Edit: ignoring global warming because it’s really hard to quantify. Just comparing deaths to global productivity increase because of cars. Cars are a net positive.
Edit 2:
Edit: ignoring global warming because it’s really hard to quantify
Clarification—it’s hard to quantify the direct relationship of cars to global warming. Duh there’s a relationship, but I really don’t want to have a debate here. Ignoring that factor for a moment, net value of productivity of cars vs productivity lost by some deaths. Yea. Let’s compare that.
Clarification—it’s hard to quantify the direct relationship of cars to global warming
It is easy to illustrate that carbon dioxide, the major byproduct of internal combustion found in most car models today, causes global warming directly. If you look at this graph, you’ll notice that solar radiation spans a large range of wavelengths of light. Most of these wavelengths of light get absorbed by our upper atmosphere according to chemical composition of said atmosphere, except for certain wavelengths in the UV region of the spectrum (that’s the part of the spectrum most commercial sunscreens are designed to block). Different chemicals have different ranges over which wavelengths of light can excite their stable forms. Carbon dioxide, as it turns out, can be irradiated over a portion of the spectrum in the IR range, in the region around wavenumber 2351. When light is absorbed by carbon dioxide, it causes vibration in the molecule, which gets dissipated as heat, since this is technically an excitation of the molecule. This is why carbon dioxide is considered a greenhouse gas, because it absorbs solar energy in the form of light as an input, then dissipates that energy after vibrational excitation as output.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere today far exceeds natural levels ever before seen on earth. There are, of course, natural fluctuations of these levels going up and down (according to natural carbon fixing processes), but the overall trend is very distinct, obvious, and significant. We are putting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere through our combustion processes than the earth can fix out of the atmosphere.
The relationship has been quantified already. Please understand, there is absolutely no need to obscure this debate with claims that the relationship is hard to quantify. It is not, it has been done, the body of research surrounding this topic is quite robust, similarly to how robust the body of research around CFCs is. I will not stand idly by while people continue to misunderstand the situation. Your urge to ignore this factor indicates either misunderstanding of the situation, or it indicates an aversion to a highly politicized topic. In either case, it does not excuse the claim you made. The less obscurity on the topic exists, the better.
It is easy to illustrate that carbon dioxide … causes global warming directly.
Actually, not that easy because the greenhouse effect is dominated by water vapor. CO2 certainly is a greenhouse gas and certainly contributes to global warming, but the explanation is somewhat more complicated than you make it out to be.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere today far exceeds natural levels ever before seen on earth.
According to what sources, and how did they verify? Do you distrust the sampling techniques used to gather data on carbon dioxide levels before recorded history?
Demonstrate, please.
What more could you possibly need? I just showed you evidence pointing to unnatural amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Disturb that balance, you cause warming. This cascades into heavier rainfall, higher levels of water vapor and other greenhouse gases, and you get a sort of runaway reaction.
You did use the word “quantify”, did you not? Do you know what it means?
Putting data on the table to back up claims. Back up your idea of what is going on in the world with observations, notably observations you can put a number on.
Turns out you don’t know. The word means expressing your claims in numbers and, by itself, does not imply support by data.
Usually “quantifying” is tightly coupled to being precise about your claims.
I’m confused. You wouldn’t have claims to make before seeing the numbers in the first place. You communicate this claim to another, they ask you why, you show them the numbers. That’s the typical process of events I’m used to, how is it wrong?
Are you asking me to write out the interpretation of the evidence I see as a mathematical model
Not evidence. I want you to make a precise claim.
For example, “because CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and because there’s a lot more of it around than there used to be, that CO2 cascades into a warming event” is a not-quantified claim. It’s not precise enough to be falsifiable (which is how a lot of people like it, but that’s a tangent).
A quantified equivalent would be something along the lines of “We expect the increase in atmospheric CO2 from 300 to 400 ppmv to lead to the increase of the average global temperature by X degrees spread over the period of Z years so that we forecast the average temperature in the year YYYY as measured by a particular method M to be T with the standard error of E”.
Note that this is all claim, no evidence (and not a model, either).
Yes it is. For example, if CO2 concentrations and/or global temperatures went down by much more than the measurement uncertainties, the claim would be falsified.
For example, “because CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and because there’s a lot more of it around than there used to be, that CO2 cascades into a warming event” is a not-quantified claim.
The claim doesn’t mention any measurement uncertainties. Moreover, the actual claim is “CO2 cascades into a warming event” and, y’know, it’s just an event. Maybe it’s an event with a tiny magnitude, maybe another event happens which counterbalances the CO2 effect, maybe the event ends, who knows…
The claim doesn’t mention any measurement uncertainties.
That’s why I said “much more”. If I claimed “X is greater than Y” and it turned out that X = 15±1 and Y = 47±1, would my claim not be falsified because it didn’t mention measurement uncertainties?
The general test is whether the claim is precise enough to be falsifiable—is there an outcome (or a set of data, etc) which will unambiguously prove that claim to be wrong, with no wiggle room to back out?
And, by the way, IPCC reports are, of course, full of quantified claims like the one I mentioned. There might be concerns with data quality, model errors, overconfidence in the results, etc. etc, but the claims are well-quantified.
