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The Improving State of the World
The subtitle is Why We're Living Longer, Healthier, More Comfortable Lives on a Cleaner Planet, and it is written by Indur M. Goklany. Imagine an up-to-date version of Aaron Wildavsky and Julian Simon, in easily digestible form. On global warming, it won't make Tim Lambert happy, but it not "denialist" either. A useful resource, recommended. Here is the book's home page. Here are papers by Goklany.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on April 2, 2007 at 01:46 PM in Science | Permalink
Comments
While the macro-trends are good—perhaps indisputably improving—an ant's-eye view of our day-to-day struggles yields a bleaker picture.
Posted by: lipstick on filter at Apr 2, 2007 2:15:16 PM
Let us see how Mr Goklany explains that a mass extinction of wildlife species was NOT in the cards, and is now accelerated by changes in the carbon and nitrogen cycles. Or else how he plans to avert it... In our only indication so far, and in quite the same vein as Wildavsky and Simon, Goklany's 1992 policy analysis on biodiversity is a half-measure that ignored the huge magnitude of the problem. And it came after two decades of ecologists making the same arguments and much much more -- only to be ridiculed by the anti-science market fundamentalist geniuses on the op-ed pages, some of them promoted by Cato. And even now too little, too late! The science has long been available, people. First rate intellectual failure.
Posted by: Lee A. Arnold at Apr 2, 2007 3:14:19 PM
Lee, Some of us evil "speciesists" don't, frankly, give a damn about extinctions. At least not propter se.
If you care to make clear, quantitative predictions about what impact they will have on human-centric measures (e.g. mean life-span, income per capita, ratio of the price of a food calorie to income, etc.), I'd be happy to listen. I'd be even happier if, after your predictions are falsified, you and your disaster-mongerering ilk would kindly shut up, but that's probably too much to ask.
Otherwise, I'll just take a bit of the historiclly unprecedented income that economic growth has brought me and use it to preseve a few specimens in zoos and wildfile preseves, for me to enjoy during my historically unprecedented degree of leisure time in my historically unprecedented long lifetime.
Posted by: David Wright at Apr 2, 2007 3:50:55 PM
You cannot make clear quantitative predictions about complex systems: in biology, in economics. What you have decided, is that it can only be done in one way. This is all a first-rate intellectual failure. The reason why there is a species extinction debt that is beginning to be paid, is a matter of science, not your beliefs. Your "human-centric measures" are pretty worthless without "ecosystem services" like soil maintenance, air and water purification, disease control, etc. -- ($30 to $40 trillion a year? We don't even know how to provide some of it) -- which are provided by healthy species in a functioning environment. And that is before the contingent value of creation, which is something like infinity at eternity. Your mortal sin of pride notwithstanding. Come on now. We need to hear better arguments. Every complex system we know -- software, bodily health, foodweb, you name it -- crashes faster after more forcing. But you haven't precisely predicted one yet... This isn't part of that weird conservative emotional dysfunction that also denies global warming, is it?
Posted by: Lee A. Arnold at Apr 2, 2007 6:48:27 PM
David,
I already feel I live in a diminished world, when I can't just go down to the open shore of the Pacific ocean, catch a fish, and feel free to eat it.
http://www.oehha.ca.gov/fish/general/99fish.html
Geez Louise, we are already at a stage where "if you weight X pounds your meal size should not exceed Y ounces."
Now, Mr. Wright, are you going to tell me that if future generations want to do a little recreational fishing, enjoy a barbecue on the sand ... they have to come back in time and make an argument based on "mean life-span, income per capita, ratio of the price of a food calorie to income, etc."?
Sounds like a way to ruin a world, but maybe that's just me.
Posted by: odograph at Apr 2, 2007 7:42:36 PM
Lee,
"You cannot make clear quantitative predictions about complex systems: in biology, in economics. What you have decided, is that it can only be done in one way. This is all a first-rate intellectual failure."
I agree. And I think Karl Popper nailed it:
"This dream [of scientific prediction] was given further impetus, he speculates, by the emergence of a genuine predictive capability regarding such events as solar and lunar eclipses at an early stage in human civilisation, which has of course become increasingly refined with the development of the natural sciences and their concomitant technologies. The kind of reasoning which has made, and continues to make, historicism plausible may, on this account, be reconstructed as follows: if the application of the laws of the natural sciences can lead to the successful prediction of such future events as eclipses, then surely it is reasonable to infer that knowledge of the laws of history as yielded by a social science or sciences (assuming that such laws exist) would lead to the successful prediction of such future social phenomena as revolutions? Why should it be possible to predict an eclipse, but not a revolution?"
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/#Pred
Some questions are harder than others. Some are going to give us fuzzy levels of confidence. So we have a choice, we can irrationally wait for things to be proven true or false ... or we can take a cautious approach based on our evolving levels of confidence.
Better late than never.
Posted by: odograph at Apr 2, 2007 8:02:21 PM
"You cannot make clear quantitative predictions about complex systems: in biology, in economics."
How about starting with prediction of the number of species extinctions caused by global warming. Thus far, the globe has warmed ~0.6 degrees Centagrade. How many extinctions have there been so far? (And no, the Golden Toad does not count).
"Your "human-centric measures" are pretty worthless without "ecosystem services" like soil maintenance, air and water purification, disease control, etc. -- ($30 to $40 trillion a year? We don't even know how to provide some of it) -- which are provided by healthy species in a functioning environment."
Historically, civilization has been easier to sustain in a warmer environment. If "ecosystem services" is your concern, global cooling should be higher on your list of priorities.
"And that is before the contingent value of creation, which is something like infinity at eternity."
Mother Nature destroys species on a regular basis. This calculation would imply that we should make the ultimate sacrifice to preserve all species.
You first.
Posted by: Mike at Apr 2, 2007 8:34:50 PM
Actually, global warming is a good example where we have enough scientific confidence to undertake at least the low cost, easy, conservative first steps.
It is also a good example of where we ignore the science, an pull pseudo-science out of our butts. We usually do that, to pretend one of those "true or false" dichotomies.
So no, no one need to pretend that there is a specific "number of species extinctions caused by global warming" ... but if they are sane, they'll think about confidence, and actions consistent with that confidence.
Posted by: odograph at Apr 2, 2007 8:59:19 PM
"So no, no one need to pretend that there is a specific "number of species extinctions caused by global warming" ... but if they are sane, they'll think about confidence, and actions consistent with that confidence".
Government "solutions" = self-interest + poor incentives + poor information + guns.
We can be confident that environmentalists are a greater threat to us than the environment.
Posted by: Mike at Apr 2, 2007 9:10:44 PM
Mike, Extinction debt is not extinction yet. But the causation is clear. The argument follows. Prove it wrong. I would really like to be wrong.
Posted by: Lee A. Arnold at Apr 2, 2007 9:19:46 PM
Effects of climate change on fragmented wildlife ecosystems:
[i.] REGULAR CIRCUMSTANCE OF WILDLIFE ECOSYSTEMS :
(1) Ecosystems have at least a two-step-fractal CLUMPED distribution, local and regional, and at the regional level they are divided by ecotones or geographic features.
(2) “Wild genetic health” is some statistical description of regional-level species populations, usually pegmarked at over 500 individuals.
(3) (Unimportant supposition.) There is an “ecological genetics” which would describe how the condition of interacting with all the other relevant species in the rest of the ecosystem, affects the survival and thriving of wild genetic health in any single one of the populations.
