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A Question for My Fellow Ricochetti
I’ve got a question I’m trying to answer, and it occurs to me that someone here might be able to help me. One of the things I like most about Ricochet is the thoughtfulness and intelligence of the members. Another thing that impresses me is the diversity of this crowd. So I’m going to toss this out there and see if anyone has any thoughts to offer.
I wrote a post not too long ago about the need for a civil dialog across the political divide. A fellow in New York City, one of these young, hyper-educated computer entrepreneur types, read it and invited me to participate in a new podcast he’s launching soon. He wants his first episode to feature someone from the left and someone from the right holding a civil discussion on matters about which they disagree.
The person on the left is another hyper-educated individual — Ph.D. from MIT in machine learning, something like that — who recently left Google to found a climate change advocacy organization in D.C. I’m the person on the right. We’re going to have a civil conversation, which I am going to assume will be centered around climate change, though that hasn’t actually been stated. The conference call will take place this Wednesday afternoon.
This isn’t intended to be a debate, but rather a conversation, a discussion, a meeting of minds. That’s the hope, anyway: ideally, we’ll each come away understanding the other’s perspective a little better. I’m an old dog, and I can’t honestly say that I want or expect my own views to change. (I think that’s probably true of most people, old dogs or not.) But I intend to do my best to listen, and to take a pleasant, non-confrontational tone.
I’ll get to my question for you in a moment.
My general thinking on climate change is pretty simple, and goes as follows:
- I’m agnostic about anthropogenic climate change. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if we’re warming the planet; might surprise me a little if we aren’t.
- I’m skeptical that we can project with any significant confidence the state of the climate 80 years from now, but I’m willing to entertain the possibility that we’re getting very good at modeling the complex dynamic system we call climate.
- I am more than skeptical that we can effectively model the several other complex dynamic systems involved in making cost/benefit analyses of various climate change mitigation strategies over a similar time scale. These include patterns of land use, agricultural production, technological evolution, urbanization, global distribution of poverty, etc. Eighty years is a very long time in terms of technological and economic development. (Step back to 1940 and imagine what futurists thought 2020 would be like; how much do you think they got right?)
- Given that I believe we can’t realistically evaluate the economic consequences of climate change 80 years from now, perhaps not even the sign of those consequences, I can not begin to justify imposing large-scale controls on current energy policy. While it’s difficult to model complex systems, history is full of examples of what happens when you create concentrated authoritarian control structures — and that’s what would be required to transform our energy economy as the climate change alarmists seem to desire.
I am ignoring two things, both of which are important in the discussion but neither of which is central to my argument. One is the impracticality of actually changing the future climate in a predictable way — at least, of doing so without crippling the global economy. The other is nuclear power, which I believe all climate change alarmists should eagerly embrace — believe so strongly that I distrust the motives or the intelligence (or both) of any climate change alarmist who doesn’t support nuclear power.
So my argument revolves around the assertion that we are not capable of making reliable long-term predictions about complex systems, and that climate mitigation strategies require us to make such predictions about several independent but linked complex dynamic systems. My question is this:
What examples do we have of anyone making successful predictions of the long-term behavior of complex systems?
Say that long-term is on the order of 50 years, give or take. Complex systems are “complex” in a relatively formal way, involving multiple interacting factors that are difficult to measure, the interactions of which may be poorly understood, chaotic, and involve feedback mechanisms.
Economies, political and social movements, markets, and technology-driven change all exhibit the behavior of complex systems. They are difficult to predict because they involve a lot of independent elements (often, people) making individual contributions based on an evolving range of factors. They are difficult to precisely describe, precisely measure, and accurately predict over any but the shortest time frames. They may exhibit sudden and chaotic changes in response to relatively small inputs (the shooting of an Archduke, for example).
In contrast, sending a rocket to the moon, designing a super-computer, making the next breakthrough in material science or battery technology or solar power or advanced medical imaging — all of these things may be complicated, but they are not complex. They are achieved by solving a large number of well-defined problems, with each solution contributing to the final goal. These systems are not characterized by chaotic behavior, subtle feedback loops, or factors that are difficult to define or measure.
We are very good at making predictions about non-complex systems, even fairly complicated ones, over pretty much any time frame. But I can think of no truly complex system about which we’ve ever successfully made an accurate long-term prediction. Hence my question.
Any thoughts?
