Tackling Global Warming Cheaper Than Ignoring It 586
Coryoth writes, "In a report commissioned by the UK government, respected economist Sir Nicholas Stern concludes that mitigating global warming could cost around 1% of global GDP if spent immediately, but ignoring the problem could cost between 5% and 20% of global GDP. The 700-page study represents the first major report on climate change from an economist rather than a scientist. The report calls for the introduction of green taxes and carbon trading schemes as soon as possible, and calls on the international community to sign a new pact on greenhouse emissions by next year rather than in 2010/11. At the very least the UK government is taking the report seriously; both major parties are proposing new green taxes. Stern points out, however, that any action will only be effective if truly global."
Side Note: (Score:3, Insightful)
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Of course, this time it's actually reasonable.
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But seriously, don't worry.
The American Way (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately, global warming is a problem who's impact is even less tangible to Americans than problems like future social security shortfalls. As such, I doubt the government will support action until we're in the midst of cataclysmic environmental impact at a nationwide level.
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You're optimistic. I say they'll just blame it on terrorism and the Axis of Evil(R).
Re:The American Way (Score:5, Insightful)
Nonsense. George Bush was very clear after 9/11 in saying that "terrorists hate the USA because it is a land of freedom".
Assuming that George Bush was correct in this assessment, he has done far more to combat terrorism than any other US President in recent history.
Osama said it best... (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, we should keep in mind that Bush is simply the symbol of this decay. The Administration as a whole is what scares the hell out of me. Add to this the people in Congress who support these shenanigans. And places like the UK have some nasty new laws as well.
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It's not just the UK and the US. here [cyborgcow.net] is a picture (chart) from the economist magazine with a world-wide view of freedoms lost after 9/11 around the world. It's an old picture, too (2003)--it's likely worse now.
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UK story, but as you say, global warming. Bush doesn't even believe that global warming is real. The US didn't sign the Kyoto agreement, yet it is by far the greatest polluter on the planet. I don't see how it's possible to have a discussion on global warming without bashing the US government.
Tony needs to talk to George first (Score:2)
We need to encourage our allies to act sensibly, the UK is small and insignificant compared to the US.
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Re:Tony needs to talk to George first (Score:4, Informative)
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Long term solution (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally I think a long term solution to this will require technology on an unprecidented scale, not merely cutting back emissions. We should be investing in these new technologies and in general scientific and economic progress, and I am concerned that these short-term "band-aid" measures of reducing output could actually increase the amount of time it takes (and thus how bad it gets) before we have the appropriate technology and scientific understanding to regulate the climate of our entire planet.
Of course, if all else fails, there's always controlled stratospheric particulate matter injection, and the US and Russia certainly have enough devices for that...
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Apparently the cheapest way to put dust in the upper atmosphere is to shoot it up with big naval guns. But aside from that, my favored techniques involve providing tax incentives in cities to paint rooftops white. This results in an increased albedo, reflecting more sunlight (and heat) - not only reducing global warming directly, but indirectly i
Re:Long term solution (Score:4, Insightful)
...and make the problem much, much worse. Increased albedo is a huge problem, from the light-gray scars that mark the existence of cities to the reduced dark green of the world's forests due to logging. Increasing the Earth's albedo leads to increased desertification--and the worst part is, this is a positive feedback cycle because increased desertification leads to increased albedo.
The best solution for roofs is not painting them white, but turning them green. Cover as many flat roofs as possible with plant cover, and increase evapotranspiration. Stop paying farmers not to farm, and pay them to grow hemp instead. Use hemp to replace all wood pulp and wood fiber applications, especially paper, and save millions of acres of trees, not in tropical rainforests, but in temperate rainforests, where the problem is just as dire.
The central problem with global warming is not the temperature in itself; it's the mechanism that is raising the temperature, which is primarily an increase in certain atmospheric gases. We don't need half-baked ideas involving producing millions of gallons of toxic paint, which will worsen the problem at every stage from the production of the paint, to its effect on albedo, to the contamination that will inevitably result from improper application and cleanup. We need to focus on reducing greenhouse gases. Period.
For the record, IANAEE (Environmental Engineer), but I will be in nine months.