(4) Normally, species populations go extinct all the time. Not the entire species, but locally or regionally an entire population. Why? A bad winter, no food, new disease, new predator, etc.
(5) The rest of the ecosystem frequently re-equilibrates to new sizes of the other populations, depending on the importance of the missing species to the food web, and other things.
(6) The missing species is returned by immigration. All ecosystems are throwing-off stragglers and adventurers always, and if a male and a female make it over the river or through the woods, --and they find each other,-- they will restart the missing species.
(7) The rest of the ecosystem will then re-equilibrate to what it was before,—although not after too much time, or if other different things have happened.
(8) Most plant and animal species thrive well only within small ranges of moisture and temperature. As the climate changes, the species move to other areas. It may take several seasons to initiate a noticeable response.
(9) In the previous rapid climate changes, we may assume that the wildlife ecosystems were spread out, continuous and contiguous,—enough for many fortuitous circumstances of species preservation, in the slow-motion tumult.
(10) If and when there is a massive extinction, then there are niches to fill, and the surviving “weeds” (tough plants and animals) spread-out to evolve and re-biodiversify the whole place. Among the smaller animals, new speciation takes a period of time somewhere around the order of ten thousand generations -- for each new species.
[ii.] WILDLIFE ECOSYSTEMS AFTER FRAGMENTATION BY HUMAN HABITAT:
(11) Human development now encircles all the wildlife areas, which are greatly reduced in size.
(12) This fragmentation of wildlife habitat effectively seals-off ecosystems, for many different species. They do not venture out into the human habitat due to conditions, or chemistry; or they are killed when they do so. This goes for both plants and animals. Some others are not affected at all.
(13) The Reduction in Size of the Ecosystem has an Immediate Consequence. One of the few truly reliable ordinal numerical relations in ecology is the species-area law, which finds that smaller areas have a smaller number of species, and bigger, bigger. There are different reasons for this. Consider the reason, that a fewer number of individuals in each population (fewer, because of less resources overall,) makes a local species population’s random extinction (always happening at 4) statistically MORE PROBABLE. The fact that it is more probable to lose whole species is called that area’s “extinction debt,” which gets paid in the number of species that eventually disappear from that area.
(14) The Isolation of the Ecosystem’s Borders has an Immediate Consequence. The blockage of migration, by human habitat, ends or greatly slows down the reconstitution of missing species (which would have happened at 6.)
(15) As the remaining ecosystem re-equilibrates over and over, in response to successive losses of species, larger oscillations of the simplifying food web serve to accelerate the local extinctions.
(16) The only way to correct this is to build and preserve wildlife corridors, land and river connections, between and among wildlife areas.
(17) In addition, many existing wildlife areas need to be greatly expanded. Why? Because AS THEY ARE NOW , they do not accommodate the pegmark number of individuals (at 2,) in a full interacting ecosystem (at 3,) for continued genetic health. Saving two animals in a zoo will not provide the ecological sharpness for species definition. Among many reasons for this, you can find: changes in the act of predation; density-dependent reproduction; etc.
[iii.] FRAGMENTED WILDLIFE ECOSYSTEMS DURING RAPID CLIMATE CHANGE
(18) As the plants and animals change their geographic places in response to the different moistures and temperatures (in 8,) many will be extinguished at the contact with human habitat (in 12.)
(19) This accelerates the extinction rate that is ALREADY ACCELERATED by the reduction in ecosystem size (at 13) and the isolation of ecosystems from each other (at 14.)
(20) The global warming hockey-stick graphs, whatever their cardinal inadequacies, all show a temperature change far, far beyond the comfort zone of many plants and animals. And realworld evidence abounds, that they are changing their ranges.
[iv.] CONCLUSION
(21) We have just embarked upon one of the greatest mass extinctions in history, and it is a profound and extra-millenial tragedy, and a spiritual disaster.
(22) Since humans are creative and economic growth could happen along many paths, it is an intellectual scandal, and needless.
Posted by: Lee A. Arnold at Apr 2, 2007 9:20:34 PM
"I already feel I live in a diminished world, when I can't just go down to the open shore of the Pacific ocean, catch a fish, and feel free to eat it."
Those limitations are provided to you by the courtesy of government benevolence.
"are you going to tell me that if future generations want to do a little recreational fishing, enjoy a barbecue on the sand ... they have to come back in time and make an argument based on "mean life-span, income per capita, ratio of the price of a food calorie to income, etc."?
Do we have to go back in time to 1890 to tell the people back then they should continue using horses?
Our "future generations" are on a trajectory toward being much wealthier and healthier than we are today. If - borrowing a page from Rawls - our duty is to the least advantaged, then we should tax the knickers off our grandkids to our own benefit.
Posted by: Mike at Apr 2, 2007 9:26:09 PM
"Mike, Extinction debt is not extinction yet. But the causation is clear."
And yet you can not provide even one example after over a century of warming.
"The argument follows. Prove it wrong. I would really like to be wrong."
And the world is run by trans-dimensional lizard people from the fifth dimension, or will be very soon now. Can you prove me wrong?
Posted by: Mike at Apr 2, 2007 9:33:13 PM
"We have just embarked upon one of the greatest mass extinctions in history, and it is a profound and extra-millenial tragedy, and a spiritual disaster."
And yet you can not provide even one example after over a century of warming.
The evidence for UFOs is better than the evidence for extinction due to man-made global warming.
Posted by: Mike at Apr 2, 2007 9:34:40 PM
Sounds like you've been eating too many fish there, Mike ;-)
Posted by: odograph at Apr 2, 2007 9:49:05 PM
Odograph: It's amusing that you quote Popper in an attempt to defend someone unwilling to make a falsiable prediction. It was Popper who introduced the criterion of falsefiability as a requirement for any hypothesis claiming to be scientific.
Fortunately, the IPCC is a real scientific body which is willing to make falsifiable predictions about climate change. And none of their predictions reach anywhere near the level of Lee's alarmist rhetoric. They predict a 100-year sea-level rise of 1.2 feet. They predict either no or a slightly positive effect on global food production. They decline to make a prediction on the impact of global warming on biodiversity. (Their report does cite several papers which have argued for both positive and negative impacts on biodiversity, but none which predict "mass extinction".)
My enviro-leftest friends love to use the "scientific consensus" as a a kudgel to bash their political opponents. Many seem, like Lee, to be sure this consensus is that humanity faces a catastrophic reduction in its well-being unless we implement their favorite policies immediately. Several times, when faced with the actual facts of the scientific consensus, my interlocutors have suspected that this IPCC body must be some sort of oil-major-funded front.
Posted by: David Wright at Apr 2, 2007 9:51:22 PM
Because a chain of causation must already have proceeded to its completion, for you to understand an argument?
Posted by: Lee A. Arnold at Apr 2, 2007 9:57:40 PM
Come on David that's too easy.
Future climate prediction is falsifiable one way, and only one way ... we have to live it, and then look back and see if calculations were correct.
But, as I'm sure you can see, that sort of limits the ability for proactive action ;-)
Maybe that what you are trying to slide past me ... let's wait until say 2200 AD, see if we need to do someting in 2007 ... and then ... Doh!
(Compare it to odds, auto accident rates, and your auto insurance. Do you wait for your crash to happen to call your agent?)
Posted by: odograph at Apr 2, 2007 9:58:13 PM
Sorry for the confusion. That was directed to Mike: You must see a chain of causation proceed to its completion in the real world, for you to understand an argument about a complex system?