Published in General
There is a new paper out looking at CO2 rising and human emissions. It turns out the lockdowns of 2020 are a natural experiment as human CO2 emissions are way down this year. Interestingly, the CO2 in the atmosphere has continued to rise at the same amount as previous years. The conclusion to make is that human emissions are not the cause the CO2 rising and it is likely ocean warming.
The Global Warming hoax is built on a vast series of bad assumptions.
Well one would hope that EVENTUALLY that Pacific Northwest (?) hospital would get relocated/rebuilt somewhere safer, before it’s actively under water.
Perhaps on something of a side note, when my youngest brother was in the Oregon National Guard one thing they did occasionally was relocating “pre-fab” “field hospital” setups from one storage/staging location to another. As it happens, sometimes in response to forest fires. These probably didn’t have a lot of the latest high-tech gizmos but they had beds and portable surgical suites and other “bulky” equipment that would be needed quickly in any type of emergent situation. I think – and hope – that these types of setups are still being maintained around the country. He told me once that when these stored setups are considered obsolete they might be shipped off to a poor country somewhere, and a newer setup is put aside.
As in my comment #6. :-)
I am drawing a blank but…I do believe such a thing starts with a valid understanding that the predictions will also be complex and most definitely will not boil down to a single number. As such, I completely reject a “science” that insists on pushing something as useless, meaningless, and irrelevant as “average annual global temperature” as the sole figure of merit for their pseudo-predictions. The whole thing becomes even more preposterous once one realized that just about all of the “average annual global warming” that may generously be assumed (for the sake of argument) to have occurred since the industrial revolutions can be tracked to the increases in nighttime low temperatures in Siberian and Alaskan winters. Is that really a bad thing?
As I live uncomfortably close to the arctic circle myself and I can feel winter coming on, I have to say no. No, it isn’t really a bad thing.
But the polar bears, man! The polar bears! And… uhhh… and the penguins! I guess.
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2nd67f
P.S. I will be the first to admit that there is a whole lot from back in my drinking days that really isn’t all that clear but I do seem to remember a time when even a third rate climatologist working second shift at Pizza Hut to make ends meet would have laughed you out of any conversation using temperature data in less than 30-year averages. I blame easy access to Excel and the failure to teach the concept of significant digits for most of the silliness we see today on this issue.
Now, where is my beer…
Bad news, everyone. I stepped outside today and breathed fresh air without a mask on. Now I’m going to die. It’s been nice knowing you all.
But the good news is I won’t be around to breathe out nasty carbon dioxide for the benefit of trees. Thank Heaven that won’t happen anymore.
Well, your corpse will provide some plant food, still.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2uNzjBCxYc&t=799
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs7mb_ue0Hg
A few years later Aquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome emerged, and one of the first things that really caught people’s attention was a whole slew of infections caused by organisms that didn’t usually go wild. Because something, later discovered to be a virus, caused a failure of critical immune functions.
I’m sure BlueYeti wants me to be pedantic again, so I’ll point out that it’s “immuno” in that name, fully “Acquired Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome”. (It’s referred to as immuno in contexts like that.)
Just a suggestion. Try to speak in terms of individual people.
Imagine a poor person in Thailand . What’s the impact on him of higher prices for electricity? How do these higher prices compare with the cost of moving farther inland to adapt to rising sea levels?
Sure, but think of all the rich people in America with beachfront properties. This could really affect them.
I appreciate the video that you provided, but here are my questions: if the CSZ event is triggered by either the lower plate sliding under the upper plate or the upper plate slipping to stand on top of the lower one, wouldn’t there be a way for geologists to then know that this has occurred?
Does the arrangement of one plane over another occur gradually?
Obviously the CSZ occurs rapidly.
The rich and powerful in the USA really do not believe it will affect the geography of the continent, the way they pretend for our sakes that they do.
I mean, the Obamas bought that mansion on the Eastern coast line.
That’s part of the problem right there, isn’t it? As some say, they MIGHT believe “climate change” is serious if the people who “promote” it so much, acted as if THEY believed it. But they don’t, because they keep buying the beachfront properties etc.
Edit: including the Obamas, as CarolJoy mentioned.
Some of those people act like Lex Luthor in the first (original) Superman movie. They’ll just buy another mansion at the NEW coast.
I think both the Left and the Right are wrong about the cause of the Calif mega wildfires.