Re:Long term solution (Score:4, Informative)
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Emissions reductions plans are not about reducing production, but about being more efficient, in terms of emissions, in the production we d
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There has actually been quite a lot of research on how well the earth's homeostatic mechanisms will compensate for our waste. And those studies are not encouraging. Read Paul Hawken's The Ecology of Commerce. He cites quite a few studies. The book was written in 1993, so I would assume there are more now as well.
A few quotes are below because he says it so much better than me. Despite the somber tone of these quotes, Hawken's is remarkably optimistic and offers a long list of suggestions for reversin
Public planning based on hype is ill-founded (Score:5, Informative)
You are right on both counts. I am a scientist and an engineer, and I work enough with climate modelling to understand the problems and limitations in this area. And from this background, I judge that the esteemed economist is paying more attention to hype than fact.
Global warming is very real. Without natural global warming, this planet would be about 33 C colder than it currently is, so it's an extremely important effect that keeps this planet liveable. The most important greenhouse gas that creates 95% of the greenhouse effect is water vapour (not CO2), and we have no control over the water vapour whatsoever, but we're damn glad it's there.
What's more, there has been a gradual (though erratic) increase of temperature throughout the current interglacial period (18,000 years) [gcrio.org], which cannot be attributed to "advanced" civilization emissions, and this should be viewed against the backdrop of the longer current glaciation cycle (100,000 years) [gcrio.org] --- ie. we're at a perfectly normal peak in temperature, and it's not even a high one within the current interglacial.
That's the background. Now let's see where current observations put us.
Man's huge outpouring of CO2 has very significantly increased the CO2 ppm in the atmosphere, to levels unprecedented in recent glacial periods. While CO2 is not a primary controller of global temperature (the long-term paleoclimate record shows almost no correlation whatsoever [geocraft.com], the record through the last several glaciations shows a strong correlation [wikipedia.org] between the two.
Of course, graphing CO2 and temperature from the fossil record doesn't tell us which is cause and which is effect, and we are not currently able to model the very complex biosphere nor the chaotic cloud formation processes well enough to make any sound judgements about this. However, that doesn't mean that we can ignore it.
Two things we do know with total certainty:
Firstly, this is what we DON'T do: we don't conclude that the temperature is going to go through the roof. Not only is there no significant temperature excess in the record (the +0.6 C of recent times would be regarded as entirely within natural climate variation if it weren't for the hype), but more importantly, the trend cannot be stopped in the ways suggested because CO2 has a very long lifetime, and all the industrial age CO2 will continue having its effect for a good 800+ years.
Secondly, this is what we DO do: we accept that the North Atlantic and polar melting cannot be stopped and that therefore the sea level will rise enormously in coming decades and centuries. This will have a collosal effect on Man, and we should plan for it, basically through gradual retreat from the shorelines.
That would be economic planning based on scientific facts, rather than hype.
Of course, reducing CO2 while we're at it is a great idea --- we should not polute the planet, FULL STOP, as it's the only one we've got, currently. But to believe that this is going to solve climate change is a complete fiction.
Re:Public planning based on hype is ill-founded (Score:4, Informative)
This just isn't true. I've heard this claim a lot, and I am yet to be provided with one reputable source that actually uses this figure. Water vapour accounts for around 80% of greenhouse gases by mass, or 90% by volume. But even that's somewhat deceptive because what really counts is how effectively it acts as a greenhouse gas to trap heat. In terms of percentage input to the warming effect of greenhouse gases, water vapour is somewhere between 36% and 70%, though most studies tend to find it to be around 65%.
Still, 65% is a very significant portion, the difference is that water vapour, unlike carbon dioxide or methane, has a very short residence time in the atmosphere (around 10 days). This means that water vapour will very quickly find an equilibrium point and can only act as a feedback rather than a forcing with regard to climate change. None the less water vapour represents an important feedback and you'll find no shortage of scientific papers detailing its effects on climate change. You'll also find that tropospheric water vapour is a vital component in IPCC climate models, while stratospheric water vapour is treated specifically in IPCC reports.