Posted by: Lee A. Arnold at Apr 2, 2007 10:14:52 PM
David Wright: "They decline to make a prediction on the impact of global warming on biodiversity." Untrue, as of yesterday:
Panel to Predict Global Warming Will Cause Mass Extinctions
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,263046,00.html
Posted by: Lee A. Arnold at Apr 2, 2007 10:15:39 PM
Odograph, you misunderstand me. I did not ask anyone to wait in order to test Lee's prediction. (It's not my decision, anyway. But given the mildness of the actual consensus predictions by real scientists, I'm not particular frightened at the prospect of waiting.) I merely asked Lee to make a prediction which could be tested by waiting. I did so because I suspect (and felt confirmed in my susicion by his refusal) that he doesn't actually believe his predictions, in the sense of being willing to stake his reputation on them; he just believes that a constant stream of alarmist rhetoric serves his political ends.
But we digress from the assertion under dispute, which is: the state of the world is, in toto, better than it used to be. Undoubtedly there are some ways that the world is not better than it used to be, the mercury levels in fish being an excellent example. Obviously, any particular such fact doesn't disprove the assertion. The world may be diminished by the fact that there is no longer a pristine field where your house stands, but presumably you are willing to make that trade off. Similiarly, the rise of industrial capitalism that put the mercury in that fish also increased our life-spans from 35 to 75 years, and moved us from periodic mass starvations to having to worry about mass obesity. I suspect most people would accept that trade off, and suspect that you would admit as much.
Posted by: David Wright at Apr 2, 2007 10:32:27 PM
Sorry, I was picking up on the general Popper vs. Warming thing.
"Similarly, the rise of industrial capitalism that put the mercury in that fish also increased our life-spans from 35 to 75 years, and moved us from periodic mass starvations to having to worry about mass obesity. I suspect most people would accept that trade off, and suspect that you would admit as much."
I agree that the aggregate good is there, but I worry. Mainly I worry that there are cycles in nature that take longer to shake out than we know. You know, environmental economics has a need for numbers _now_. Tell us, they say, the damage to the oceans from coal burning, and we'll total it up. Then, they say, they'll prescribe policy.
How sad if those numbers aren't "final." How sad if it all shakes out after that policy was set. How sad if the policy was a little close to the edge.
In terms of "most people" accepting trade-offs ... I think most people pretend not to know the extent of the "fishes" problem, and avoid even knowing the broader consumption recommendations coming out of the medical community. We treat it as if it were only a swordfish (and some tuna) problem, and skip the fine print.
("Largemouth Bass. It is safe for adults to eat up to three meals of largemouth bass per week. Children, however, should only eat one meal of largemouth bass per week from the Clinch River and no more than two meals of largemouth bass per week from the Tennessee River." - http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/)
Posted by: odograph at Apr 2, 2007 10:44:39 PM
David Wright, A prediction which can be tested by waiting: "The IPCC draft estimates that if temperatures rise approximately 2 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit more, one-third of species will be lost from their current range, either moved elsewhere or vanished." I don't care about the numbers in this prediction.
Another prediction that can be tested by waiting: "One day, people who insist this that there must be a trade-off with economic growth in the future, will provide a solid argument." Now don't hold your breath on that one.
Posted by: Lee A. Arnold at Apr 2, 2007 11:29:51 PM
Odograph, Did Popper ever look at kinds of falsifiability in science? Because surely, there are things that are absolutely true about complex systems, although they are not precisely predictable.
For example, these predictions are true: (1) systems oscillate within parameters; (2) after brief perturbations they usually return to within parameters; (3) they occasionally change violently, a catastrophe; (4) the probability of catastrophe INCREASES with continuous forcing or introduced exotics.
These is observed in many complex (i.e. multi-compartment reticulated model) systems. But what exactly happens, and the way it happens, are never precisely predictable.
And the reasons why they aren't precisely predictable, are also several, and differently applied: (a) nonlinear computations and impossible computations; (b) problems in definitions and modelability; (c) fine and coarse graining; (d) problems in measurability of variables; (e) experimental unrepeatability; (f) and therefore problems in model verification.
What I don't understand is the resistance to facts. In their daily lives, I presume that these people look both ways before they cross the street. So it really seems like some emotional dysfunction that believes global warming is a liberal plot.
And to substitute instead a certainty that there is only one locked set of institutional forms for the market system to proceed, is bizarre.
Posted by: Lee A. Arnold at Apr 2, 2007 11:31:30 PM
"You must see a chain of causation proceed to its completion in the real world, for you to understand an argument about a complex system?"
Talk of "complex systems" could more plausibly be used to support the projection of increased biodiversity through genetic engineering.
Posted by: Mike at Apr 3, 2007 12:14:27 AM
Observe the weasel words:
"The IPCC draft estimates that if temperatures rise approximately 2 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit more, one-third of species will be lost from their current range, either moved elsewhere or vanished."
And if my aunt had testicles, she would be my uncle.
Temperatures have been increasing gradually. Man-made CO2 has been increasing exponentially. If the theory of man-made global warming is true, then each additional molecule must yield less climate forcing. There is no evidence to support the claim that man-made CO2 will yeild temperature increases anywhere near 2 to 4 degrees over the next century.
During the Holocene Warm Period, temperatures were several degrees warmer than they are now, and species then were thriving rather than collapsing.
Posted by: Mike at Apr 3, 2007 12:42:18 AM
Mike: "There is no evidence to support the claim that man-made CO2 will yeild temperature increases anywhere near 2 to 4 degrees over the next century."
That is false. From NATURE magazine, February 8, 2007:
"...[the new IPCC report's] predictions of the temperature increase over this century, which is now given as 1.1–6.4 °C"
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v445/n7128/full/445578a.html
During the Mid-Holocene Climatic Optimum (from 5000-7000 years ago,) ecosystems weren't fragmented, as they are now. This is the key difference. Climate change will accelerate the species extinction that was ALREADY predicted because of area reductions and fragmentation. This would be true whether the climate change is hotter or colder, wetter or drier. See #11-19 in the sequence above.
Posted by: Lee A. Arnold at Apr 3, 2007 1:22:26 AM
"That [there is no evidence to support the claim that man-made CO2 will yeild temperature increases anywhere near 2 to 4 degrees over the next century] is false. From NATURE magazine, February 8, 2007:"
"...[the new IPCC report's] predictions of the temperature increase over this century, which is now given as 1.1–6.4 °C"
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v445/n7128/full/445578a.html"
Which is based on straight line projections from CO2 emmissions, which is demonstrably false.
"Climate change will accelerate the species extinction that was ALREADY predicted because of area reductions and fragmentation."
Fragmentation would lead to speciation through nomral Darwinian means.
Is biodiversity a good thing or a bad thing? Please pick a position and stick to it.
Posted by: Mike at Apr 3, 2007 1:42:30 AM
Lee: Touche! The Fox News headline is a great come-back. And I appreciate your willingness to take up my challenge to make a concrete prediction.
On the other hand, your concrete prediction is neither particularly alarming nor falsifiable in any meaningful sense. Notice that it could be satisfied without a single species going extinct, just by moving species around, so it doesn't actually say anything about biodiversity. In fact, depending on what threshold of movement one picks to declare that a species has been lost from a "current range," you could claim that 1/3 of all species satisfy this criterion every year already. Frankly, collapsing movement and extinction into a single category and not seperating the contribution of warming from the underlying trend are obvious ploys to arrive at a bigger number.