That is fair, so why was the claim that cars are a net positive not nearly as thoroughly scrutinized as my counterargument? I can’t help but notice some favoritism here...
Was such an analysis done? Recently? Is this such common knowledge that nobody bothered to refute it?
Edit: my imagination only stretches so far as to see climate change being the only heavy counterargument to the virtue of cars. Anything else seems relatively minor, i.e deaths from motor accidents, etc.
why was the claim that cars are a net positive not nearly as thoroughly scrutinized as my counterargument?
Because there is a significant prior to overcome. Whenever people get sufficiently wealthy, they start buying cars. Happened in the West, happened in China, Russia, India, etc. etc. Everywhere. And powers-that-be are fine with that. So to assert that cars are a net negative you need to assert that everyone is wrong.
Just out of curiosity, what is your stance on the impact of cars on climate change? And cars are too narrow, then what is your stance on fossil fuel consumptions and its impact on climate change?
You linked to parts of the debate I’ve never been exposed to, so I’m curious if there’s more to know.
Generally speaking, the issue of global warming is decomposable into several questions with potentially different answers. E.g.:
Have we observed general warming throughout the XX and early XXI century? That’s a question about facts and can be answered relatively easily.
Does emitting very large amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere affect climate? That’s a question about a scientific theory and by now it’s relatively uncontested as well (note: quantifying the impact of CO2 on climate is a different thing. For now the issue is whether such an impact exists).
Are there other factors affecting climate on decade- and century- scales? Also a question about scientific theories and again the accepted answer is “yes”, but quantifying the impact (or agreeing on a fixed set of such factors) is not so simple.
What do we expect the global temperatures to be in 20/50/100 years under certain assumptions about the rate of CO2 emissions? Ah, here we enter the realm of models and forecasts. Note: these are not facts. Also note that here the “complicated” part becomes “really complicated”. For myself, I’ll just point out that I distrust the confidence put by many people into these models and the forecasts they produce. By the way, there are a LOT of these models.
What consequences of our temperature forecasts do we anticipate? Forecasting these consequences is harder than forecasting temperatures, since these consequences are conditional on temperature forecasts. Some things here are not very controversial (it’s unlikely that glaciers will stop retreating), some are (will hurricanes become weaker? stronger? more frequent? Umm....)
What should we do in response to global warming? At this point we actually leave the realm of science and enter the world of “should”. For some reason many climate scientists decided that they are experts in economics and politics and so know what the response should be. Unfortunately for them, it’s not a scientific question. It’s a question of making a series of uncertain trade-offs where what you pick is largely decided by your values and your preferences. I expect the outcome to be as usual: “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must”.
What inference are you expecting readers to draw from that?
Inferences I draw from it: 1. Looks like researchers are checking one another’s results, developing models that probe different features, improving models as time goes on, etc.; those are all good things. 2. It would be good to know how well these models agree with one another on what questions. I don’t know how well they do, but I’m pretty sure that if the answer were “they disagree wildly on central issues” then the denier/skeptic[1] camp would be shouting it from the rooftops. Unless, I guess, the disagreement were because some models predict much worse futures than currently expected. So my guess is that although there are such a lot of models, they pretty much all agree that e.g. under business-as-usual assumptions we can expect quite a lot more warming over the coming decades.
[1] I don’t know of any good terms that indicate without value judgement that a given person does or doesn’t broadly agree that global warming is real, substantially caused by human activities, and likely to continue in the future.
That there is no single forecast that “the science” converged on
I confess it never occurred to me that anyone would ever think such a thing. (Other than when reading what you wrote, when I thought “surely he can’t be attacking such a strawman”.)
I mean, I bet there are people who think that or say it. Probably when someone says “we expect 2 degrees of warming by such-and-such a date unless something changes radically” many naive listeners take it to mean that all models agree on exactly 2 degrees of warming by exactly that date. But people seriously claiming that all the models agree on a single forecast? Even halfway-clueful people seriously believing it? Really?
A nice example of a non-quantified claim
Do please show us all the quantified claims you have made about global warming, so that we can compare. (I can remember … precisely none, ever. But perhaps I just missed them.)
Not that I think there’s anything very bad about non-quantified claims—else I wouldn’t go on making them, just like everyone else does. I simply think you’re being disingenuous in complaining when other people make such claims, while avoiding making any definite claims to speak of yourself and leaving the ones you do make non-quantified. From the great-grandparent of this comment I quote: “relatively easily”, “relatively uncontested”, “really complicated”, “I distrust the confidence …”, “a LOT of these models”, “not very controversial”, (implicitly in the same sentence) “very controversial”.
But, since you ask: I think it is broadly agreed (among actual climate scientists) that business as usual will probably (let’s say p=0.75 or thereabouts) mean that by 2100 global mean surface temperature will be at least about 2 degrees C above what it was before 1900. (Relative to the same baseline, we’re currently somewhere around 0.9 degrees up from then.)
“Sceptic” implies value judgement? I thought being a sceptic was a good thing
I paraphrase: “How silly to suggest that ‘sceptic’ implies a value judgement. It implies a positive value judgement.”
