Registered: Mar 2003
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/lastword/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/scie...1400600,00.html

The IPCC report is making a lot of headlines in the UK, and so is the (US / Oil-lead) anti-IPCC PR rollout.


So there we have it. On one hand we have the IPCC, the rest of the world's major scientific organisations, and the government's chief scientific adviser, all pointing to the need to cut emissions. On the other we have a small band of sceptics, including lobbyists funded by the US oil industry, a sci-fi writer, and the Daily Mail, who deny the scientists are right. It is reminiscent of the tobacco lobby's attempts to persuade us that smoking does not cause lung cancer. There is no danger this lobby will influence the scientists. But they don't need to. It is the influence on the media that is so poisonous.


But John Maddox, a former editor of the journal Nature, who attended yesterday's meeting, said the sceptics might have a point.

He did not dispute that carbon dioxide emissions could drive global warming, but said: "The IPCC is monolithic and complacent, and it is conceivable that they are exaggerating the speed of change."



I was wondering if the US has much reporting of the issue - and if it is "poisonous" or not. Is Kyoto supported or not?

cheers

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Hilbert Space
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As long as people realise that the oil companies would basically have to say that the problem is exaggerated whether or not they believed it to be, it should be OK. The problem is not so much with the media, I think, as with those elements of the public who are looking for reasons not to worry about the problem. Exactly what would comprise sufficient evidence for those people isn't clear to me (they just do that Bush 'we need more evidence' nonsense).

There is a genuine debate, but serious scientists probably shouldn't take oil company money for this because, whatever they find, it is going to look like they were aiming to produce the results that the oil companys want to see.

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Registered: Mar 2004
Location: USA
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Give me the money. It's cold outside, the oil companies are right.

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Registered: Sep 2000
Location: Kansas City
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The new report's projections on magnitude and rate of change are so wildly out of step with the rest of the research to date that some skepticism is certainly warranted.

I don't know that there's much of a case to be made anymore that human CO2 emissions aren't causing/going to cause some degree of warming and that there will be some costs associated therewith. But there's very real arguments to be made as to the magnitude and rate of change, and the proper policy response. There's clearly client science on both sides distorting the issue.

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Registered: Aug 2001
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The concern is that the longer action is delayed, clearly the more severe it will have to be. Bush's record on this (and on much science in general) is shameful and the people who believe his line should be fucking ashamed of themselves.

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Registered: Sep 2000
Location: Kansas City
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I'd argue that the administration's record on a lot of environmental science is better that he gets credit for. The amount of really ridiculous criticism he's gotten on things like air and water quality is disturbing, for instance; clearly, there are some for whom no free-market solution is reasonable and for whom any pullback in restrictions on economic activity represents lost ground.

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Registered: Aug 2001
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Air and Water quality are of very low importance compared to climate change.

I am not sure that free-market solutions are going to work in many cases, incidentally, unless the market is tilted by government through differential taxation based on some environmental cost function.

This nutso idea of going to Mars is another issue I have with him. What the fuck?

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Registered: May 2002
Location: blessed oblivion
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quote:

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Originally posted by Smug Git
Air and Water quality are of very low importance compared to climate change.

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Registered: Aug 2001
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Climate change will affect a lot more people, and is much more long-term.

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Registered: Aug 2002
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quote:

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Originally posted by Smug Git
This nutso idea of going to Mars is another issue I have with him. What the fuck?

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Registered: Sep 2000
Location: The Bottom of the Toyem Pole
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quote:

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Originally posted by CHiPsJr
clearly, there are some for whom no free-market solution is reasonable and for whom any pullback in restrictions on economic activity represents lost ground.

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Registered: Sep 2000
Location: MadCo
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Totally fucking agreed with Nute. The future cost is just too great, and there's no good reason not to switch now, or start switching now.

Melesse

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Registered: Dec 2002
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Just out of curiosity Nute, how does this:

quote:

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...Developed nations should be putting their developed status to work and pay the premium to shift to a cleaner economy. This will pay off quickly as economies of scale begin to work their magic. We also need to pay for it in convenience and stop producing and buying electronics that are in an always-on standby mode that leeches electricity constantly in order to save us 5 seconds of startup time. WTF?...

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Hilbert Space
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quote:

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Originally posted by tessellated
I actually very much like the idea of humans exploring Mars. I always have been quite enthusiastic about space exploration in general, but given Bush's amazing ability for making a complete cock-up of anything he touches I won't be sad if that program gets delayed a few more years.