All the other quotes in the article are equally carefully framed. "It is clear that a number of species are going to be lost," says one. The words "mass extinction" appear only in Fox's headline.
Odograph: The "precautionary principle" you cite has its place, but its users tend to be awfully selective in its application. Shouldn't we also be circumspect about messing with economic growth?
(I used to work in particle physics. Before turning on a new accelerator, a committee would convene to assess the danger that it could induce a phase transtion that would destroy the known Universe. Now there is a catastrophic risk for you! And yet threre was narry a peep from environmentalists about it. That particular risk didn't dovetail with their political agenda.)
Posted by: David Wright at Apr 3, 2007 4:04:07 AM
"Odograph: The "precautionary principle" you cite has its place, but its users tend to be awfully selective in its application. Shouldn't we also be circumspect about messing with economic growth?"
I was very impressed by this Time magazine article about the human (and American) response to "risk":
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1562978,00.html
It's true, "users" spend too much time worrying about "terrorist" and not enough thinking about "diet and exercise."
To me that says we should double-down on the rational analysis and look at exactly what we are gaining and losing. Mike said above "We can be confident that environmentalists are a greater threat to us than the environment." That's the kind of irrational stuff that gets us nowhere. And I might add, might lead us to suspect where the irrational "users" really are on this.
No, let's look at the risks, and compare them to the possible responses. Yes, we can definitely "be circumspect about messing with economic growth" ... but no one reasonable is recommending a cancellation of growth. We are talking about shaving off a couple fractions of a percent ... to pay for the insurance.
... just like we do in our real lives, all of the reasonable ones amongst us. We shave a few percent off our incomes and wealth to play it safe, and cover the insurance.
Posted by: odograph at Apr 3, 2007 9:05:23 AM
Actually, Lee's posts do imply a tradeoff of sorts. Lee, if he means what he says, would clearly accept more warming (or at least less reduction in warming) in exchange for less habitat fragmentation. So, Lee, what's your tradeoff? How much land do you need returned to the wild (and where, to minimize fragmentation) in exchange for X greenhouse gases? Any idea?
Posted by: Keith at Apr 3, 2007 10:39:48 AM
More to the point, Lee's fragmentation argument would imply that we should, under a carbon emissions program, allow companies to buy C02 emission rights by returning land to the wild, especially based on lowering ecosystem fragmentation.
Of course, it would also be really good to eliminate agricultural subsidies.....
And of course if trying to lower C02 emissions then leads to more clear cutting for corn and sugar fuels, then Lee's whole goal may be undone...
Posted by: Keith at Apr 3, 2007 10:49:31 AM
Why is this thread, and so many which start off with environmental questions, about the haters?
I'm sure there are, off somewhere, true "enviro-lefties" who champion huge statist solutions ... but I never see them show up for these things. Instead, it's all about haters who see enviro-lefties under their beds.
Global warming? There's an enviro-lefty under my bed!
Ocean fisheries? There's an enviro-lefty under my bed!
Over-reliance on imported oil? There's an enviro-lefty under my bed, and I swear this time he wants to take my SUV!
... that makes it so easy, doesn't it? There is no need to actually worry about the actual way the world works. There is no need to study an issue, or ("God forbid?") rely on science. You don't even need to think about how your purchases affect national security.
The easy way out is to hate an environmentalist. It feels good too.
Posted by: odograph at Apr 3, 2007 11:00:52 AM
"I'm sure there are, off somewhere, true "enviro-lefties" who champion huge statist solutions ... but I never see them show up for these things."
As the old saying goes, if you can't spot the rube at the poker table, then you're the rube. I think there may be something parallel here. You really can't be serious that you've never seen statist enviro-lefties. Ever hear of the Club of Rome? Paul Ehrlich? Or do they seem reasonable and sane and non-statist to you?
"Global warming? There's an enviro-lefty under my bed!"
Yes, asking for evidence is a McCarthyist witchhunt. Me, I believe there's global warming, and heck, if you can demonstrate a large enough probability of catastrophe and a large enough reduction in that probability from taking action X, then by golly you've got a case for action X.
"Ocean fisheries? There's an enviro-lefty under my bed!"
Hell, even "market environmentalist" libertartians like Terry Anderson have suggested tradable fishing quotas as a possible solution to this issue.
I think you're just substituting your own ignorance and biased beliefs for actually reading or knowing what libertarians actually think. That must make your world simple enough for you to handle.
"Over-reliance on imported oil? There's an enviro-lefty under my bed, and I swear this time he wants to take my SUV!"
"Over-reliance on imported oil?" Again, you assume that it's a problem, and that assumption doesn't warm my heart. There may very well be a negative externality from importing oil from nation X (and nations Y and Z), but your failure to make that distinction and just worry about reliance on "imported" oil betrays a certain lack of appreciation for the virtues of specialization and trade and a statist frame of mind that, I'm sorry, makes me discount what you have to say by some amount. Feel free to show me that you understand the virtues of specialization and markets by making a more specific case for some policy with regards to oil based on, ya know, an actual externality.
You get bonus points if you incorporate the worse effects on global warming from oil import taxes, since the substitute for oil is more greenhouse gas intensive energy like coal. And if you just say "then tax carbon use even more," you still need to realize that your oil import tax is causing greater carbon emissions for any given carbon tax level.
I'm not sure about hating environemntalists, but I'm no fan of glib but fundamentally ignorant people. And that may (or may not) cover you.
Posted by: Keith at Apr 3, 2007 11:53:07 AM
Mike: "which is based on straight line projections from CO2 emmissions..." False again.
"Fragmentation would lead to speciation through normal Darwinian means." Almost but not quite. Isolation does lead to speciation, taking on the average of 10,000 generations. But area reduction and fragmentation make the ecosystem insupportable long before that.
Posted by: Lee A. Arnold at Apr 3, 2007 12:13:47 PM
David Wright: Since I now understand you aren't reading everything, I''ll will try to be brief.
(A) There is no need to make a "falsifiable quantitative" prediction to prove the argument in this case. Similarly, no one requires precise quantitative predictions in economics, either. In economics the arguments are almost entirely ordinal, not cardinal.
(B) As species move around, some of them will go extinct NOW, because the intervening human habitat is not passable for all of them.
(C) There is no possible construction in ecology that gives 1/3 of all species being lost from the current ranges every year, under normal circumstances. (Let's define "normal" as "in the time period since the last mass extinction.") I don't know the average figure, but I would guess it's in the magnitude of 0.01% per decade -- and, in periods WITHOUT habitat fragmentation, these were reconstituted by migration; see #6 in my long sequence above.
(D) I find it incredible that someone who used to work in particle physics would hold forth on another science without making a study of it. As in physics, this stuff has been very carefully established. Whence comes this hubris?
Posted by: Lee A. Arnold at Apr 3, 2007 12:14:58 PM
Keith: I actually think that habitat fragmentation was a more serious problem over the last 30 years, but that window is closing fast. There's not much of a tradeoff now.
You can thank either conservative blindness or liberal stupidity, take your pick, I don't care. There has been a monumental intellectual failure in the United States, both at home and as "leader of the world," as these problems mounted.
And in terms of stopping one as the price of the other? That is a false tradeoff, of course. It would imply that economic growth and development are unilinear, which is nonsense.
Posted by: Lee A. Arnold at Apr 3, 2007 12:16:13 PM
Keith buddy, pointing to rational economists outside this thread does not disprove the hating within it ;-)
And congrats if you assumed that I, the lifelong conservative and Republican, must be a "lefty" if I like to go outside and enjoy the world now and then.
