Not that Global Warming is the right phrase anymore. Rather Climate Change or better still Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). There's a great deal of debate about AGW right now (called 'consensus' by the new media) touching virtually every facet of the problem, causes, effects, solutions, evidence, measurement, everything about AGW is undergoing scrutiny right now. This posting is an effort to organize the arguments and explain my personal position on AGW.

To start with I'll walk through the justifications for AGW and the proposed solutions.

In last century scientists discovered green house gasses. These are gasses in the atmosphere that affect the temperature of the Earth. Greenhouse gasses are essentially gasses that are one way permeable to the sun's energy. They allow sunlight in and then they trap that energy. Greenhouse gasses include Water Vapor, Methane, and CO2. The volume of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere has an impact on the global average temperature. Generally, the more greenhouse gasses the higher the temperature.

At the same time this information was being uncovered we also learned that the world was getting hotter. Global average temperatures had been rising from the 1850’s and showed every sign of continuing. Concurrent with the temperature rise was an increase in atmospheric CO2. Given what was known about greenhouse gasses CO2 became the most likely cause of this unprecedented hike in global heating.

Scientists began to study the effects of increased temperatures. Most of what they found was bad. Higher temps would result in melted ice and increased sea levels. People living at or near sea level would be displaced or forced behind levees. Their migration or impoverishment would put pressure on the societies around them leading in turn to war. At the same time illnesses that thrive in warmer temperatures, especially malaria would be greatly increased. Climate changes resulting in higher temperatures could lead to more violent storms that cause damage or to droughts. This rise in temperature would be a very bad thing.

Having peered into the future to see the devastation the natural desire is to prevent it. Fortunately it was very easy to see where this extra atmospheric carbon was coming from. Industry was its cause. For decades, over a century, humanity had burned ever increasing amounts of carbon based fuels to power all of the gizmos developed since the start of the industrial revolution. As the fuels were burnt the CO2 within was liberated from the base compound and released into the atmosphere. Additionally man had developed a taste for beef, and had breed legions of cattle. The cattle, extant in previously unherd (deliberate pun) of numbers released vast quantities of methane. These then are the likely causes of the catastrophic temperature rise.

The solutions become pretty clear. However nice a car or heat in the winter is, it isn't worth war, famine, and flood. Those amenities must be scaled back to reduce the rate at which greenhouse gasses pour into the atmosphere. Doing so would halt the rise in temperature before it became disastrous. As these devices had spread all over the world so the solution would have to be world wide as well. No one country could make decisive changes and rescue the rest. Instead all humanity must work together to save itself.

It’s not a bad narrative. It’s internally consistent and proceeds logically from point to point if you assume the premises are correct. Mostly, anyway. It’s the last step of that chain that really got my notice. I can accept temperature hikes and greenhouse gases and even rising sea levels without questioning too much. There's too much information in the world to seriously question every expert. If a climate scientist gets an article in the paper about Global Warming then it’s likely enough to be correct. The first time it really began to deserve closer scrutiny was when it became clear that the policy suggested to save the world was to destroy the world.

Proponents of AGW want to return human carbon emissions to 19th century levels. At present this is only feasible by a return to 19th century technology. While there are a number of promising technologies, solar, wind, and nuclear, foremost among them, none of them supports anything like the current level of technology enjoyed by even 2nd world nations in the degree to which they can be developed. The threat essentially is "if you don't give up your worldly possessions and live in poverty you may lose your worldly possessions and be forced to live in poverty." When the proposed solution is to preempt the problem and just accept it earlier both the solution and the base premises need to be more closely examined.

So, more on that in the next post.

It's a bad theory.

In practice Common knowledge is the list of things I think people should know that they don't. I'm not certain if this reflects badly on me or on everybody else.

A few modest examples collected in the last few days:

As previously documented on this site, just who Mussolini is.

That the British Pound is the currency of England and that it is not commonly denoted as "#". This example is disappointing because it belongs to a usually very bright person with a college education. Although its not totally unjustified. I can forgive parochialism, why would you know things about other countries when America is so awesome?

That nobody knows what Jingoism is except journalism students, and they think its a bad thing.

That whether the current slate of health care bills passes or not it has nothing to do with Republicans. Democrats compose a super majority and can pass whatever legislation they can agree on without the aid of any Republicans. That the healthcare proposals are skewing substantially to the right and are simultaneous becoming watered down has nothing to do with Republicans and everything to do with Democrats getting elected by running as Republicans and wanting to get elected again, and other Democrats not willing to make such sweeping changes without being able later to blame it on Republicans.

That Muslims practice Islam. There is, it seems, a group of people not aware that those things go together. These poor unfortunates believe that we are locked in a very perplexing war involving free people and Islams and Muslims, two groups of different religious fanatics from the Middle East. Subsequent questioning revealed an astonishing amount of confusion as to how the different groups of Sunnis and Shiites fit in.