Being a skeptic is a good thing. I was deliberately using one word that suggests a positive judgement (“skeptic”) alongside one that suggests a negative one (“denier”). Perhaps try reading what I write more charitably?
I confess it never occurred to me that anyone would ever think such a thing.
I recommend glancing at some popular press. There’s “scientific consensus”, dontcha know? No need to mention specific numbers, but all right-thinking men, err… persons know that Something Must Be Done. Think of the children!
Do please show us all the quantified claims you have made about global warming
Is this a competition?
I don’t feel the need to make quantified claims because I’m not asking anyone to reduce their carbon footprint or introduce carbon taxes, or destroy their incandescent bulbs, or tar-and-feather coal companies...
Let me quote you some Richard Feynman: “I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of uncertainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything”.
Being a skeptic is a good thing
It is to me and, seems like, to you. I know people who think otherwise: a sceptic is a malcontent, a troublemaker who’s never satisfied, one who distrusts what honest people tell him.
I recommend glancing at some popular press. There’s “scientific consensus”, dontcha know?
Yeah, there’s all kinds of crap in the popular press. That’s why I generally don’t pay much attention to it. Anyway, what do the deficiencies of the popular press have to do with the discussion here?
Is this a competition?
No, it’s a demonstration of your insincerity.
I don’t feel the need to make quantified claims because I’m not [...]
Status quo bias.
In (implicitly) asking us not to put effort into reducing carbon footprints, introduce carbon taxes, etc., etc., you are asking us (or our descendants) to accept whatever consequences that may have for the future.
I fail to see why causing short-term inconvenience should require quantified claims, but not causing long-term possible disaster.
(I am all in favour of the attitude Feymnan describes. It is mine too. If there is any actual connection between that and our discussion, other than that you are turning on the applause lights, I fail to see it.)
Anyway, what do the deficiencies of the popular press have to do with the discussion here?
Because my original conversation was with a guy who, evidently, picked up some of his ideas about global warming from there.
In (implicitly) asking us not to put effort into reducing carbon footprints
LOL. I am also implicitly asking not to stop sex-slave trafficking, not to prevent starvation somewhere in Africa, and not to thwart child abuse. A right monster am I!
In any case, I could not fail to notice certain… rigidities in you mind with respect to certain topics. Perhaps it will be better if I tap out.
I could not fail to notice certain… rigidities in your mind
I’m sorry to hear that. I would gently suggest that you consider the possibility that the rigidity may not be where you think it is, but I doubt there’s much point.
IT IS HARD TO QUANTIFY THE EXACT PROPORTION OF GLOBAL WARMING THAT IS CAUSED BY CARS AS OPPOSED TO OTHER SOURCES OF GLOBAL WARMING, SAY EVERY OTHER REASON THAT CARBON DOIXIDE ENDS UP IN THE ATMOSPHERE AND AS AN ABSTRACTION FROM THAT HOW MUCH OF GLOBAL WARMING IS LITERALLY CAUSED BY CARS AND THEREFORE HOW MUCH DAMAGE TO PRODUCTIVITY CARS CAUSE BY CAUSING GLOBAL WARMING TO BE SOME FRACTION HIGHER THAN IT WOULD HAVE OTHERWISE BEEN.
If you go into the sampling and analysis specifics, the chemistry is sound. There are a few assumptions made, as with any data sampling technique, but if you decide to want to dispute such details, you may as well dispute the technical details and call your objection there. Otherwise, I don’t see where your claim holds, this is one of the better documented global disputes (makes sense, since so much is at stake with regards to both the industry involved as well as the alleged consequences of climate change.)
I can say that global productivity increase doesn’t mean anything if it cannot be sustained.
Please illustrate, then. What is the net cost of “cars and motor vehicles in general” with respect to their “emissions into the atmosphere”? Use numbers and show your work.
Okay, consider this an IOU for a future post on an analysis. I’m assuming you’d want an analysis of emissions relative to automobile use, correct? Wouldn’t an emissions based on fossil fuel consumption in general be more comprehensive?
Edit: In the meantime, reading this analysis that’s already been done may help establish a better understanding on the subject of quantifying emissions costs.
Also please understand that what you’re asking for is something whole analytical chemical organizations spend vast amounts of their funding on doing this analysis. To say that I alone will try to provide something anywhere close to the quality provided by these organizations is to exercise quite a bit of hubris on my part.
That said, my true rejection to Elo’s comment wasn’t that global warming isn’t hard to quantify. My true rejection is that it seems entirely careless to discard global warming from the discussion of the virtue (or lack thereof) of motor vehicles and other forms of transportation.
We are talking about the cost-benefit analysis of cars and similar motor vehicles (let’s define them as anything that moves and has an internal combustion engine). Your point seems to be that cars are not net beneficial—is that so? A weaker claim—that cars have costs and not only benefits—is obvious and I don’t think anyone would argue with it.
In particular, you pointed out that some of the costs involved have to do with global warming and—this is the iffy part—that this cost is easy to quantify. Since I think that such cost would be very-difficult-to-impossible to quantify, I’m curious about your approach.