Posted by: odograph at Apr 3, 2007 12:17:23 PM
Odograph: As we see, libertarians cannot begin to admit that many environmental problems are beyond the information abilities of individuals. That would destroy their whole program, and they would end up as mixed economists, like the rest of us.
So the libertarians fall back on something like the Hayekian mysticism that prices can be made to transmit all required information.
This is an intellectual circularity, because prices have to be determined by demand as well, but to have proper demand you need informed consumers; but, as we started out, there is not enough time to for a person to learn all the proper information, particularly on environmental issues, even if the proper information (supposedly: quantifiable, falsifiable) existed.
This is problem is surfacing for them especially on global warming, since reality is becoming obvious. They don't have a leg to stand on, so they start lashing out: "It isn't really a problem!" and "It is a liberal plot to control people!"
Never mind that "making prices right" would require another government bureaucracy for monitoring and enforcement on some of these complicated issues! This is just too much for them to handle!
So for now, we are seeing a sort of emotional infantilism.
Posted by: Lee A. Arnold at Apr 3, 2007 12:18:05 PM
Lee, as you can see by my 12:17:23 PM, I have strong libertarian leanings. The way I look at it, I'm a conservative who is not willfully stupid or insane.
When the market comes right up against my world, I'll choose my world.
(What's the figure on overweight and obesity in the US these days? I don't want a statist solution, I just want folks to educate themselves, and choose happy and healthy lives for themselves and future generations. Most people need to work some fat off their ass more than they need X% growth in GDP.)
Posted by: odograph at Apr 3, 2007 12:23:17 PM
Odograph, everybody with a functioning brain has "strong libertarian leanings," if that means you love and want to preserve liberty.
But the libertarians have started to bend and ignore science, and misconstrue its methodology, to fit their ideology. It has to be an emotional dysfunction, because it never stands up to intellectual investigation. I have to go to work...
Posted by: Lee A. Arnold at Apr 3, 2007 12:37:16 PM
That's just the floppy end of libertarianism ;-)
Posted by: odograph at Apr 3, 2007 12:46:22 PM
Global warming is a real externality with real negative (and positive) effects. An entirely reasonable solution is to undertake a study of its net social costs and translate them into a tax, so that prices again communicate the required information.
Fortunately, reasonable people have undertaken such studies. Nordhaus came up with $17/ton C. That corresponds to about a 15 cents/gallon petrol tax. That's well below what the U.S. currently imposes, so by that measure we ought to say "okay, we're good" and keep going. (Yeah, we ought to extend the tax to jet fuel, too. But we also ought to make sure that "alternative energy" doesn't get subsidized. I'd be happy to trade one for the other.)
The highest optimal tax ever calculated comes from Stern's similiar analysis, under rather controversial assumptions, and rings in at $311/ton C. That corresponds to about a $3/gallon petrol tax. That would mean the U.S. needs to adjust its energy taxes, but Europe is all good and needn't undertake additional measures.
One doesn't need to be a hater to see that these are not the sort of measures that will satisfy most enviro-lefties. One doesn't need to read any further than this thread to see an enviro-lefty who believes that his one favorite cost justifies massive, immediate intervention, who describes that cost in the most alarmist terms while trying his best to avoid clearly quantifying it, and who is even willing to argue at length that his special science should be exempt for the requirements of quantification and falsifiability.
(Lee, it would be quite easy to adjust your predictions to accomodate my objections. Just tell us a lower bound on the additional fraction of currently known species that will be extenct in 100 years under current warming scenarios.)
(And if you're surprised that a physisict has little respect for ecological science, you haven't spent much time around physicists. We're rather skeptical of the validity of any sciences further from physics than physical chemistry. I do admit, though, that an influx of physics-types into astronomy and genetics has helped solidify those sciences over the last generation.)
Posted by: David Wright at Apr 3, 2007 3:03:33 PM
Why We're Living Longer, Healthier, More Comfortable Lives on a Cleaner Planet,
---------------------------------------------------
Hmm...That is not the way it looks from here in Bangladesh. I am happy that you all can can argue all about marginal animal survival outside of zoos.
I look around here at the crowded masses huddled along the side of the road outside the gates of the export zone and wonder how many are going to survive the next few decades and if they survive what kind of life it will be.
What they have now seems so terrible that I can hardly look them in the eye...What they are facing in the coming decades seems inevitable and awful.
But don't worry. They are far away and won't be able to comment on this blog.
Posted by: Robb Lutton at Apr 3, 2007 3:36:27 PM
Life in Bangladesh is improving. Life expectancy improved from 37 years to 58 from 1952 to 1997, according to http://www.perc.org/pdf/ps21_tables.pdf.
Per capita income increased by 37% from 1994 to 2004 in current US dollars according to http://earthtrends.wri.org/text/economics-business/variable-638.html
It's low, not doubt, but increasing.
Posted by: Ron at Apr 3, 2007 4:06:16 PM
Life in Bangladesh is improving. Life expectancy improved from 37 years to 58 from 1952 to 1997, according to http://www.perc.org/pdf/ps21_tables.pdf.
Per capita income increased by 37% from 1994 to 2004 in current US dollars according to http://earthtrends.wri.org/text/economics-business/variable-638.html
It's low, not doubt, but increasing.
Posted by: Ron at Apr 3, 2007 4:06:58 PM
"That corresponds to about a 15 cents/gallon petrol tax."
Obviously wrong, because a > 15 cent run-up in global petrol prices over the last few years did not, in fact, cure global warming.
But I agree that it is an externality that rational people can approach ... and ideally solve.
Posted by: odograph at Apr 3, 2007 4:15:30 PM
(I think I'm falling in favor of cap-and-trade, just because fee-based analysis follows a moving target. People seem to adjust to and accept higher energy prices quite readily.)
Posted by: odograph at Apr 3, 2007 4:17:43 PM
Odograph: You mistakenly assume that the cure for global warming involves stopping global warming. It may well be that the optimal cure, in the sense of maximizing aggregate human welfare, is to let global warming continue and simply mitigate some of its effects. Indeed, the problem with cap and trade, with a fixed cap, is precisely that -- it doesn't allow for the possibility that it may be optimal to increase the cap and accept more effluent in order to obtain the benefits of the additional stuff that allows us to produce.
In any case, I assure you, Nordhaus is a serious academic economist, with an appointment at Yale and a long history of research on the economics of natural resouces. And my conversion from carbon to petrol tax is correct.
Posted by: David Wright at Apr 3, 2007 4:59:53 PM
"Odograph: You mistakenly assume that the cure for global warming involves stopping global warming. It may well be that the optimal cure, in the sense of maximizing aggregate human welfare, is to let global warming continue and simply mitigate some of its effects"
LOL, back atcha' ;-)
There isn't going to be science solid enough to make that kind of "edge" decision. So we are caught between the cautious (me?) and the risk-takers (you?) who are ready to shoot from the hip ... assuming their science, to get an "optimal cure" that suits them.
Posted by: odograph at Apr 3, 2007 5:05:57 PM
"And my conversion from carbon to petrol tax is correct."
Only if you assume a scientific certainty that we live in the best of all possible worlds.
Posted by: odograph at Apr 3, 2007 5:07:03 PM
Mike: "which is based on straight line projections from CO2 emmissions..."
Lee: False again.
Flapdoodle.
