlation isn't causality --but only just.
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Jim Eager at 01:07 AM on 3 May 2013Roy Spencer's Catholic Online Climate Myths
To make Dikran Marsupial's alalogy to free fall and gravity a bit more explicit, while it is true that we can not say with certainty whether or not warming continues over a short enough time span, we can tell with certainty at any point in time whether or not Earth's energy flux is out of balance, which means we can say with certainty that therefore there must be continued warming.
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cRR Kampen at 00:48 AM on 3 May 2013Participate in a survey measuring consensus in climate research
Done. My selection got one explicit reject (no quantification). Looked like a contrarian try. One neutral, rest more or less endorsing (A)GW.
I wonder whether the magic number, 97(%), will be established again.
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Ray at 23:54 PM on 2 May 2013Roy Spencer's Catholic Online Climate Myths
cRR Kampen Having had a look I agree, the scoring chart is fatuous. I didn't see your name in the comments. Oh and I am familiar with the works of EAB. Dikran Marsupial I think Monckton is being pedantic in that it is true no one can say that the earth is warming as knowledge of global temperature is from measurements that are always in the past, obviously they can't be in the future and the present is an ephemeral and instantaneously (well to all intents and purposes) obsolete entity
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macoles at 23:33 PM on 2 May 2013Participate in a survey measuring consensus in climate research
My sample had 6 endorsements, 4 neutrals, and unsurprisingly 0 rejections.
My guess is that those participating from "sceptic" websites will be casting doubt on just how randomly selected these papers really are. Another conspiracy for Prof Lewandowsky perhaps?
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Sceptical Wombat at 23:31 PM on 2 May 2013Roy Spencer's Catholic Online Climate Myths
Alexandre @8
You are being a little unfair in saying that no sceptic ever contradicts another. Followers of the phony second law of thermodynamics and other deniers of any impact of CO2 on temperature do indeed get criticised by Spencer among others.
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OPatrick at 23:19 PM on 2 May 2013Participate in a survey measuring consensus in climate research
Two questions I had about how to answer:
1) If the abstract talks only about model predictions without stating how confident we can be about these modelled results should this be counted as explicit endorsement (etc.)?
2) If the abstract is about only one, probably relatively small, anthropogenic contribution without any reference to the reality or magnitude of other anthropogeic factors should this be taken as endorsement?
I am aware that my judgements on this may be part of what you are trying to measure, but I would be interested to know how you and other readers made judgments in cases like these.
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cRR Kampen at 23:13 PM on 2 May 2013Roy Spencer's Catholic Online Climate Myths
#11 Ray, the layman can easily see through Monckton's nonsens with a look at his scoring chart. Sóóó 'scientific', no? I don't think my post at WUWT will make it (they are of the free speech collective, read Orwell for the meaning of that). I found comparison with Iraqi democracy during Saddam when his election results were typically like 99.1% of the votes.
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Russell8621 at 23:05 PM on 2 May 2013Roy Spencer's Catholic Online Climate Myths
As Monckton's first job was as a Catholic journalist, his latest venue is unsurprising. One shudders to think what claptrap he has laid on his fellow Knights of Malta, Pat Buchanan included.
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition to take action at this late date, but Christopher's making common cause with heretics so flagrant as the Cornwall Alliance Calvinists should earn the censure of his Grand Master- if he can get a word in edgewise.
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ajki at 21:39 PM on 2 May 2013Participate in a survey measuring consensus in climate research
Participation is cool(TM) ;-)
Thanks for the chance.
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Dikran Marsupial at 21:29 PM on 2 May 2013Roy Spencer's Catholic Online Climate Myths
The comment "No one knows whether it is currently warming, because we only see warming "in the rearview mirror"...after it has occurred." is a bit like saying "we cant tell whether a skydiver is currently falling because we only see his falling "in the rearview mirror"... after it ocurred". Of course we can't tell whether it is warming or cooling solely from observations over too short a timeframe, but that doesn't mean we don't know whether it actually is warming or cooling. If someone shows you a photograph of a skydiver in mid air, most of us would be happy with the idea that he is falling, because we are aware of something called "gravity". Similarly there is a good deal we do know about the physics of climate which suggests there is good reason to expect the climate to be warming, even though the observations do not unequvocally show this if you look at too short a period.