Your link is to an uncritical Gish Gallop (“literature review” might be a more charitable characterization) through all the studies which said something on the topic.
Re update:
Cost is an economics question. Analytical chemistry is remarkably ill-equipped to answer such questions.
As to “careless to discard global warming”, well, I believe Elo’s point was that it’s hard to say anything definite about the costs of cars in this respect (keep in mind, for example, that humans do need transportation so in your alternate history where internal-combustion-engine motor vehicles don’t exist or are illegal, what replaces them?)
Cost is an economics question. Analytical chemistry is remarkably ill-equipped to answer such questions.
Analytical chemistry is well equipped to handle and acquire the data to show, definitively, that global warming is caused by emissions. To go further to say that we cannot use these facts to decide whether or not the automotive infrastructure isn’t worth augmenting because its too hard to make a cost-benefit analysis in light of the potential costs associated with global warming and air pollution is careless. Coastal flooding is a major cost (with rising oceans), as are extreme weather patterns (the recent flooding in Peru comes to mind), as well as the inevitable mass migrations (or deaths) resulting from these phenomena. I’m not aware of such figures, but this is a start.
keep in mind, for example, that humans do need transportation so in your alternate history where internal-combustion-engine motor vehicles don’t exist or are illegal, what replaces them?
Though I’m not asking for a replacement of motor vehicles (although electric cars come to mind), I am asking for augmentation. Why take the risk?
Analytical chemistry is well equipped to handle and acquire the data to show, definitively, that global warming is caused by emissions.
I was not aware that analytical chemists make climate models and causal models, too...
Coastal flooding is a major cost
You are confused about tenses. Coastal flooding, etc. is (note the present tense) is not a major cost. Coastal flooding might become a cost in the future, but that is a forecast. Forecasts are different from facts.
electric cars come to mind
Electric batteries do not produce energy, they merely store energy. If the energy to charge these batteries comes from fossil fuels, nothing changes.
I was not aware that analytical chemists make climate models and causal models, too...
They can. Though the people who came up with the infrared spectroscopy technique may not have been analytical chemists by trade. Mostly physicists, I believe. Why is this relevant? Because the same reason why infrared spectroscopy works also gives a reason for why emission cause warming.
You are confused about tenses. Coastal flooding, etc. is (note the present tense) is not a major cost. Coastal flooding might become a cost in the future, but that is a forecast. Forecasts are different from facts.
Coastal flooding damages infrastructure built on said coasts (unless said infrastructure was designed to mitigate said damage). That is a fact. I don’t see what the problem is here.
Electric batteries do not produce energy, they merely store energy. If the energy to charge these batteries comes from fossil fuels, nothing changes.
Agreed. So let me rephrase. Solar energy comes to mind. Given enough time, solar panels that were built up using tools and manpower powered by fossil fuels will eventually outproduce the energy spent to build it. This does change things if that energy can then be stored, transferred, and used for transportation purposes, since our current infrastructure still relies on such transportation technology.
This is what I mean by augmentation. Change the current infrastructure to support and accept renewable energy source over fossil fuels. We cannot do this yet globally, though some regions have managed to beat those odds.
They can. Though the people who came up with the infrared spectroscopy technique may not have been analytical chemists by trade.
You are confused between showing that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and developing climate models of the planet Earth.
Coastal flooding damages infrastructure
Yes, but coastal flooding is a permanent feature of building on the coasts. Your point was that coastal flooding (and mass migrations and deaths) are (note: present tense) the result of global warming.This is (note: present tense) not true. There are people who say that this will become (note: future tense) true, but these people are making a forecast.
Solar energy comes to mind
At which point we are talking about the whole energy infrastructure of the society and not about the costs of cars.
You are confused between showing that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and developing climate models of the planet Earth.
What other inferential steps does a person need to be shown to tell them that because CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and because there’s a lot more of it around than there used to be, that CO2 cascades into a warming event?
There are people who say that this will become (note: future tense) true, but these people are making a forecast.
The recent weather anomalies hitting earth imply the future is here.
At which point we are talking about the whole energy infrastructure of the society and not about the costs of cars.
Indeed, so why not debate at the metalevel of the infrastructure, and see where the results of that debate lead in terms of their impacts on the automotive industry? It is a massive industry, worth trillions of dollars globally, any impacts on energy infrastructure will have lasting impacts on the automotive industry.
What other inferential steps does a person need to be shown to tell them that because CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and because there’s a lot more of it around than there used to be, that CO2 cascades into a warming event?
Look up a disagreement between two chaps, Svante Arrhenius and Knut Ångström :-)
Here is the argument against your position (there is a counter-argument to it, too):
water vapor, which is far more abundant in the air than carbon dioxide, also intercepts infrared radiation. In the infrared spectrum, the main bands where each gas blocked radiation overlapped one another. How could adding CO2 affect radiation in bands of the spectrum that H2O (not to mention CO2 itself) already made opaque?
.
The recent weather anomalies hitting earth imply the future is here.
Like the remarkable hurricane drought in the North America? Or are you going to actually argue that weather is climate?
so why not debate at the metalevel of the infrastructure
What was his counter-argument? I can’t read German.