I have a book titled The 33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene. This book (as you might have guessed by the title) discusses 33 different strategies of war and how to apply them to daily life, not just life in the military or in battle. One of the features of this book are frequent quotes in red text down the left and right margins of the page. The very first quote like this you see in the book is a quote from the Bible, Job 7:1. When I was reading the book this quote caught my eye so I decided to look it up, and as it turns out the quote is flat wrong. The book (33 strategies) has the quote as “The life of man upon earth is a warfare” when I turned to the Bible that passage is “Is there not an appointed time to man upon earth? Are not his days also like the days of an hireling?” (KJV). I also looked this up in the New Kings James Version and it reads “Is there not a time of hard service for man on earth? Are not his days also like the days of a hired man?” (NKJV). Now I don't want to be overly critical but when you make a significant error in the very first quote in your book it tents to cans doubt on the rest of the quotes and intended the rest of the book as a whole. For arguments sake (specifically my argument) lets say that the rest of the book is also filed with these type of errors. Given the book uses historical examples of generals or leaders of various types there could be hundreds of factual errors in this book. When I thought of this my question was does this possibility make the book valueless? My answer is no.

This book seeks to give the reader tools to use in their own life, tools to succeed at war, and tools to succeed at life. If the readers learns from this book, applies what he has learned, and improves their life then the book is a success. As a successful book it has value. Misquotes and factual errors aside useful learning has occurred.

I think that everything I just said about chess can be said about the computer game Starcraft. This occurred to me when I herd someone describing another's obsession with the game of chess. The way he described this persons behavior and motivations was similar to someone who obsesses over Starcraft. This got me thinking about the real differences between the two. While some are obvious – such as it being played on the computer, having up to eight players, not being able to see your oponts moves, being real time – I think that what makes chess a great game also makes Starcraft a great game. Furthermore people who are good at Starcraft must be be able to think much faster then the players of chess, after all if you take even 3-4 minutes to plan where your going to attack you will be overrun. However players of chess must be more conservative regarding their pieces, once a piece it gone it stays gone unless a pawn reaches the other side of the board.

My guess would be that the same areas of the brain are used in chess and Starcraft and its only my lack of a F-MRI that limits me to a guess. I wounder if I can find one on eBay, but I digress.

If what I have stated about chess and Starcraft being similar is more or less true then that must mean that all the useful things chess can do for you Starcraft can do as well. Its an interesting thought, no?

Now up front I hope none of what I say offends Mr. Ripley, but if it does I guess he will just take my posting rights away. Mr. Ripley is a person that (in my experience) pick up a new hobby with a lot of enthusiasm, work at it very hard for a little while then burns out and drop it. Paint ball was one of these cycles. He decided that paint ball was a grate thing and spent a lot of time and money at it. He talked about going often, looked at magazines on the subject, and bought some equipment for it. But just as suddenly as he picked it up he dropped it. Now he does not talk about it and he makes no plans to go, he just moved on to something else.

As for me I think I tend to be middle of the road about stuff. One of my things is I hate wasting money, even if its not all that much. Just something about me says “look at you, you spent $15 on that and now you are not going to use it, what a waist, you should feel bad...for some reason”. So I tend to be a bit reserved about spending money if I am not fairly sure I am going to use what I bought. This helps be stay in the middle of the road when it comes to hobbies. If it costs money I will be slow to pick it up and slow to drop it. Before I get into something I want to make sure I am going to like it for a long time and not get board with it. So I will try things for a long time and see if others will stay interested in it (if its a group activity) before buying in and adding it to my list of “things I do”.

As for Mr. Duk I am not sure a penguin can have hobbies, just fishing (with his mouth) and sliding down ice on his belly (which looks fun).

Now I am not trying to that Ripley' s way of doing things is bad and mine is good, just saying that they are different. Mr. Ripley has tried many more things then I have I'm sure, and this gives him more information about what he like and dislikes and ultimately he knows more about who he is because of it. However he can spend a lot of money in the process and can leave people disappointed when they also spend a lot of money and then loose their partner in what ever hobby it was. As for me I will try less things in life but have more money to spend on the things I do like. I also may completely mis an opportunity to do something I would love because I don't want to spend the money to “buy in”.

Whats the point of all this you ask? Well, I guess like most of what you will read here...there isn't one. I will post here for a while, and because doing so is free (for me) I will again drop it for something else. Don't take it personally, its just the way things go.

For More

"There is this middle class environmentalism where being green is part of the desired image."

"The findings indicate that even those people who appear to be very committed to environmental action find it difficult to transfer these behaviours into more problematic contexts."

Hopefully like other fads, "Pet rock anyone?", this to shall eventually die off.

I'll start again.

Yar, it be time agin fer speakin' in th' fav'rit mode of all th' scurvy dogs what been out on th' high seas keel haulin' an piratin'

For those o' you lubbers too weak in th' liver ter make yer own way in this rough and tumble vernacular there be hope.

This fine example of th piratin' way o' speakin' might be a mite technical for some o' the good crew more in their cups wit Rum, so these fine gentlemen charted a more relaxedly fitted course.

Arrr!