Essentially this is just word games, with no scientific or statistical justification.
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michael sweet at 20:25 PM on 2 May 2013Global Warming: Not Reversible, But Stoppable
Mark Banner,
I have made one comment and you have conceded that your original estimate is off by at least 100%. You are clearly aware of this issue since you conceded the point and replied immediately. Tom and others have made numerous other points that show you are hopelessly optomistic. Since you know your original proposal is off by at least 100%, why should I consider it until you include all the other costs you previously have not mentioned?
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JasonB at 20:08 PM on 2 May 2013Roy Spencer's Catholic Online Climate Myths
Ray @ 11,
It's a bit hard to get past the rather childish namecalling, but I'd start by noting that Monckton's first obvious and unequivocal error appears in only the second paragraph:
The satellites reveal the inconvenient truth that there has been no global warming for approaching two decades.
How on earth does he work that out? I thought he might have been cherry picking with his "approaching two decades" qualifier, since the satellite record itself is nearly 25 years long, but no — I can't get "no global warming" from UAH using any start date anywhere near two decades ago. Perhaps you'll have better luck, using either http://www.skepticalscience.com/trend.php or http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1983/plot/uah/from:1983/trend.
Of course, I was being charitable there, because his first error appears in the very first paragraph:
With John Christy he presents the monthly real-world data from the microwave sounding unit satellites that provide the least inaccurate global temperature record we have.
But I suppose that one could be considered equivocal, since one might think that after all these corrections it must be getting pretty accurate by now:
Trying to decode the flowery Monckton-speak, his first "point" appears to be that while the planet has been warming, and the science that Monckton agrees with says that adding more CO2 will cause more warming, Spencer is right to say that nobody knows if it is currently warming — i.e. at this very instant — because in the short term natural variation can temporarily mask the underlying warming.
To which I'd reply to Monckton: If you see something lying on the ground that looks like a dog turd, feels like a dog turd, and smells like a dog turd, by all means go ahead and taste it, because who knows, right? You might get lucky.
In any case, defending Spencer's claim on the basis that it's possible that right at this very moment the underlying warming is possibly being masked in the surface temperature record (since he talks about the "17 year pause", which of course doesn't exist when the oceans are taken into account) by natural variability and we won't know that until sometime down the track is damning Spencer by faint praise indeed. "Charitable" doesn't begin to do it justice.
Anyway, I gave up reading at that point; life's too short.
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JasonB at 19:34 PM on 2 May 2013Global Warming: Not Reversible, But Stoppable
Tom Curtis @ 67:
Hopefully if the AI were intelligent enough to employ a concept of justice, it would recognize that such an action would be punishing the future genearations for their forebears crime of not giving sufficient consideration to the well being of future generations, which would be ironic, but not just.
It's an interesting philosophical question: exterminating humanity now as punishment for the crime of burdening future generations would, of course, prevent those future generations from ever existing, but does never existing mean they are being punished? The AI might take the view that the world has been screwed up so badly that those future generations would wish they'd never been born and that being born would actually be punishment. It might also take the view that, by definition, you can't punish someone who will never exist.
I don't know — given the differences of opinion we find even among our own species, I find it very difficult to imagine what a super-intelligent AI might find "moral". I do know that I wouldn't like to bet my future on it agreeing with me.
(As an aside, I'm not sure a concept of justice is something that has an intelligence threshold ("intelligent enough to employ a concept of justice"); that's why I talked about "morals" instead. I suspect the two concepts are orthogonal. Even if it were moral, there's a real risk that it could be so far advanced relative to us (due to the lack of inherent intelligence limits that we face) that it would care as much about us as we care about ants, or even the bacteria on our hands that we routinely wipe out with anti-bacterial soap, and simply not recognise that morals ought to apply.)
Further, given that carbon sequestration technologies are still novel, it is reasonable to assume that per unit costs will come down with time.
That's possible if better technologies can be found. But the reverse is also easily possible, as you note below. Think about CCS, for example — it makes sense that we'd start sequestering in the sites that would cost us the least to use. But as those sites became full, we'd need to start searching further afield, and using sites that were previously rejected because they weren't as cheap. How much of the cost of CCS is technology-related and how much is unavoidable due to the laws of physics?