Like the remarkable hurricane drought in the North America? Or are you going to actually argue that weather is climate?
Well clearly we need to establish a time range. Most sources for weather and temperature records I’ve seen span a couple of centuries. Is that not a range large enough to talk about climate instead of weather?
Sure, but it’s a different debate.
Its a related debate, especially relevant if conclusions in the debate a metalevel lower are unenlightened.
The description of the link is entirely unfair. It provides a (relatively) short summary of the language of the debate, as well as a slew of data points to overview. To frame the source as you describe it is entirely an exercise in poisoning the well.
Ironic, since you just asked me to do my own analysis on the subject, yet you are unwilling to read the “one-guy organization” and what it has to say on the subject.
The merits (or lack thereof) of said organization has nothing to do with how true or false the source is. This is ad hominem.
Cars are net positive.
Edit: ignoring global warming because it’s really hard to quantify. Just comparing deaths to global productivity increase because of cars. Cars are a net positive.
Edit 2:
Clarification—it’s hard to quantify the direct relationship of cars to global warming. Duh there’s a relationship, but I really don’t want to have a debate here. Ignoring that factor for a moment, net value of productivity of cars vs productivity lost by some deaths. Yea. Let’s compare that.
It is easy to illustrate that carbon dioxide, the major byproduct of internal combustion found in most car models today, causes global warming directly. If you look at this graph, you’ll notice that solar radiation spans a large range of wavelengths of light. Most of these wavelengths of light get absorbed by our upper atmosphere according to chemical composition of said atmosphere, except for certain wavelengths in the UV region of the spectrum (that’s the part of the spectrum most commercial sunscreens are designed to block). Different chemicals have different ranges over which wavelengths of light can excite their stable forms. Carbon dioxide, as it turns out, can be irradiated over a portion of the spectrum in the IR range, in the region around wavenumber 2351. When light is absorbed by carbon dioxide, it causes vibration in the molecule, which gets dissipated as heat, since this is technically an excitation of the molecule. This is why carbon dioxide is considered a greenhouse gas, because it absorbs solar energy in the form of light as an input, then dissipates that energy after vibrational excitation as output.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere today far exceeds natural levels ever before seen on earth. There are, of course, natural fluctuations of these levels going up and down (according to natural carbon fixing processes), but the overall trend is very distinct, obvious, and significant. We are putting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere through our combustion processes than the earth can fix out of the atmosphere.
The relationship has been quantified already. Please understand, there is absolutely no need to obscure this debate with claims that the relationship is hard to quantify. It is not, it has been done, the body of research surrounding this topic is quite robust, similarly to how robust the body of research around CFCs is. I will not stand idly by while people continue to misunderstand the situation. Your urge to ignore this factor indicates either misunderstanding of the situation, or it indicates an aversion to a highly politicized topic. In either case, it does not excuse the claim you made. The less obscurity on the topic exists, the better.
Actually, not that easy because the greenhouse effect is dominated by water vapor. CO2 certainly is a greenhouse gas and certainly contributes to global warming, but the explanation is somewhat more complicated than you make it out to be.
This is not true.
Demonstrate, please.
According to what sources, and how did they verify? Do you distrust the sampling techniques used to gather data on carbon dioxide levels before recorded history?
What more could you possibly need? I just showed you evidence pointing to unnatural amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Disturb that balance, you cause warming. This cascades into heavier rainfall, higher levels of water vapor and other greenhouse gases, and you get a sort of runaway reaction.
Will Wikipedia suffice?
You did use the word “quantify”, did you not? Do you know what it means?
Putting data on the table to back up claims. Back up your idea of what is going on in the world with observations, notably observations you can put a number on.
Turns out you don’t know. The word means expressing your claims in numbers and, by itself, does not imply support by data.
Usually “quantifying” is tightly coupled to being precise about your claims.
Usually “quantifying” is tightly coupled to being precise about your claims.
I’m confused. You wouldn’t have claims to make before seeing the numbers in the first place. You communicate this claim to another, they ask you why, you show them the numbers. That’s the typical process of events I’m used to, how is it wrong?
LOL. Are you quite sure this is how humans work? :-)
I want you to quantify the claim, not the evidence for the claim.
They don’t, that’s something you train to do.
Why? Are you asking me to write out the interpretation of the evidence I see as a mathematical model instead of a sentence in English?
Not evidence. I want you to make a precise claim.
For example, “because CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and because there’s a lot more of it around than there used to be, that CO2 cascades into a warming event” is a not-quantified claim. It’s not precise enough to be falsifiable (which is how a lot of people like it, but that’s a tangent).
A quantified equivalent would be something along the lines of “We expect the increase in atmospheric CO2 from 300 to 400 ppmv to lead to the increase of the average global temperature by X degrees spread over the period of Z years so that we forecast the average temperature in the year YYYY as measured by a particular method M to be T with the standard error of E”.
Note that this is all claim, no evidence (and not a model, either).
Yes it is. For example, if CO2 concentrations and/or global temperatures went down by much more than the measurement uncertainties, the claim would be falsified.