You link to a very rough chart (looking at the plot style it is a qualitative rather than hard quantitative) that shows - well not a gradual and erratic rise, but a certain amount of erraticness and variation with current temperatures being plotted as a momentary low. The chart is old, over 16 years old, however, and we have many more recent studies that compile together many sources of proxy data. Here is a chart showing several such proxy data reconstructions, which sompiels together the different methods [wikipedia.org]. Note that the general trend is far more down than up, and that the recent rise is completely obscured due to the scale of the chart (as with the chart you provided). The author of this chart, however, conveniently denotes the 2004 temperature level, and provides a subchart of recent proxy data. All of a sudden the recent rise is more clear, and far from natural looking.
To stem off the the claims that the individual lines in that plot (as opposed to the averaging over all of them) show much greater natural variation - most of those represent data from a single location such as an ice core from Greenland, and ice core from Kilamanjaro etc. There is plenty of variation in local climate, and no one denies this, however it is global warming that is the issue and the average global temperature, which is far better expressed by the averaging over the various local data sources spread around the globe, is far less given to such dramatic fluctuation (and we know this - compare instrumental temperature data for local sources versus averaged globally: in the global average there is much less dramatic variation).
We are, indeed, currently in an interglacial. We have, however, been in one for the past 11,000 years or so, and via most modern temperature reconstruction we reached the temeperature peak for that interglacial near the beginning, and shouldn't be expecting further rises within this interglacial. The current sudden upsurge of temperature really isn't a normal peak - it is anomolous within this interglacial. Moreover, it actua
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I'm very skeptical of sociological solutions to problems, I think in the end it's best for everyone to solve this through app
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Re:Long term solution (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Long term solution .. yes, long term (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Long term solution (Score:5, Insightful)
In what way is it so terribly inefficient?
Startup costs? Well, all one does is dig a hole and drop the seedling tree in. It's possible for one person to plant more than 300 trees an hour with the right equipment. How much does that cost, maybe 20 cents per tree? The land needs to be acquired as well. There's plenty of waste land that can be used, like the land near freeways. It will require a lot of land, but that's the only major resource that would be required. When compared to the billions of dollars of farm subsidies that the US already pays to agriculture producers, a subsidy for growing trees would be small by comparison.
There won't be maintenance costs, except for possible subsidies to private growers. The costs when the tree needs to be replaced won't be great either.
Such conversion is what trees are good at. Why invent useless technology when natural means are already available that can do what is required for less cost? The big cost in the conversion will be the energy. The energy input in your equation has to come from somewhere, and when noncarbon energy is in short supply that is an important consideration. Trees capture the energy for free.
Hmmmmm; Math please (Score:3, Informative)
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Living Planet Report (Score:2, Insightful)
CC.
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Taxes: is there anything they can't do? (Score:3, Insightful)
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This isn't about global warming, it's about revenue generating, nothing more. The council proposing this is over a million pounds in the red, just says it all really. People with expensive cars are an easy target.
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So yes, people are punished for making choices that are bad for other people. However, the princi
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I was all against banning smoking in pubs as that limits people's freedom of choice, however, as a non-smoker after visiting Ireland and all the pubs have clean air I'm now looking forward to the england smoking ban. However, if I had to vote in a referendum on the smoking ban I'd probably vote against as it should be upto the owner of the bar to decide on the rules - but as the law i
Re:Taxes: is there anything they can't do? (Score:5, Funny)
if not for taxes to pay for public education, our kids would be the dubmest in the free world, wiat..... never mind
if not for taxes, our social security and medicare programs would be bankrupt. wait
if not for taxes to fight the war on drugs, we would have drug problems in every inner city, uh
if not for taxes, the government would need to go into debt,
if not for taxes our medical and college education costs would be out of reach,
if not for taxes to pay for war, we'd be loosing the war on terror,
Well, FU! you're just not trying hard enough to see how valuable all these taxs are for everyone. We NEED the government to be "proactive"
Re:Taxes: is there anything they can't do? (Score:5, Insightful)
Public schools do not educate, according to reformed schoolteachers like John Gatto [johntaylorgatto.com] and John Holt [holtgws.com]. If they did, the populace wouldn't take the crap [slashdot.org] that 'we' do - teh masses would know how to recognize tyranny when it happened, and find a way to circumvent it.