The same logic would apply with reforestation, not only because we'd start with the cheapest land and gradually work our way up to the highly valuable land that is being used for other things, like growing food, but also because worsening drought, etc., might make it more and more difficult to achieve.
I think many options also use a fair bit of energy, and there's a real risk that energy will become increasingly expensive in real terms as the free ride we've all been one comes to an end.
Of course, it is also reasonable to assume an increasing marginal cost for each additional tonne sequestered (unless we decide we are going to simply ignore economics). Given that, further delay pushes up the mean per unit cost of sequestration. Bahner gives us no reason to think that improvements in technology will push down costs faster than diminishing efficiency with amount sequestered will push them up.
Not ony that, but the total number of units that need sequestration will of course also increase under BAU, so increasing the cost per unit and increasing the number of units doesn't sound like a recipe for cheapness to me.
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Ray at 19:24 PM on 2 May 2013Roy Spencer's Catholic Online Climate Myths
It would be good if Dana would address and refute the criticisms by Christopher Monckton (referred to in comment 10 from Carlton Benson III) as these portray a very different picture of Dr Spencer and his speech from that given here. Such contrasting views about the same person and the same speech are very confusing to the layman
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Carlton Benson III at 17:28 PM on 2 May 2013Roy Spencer's Catholic Online Climate Myths
Comments also appeared here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/01/nuccitelli-gets-a-bruising-by-the-factual-hand-of-monckton/
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Tom Curtis at 16:41 PM on 2 May 2013Global Warming: Not Reversible, But Stoppable
JasonB @65, excellent points about AI. I do, however, take exception to the tongue in cheek (?) claim that, "Heck, if it were moral, it might decide that would be just punishment for our attempt to push the problem onto future generations to solve." Hopefully if the AI were intelligent enough to employ a concept of justice, it would recognize that such an action would be punishing the future genearations for their forebears crime of not giving sufficient consideration to the well being of future generations, which would be ironic, but not just.
Further, given that carbon sequestration technologies are still novel, it is reasonable to assume that per unit costs will come down with time. Of course, it is also reasonable to assume an increasing marginal cost for each additional tonne sequestered (unless we decide we are going to simply ignore economics). Given that, further delay pushes up the mean per unit cost of sequestration. Bahner gives us no reason to think that improvements in technology will push down costs faster than diminishing efficiency with amount sequestered will push them up.
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JasonB at 14:44 PM on 2 May 2013Global Warming: Not Reversible, But Stoppable
Deus ex Machine = Deus ex Machina. Autocorrect can be a pain sometimes. :-)
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JasonB at 14:41 PM on 2 May 2013Global Warming: Not Reversible, But Stoppable
No, it's extremely pessimistic, because:
1) It relies on IPCC economic growth projections, which will be shown within the next 1-2 decades to be far, far too low. They neglect the economic effects of artificial intelligence, which will be spectacular. Probably the best work in this area has been done by Robin Hanson. He uses a standard neoclassical (Solow-Swan) growth model to estimate annual ecomomic growth that could approach 45% per year (see page 6) by 2025. Needless to say, the IPCC does not have anything close to that.
Just because an economist using a simplistic model can "estimate" ridiculous figures does not mean that the IPCC "will" be shown to be far, far too low because they neglect effects that "will" be spectacular.
Seriously, suggesting that AI will save the day is nothing more than a Deus ex Machine that deserves no more respect than Roy Spencer's belief that (literally) God will save the day.
There are two serious problems with this faith in AI:
1. Even if computing power increased enough to perform the necessary computation in realtime to simulate a human-level intelligence, we still have no idea how to write software that would harness that computer power to do so. A computer without software is just an expensive paperweight.
2. If we did manage to create such an artificial intelligence, there's no reason to believe even in principle that it would be limited to our own levels of intelligence nor that it would be benevolent. (The only computational models inspired by biological brains, i.e. artifician neural nets (ANNs), cannot be programmed — they must be trained, just like a biological brain; and just like a biological brain, you can't guarantee that the product of your training is what you would hope for and not, for example, a homicidal sociopath. You can't program Asimov's Three Laws into the ANN, you'd need to try to teach it moral behaviour and hope for the best.) How do we know that it won't decide that the best course of action is not to go all Terminator on our ass but instead let rising CO2 levels wipe out the competition? (See point 4.4.) Heck, if it were moral, it might decide that would be just punishment for our attempt to push the problem onto future generations to solve. In other words, such an outcome could well be an apocalyptic nightmare scenario just as easily as a get-out-of-jail-free card.