I said:
The claim doesn’t mention any measurement uncertainties. Moreover, the actual claim is “CO2 cascades into a warming event” and, y’know, it’s just an event. Maybe it’s an event with a tiny magnitude, maybe another event happens which counterbalances the CO2 effect, maybe the event ends, who knows…
That’s why I said “much more”. If I claimed “X is greater than Y” and it turned out that X = 15±1 and Y = 47±1, would my claim not be falsified because it didn’t mention measurement uncertainties?
Well, at this point I’d concede its not easy to make a claim with standards fit for such an example.
I’ll see what I can do.
The general test is whether the claim is precise enough to be falsifiable—is there an outcome (or a set of data, etc) which will unambiguously prove that claim to be wrong, with no wiggle room to back out?
And, by the way, IPCC reports are, of course, full of quantified claims like the one I mentioned. There might be concerns with data quality, model errors, overconfidence in the results, etc. etc, but the claims are well-quantified.
That is fair, so why was the claim that cars are a net positive not nearly as thoroughly scrutinized as my counterargument? I can’t help but notice some favoritism here...
Was such an analysis done? Recently? Is this such common knowledge that nobody bothered to refute it?
Edit: my imagination only stretches so far as to see climate change being the only heavy counterargument to the virtue of cars. Anything else seems relatively minor, i.e deaths from motor accidents, etc.
Because there is a significant prior to overcome. Whenever people get sufficiently wealthy, they start buying cars. Happened in the West, happened in China, Russia, India, etc. etc. Everywhere. And powers-that-be are fine with that. So to assert that cars are a net negative you need to assert that everyone is wrong.
Just out of curiosity, what is your stance on the impact of cars on climate change? And cars are too narrow, then what is your stance on fossil fuel consumptions and its impact on climate change?
You linked to parts of the debate I’ve never been exposed to, so I’m curious if there’s more to know.
tl;dr It’s complicated :-)
Generally speaking, the issue of global warming is decomposable into several questions with potentially different answers. E.g.:
Have we observed general warming throughout the XX and early XXI century? That’s a question about facts and can be answered relatively easily.
Does emitting very large amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere affect climate? That’s a question about a scientific theory and by now it’s relatively uncontested as well (note: quantifying the impact of CO2 on climate is a different thing. For now the issue is whether such an impact exists).
Are there other factors affecting climate on decade- and century- scales? Also a question about scientific theories and again the accepted answer is “yes”, but quantifying the impact (or agreeing on a fixed set of such factors) is not so simple.
What do we expect the global temperatures to be in 20/50/100 years under certain assumptions about the rate of CO2 emissions? Ah, here we enter the realm of models and forecasts. Note: these are not facts. Also note that here the “complicated” part becomes “really complicated”. For myself, I’ll just point out that I distrust the confidence put by many people into these models and the forecasts they produce. By the way, there are a LOT of these models.
What consequences of our temperature forecasts do we anticipate? Forecasting these consequences is harder than forecasting temperatures, since these consequences are conditional on temperature forecasts. Some things here are not very controversial (it’s unlikely that glaciers will stop retreating), some are (will hurricanes become weaker? stronger? more frequent? Umm....)
What should we do in response to global warming? At this point we actually leave the realm of science and enter the world of “should”. For some reason many climate scientists decided that they are experts in economics and politics and so know what the response should be. Unfortunately for them, it’s not a scientific question. It’s a question of making a series of uncertain trade-offs where what you pick is largely decided by your values and your preferences. I expect the outcome to be as usual: “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must”.
What inference are you expecting readers to draw from that?
Inferences I draw from it: 1. Looks like researchers are checking one another’s results, developing models that probe different features, improving models as time goes on, etc.; those are all good things. 2. It would be good to know how well these models agree with one another on what questions. I don’t know how well they do, but I’m pretty sure that if the answer were “they disagree wildly on central issues” then the denier/skeptic[1] camp would be shouting it from the rooftops. Unless, I guess, the disagreement were because some models predict much worse futures than currently expected. So my guess is that although there are such a lot of models, they pretty much all agree that e.g. under business-as-usual assumptions we can expect quite a lot more warming over the coming decades.
[1] I don’t know of any good terms that indicate without value judgement that a given person does or doesn’t broadly agree that global warming is real, substantially caused by human activities, and likely to continue in the future.
That there is no single forecast that “the science” converged on and everyone is in agreement about what will happen.
If you’re curious, IPCC reports will provide you with lots of data.
A nice example of a non-quantified claim :-P
“Sceptic” implies value judgement? I thought being a sceptic was a good thing, certainly better than being credulous or gullible.
I confess it never occurred to me that anyone would ever think such a thing. (Other than when reading what you wrote, when I thought “surely he can’t be attacking such a strawman”.)
I mean, I bet there are people who think that or say it. Probably when someone says “we expect 2 degrees of warming by such-and-such a date unless something changes radically” many naive listeners take it to mean that all models agree on exactly 2 degrees of warming by exactly that date. But people seriously claiming that all the models agree on a single forecast? Even halfway-clueful people seriously believing it? Really?
Do please show us all the quantified claims you have made about global warming, so that we can compare. (I can remember … precisely none, ever. But perhaps I just missed them.)