You provided the link. Look it up. Those projections are based on computer models which assume that climate forcing from each additional molecule of CO2 moves in a straight line. It demonstrably does not.
Those projections are based on computer models that can not even predict past climate events, such as the heat vent into outer space that was recently discovered over the Pacific.
Those projections are based on computer models which even the IPCC concedes includes many parameters about which we know very little. If an engineer built a bridge knowing very little about much of the relevant physical laws in bridge construction, I would not step out on that bridge.
Mike: "Fragmentation would lead to speciation through normal Darwinian means."
Lee: Almost but not quite. Isolation does lead to speciation, taking on the average of 10,000 generations.
Experiments by Dobzhansky and Pavlovsky done on fruit flies point to an average of about 300 generations. In fast breeding species such as insects - which is mostly what we are talking about when we talk about animal species - that means a few years.
In plant species, the link between CO2 and biodiversity is direct, as climate history shows and experiments demonstrate. CO2 is plant food. Plants thrive on it. And animals thrive on those thriving plants.
Lee: But area reduction and fragmentation make the ecosystem insupportable long before that.
We have had warming for over a century now. We have also had fragmentation. Once again, where is the evidence of extinction due to man-made global warming? Name some species.
And you still have not told us why we should even care about species extinction beyond providing an opportunity for moral vanity. Not everyone subscribes to your Gaia worshiping nature religion which places a non-negotiable premium on species. In fact, most of mankind does not. And they are even less likely to subscribe the less prosperous they are. Medical utility can be rendered moot through gene banks and genetic engineering. Aesthetic concerns can be addressed through private land trusts of biodiverse "hotzones". All of this requires the sort of wealth that would be destroyed by expensive and destructive schemes such as Kyoto.
Posted by: Mike at Apr 3, 2007 5:26:16 PM
"And you still have not told us why we should even care about species extinction beyond providing an opportunity for moral vanity."
I don't know about you Mike, but I like to eat 'em.
(Many tasty big ocean fishes are suffering population crashes right now ... "Cod" is a good book on that, as is "The Doryman's Reflection")
Posted by: odograph at Apr 3, 2007 5:42:48 PM
"I look around here at the crowded masses huddled along the side of the road outside the gates of the export zone and wonder how many are going to survive the next few decades and if they survive what kind of life it will be."
Sea levels have been rising naturally for thousands of years now (about 2 inches per century in the past 6,000 years). Expensive and destructive schemes such as Kyoto will make it more difficult to mitigate the effects of increase - by depriving Bangladesh of the techniques and technology necessary to cost-effectively develop the wealth necessary to do the mitigation, by depriving countries outside Bangladesh of the additional wealth that could be used to assist Bangladesh do the mitigation.
Gaia, save the world from your followers. We have more to fear from environmentalists than from the environment.
Posted by: Mike at Apr 3, 2007 5:53:25 PM
"Many tasty big ocean fishes are suffering population crashes right now"
Oddly enough, the oceans are where government, especially global government, is all to present, and respect for private property rights conspicuously absent.
Posted by: Mike at Apr 3, 2007 5:56:19 PM
"Oddly enough, the oceans are where government, especially global government, is all to present, and respect for private property rights conspicuously absent."
While there is a certain "to a man with a hammer every problem looks like a nail" aspect to this, but to an extent I agree. A single owner would be "likely" to make better long term management decisions than competing non-owners.
The problem is there is no guarantee. It becomes a choice, which is more important, that some guy has "property rights" or that 4 generations hence still get to enjoy sushi?
The heartless economist would say that "economic efficiency" wins, even if that means no fish. Not I. Fishery management has to be for long term sustainability, in my humble opinion.
Posted by: odograph at Apr 3, 2007 6:02:25 PM
BTW, note that in many places in the world "we" made the decision to go with economic efficiency. The argument goes that if you don't think leaving some fish out there to breed is the highest return on your investment, you should just catch them all now, and invest the money elsewhere. That's what we did with things like the Monterey Bay small-fish harvest. "We" caught them and ground them up into fertilizer for fields, because that was more "efficient" than leaving them to be eaten by larger predators. "We" caught them until the population crashed.
... but the money was invested, so no loss to us!
Posted by: odograph at Apr 3, 2007 6:16:47 PM
"Fishery management has to be for long term sustainability, in my humble opinion."
Then start a fish farm and convey it to your great-great-grandtykes through a restrictive covenant.
If the grandkids don't share your taste for sushi, tough noogies.
Posted by: Mike at Apr 3, 2007 6:23:09 PM
"If the grandkids don't share your taste for sushi, tough noogies."
You demonstrate why it is more than a "tragedy of the commons" Mike. If we designate "owners" arbitrarily, to fit your worldview, we have to _hope_ that every generation takes the long view. We have to hope that no wastrels will cash in and head to the bar.
I really don't get it, as a conservative, that some of my fellows can be so far around the bend that they value markets more than the world.
"If the grandkids don't share your taste for sushi, tough noogies."
As I said to you above, that sounds like a fine way to ruin a world.
Congratulations, you are more than half way there.
Posted by: odograph at Apr 3, 2007 6:40:14 PM
David Wright: Please name AT LEAST ONE complex adaptive system which has been accurately quantitatively predicted in the sense that you require. You can use any example from the entire history of science.
I didn't write that physicists have no respect for ecological science. I wrote that you evidently haven't studied any.
Read THE QUARK AND THE JAGUAR by Murray Gell-Mann. A great physicist who has studied ecology. He lays out the same argument I have laid out here.
If he won't do, let's take someone you respect, William Nordhaus, economist at Yale. In a paper he coauthored in Science, we read:
"Similarly, while extant biota have survived previous abrupt climate changes through extensive and rapid migrations, human-caused habitat fragmentation and other anthropogenic influences may impede migrations and thereby increase vulnerability of certain ecological systems to any future abrupt climate changes..." (SCIENCE 299: p.2008, March 28, 2003)
In other words, the same argument as Gell-Mann and this humble reporter.
The curious thing, though, is your archaic insistence on strict standards of quantification and falsifiability. Surely, only the physical sciences need apply, in your world. Again: why are you hanging around on an economics blog?
Posted by: Lee A. Arnold at Apr 3, 2007 6:58:19 PM
Mike: Give it up! I know now that you really don't care about the science, but just to set the record straight, before I sign-off for good: The radiation-absorption band of atmosppheric CO2 becomes saturated, and it is not a linear relationship. Climatologists all know this -- you haven't got the drop on them yet.
In fact prediction is getting better -- the same Nature article states that "the accuracy of previous IPCC predictions, such as estimates made from 1990 onwards, that global temperatures would rise by between 0.15 °C and 0.3 °C per decade. Temperatures have climbed steadily since: the ten hottest years on record all postdate 1990, and the rate of warming, 0.2 °C per decade, fits the initial prediction."
The "heat vent into outer space" is Lindzen's theory, and he hasn't gotten it into a peer-reviewed journal yet. So you can also rail-on about peer review.
You are right, insects do indeed evolve faster; the figure of 10,000 generations is for mid-size animals like fish and small mammals.
Fragmentation has become severe only in the last 30 years. Species have changed ranges always, but there lots of evidence it is accelerating right now.
The best list of extinguished and endangered species is the Red List: http://www.iucnredlist.org/ They added 26,000 more endangered species, LAST YEAR ALONE. Go argue the science with them.
As to why you believe there is only one path for economic growth, I have NO idea, and it probably doesn't really matter. That's it for me.
