You might want to take a look at Tim Harford of the Financial Times’s summary of 2010 in just eight slides (three columns per slide). One of the most astonishing to me had the following numbers on it: China emitted 6,921m tons of CO2 over the last year (significantly more than in 2009); the U. S. emitted 5,648m tons (somewhat less than in 2009). China’s amount of increase far exceeds any amount by which we could reasonably be expected to cut back.
There’s also a column that illustrates in numbers how incredibly foolhardy BP was. Check it out.
“One of the most astonishing to me had the following numbers on it: China emitted 6,921m tons of CO2 over the last year (significantly more than in 2009); the U. S. emitted 5,648m tons (somewhat less than in 2009). China’s amount of increase far exceeds any amount by which we could reasonably be expected to cut back.”
The point I’ve been making for years. In light of the fact that temperatures haven’t risen in 15 years, and one of the key scientists has come clean that it was always really about wealth distribution anyway, it seams all the more insane – given our labor cost issues vis-a-vis China – to add yet another destructive policy to for US business to deal with.
I think GW is real (and 15 years of satellite data, it that’s what it is, might be cherry picking),
but I’ve largely resigned myself that no one really cares enough to put on the brakes.
My sister goes to some of the GW conferences (as an industry rep). She made the flip from stopping it to “adaptation” a couple years ago. I wasn’t ready. I still might not be. Adaptation is more likely to be just “living it,” whatever it turns out to be.
You know, we’ll enjoy a few less salmon runs, and call it “adaptation.” Stuff like that.
I certainly think that climate change is real (everything changes), that the heat we produce has to go somewhere, and that whether climate change is due to human action or not doesn’t make a good deal of difference to people whose homes have gone underwater (in the literal rather than figurative sense). I’m far more skeptical about the changes that have been proposed for dealing with the situation.
That’s why I’ve pitched the geo-engineering solutions around here rather than the behavioral ones. I think they’re more likely actually to effect the changes that might be needed and they’re likely to be of benefit to the United States.
News today seems to be that ocean acidification, another result of increasing atmospheric CO2, is likely to bite us sooner rather than later.
I haven’t heard of a geo-engineering solution to really fix that, or overall GW really. It is more a talisman at this point.
People say geo-engineering.
“A December 2009 National Geographic report quoted Thomas Lovejoy, former chief biodiversity advisor to the World Bank on recent research suggesting ‘the acidity of the oceans will more than double in the next 40 years. This rate is 100 times faster than any changes in ocean acidity in the last 20 million years, making it unlikely that marine life can somehow adapt to the changes.'”
I’m sure it didn’t move during some 15 year segment though, so how cares. We can cherry-pick our way out of it. That’s the ticket.
link
jp –
The AGW’s are the king of cherry picking. Remember FL hurricanes a couple years ago as proof positive? Then, no hurricanes. But of course “that is predicted by the theory, too.”
One thing I didn’t mention is the rise of temperatures on other planets in our solar system. Either man has secretly populated and polluted these planets, or this theory is in deep shit trouble. Hmm. Multiple planets. The sun, maybe? Who’d a thunk it, the sun?
Alex Knapp first drew my attention to CO2 in the oceans. This seems to have far, far, far more credibility. Its only a matter of time until the AGW nuts, who gravitated from coming Ice Age to the earth has a fever, to go to the ocean issue. Of course, they won’t care about the underlying science of either issue, just that its a place to hang their hat for taxation, thwarting US economic activity and wealth redistribution.
But that brings us full circle: what to do about China……….and Brazil, and India……..
If the ocean issue is truley a problem, I see no immediate solution. The first, best, option would be an emergency program for nuclear energy production. Don’t hold your breath, given the true motives of the activists. But economic self immolation should be rejected at every turn.
It’s another sort of cherry picking to choose the most irrational hurricane criers and make them “global warming.” But I will skip that, and the call-out to other planets. And the totally inaccurate memory of global cooling (press, not science played it up).
Here’s the thing on GW. You are a bright enough guy (hobbled by biases of course, but bright enough) to know that the question of GW cannot be decided now as P=0.0 (no chance of being true) or P=1.0 (an absolute truth).
Anyone reasonable is going to look at the real science and real uncertainty, and set their confidence of the moment. For me it might be P=0.7 or 0.8. For a reasonable critic it might be P=0.2 or 0.3
You can spot someone who isn’t really listening to science by how they play the P’s.
If they have 0.0 or 1.0 then they probably can’t handle the science.
(Of course, some who really know that it can’t be P=0.0 or P=1.0 shy away from that, because it leads to what we normally do in uncertainty …. hedged bets.)
Nice try, jp. No cigar. Theories aren’t like playing dice. Theories are consistently proven out by data, else they are just idle speculation. That’s where AGW stands right now.
Once you have to lean on “I believe it because the probability its true reaches my personal critical threshold” you are just a this side of a riverboat gambler.
So, how do you approach your portfolio Drew?
Do you have one certainty about future bond or stock prices, and do you bet for that one outcome without any hedge? Are you all-in options one way or another?
GW science is definitely more advanced than financial modeling, but it shares with finance that it is a prediction, with uncertainty, about the future.
Kind of sad that you think “no cigar” in response to that non-ideological truth.
BTW, while you throw out (what I consider) BS dismissals of GW theory, can you answer me this one riddle? Why does Russia sign on, and accept it as a truth?
They have absolutely no reason to do so. They are dependent on oil and gas exports to those GW-believing Europeans. Fighting GW theory would protect their product. Additionally, if they were going to lie, it would be in their interest to pretend that it was not true when it was, not the reverse. They would benefit as a regional winner in a warmer world.
So explain it, why the heck do the Russians buy (A)GW?