Not that I think there’s anything very bad about non-quantified claims—else I wouldn’t go on making them, just like everyone else does. I simply think you’re being disingenuous in complaining when other people make such claims, while avoiding making any definite claims to speak of yourself and leaving the ones you do make non-quantified. From the great-grandparent of this comment I quote: “relatively easily”, “relatively uncontested”, “really complicated”, “I distrust the confidence …”, “a LOT of these models”, “not very controversial”, (implicitly in the same sentence) “very controversial”.
But, since you ask: I think it is broadly agreed (among actual climate scientists) that business as usual will probably (let’s say p=0.75 or thereabouts) mean that by 2100 global mean surface temperature will be at least about 2 degrees C above what it was before 1900. (Relative to the same baseline, we’re currently somewhere around 0.9 degrees up from then.)
I paraphrase: “How silly to suggest that ‘sceptic’ implies a value judgement. It implies a positive value judgement.”
Being a skeptic is a good thing. I was deliberately using one word that suggests a positive judgement (“skeptic”) alongside one that suggests a negative one (“denier”). Perhaps try reading what I write more charitably?
I recommend glancing at some popular press. There’s “scientific consensus”, dontcha know? No need to mention specific numbers, but all right-thinking men, err… persons know that Something Must Be Done. Think of the children!
Is this a competition?
I don’t feel the need to make quantified claims because I’m not asking anyone to reduce their carbon footprint or introduce carbon taxes, or destroy their incandescent bulbs, or tar-and-feather coal companies...
Let me quote you some Richard Feynman: “I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of uncertainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything”.
It is to me and, seems like, to you. I know people who think otherwise: a sceptic is a malcontent, a troublemaker who’s never satisfied, one who distrusts what honest people tell him.
Yeah, there’s all kinds of crap in the popular press. That’s why I generally don’t pay much attention to it. Anyway, what do the deficiencies of the popular press have to do with the discussion here?
No, it’s a demonstration of your insincerity.
Status quo bias.
In (implicitly) asking us not to put effort into reducing carbon footprints, introduce carbon taxes, etc., etc., you are asking us (or our descendants) to accept whatever consequences that may have for the future.
I fail to see why causing short-term inconvenience should require quantified claims, but not causing long-term possible disaster.
(I am all in favour of the attitude Feymnan describes. It is mine too. If there is any actual connection between that and our discussion, other than that you are turning on the applause lights, I fail to see it.)
Sure. So what?
Because my original conversation was with a guy who, evidently, picked up some of his ideas about global warming from there.
LOL. I am also implicitly asking not to stop sex-slave trafficking, not to prevent starvation somewhere in Africa, and not to thwart child abuse. A right monster am I!
In any case, I could not fail to notice certain… rigidities in you mind with respect to certain topics. Perhaps it will be better if I tap out.
Er, no.
I’m sorry to hear that. I would gently suggest that you consider the possibility that the rigidity may not be where you think it is, but I doubt there’s much point.
.
Fourth clarification
IT IS HARD TO QUANTIFY THE EXACT PROPORTION OF GLOBAL WARMING THAT IS CAUSED BY CARS AS OPPOSED TO OTHER SOURCES OF GLOBAL WARMING, SAY EVERY OTHER REASON THAT CARBON DOIXIDE ENDS UP IN THE ATMOSPHERE AND AS AN ABSTRACTION FROM THAT HOW MUCH OF GLOBAL WARMING IS LITERALLY CAUSED BY CARS AND THEREFORE HOW MUCH DAMAGE TO PRODUCTIVITY CARS CAUSE BY CAUSING GLOBAL WARMING TO BE SOME FRACTION HIGHER THAN IT WOULD HAVE OTHERWISE BEEN.
Tapping out.
Oh really? Since when?
Edit: Just in case you weren’t convinced.
If you go into the sampling and analysis specifics, the chemistry is sound. There are a few assumptions made, as with any data sampling technique, but if you decide to want to dispute such details, you may as well dispute the technical details and call your objection there. Otherwise, I don’t see where your claim holds, this is one of the better documented global disputes (makes sense, since so much is at stake with regards to both the industry involved as well as the alleged consequences of climate change.)
I can say that global productivity increase doesn’t mean anything if it cannot be sustained.
Please illustrate, then. What is the net cost of “cars and motor vehicles in general” with respect to their “emissions into the atmosphere”? Use numbers and show your work.
Okay, consider this an IOU for a future post on an analysis. I’m assuming you’d want an analysis of emissions relative to automobile use, correct? Wouldn’t an emissions based on fossil fuel consumption in general be more comprehensive?
Edit: In the meantime, reading this analysis that’s already been done may help establish a better understanding on the subject of quantifying emissions costs.
Also please understand that what you’re asking for is something whole analytical chemical organizations spend vast amounts of their funding on doing this analysis. To say that I alone will try to provide something anywhere close to the quality provided by these organizations is to exercise quite a bit of hubris on my part.
That said, my true rejection to Elo’s comment wasn’t that global warming isn’t hard to quantify. My true rejection is that it seems entirely careless to discard global warming from the discussion of the virtue (or lack thereof) of motor vehicles and other forms of transportation.