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Registered: Sep 2000
Location: Kansas City
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First of all, Nute, your idea of "sustainable" and mine are clearly a whole hell of a lot different, and I think you might be suprised at the level of economic development a whole lot of environmental "experts" deem to be sustainable--we are talking in some cases not about hybrid cars, but about the elimination of all fossil fuels and the abolition of agriculture. To say that one advocates a "sustainable" economy/ecology is meaningless. We all do. We disagree as to what tactics bring it about.

I would argue that absolutely there are situations in which economic benefits justify environmental damage. There are specific federal regulations on carcinogenic pesticides that operate at an estimated marginal cost of several trillion dollars per life saved. Many of the changes in regulation under the Bush administration involved some pretty common-sense weighing of marginal cost against marginal benefit. This, frankly, strikes me as a better way of making policy than the adoption of some comprehensive, absolutist environmental ethic. ALL choices that involve economic restrictions impose a cost in terms of quality of life, and I am not willing to live a nerf life in which I sacrifice freedom of action and comfort in order to be perfectly safe.

There are certainly some specific actions that can reduce fossil fuel use while still generating a long-term profit to practitioners of industry. This is certainly not true of ALL such actions, and there aren't many same people who argue that a comprehensive, forced industrial transormation away from fossil fuels would do anything other than kick hell out the developed world economically. It's not a "fucking cop-out", it's an attempt to compare short-term costs to long-term benefits, and even most of the people who think the transition is a good idea make a point of saying, "but somebody else should do it first, not me and mine." Witness Kyoto.

There is room for intelligent people to disagree about the possible magnitude and ultimate impact of global warming; there is plenty of reasonable debate over a course of mitigation vs. adaptation. For once I'm not the extremist in the debate; I think we ought to weigh likely costs and benefits, and you're overtly advocating that we act to avoid the nightmare scenario, independent of degree of likelihood, and regardless of who suffers what consequence in the meantime.

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Registered: Aug 2001
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The problem is that the risk/cost analysis has some boggling potential costs, so a more 'environmental' approach is actually potentially justified.

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Registered: Sep 2000
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SSimon, two different issues. I'm talking about TVs and stereos, for example, that even when you turn them off aren't really off, just in standby mode. It's in everything electronic sold these days, it seems. I read a piece a few months ago talking about set-top cable boxes that could easily be built with 60% better energy efficiency but that there isn't any motivation for it. It would cost slightly more but even that would still be almost negligible. A lot of the embedded PC devices don't utilize the extent of our knowledge in low power consumption either.

Your point about my computer isn't entirely lost though. I could reduce my energy use by shutting down my computers all the time. I use them as servers though and its difficult to boot them remotely when I or someone else needs to access them.

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Registered: Aug 2001
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Heating and cooling are the big electricity consumers. And energy in general, in fact (given that internal combustion engines are heat engines).

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Registered: Sep 2000
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quote:

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Originally posted by Smug Git
The problem is that the risk/cost analysis has some boggling potential costs, so a more 'environmental' approach is actually potentially justified.

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Hilbert Space
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Sure, that is what I meant by 'risk/cost analysis'. The 'economic chaos' arguments were somewhat dubious, though. The UK and other countries can meet Kyoto guidelines without that chaos (Russia will find it a piece of cake, actually, but that is more to do with their incredible disappearing economy than anything else) and so could the US have. That Kyoto is only a beginning is certainly true, but a beginning is what is needed. The US produces such a large proportion of Greenhouse emissions that, although Kyoto will now go ahead anyway thanks to Russian aquiescence, without the US signing up (and stopping the ridiculous scare stories), the beginning is stumbling at the line. Of course, as we discussed a while back, neither side in the Senate voted for Kyoto, so there is some serious work to be done. It has to start, I think, with the end of the denial (from people like Bush but he is not solely to blame; he didn't start the sophistry surrounding the debate in the US, he merely chose not to try to stop it) that the problem is big and of the role of the US in causing and worsening the problem (Australia and Canada are also big culprits in this regard).

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Registered: Sep 2000
Location: Kansas City
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We clearly disagree very fundamentally about the implications of Kyoto for the US economy. I'll throw this out there, though: if the protocol had imposed the same restrictions on the PRC (a major CO2 source in its own right) that it had on the US, I'd have been more likely to support it. And the PRC, I daresay, a lot less likely.

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Registered: Sep 2000
Location: The Bottom of the Toyem Pole
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I never suggested that everyone would be rich in a sustainable energy economy. I also disagree with the idea that changing our economy would be that disruptive. It isn't like we are going to shut off the oil pumps all at once and make eveyrone take up the slack working as drones installling solar panels and windmills.

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