To go from "We really have NFI how to create such an AI" to "It will be developed in the next 20 years and will add x% growth to our GDP" is just ludicrous, especially when your own link warns "Since competitive wages are proportional to per-intelligence production, rapidly declining wages imply rapidly declining per-intelligence production, due to an intelligence population growing much faster than total production. Wages might well fall below human subsistence levels, if machine subsistence levels were lower." Oops.
2) It assumes a cost of $1000 per metric tonne of CO2 removed. Humans have the rest of this century to get costs down, and I'm sure they will be well below that number when it is used.
That seems like a big assumption. How do you know costs to remove CO2 will go down? After all, the inflation-adjusted price of oil has been rising over the longer term (Link), which is not an unsurprising outcome as the resources become more and more difficult to extract, and oil is likely to remain a key source of energy for a while yet. It would be challenging adjusting to the cost pressures of an important energy resource at the same time as having to dedicate an increasing share of our energy resources to bringing down the atmospheric levels of CO2. In addition, changes to the environment brought about by the rising CO2 levels could well increase the cost of methods that would remove it. You appear to be begging the question.
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chriskoz at 13:35 PM on 2 May 2013Leave It in the Ground, Climate Activists Demand
As popular article, this text is riddled with over-simplifications, e.g.:
Since CO2 resides in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, emissions of 50 years ago have the same impact on the climate as those emitted today
Not quite. Emissions of "50 years ago" have the same impact on the climate today, as "those emitted today" will have in 50y (because of lag in surface warming).
On the longer term (several centuries), the cumulative emissions will have the same warming potential, regaredeless when they were emitted, and regaredeless of emission rates, not because "CO2 resides in the atmosphere for hundreds of years", but because fossil-fuel carbon resides in the atmosphere-ocean circulation for several milenia, which is virtually infinite on human timescale. So, our FF burning activity will have impact on climate not for your 50y but for many Ky, possibly preventing the next glaciation cycle.
An interesting is this new concept of “mitigation" potential: "it is harder for the U.S. to reduce carbon emissions because of existing infrastructure than it is for poor countries [...] who haven’t built them yet". Well, if they continue quibbling over such details, while not paying attention to what I just said in the paragraph above, how could they be regarded as reasonable, responsible poeple? How can we expect the agreement and responsible action from their discussions?
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Tom Curtis at 11:32 AM on 2 May 2013Global Warming: Not Reversible, But Stoppable
Bob Loblaw @63, point very well made.
In fact, even with "real" growth rates at those levels, the social and economic disruption would be difficult to distinguish from an episode of hyperinflation. I doubt sustained growth rates greater than 10% per annum without the social disruption caused by the rapid obsolescence of jobs and training that would accompany it rising to the point where it would kill the "growth". Further, such rapid growth would inevitably drive hyperinflation on those goods whose production could not keep up with the rate of economic development - such goods as food, for example.
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Tom Curtis at 11:24 AM on 2 May 2013Nils-Axel Mörner is Wrong About Sea Level Rise
In a prior post, I reffered to a photoshopped picture used by Morner as "evidence" of the lack of sea level rise in the Maldives. I have been unable to find the scientific paper in which it was located, and so must withdraw the claim that it appeared in such. Never-the-less, Morner has frequently used this tree in his presentations about sea level rise, including at WUWT and in an interview for 21st Century Science and Technology (PDF).
The story Morner gives is that he knew of the tree from visits to the Maldives in the 50s, and that its continued survival in the tide zone is evidence that sea levels have not risen. That basic story has some embellishments I will discuss below. Two accompany the story, four different pictures (plus B&W variants) of Morner's Tree are used. There are two grainy "before pictures". One of those has a mark identifying it as a propriety photograh in the lower right corner, strongly suggesting it is a stock photo and has no relationship to Morner's tree (other than species and isolated location). There are also to "after photos", of which one, due to the distinct slope of the intertidal zone where it is located, is also obviously not the same tree as the other. It is not at all clear that either of these dubious photos was actually provided by Morner, although both have circulated among climate "skeptics" as illustrating Morner's tree.