We are talking about the cost-benefit analysis of cars and similar motor vehicles (let’s define them as anything that moves and has an internal combustion engine). Your point seems to be that cars are not net beneficial—is that so? A weaker claim—that cars have costs and not only benefits—is obvious and I don’t think anyone would argue with it.
In particular, you pointed out that some of the costs involved have to do with global warming and—this is the iffy part—that this cost is easy to quantify. Since I think that such cost would be very-difficult-to-impossible to quantify, I’m curious about your approach.
Your link is to an uncritical Gish Gallop (“literature review” might be a more charitable characterization) through all the studies which said something on the topic.
Re update:
Cost is an economics question. Analytical chemistry is remarkably ill-equipped to answer such questions.
As to “careless to discard global warming”, well, I believe Elo’s point was that it’s hard to say anything definite about the costs of cars in this respect (keep in mind, for example, that humans do need transportation so in your alternate history where internal-combustion-engine motor vehicles don’t exist or are illegal, what replaces them?)
Analytical chemistry is well equipped to handle and acquire the data to show, definitively, that global warming is caused by emissions. To go further to say that we cannot use these facts to decide whether or not the automotive infrastructure isn’t worth augmenting because its too hard to make a cost-benefit analysis in light of the potential costs associated with global warming and air pollution is careless. Coastal flooding is a major cost (with rising oceans), as are extreme weather patterns (the recent flooding in Peru comes to mind), as well as the inevitable mass migrations (or deaths) resulting from these phenomena. I’m not aware of such figures, but this is a start.
Though I’m not asking for a replacement of motor vehicles (although electric cars come to mind), I am asking for augmentation. Why take the risk?
I was not aware that analytical chemists make climate models and causal models, too...
You are confused about tenses. Coastal flooding, etc. is (note the present tense) is not a major cost. Coastal flooding might become a cost in the future, but that is a forecast. Forecasts are different from facts.
Electric batteries do not produce energy, they merely store energy. If the energy to charge these batteries comes from fossil fuels, nothing changes.
What do you mean by augmentation?
They can. Though the people who came up with the infrared spectroscopy technique may not have been analytical chemists by trade. Mostly physicists, I believe. Why is this relevant? Because the same reason why infrared spectroscopy works also gives a reason for why emission cause warming.
Coastal flooding damages infrastructure built on said coasts (unless said infrastructure was designed to mitigate said damage). That is a fact. I don’t see what the problem is here.
Agreed. So let me rephrase. Solar energy comes to mind. Given enough time, solar panels that were built up using tools and manpower powered by fossil fuels will eventually outproduce the energy spent to build it. This does change things if that energy can then be stored, transferred, and used for transportation purposes, since our current infrastructure still relies on such transportation technology.
This is what I mean by augmentation. Change the current infrastructure to support and accept renewable energy source over fossil fuels. We cannot do this yet globally, though some regions have managed to beat those odds.
You are confused between showing that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and developing climate models of the planet Earth.
Yes, but coastal flooding is a permanent feature of building on the coasts. Your point was that coastal flooding (and mass migrations and deaths) are (note: present tense) the result of global warming.This is (note: present tense) not true. There are people who say that this will become (note: future tense) true, but these people are making a forecast.
At which point we are talking about the whole energy infrastructure of the society and not about the costs of cars.
What other inferential steps does a person need to be shown to tell them that because CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and because there’s a lot more of it around than there used to be, that CO2 cascades into a warming event?
The recent weather anomalies hitting earth imply the future is here.
Indeed, so why not debate at the metalevel of the infrastructure, and see where the results of that debate lead in terms of their impacts on the automotive industry? It is a massive industry, worth trillions of dollars globally, any impacts on energy infrastructure will have lasting impacts on the automotive industry.
Look up a disagreement between two chaps, Svante Arrhenius and Knut Ångström :-)
Here is the argument against your position (there is a counter-argument to it, too):
.
Like the remarkable hurricane drought in the North America? Or are you going to actually argue that weather is climate?
Sure, but it’s a different debate.
What was his counter-argument? I can’t read German.
Well clearly we need to establish a time range. Most sources for weather and temperature records I’ve seen span a couple of centuries. Is that not a range large enough to talk about climate instead of weather?
Its a related debate, especially relevant if conclusions in the debate a metalevel lower are unenlightened.
Here
Noted, edited.
The description of the link is entirely unfair. It provides a (relatively) short summary of the language of the debate, as well as a slew of data points to overview. To frame the source as you describe it is entirely an exercise in poisoning the well.
The source is a one-guy organization which doesn’t even pretend it’s unbiased.
Ironic, since you just asked me to do my own analysis on the subject, yet you are unwilling to read the “one-guy organization” and what it has to say on the subject.
The merits (or lack thereof) of said organization has nothing to do with how true or false the source is. This is ad hominem.
I glanced at your source. The size is relevant because you told me that
...and the lack of bias (or lack of lack) does have much to do with how one treats sources of information.
If you’d filter out one-man firm as a source not worth reading, you’d filter out any attempt of an analysis on my part as well.
I am concerned about quality here, not so much who sources come from. This, necessarily, requires more than just a glance at material.