People on the Right do not agree with Lefties that the mega fires are the result of Climate Change as caused by the cows releasing too much methane or the women using their blow dryers too much.
I concur with that analysis.
But then just how has “forest mismangement” ended the phenomena of dew on my pavement and shrubs and trees, which prior to 2015 occurred so often that at least five times each summer I thought I left the sprinklers on all night? (This phenomenon is one that no longer occurs at all, here in Northern Calif.)
Meanwhile volcanologists are stating that the volcanoes have been so active over the last 36 months that atmospheric rivers of moisture should be occurring in record numbers, even bringing about the rare summer rainstorms. And sure enough, we should have had at least one three or four day storm in August. But like 70% of all such rainstorms, it is dessicated before it reaches us.
Why?
I suspect at least part of the lack of dew is related to the concretization of pretty much everywhere. These heat sinks prevent wind and moisture from going where they used to go. I am assured that the Phoenix-Metro area has a micro-climate ‘bubble’ that prevents heat from escaping back to the desert that surrounds it.
I completely misinterpreted your comment. I thought you were saying humans would evolve towards a collapse of the immune system.
I think many predicted the ultimate failure of Communism and that proved to be right on the money.
The movement of the tectonic plates is gradual–millimeters per year. Where two plates are moving against each other, they bend as the stress builds up (yes, stone can bend) until either the stone fractures, or the joint slips (friction). That stress release movement is the earthquake, and can move many feet at once, over a variable-sized area. The direction of motion matters, too. That’s why not all undersea earthquakes make tsunamis.
You mean like covid death/total population rates of .00054 (or something super close to that) being significantly better than .00055? (I can’t remember if its supposed to be 4 0s or 3 0s, but you get the point)
I got into a reddit fight over the lack of significance between those two numbers. That they were comparatively the same. They didn’t like that much.
Introduce them to the uncomfortable truth that 9.9999999… = 10. ;)
But it is like a bacterial infection when one doesn’t take the antibiotic the full ten days.
They kept insisting that there was a 50% increase between the two numbers.
I can’t tell if they were numerical dunces or if they actually were quite gifted with numbers and knew how to manipulate statistics to mislead people.
Well, or it won’t be rebuilt in a safer place, and maybe the Big One will hold off for fifty years, at which point the new hospital can be built upon the ruins of the old because the Big One reset the clock, or there aren’t any people living in Seaside anymore, or by then we’ll all be getting our hip replacements and nanobot Dementia treatments at pre-fab hospital set-ups because those turn out to make more sense..
The point, for me, is that even in cases of relatively simple, easily-grasped risks, human beings who completely accept “the science” and believe heart and soul that the guys in the white lab coats (or, in the case of geophysicists, Patagonia fleece sweaters and muddy rubber waders) are spot-on in their direst predictions…can’t bring themselves to act accordingly.
I asked one of my relatives, an environmentalist, whether it made any sense at all to be fussing about a relatively tiny number of black men dying at the hands of The Police, even if you accept the idea that these are Racist Murders, given climate change and We’re All Going To Die? Why, I wondered, is the left expending political and moral capital on transgendered bathrooms when there’s climate change and We’re All Going to Die?
If Climate Change is our generations equivalent of World War 2, would we put D-Day on hold while we train our G.I.s in anti-racism, checking their (white) privilege, and proper pronoun etiquette?
Naturally, the response was…”shut up.” By which I think he meant “we can walk and chew gum at the same time.” But as the (actual) COVID-19 and (potential) CSZ crises demonstrate, we can’t. Or at least, they can’t.
The only sensible position to hold about climate change is the one Henry articulates in the OP. Yes, it could be a problem. yes, it could be our fault, in whole or in part. Yes, it might be a good idea to think about how we can (not just should) respond, either preventively or to mitigate the effects. If this is a real problem, there could be solutions. If it is merely another proglefty quasi-religious, sheep-and-goats exercise, solutions aren’t just not forthcoming, they are actually unwelcome.
I have little to add to a serious scientific discussion, but if you’d like a question from a history major, I’d really like to know how it is that, according to reports from several years back, the climate of Mars is warming. Is this due to the activity of Martians, or does it perhaps have to do with solar activity?
Dang. Modern industry is ruining the whole solar system.
I told you to stop driving. But did you listen?
Probably due to Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator testing on Mars….