Appropriate for a blog titled “Shetl Optimized,” recalling the original shtetl system, built on self sufficiency and a healthy dose of tzedaka toward the rest of the shtetlen. If the object is to optimize, not paralyze, cooperation will work more effectively than taxation; i.e., disperse the wealth for collective well being (the wealth of creative opportunity as well as the wealth of energy and resources) as opposed to hoarding it as a form of punishment.

Tom

Most of us just have to give up the sports car and poker night.

I hope to make time to read more of this important thread. For now, I would only contribute the comment that instead of taxing us into paralysis, or limiting creative opportunities (like scientific conferences), would it not be more productive to decentralize and expand economic activity into many small and redundant local systems that consume resources on smaller scales — and network them, not on the big business model of efficiency, but on the old agrarian model of effectiveness?

Even if global warming is caused by humans, the fact that it is happening at all is also a human problem to solve — and it seems to me a head in the sand solution to cut back and deny resources for individual growth, especially since a significant portion of the world’s population is starving and undereducated. We won’t go back to the days when 97% of people were farmers; we can, however, in this age of information, use that technology to effectively build and link self sufficient communities in a robust way — so that we as a world community can protect ourselves not only against natural disasters such as hurricanes and famine, but against patently manmade disasters (e.g., terrorism, slavery, war) as well.

Tom

In the meantime, the covert cadre that really controls the global conspiracy to (in your phrase) “advance the cause” — hmmm  would that be the cause of science? the cause of the Enlightment? the world wonders! — remains ebulliently confident of its power!

John Sidles says: “Johnny C, the strongest climate-change skepticism addresses the strongest climate-change science, eh?”

So after numerous comments on this post, containing no substantive argument, but lots of sneers at other commenters who addressed the issues raised by the post, your latest contribution is to say that Scott doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but commenters who disputed his points are polemicists who shouldn’t have tried to correct him because there are other better arguments that global warming is a problem.

Never mind that a supposed increase in exteme weather events is probably the most prominant argument for global warming being real that the general public is exposed to. Like the “hockey stick” graph, it’s fine to feed them bullshit, if it advances the cause. Right?

Johnny C says: “If Scott is to argue that increased weather disasters lend support to the theory of global warming, we must first establish the premise that weather disasters have increased.”

Johnny C, the strongest climate-change skepticism addresses the strongest climate-change science, eh? Such that skepticism and science both gain in strength?

Whereas skepticism that consistently cherry-picks the weakest science becomes — in the long run — merely a futile polemical exercise.

The strongest climate-change science (it seems to me) rests upon:

(1) theoretical foundations in heat transfer physics,

(2) affirmed by observations of global energy imbalance,

(3) given moral weight by concern for future generations,

(4) as appreciated by a global scientific community,

(5) in a spirit of respect for what we do not understand,

(6) and a commitment to conserving what we can never recreate, if it is destroyed.

Johnny C, hopefully the above references will help you in appropriately broadening your skeptical appreciation of science!

My point (in posting that excerpt) is that, if Scott is to argue that increased weather disasters lend support to the theory of global warming, we must first establish the premise that weather disasters have increased.

Can you please point me to any such evidence, for any space, time, and “measure choices” of your choosing? Thank you.

Johnny C posts  [a cut-and-paste letter-to-the-editor from the Wall Street Journal]

Johnny C, how is it that you are unconcerned with that letter’s multiple symptoms of cherry-picking?

• Unexplained spatial restrictions  USA only.

• Unexplained temporal restrictions Recent decades only.

• Unexplained measure choices Hurricanes, floods and droughts only.

• Absence of physical theory  No physics context is offered.

• Absence of verifiability  No verifiable references.

Conclusion  The letter’s restrictions and lacunae act to obstruct rational scientific discourse … and that is why denialist arguments characteristically impose these restrictions, eh?

It’s not complicated, Johnny C!

While it’s hardly mentioned in the media, the U.S. is currently in an extended and intense hurricane “drought.” The last Category 3 or stronger storm to make landfall was Wilma in 2005. The more than seven years since then is the longest such span in over a century.

Flood damage has decreased as a proportion of the economy since reliable records were first kept by the National Weather Service in the 1930s, and there is no evidence of increasing extreme river floods. Historic tornado damage (adjusted for changing levels of development) has decreased since 1950, paralleling a dramatic reduction in casualties. Although the tragic impacts of tornadoes in 2011 (including 553 confirmed deaths) were comparable only to those of 1953 and 1964, such tornado impacts were far more common in the first half of the 20th century.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports that drought in America’s central plains has decreased in recent decades. And even when extensive drought occurs, we fare better. For example, the widespread 2012 drought was about 10% as costly to the U.S. economy as the multiyear 1988-89 drought, indicating greater resiliency of American agriculture.

There is therefore reason to believe we are living in an extended period of relatively good fortune with respect to disasters.

1) When we consider economic measures like taxation that will bring Gas price to 25 dollars a gallon we have to realize that an economic collapse (which may result from such measures) may have devastating effects on the lives of hundred of millions of people as terrible as the effects of global warming and in a much shorter time-scale.

2) It is very important to have some sense of time- and cost- scales for various threats from global warming and various measures proposed here. Delaying the effect of warming by 10 years is one thing and delaying it by one month is completely different.

3) I tend also to support the idea of building more nuclear power plants. (I was surprised that this obvious measure was not more central to the discussion.) But I realize that there is much opposition to this, and, in fact, most countries go in the opposite direction, and I would like to understand better why.

4) Some of the proposed measures and statements are not consistent with democratic thinking, (and the damage from dictatorship, even scientists-run dictatorship again can be much worse than the damage from global warming and at a much shorter time-scale).

5) The comparison of the projected suffering and loss of life from global warming to cases of mass murders is not good (and can be unnecessarily offensive). A good analogy for these claims could be with natural disasters like the 1918 flu pandemic (the “Spanish flu”). This was a natural phenomenon, likely intensified by human actions and negligence, that led to the death of 50-100 million people.