Posted by: Lee A. Arnold at Apr 3, 2007 7:02:52 PM
but just to set the record straight, before I sign-off for good: The radiation-absorption band of atmosppheric CO2 becomes saturated, and it is not a linear relationship. Climatologists all know this
And yet, curiously, the band saturation properties of CO2 do not show up in the climate models used by the IPCC.
And the diminishing forcing of each marginal CO2 molecule undermines even the theoretical efficacy of expensive and destructive schemes such as Kyoto.
In fact prediction is getting better -- the same Nature article states that "the accuracy of previous IPCC predictions, such as estimates made from 1990 onwards, that global temperatures would rise by between 0.15 °C and 0.3 °C per decade. Temperatures have climbed steadily since: the ten hottest years on record all postdate 1990, and the rate of warming, 0.2 °C per decade, fits the initial prediction."
As the models have become more sophistocated, the worst case scenarios have grown smaller and less likely. Contrast this with the ever inflating rhetoric of scare-mongers such as Oscar-winner Al Gore.
And saying that the models are getting better is like saying that 20% is four times as much as 5% - true but meaningless. Even the IPCC concedes that the climate models include many parameters about which we know very little. As they both cool and warm, clouds in particular remain a real wild card. If an engineer built a bridge knowing very little about much of the relevant physical laws in bridge construction, I would not step on that bridge.
The "heat vent into outer space" is Lindzen's theory, and he hasn't gotten it into a peer-reviewed journal yet. So you can also rail-on about peer review.
The Pacific heat vent is not a theory, but an observed fact - a fact confirmed more than once and published in refereed journals:
Y.C. Sud et al., "Mechanism Regulating Sea-Surface Temperatures and Deep Convection in the Tropics," Geophysical Research Letters 26 (1999): 1019-22
J. Chen et al., "Evidence for Stregthening of the Tropical General Circularion in the 1990s," Science 295 (2002): 838-41
B.A. Weilicki et al., "Evidence for Large Decadal Variability in the Tropical Mean Radiative Energy Budget," Science 295 (2002): 841-44
This heat vent was not predicted by any of the global climate models. The models are a bogus example of Club of Rome type pseudo-science.
You are right, insects do indeed evolve faster; the figure of 10,000 generations is for mid-size animals like fish and small mammals.
Insects make up a pretty hefty chunk of the animal biomass. Larger more charismatic mega-fauna could be protected by private gene banks, private zoos, and private land trusts of biodiverse "hotzones". The effect of CO2 on plant biodiversity is straightforward.
Fragmentation has become severe only in the last 30 years. Species have changed ranges always, but there lots of evidence it is accelerating right now.
The best list of extinguished and endangered species is the Red List: http://www.iucnredlist.org/ They added 26,000 more endangered species, LAST YEAR ALONE. Go argue the science with them.
"Endangerment" is not extinction. Among the extinct species on the list, none are traceable to the marginal effects of man-made warming. Plenty are traceable to man's failure to rape Mother Nature through high-yield fossil-fuel based agriculture afforded by chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, rodenticide, fungicides, genetic engineering, and heavy equipment. And Mother Nature murders her own all the time.
As to why you believe there is only one path for economic growth, I have NO idea, and it probably doesn't really matter.
Presumably you would prefer the 'job creation' that stems from wealth destruction. Ban a bulldozer (because it emits CO2), and you create jobs for dozens of men with shovels. Ban the shovel (because making shovels emits CO2), and you create still more jobs.
'Job creation' is the manufacture of poverty.
Give it up! I know now that you really don't care about the science,
This from someone who is reluctant to offer falsifiable propositions on principle, and offers talk of "complex systems" as a cover for snatching groundless scare stories about species extinction out of his ass. An intellectual failure of the first order.
Posted by: Mike at Apr 3, 2007 9:36:03 PM
Odograph: The conversion of a carbon tax into a petrol tax is just a division problem. You only need to know that burning a gallon of gas releases about 20 pounds of carbon. No subjective judgements required.
Obviously, computing the optimal tax does require subjective judgements. The Ramsey analysis that both Nordhaus and Stern use is a nice way to at least tie up those subjective judgements in a consistent, parameterized framework. I don't ask you to accept either of their analysis, but I do ask you to accept that it is at least theoretially possible that the negative consequenes of an externality are mild enough the optimal tax on the externality isn't large enough to eliminate it.
Lee: It seems that the only prediction you are willing to stick your neck out and make is "climate change will cause some extinction". You seem to overestimate my requirements, because I'm willing to accept that as both falsifiable and quantitative. (It asserts that the number of extinctions is 1 or greater, so it would be falsified if no species went extinct.) It just doesn't justify much alarmist rhetoric or emergency actions, does it?
Posted by: David Wright at Apr 3, 2007 9:47:16 PM
"Obviously, computing the optimal tax does require subjective judgements. The Ramsey analysis that both Nordhaus and Stern use is a nice way to at least tie up those subjective judgements in a consistent, parameterized framework. I don't ask you to accept either of their analysis, but I do ask you to accept that it is at least theoretially possible that the negative consequenes of an externality are mild enough the optimal tax on the externality isn't large enough to eliminate it."
The problem with a lot of this is that it works well as theory but fails so horribly, in so many ways, in practice.
And we need a carbon plan today, and won't have those externailties in a "falsifiable" way for centuries.
So, I guess the thing I have to ask you is whether you are ready to move now, with conservative limits, and margins for error, KNOWING that the final numbers wont be here in our livetimes ... or if you are just stalling, perpetrating a slightly more advanced version of Mike's:
"If the grandkids don't share your taste for sushi, tough noogies."
Posted by: odograph at Apr 3, 2007 9:57:46 PM
To answer your question, Odograph: I'd be happy to accept Nordhaus's small carbon tax, even on top of current taxes. I have my qualms about Stern's carbon tax, but I could probably be brought to accept it, for example if the revenue were used to reduce income taxes instead of to subsidize alternative energy. I'd be pretty implacably imposed to capping global carbon emissions at 1990 levels forever. (There's no analysis suggesting that's the appropriate level and, by the way, it also isn't predited to cure global warming.)
Posted by: David Wright at Apr 3, 2007 10:17:19 PM
If we designate "owners" arbitrarily, to fit your worldview, we have to _hope_ that every generation takes the long view.
Nothing arbitrary about ownership. If fish are your shtick, farm them. The fact that you don't demonstrates you are just posturing. The only arbitrary thing here is your presumptuousness about the desires of well-heeled future generations. Are you angry that cave men did not conserve flint stone for you?
Posted by: Mike at Apr 3, 2007 10:31:22 PM
"Nothing arbitrary about ownership. If fish are your shtick, farm them. The fact that you don't demonstrates you are just posturing."
If you think farming is at all about the ecology of big ocean fishes ... I hate to "school" you (bada bing), but no.
Posted by: odograph at Apr 4, 2007 12:06:32 AM
If you want to throw your great-great-grandkids on the mercy of the people's commissars of the ocean blue rather than your own presumptuous self, be my guest.
Best of luck to your grandkids.
Posted by: Mike at Apr 4, 2007 1:08:51 AM
David Wright: As I wrote far above, I will go with the IPCC prediction. I imagine scientists will make it more precise as time goes on. I don't think I ever mentioned any emergency actions, but it's a disaster. And it doesn't even include the possibility of abrupt change.