The government is in debt because of the tax "cuts" Bush pushed through.
The government has been in debt for a very long time - Johnson started printing money to pay for Vietnam, and there was no turning back. Clinton only balanced the budget by borrowing money from social security. If the government had to abide by the same accounting standards as corporations, there would have never been a 'surplus', and the current deficits would be much, much worse than the numbers they currently put out.
Our medical and college education costs are out of reach because
we're spending our money on things like the War on Drugs(which just makes illegal drugs more expensive)
If not for the war on drugs driving up prices, how could the various black-op agencies finance their nefarious operations? Read something about Clinton being in on cocaine smuggling through Arkansas - seems like a possibility to me...
and the War on Terror(abject failure due to our inability to concentrate on the nation that actually caused the terror).
You are refering to the traitors in the whitehouse, right?
The United States has the lowest tax levels of the Western world. We also have the highest debt and the worst healthcare. There is a connection.
'Highest debt' is because our Feral Government has had free reign to "print" money for its various programs for 35+ years, and no one's had the ability to call them on it. See Ron Paul's The End of Dollar Hegemony [lewrockwell.com].
'Worst healthcare' is because a certain kind of doctor lobbied themselves a monopoly, and the government set the rules such that employers paid their employees' healthcare bills (wage ceilings during WWII led companies to pick up their workers' doctor bills). Medicare was created to pay for retired workers who'd gotten accustomed to the 'health insurance' paradigm, and that program's costs have been spiraling out of control ever since. See 100 Years of Medical Robbery [mises.org] and Real Medical Freedom [mises.org].
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No it didn't. Some people were educated but there was massive illiteracy. People clamored for public education precisely because so much of the country was filled with uneducated people.
"social security and medicare programs - how to punish people for getting old. My poor grandfather would've expired, were it not for Medicare paying for his defibrillator... I have three grandparents left, aged 86 to
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As a government, they have to make pollution undesirable to companies, and basically have 2 ways doing it:
1. Create legsitlation to prohibit undesirable actions.
2. Place taxes on undesirable actions.
I prefer option 2.
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Re:Taxes: is there anything they can't do? (Score:4, Interesting)
Twofer against (Score:2, Insightful)
Better off coping with a warmer planet (Score:2, Interesting)
Assuming global warming is true (a point I will neither defend nor oppose), the money spent on preventing global warming is a waste. The full implementation of the Kyoto treaty will result in a decrease in global warming by 0.07C [cei.org]. That's right, less than a tenth of a degree Celcius, with all the economic and humanitarian harm that Kyoto would impose. And that harm is real: the EU nations are already trying to figure out how to not do Kyoto while still claiming some kind of adherence to the treaty because th
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Re:Better off coping with a warmer planet (Score:5, Insightful)
That's an interesting assertion. The point of the report is that this precise question was studied in great depth by a well respected economist (Stern was a former chief economist for the World Bank), and that the results of all that detailed anaylsis is that, in fact, it is far more expensive to learn to cope with a warmer planet. I fail to see how you dismiss that result quite so easily - especially given that you have not read the report (it is not officially released till tomorrow).
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You're also ignoring the possibility that even without said tipping point, the cost of coping with a warmer planet may be higher than the costs required to halt climate change. Add to that the fact that the planet we'd have to cope with could be a very unpleasant place to live -- which itself must be considered as a cost -- and I'd say that whether or not man-made global
Re:Better off coping with a warmer planet (Score:5, Interesting)
Not true.
The majority of the energy that the world consumes today is from non-renewable sources - coal, oil, uranium and so on. These sources of energy will be depleted eventually. In 100 years oil will be scarce, easily-extractable uranium may be in short supply and coal, although still plentiful, may not be used as widely for energy as it is now.
Even if one believes the most optimistic view (against all available evidence) that increasing the CO2 concentration from the preindustrial level of 280 ppm to a much higher level has no effect on the planet's climate and the ecology, one cannot deny that we will need new sources of renewable energy. If global warming provides us with an opportunity to implement renewable energy, it would provide economic stability for future generations.