The two "genuine" photos are produced below from WUWT. The "before" tree is in the lower left corner, the "after tree" in the upper right corner.
The first thing to notice is that they are not identifiable as the same tree. Indeed, if the large oval stone in the left foreground of the upper picture is the same stone as that in the right midground of the lower picture, they are not the same tree. The upper right tree is far closer to the stone than is the one in the lower right. Probably the stones are merely similar, rather than the same, in which case the pictures are still not of the same tree.
That, however, is a minor point.
Far more significant is the photoshopping of the upper right picture. This is far clearer in the version of the picture from the 21st Century Science and Technology interview, used as the basis of the picture below.
If you look closely at the picture you can see two edit lines where two pictures have been grafted together. The first in order of editing (marked by the orange arrow) is shown by the sharp cut off of the tree's shadow along with a subtle change of colouration in the stones. I am not expert on imaging fraud, so it is possible that I am wrong about that one, although I doubt it.
The second edit line is definite. Not only are the rock colours on either side of the line clearly distinct, but there is a clear discontinuity between the roots and lower branches of the tree and the leaves and upper branches. The discontinuity even orphans a sawn of branch on the left side of the tree, leaving it apparently floating in mid air.
Not only is the photo fishy, so is the attached story. The tale that the island on which the tree is located, Viligilli (or Villingili) is a prison island falls on the simple fact that no prison is located on the island (see also google map). The notion that the tree was uprooted and then replanted fails on the fact that the roots shown are solidly attached to the earth below, with no disturbance of that Earth. And with that part of the tale, so also goes the theory that Australian science students are both vandalous and fraudulent.
DJ at WUWT quotes a discussion of the story by a purported Maldivian. That anonymous source claims Viligilli was a prison island until 1973, which rescues part of Morner's story. They also go on to say, however:
"The tree is called ironwood (Pemphis acidula). It’s known for its resilience against salt and is usually the dominant species in very high wave energy and salt spray zones. Having traveled to over 600 islands in Maldives I have witnessed a number of such one ‘tree’s’. The tree in question simply has withstood erosion in the last 10 or so years while weaker trees around it fell. Aerial photographs of 1968/1969, 1998 and 2004 shows that the area is relatively stable with occasional erosion. There have been a number of trees in this specific area of the island like the one in question which have remain separated from the island. It is part of the erosion process. The tree most likely was there 50 years ago but it certainly was not alone as it is now. It is these kinds of adhoc observation based conclusions rather than rigorous assessments which make me question the findings of Morner."
(My emphasis)
If we accept the authenticity of this Maldivian (and hence the partial corroboration of Morner's account) then we must also accept their expertise on such isolated trees.
Indeed, on first principles we can see that account to be correct. If sea level is falling, the intertidal zone will be in the process of being colonized by a species (Pemphis acidula) that can grow in that region. We would consequently expect to see few mature trees, but a significant number of immature trees colonizing the zone. A stable sea level would be evidenced by a number of mature trees in thickets, as is common for the species. Only with rising sea levels would sole mature survivors of former thickets remain. So, in as much as Morner's photoshopped picture is evidence of anything, it is evidence of rising sea levels. But it takes the sort of "skepticism" that can't even notice such blatant photoshopping to not notice that.
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Mond from Oz at 10:09 AM on 2 May 2013Forks in the Road: Last Exit to Two Degrees
We need to look very carefully at the contribution of the other GGs, and in this connection I note that T.J.Blasing ( CDIAC, Recent Greenhouse Gas Concentrations, updated Feb 2013) calculates a combined 1.04 Watts per square meter of increased radiative forcing from CH4, N2O and O3, plus a small 0.34 from the others. That totals to 1.384 W/m, surely not an insignificant addition to the increased radiative forcing of 1.85W/m from CO2 alone. Butler (the NOAA Annual Greenhouse Gas Index 2012) calculates a CO2 equivalent of 473 ppmv for 2011. And that, with all the uncertainties, says to me that we have already, very probably, jumped the 2 degree barrier.
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