Posted by: Lee A. Arnold at Apr 4, 2007 1:54:51 AM
As I wrote far above, I will go with the IPCC prediction. I imagine scientists will make it more precise as time goes on.
As the error bars on the IPCC projections shrink, the worst case scenarios grow smaller and more remote, unlike the ever increasing hyper-venelation from the likes of Al Gore.
I don't think I ever mentioned any emergency actions, but it's a disaster.
Warming was not a disaster during either the Roman Warm Period or the Medieval Warm Period, quite the opposite.
"And [the IPCC] doesn't even include the possibility of abrupt change."
The IPCC does not include the possibility of abrupt change for the better either.
Posted by: Mike at Apr 4, 2007 2:44:54 AM
"Nothing arbitrary about ownership. If fish are your shtick, farm them. The fact that you don't demonstrates you are just posturing. The only arbitrary thing here is your presumptuousness about the desires of well-heeled future generations. Are you angry that cave men did not conserve flint stone for you?"
There is no current tech to farm fish the big ocean fish in the true sense, that is from egg to market. To the extent that they "farm" them now it is more like a feedlot operation. Some of the smaller fish caught in open ocean trawls are saved off, penned, and grown out before being taken to market. That may be good or bad, but the critical thing is that the process still relies on nature's bounty for each "sales cycle." You've got to catch those fish, and when they are gone, they are gone.
But really your demand that I be the capitalist to preserve those fish shows the flaw in your philosophy. You have made it dependent on me, and if I don't (or can't) do it, the fish go.
"If you want to throw your great-great-grandkids on the mercy of the people's commissars of the ocean blue rather than your own presumptuous self, be my guest.
Best of luck to your grandkids."
There you go again, everything depends on me.
For what it's worth, I do enjoy Yosemite, and don't think Abraham Lincoln was a "people's commissar" for signing the park into existence.
In fact, I as a livelong conservative and Republican (remember?) can note that "people's commissars" actually have a very bad record on the environment. It is the democratic market economies that seem to find balance. That is, we find balance between growth and sustainability.
Only a few nutters at the extreme think it is all about growth, the future be damned. I dont' get it. I mean, what do you do, stay inside all day and only venture out for Burger King? That seems to be the kind of future you are heading for .... 20 billion people on the planet, but if they can get a Burger King (probably soy burger at that point) to watch in front of their TV it's a win.
Posted by: odograph at Apr 4, 2007 11:03:25 AM
David Wright: I want to add three things I can't find out yet about about the new IPCC estimate on species:
(1) Is the IPCC estimate to be ADDED to the (very approximate) estimate of 7% of species lost per decade due to area loss, and which was expected to accelerate, BEFORE global warming became an issue? (That figure takes a very rough average of a dozen different estimates using different techniques.)
(2) Is the IPCC calculating any probabilities for abrupt weather (not climate) events, such as sudden droughts, which would hammer local species populations? -- I am going to guess it does not, because it seems impossible to come up with a meaningful number.
(3) Does the IPCC estimate include the effects of fragmentation of wildlands? Fragmentation (a) makes the species-area relationship effective sooner, and (b) prevents species from moving to a different range, particularly when human habitat intervenes.
Posted by: Lee A. Arnold at Apr 4, 2007 12:03:15 PM
"There you go again, everything depends on me."
Since God has not been answering His telephone calls, it's either you or somebody else, kiddo. Why not you? After all, you are the one who seems to have the requisite psychic abilities - knowing what the fashions in food preference will be four or more generations hence.
Posted by: Mike at Apr 5, 2007 1:45:25 AM
(1) Is the IPCC estimate to be ADDED to the (very approximate) estimate of 7% of species lost per decade due to area loss, and which was expected to accelerate, BEFORE global warming became an issue? (That figure takes a very rough average of a dozen different estimates using different techniques.)
"Percent of species lost per decade" is a number grabbed from someone's ass, as we still don't know the total number of species. As people have been watching and recording them avidly for some time now, birds are among the most exhaustively documented species. As a percentage of the total, very few birds have been lost since the present warming period began in the late 19th Century.
(2) Is the IPCC calculating any probabilities for abrupt weather (not climate) events, such as sudden droughts, which would hammer local species populations? -- I am going to guess it does not, because it seems impossible to come up with a meaningful number.
Variability has actually been greater during cooling periods than in warming ones. So if you want a meaningful number, look at the cooling periods and dial the number down.
(3) Does the IPCC estimate include the effects of fragmentation of wildlands? Fragmentation (a) makes the species-area relationship effective sooner, and (b) prevents species from moving to a different range, particularly when human habitat intervenes.
If fragmentation is your problem, then warming should be up your ally. Warming increases range both upward in altitude and poleward in latitude. Those scary pictures of receding glaciers are also images of expanding habitat.
A supplemental solution to fragmentation would be an amplification of high-yield agriculture through Frankenfoods. Higher yield per hectare has meant the return of previously cultivated land to the wild. Forest coverage actually increased over North America during the 20th Century.
Others solutions for species preservation include gene banks, zoos, and land trusts. But those things cost money - money that would be made more scarce by expensive and destructive schemes such as Kyoto.
Posted by: Mike at Apr 5, 2007 1:48:23 AM
"'There you go again, everything depends on me.'
Since God has not been answering His telephone calls, it's either you or somebody else, kiddo. Why not you? After all, you are the one who seems to have the requisite psychic abilities - knowing what the fashions in food preference will be four or more generations hence."
If not me who? If not me, an international system of ocean reserves ("no take" regions), and international cap-and-trade agreements.
That's an easy answer and one not so far from reality. The agreements are there, sort of, they just skirt the edge a little too often. Or they break down on international boundaries. They too often "manage" fisheries right down to collapse.
We can use our noggin's to figure out what is sustainable, and put in a margin for our own error. We don't have to punt, as you do, with the ideologically pure (but insane) demand that markets come first, and that if we can't find a market player to preserve the future, then the future be damned.
Posted by: odograph at Apr 5, 2007 9:47:49 AM
Mike, almost entirely nonsense. Even Lomborg gets more of it correct than this (and refutes you!) before his own discussion of extinction runs off the rails.
Posted by: Lee A. Arnold at Apr 5, 2007 11:50:30 AM
If not me who? If not me, an international system of ocean reserves ("no take" regions), and international cap-and-trade agreements.
Best of luck to your great-great-grandkids.
Posted by: Mike at Apr 5, 2007 3:54:31 PM
almost entirely nonsense.
Since it is based on theory rather than actual measures confirmable by the senses, the nonsense is "percent of species lost per decade". Actual measures show that bird loss during the warming that began in the 19th Century - an area where we actually have evidence - has been minimal.
Posted by: Mike at Apr 5, 2007 4:00:41 PM
Sinnce birds can fly, any dodo knows they can usually make it over human habitat.
Posted by: Lee A. Arnold at Apr 5, 2007 7:53:56 PM
"If not me who? If not me, an international system of ocean reserves ('no take' regions), and international cap-and-trade agreements."
Best of luck to your great-great-grandkids.
You know it's funny. George W. Bush has set aside those very "no take" ocean reserves (in fact, "the world’s biggest ocean preserve") ... and he is not at the top of anyone's list as a ... what was it? Oh yeah, "people's commissar."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13300363/
I think the sane amongst us will take practical and solid plans over mindless ideology. The best you can offer is your repeated "best of luck." Maybe "luck" is a plan, but not a very good plan.
Posted by: odograph at Apr 5, 2007 9:46:45 PM
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