humanities.philosophy.objectivism

On Mar 3, 5:43 pm, David Schwartz wrote:
> On Mar 3, 11:46 am, TC wrote:
.....
> > your emission of CO2 does harm me through the mechanism
> > of climate change (I like colder weather).

> Certainly my emission of CO2 only does you measurable harm through a
> tremendously indirect mechanism.

It does harm. That is what matters. Indirectness is not
of importance.
.....
> You are not entitled to be protected from harm that arises indirectly
> from a chain of events that I start.

So you are free to pull a trigger that releases a hammer,
that strikes a primer that .... drives a bullet into my body?
..............
> > Pissing in my swimming pool is a violation of my rights and is much
> > more directly analogous to CO2 emissions into the atmosphere.

> Except it's not your atmosphere.

Now who is picking at analogies?

Yes no one owns the atmosphere but the atmosphere
is essential to your life and my life and ....

> Pissing in my swimming pool would be
> more analogous. If you have any rights to the atmosphere you breathe
> and interact with to be free from my CO2, those same property rights
> would permit me to have more CO2 in the atmosphere that I breathe and
> interact with.

I have no right for my pool to be free of nitrogen compounds
so that ploy doesn't get you anywhere.

..............
> > If enlightened people see the inevitable stoppage coming,
> > and recognize the disruption that the stoppage caused by
> > shortages and chaotic change will cause, they it is rational
> > for these enlightened people to try to stop the burning of fossil
> > fuels.
> > Given that the societies involved use laws, one of the techniques
> > would be to seek the passage of laws.

> This is the same as the seat belt argument, precisely so.

Not precisely so.

> My not
> wearing a seatbelt indirectly raises your insurance rates,

The mechanism by which insurance rates rise is rather
different from the mechanism by which climate warms.

> polluting the public roads(??????).
Huh???

>Can you distinguish them?
I did.

> > > For example, arguments that seat belts don't just
> > > protect insurance rates but also protect the people who wear them
> > > argue against seat belt laws.
> > I won't snip that because I cannot see how this argument works.
> > Perhaps you can explain how lack of laws is good in your
> > scenario.

> You can at least make that argument that greenhouse gases are a
> negative externality. To the extent we believe that argument, it
> argues in favor of laws on restricting greenhouse gas emissions. To
> the extent that enternality is internalized, the argument is weaker.
> If we can internalize an externality, we don't need a law to fix it
> (other than a law to internalize the externality).

How does this explain your remark about seat belts?
Are you saying that we should all be good do-bes and wear
seat belts voluntarily?

> If the primary benefit of seat belt wearing is the seat belt wearer,
> then the externality is small. Most people will wear selt belts to
> protect themselves, even if they don't care about other people's
> insurance rates.

Yes you were but you are wrong about most people
wearing seat belts voluntarily. They perceive the inconvenience
of putting it on and don't perceive the risk of not wearing one.
[I'm weird, my first car was old before there were seatbelts
required so I installed them.]

How do you feel about air bags by the way?
.....
> > Reducing GG from China will help us in the long run.

> All the way to the next ice age.

I said reduce, not zero-out.

......
> > There is more than one way to industrialize. Many nations are going
> > straight to cell phone and skipping the wired state avoiding the need
> > for massive tonnage of copper.

> Africa is not going to run on solar power. Sorry.

Why not? It is well situated stradling the equator.

> > > What is the uncertainty due to accuracy of cloud measurements? What is
> > > the uncertainty due to humidity resolution?
> > Doesn't matter.

> Sure it does. The whole point of science is that you don't have to
> trust the scientists.

The model I cited fit the data from 1700-1800 without
anthropogenic inputs. Just look at the plots.
Thus they must have parametized
clouds etc well enough. Always room for improvement
of course.

But the departure of natural (non-anthro) forcing
from the data during 1800-2000 is significant because
of the match from 1700-1800.

didn't make sense>
However the model was parametized the discretion
was limited by proxy temperature measurements.