Thus, the money would not be wasted. Instead, it should be considered as an insurance policy.
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I'm sure a strong economy will be consolation to the plant and animal life that will be lost forever. Sorry Mr Polar Bear - you don't have any habit left, but look around you - the economy has never been stronger!
>> Frankly, the technological advances on our planet are going to decrease greenhouse gas emissions without any kind of treaty or government mandate.
If that's true, why haven't emissions decreased with technology
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OK, now tell me how much CO2 you'd need to add to a gas mix that's 78% nitrogen, 20% oxygen, and 2% other gases to get an atmosphere that's 97% CO2? Now tell me where you're going to find enough carbon and oxygen to make that CO2. Then tell me how you're going to EXPAND THE EARTH so that its size (relative to the volume of its
Parity, finally (Score:2)
If we're serious about Global Warming (Score:2)
If we're going to tackle global warming, we need to do it the smart way: Huge man-made carbon sinks. This is an engineering problem, folks. Solving the problem can be done on the cheap.
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(I hope that's what you're really suggesting here, it seems that way)
Don't Worry (Score:2)
Sure amigo, we are producing less green house gases today! Whatever you say homes.
Muahaha
UK gov hoping for the worse (Score:2)
So close, and yet... (Score:2)
In other worlds, it doesn't matter, because China and India don't give a damn, and will poison as much of their air/water/land as they have to to make a buck.
At least that is self-correcting, they seem to have reached the point where they are killing themselves off with the toxins at an exponential rate...
Could global warming be good for humanity? (Score:2)
cheaper still ... (Score:2)
When the isostatic rebound [wikipedia.org] from the melting global ice jiggles the Yellowstone caldera into erupting and takes out the neocon infestation in America, it will rid the planet of a dangerous meme reservoir that might otherwise require untold expenditures to pacify. The loss of the declining "liberal" population will have to be regarded as unavoidable collateral damage.
The injection of ginormous volumes of dust into the atmosphere will block enough sunlight
I'm alright with that. (Score:2)
That's cool, as long as we Americans don't have to do anything!
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the problem with "we Americans" is that far far too often we ask the government to do for us instead of us doing for ourselves. No wonder legislation like the patriot act passes without any real resistance when "we Americans" are too stupid/lazy/fearful to do for ourselves. "we Americans" need to take the initiative in doing what we can under our own roofs and in our own backyards before we go crying to the government.
Lots of people won't cat
Master of the Obvious? (Score:2)
Pass legislation to Remove CFC pollution from atmosphere: $10,000,000.00
Tackle global warming: $100,000,000,000.00
Human species continues to survive on planet Earth: Priceless.
Seriously, anything is cheaper than death.
lrn2tckle
Kinda hard to chat about a report that (Score:2)
I am a bit suspicous that the news article claims "could be 5-20%". This makes me think that this is the cost under the worst-case GW, which is highly improbable. Also, other cost-benefit analyses of this issue that I have seen have had much lower returns - something like break-even to 200%, not the 500-2000% implied by the news article. Something seems a bit fishy.
Also, just for reference, fighting AIDS and malaria have 50-fold returns, blowing even this GW
A good first step (Score:2)
However, we should not take this ONE study as the final word on the subject. More studies are needed. This study needs to be reviewed to check for possible flaws and caveats, such as:
1. What timeframe was considered, for both the cost of doing something and the cost of doing nothing? Multiple timeframes need to be projected.
2. Were
EdGCM: NASA Global Warming Simulator on a Laptop (Score:4, Interesting)
We don't have an economics model attached so it isn't 100% relevant to TFA, but it will let you see the physical effects different CO2 and GHG scenarios will have on our planet.
Disclaimer: I'm a developer on the project.
I wish I could write this eloquently (Score:3, Interesting)
For convenience (and posterity) I've copied the article below. The emphasis is mine, but please read the whole thing.
As most engineers and doctors know... (Score:4, Funny)
it's a lot harder to fix someone when they have lung cancer than to stop them from smoking in the first place.
Engineers know the value of tests...
all that "test first" design and building models, it saves having to repair crazy legacy code on live servers... or fix the bridge while cars are driving over it.