> > The point is that from 1700-1800 the model fits PROXY
> > (all that's available) data well. Thus the model works in an
> > era when anthropogenic disturbance was low.
> > Beyond 1800 anthropogenic inputs increase and the model with
> > only natural inputs (NAT) does not match the data. It is off by
> > over half a degree at 2000.
> > The anthropogenic data alone if off by 0.15 degree in 2000 and
> > fails to reproduce decade scale fluctuations in the data.
> > But the natural and anthropogenic combined is within 0.1 degree
> > in 2000 and matches the fluctuations.

> This is very meaningful if the total uncertainties caused by
> arbitrarily chosen inputs is less than half a degree.

They are. Look at the data curves.

Sadly, it is
> not. If the model is not accurate to half a degree, a half a degree
> discrepancy is meaningless.

Did you look at the data curves?

> > If it were only natural then from 1800-2000 would match as
> > well as 1700-1800. If it were only human factors, the match
> > would be better from 1800-2000.

> And it's entirely possible that changing some of the input choices
> would have produced results just like that.

So where can I see data where this has been done?

> All he would need is a bit of play in two inputs to cause the
> temperature predicted to drop a bit over time. This absence of this
> linear drop in the real world could then be perfectly explained by A-
> CO2.

You are really making it up as you go along!

> Again, there is way more than .5C of uncertainty. So all he has to do
> is tweak the uncertain inputs to get a drop of .5C over the end of the
> run. It's really not hard at all.

I have to ask again if you have looked at the graphs.
Where do you get this greater than 0.5C uncertainty?


> This is precisely what was done in numerous previous studies. I don't
> know about this specific one, but I do know the uncertainties are
> large enough. I would say with 99% certainty that he could have rigged
> his inputs slightly differently to get a rise such that A-CO2 pushes
> the temperature .5C too high.

Are you accusing the authors of fraud?

..............
> > No changes. Same model. The UVic Earth System Climate Model.
> > Just changes in forcing.

> The issue is the parameters that were not changed. How were the values
> for those inputs placed within the known error bars.

What are you talking about? Read the paper if you want
details.

All someone has
> to do is choose those values such that without A-CO2 you get a half-
> degree drop and then the A-CO2 can perfectly be used to explain that
> drop.

No it cannot. Data are presented from model runs - same
parameters - except for Anthro CO2, sulfate and ground cover.

> The proof is only valid if the data fits better with only the A-CO2
> for the vast majority of input values within the error bars.

Why only ACO2. ASulfate and ALand are clearly important.

> No
> climate model has come anywhere close to this yet, because the
> temperatures are all over the map. Just tinkering with humidity can
> get you a 4C drop. Even A-CO2 can't fix that.

The model with whatever parametrization of water vapor it
has is clearly different with no other changes thatn the Anthro
factors CO2, sulfate and land cover.

...............
> > > No, we are doomed to let the atmosphere itself tell us the effects of
> > > our emissions because we are still not smart enough to predict the
> > > weather.
> > What a sad, sad, pessimistic viewpoint.

> Unfortunately, that's reality. We simply cannot model ocean surface
> effects well enough.

I really think you are wrong.

> > > The choice of humidity resolution is arbitrary, and yet
> > > different choices produce radically different results. This permits
> > > those who tune the models to get whatever results they most want from
> > > a wide set of possible results.
> > You still haven't pointed me to a paper that discussed these
> > radically different results.

> I don't have to. It is up to the person making the claim to
> demonstrate its validity.

I provided a paper.
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~nathan/pdf/matthewsetal2004.pdf
Surely you can do the same.

......
> > Then how do you account for the goodness of fit from 1700-1800?
>
> The inputs were tweaked, within the known error bars, to get the
> results that were expected in the first place. If the model didn't fit ...

Nonsense. The inputs were as shown in the graphs.
Are you accusing the authors of cooking their data?

Tom