Unfortunately what we've got now is the latter situation...
the patient is sick and cars are driving over him.
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That prerequisite doesn't seem to stop anyone here...
- Tony
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Cheaper for whom? (Score:5, Insightful)
The only way to correct for something like this is through taxation etc, where the law can be applied and force better behaviour.
Cheaper for you, still (Score:5, Insightful)
This is from the article:
The article does not say when that is supposed to happen, and like everybody else here I haven't read the 700-page report that the article refers to, only the article itself. What I do know is that if the current world response to climate change doesn't change for the better soon, then you will start to see real consequences in the next several decades. If you don't plan on being alive 10-30 years from now (depending on the data you're relying on), then, well--I hope your life was successful and fulfilling. For the rest of us, we have a very real global problem on our hands that will become at least partially realized within our lifetimes. And you better believe we will be picking up the tab for it.
Re:Cheaper for you, still (Score:4, Informative)
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In the world of debate, the above would be classified an ad hominem argument. Someone not being an expert in the field is not proof that they're wrong. Debate the
Crichton's state of confusion. (Score:3, Informative)
The requisite debunking [realclimate.org] and one reason why he does not deserve any respect [realclimate.org] on climate related matters.
To those screaming about their back pocket, how else can we direct the economy away from a destructive path other than taxation and regulation?
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Start with the concept of every state having their own nuclear waste disposal facility, for example, and work from there.
Find out who is merely pandering to the meme, and who is serious about offering up treasure to address the issue.
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I've always thought that a single site in the Canadian shield, perhaps at the bottom of an old uranium mine, would do the trick. It's already radioactive as hell, given the amount of natural uranium in the Athabasca basin. Indeed one current mine is mined entirely by remote
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This is also false. Climatology is also actually a multidisciplanarian field; relying in part on the disciplines of anthropology and biology for gathering its evidence.
It is also false argument that scientists from one field cannot criticise the work of scientist in another field. Sciences overlap and math is math. I've always found it interesting that many climatologists reject critcism of their statistical methods by statisticians, because the statisticians are not cl
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>Yet he has no training in climatology. This is also false. Climatology is also actually a multidisciplanarian field; relying in part on the disciplines of anthropology and biology for gathering its evidence.
From which it does not follow that anyone trained in biology or anthropology can automatically claim to "have training in climatology." OP is quite correct in stating that Crighton has no training in climatology.
There is no authority in science. Only data.
That is naive on two levels, firstl
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It was probably something along the lines of "Why are you asking me about global warming? I'm a physicist. If you have questions about global warming, go ask an atmospheric scientist."
Note: "smart guy" != "expert in everything".
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It was even proposed that cleaning up particulate pollution over Europe could reveal a truer extent of
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is that the one?
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Cause as an arsehole, I'd only be interested in it if it had whale skin hubcaps
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Re:Oil Replacement Needed First (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder if that reduction is even necessary (though I would say it's a good idea anyway). According to the CIA world factbook [cia.gov], the USA consumes about 4 trillion kWh of electricity each year. According to Wikipedia the energy content of biodiesel is about 35 MJ per liter [wikipedia.org]. For 4 trillion kWh, this works out to about 15 quads (the unit used by the UNH study [unh.edu]). To produce that much Biodiesel, according to the UNH study, we would need about 12000 square miles of desert land. This is a very rough approximation; converting Biodiesel to electricity is not 100% efficient, energy consumption has changed since the CIA world factbook was updated, we don't need to go all the way to Biodiesel to generate electricity (just using the oil extracted from the algae, or even the algae themselves, should work), etc. etc.
So, give or take, for transportation and electricity combined, we need about 30000 square miles of desert land. We have that much. And this is for the USA, which, to my knowledge, has the highest energy consumption per capita.
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Actually, no. As An Inconvenient truth points out, out of 900+ reports on global warming, the number of scientists that disagree with the issue and the number of reports that find their are uncertainties is 0%. On the other hand, it goes on to show that the number of news articles in the media that claim doubt is well over 50% (63% from memory but don't quote me on that). It then moves on to a US govt official (now resigned) who had deliberately edited documents to add uncerta