Last climate change post, I promise

[snousle]

Amidst the shitstorm over the IPCC report errors, I am pleased that at least one conservative commentator has seen fit to lay out what he does think is correct about climate change instead of merely throwing stones. Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Jonathan Adler explains why he believes that human activity is influencing the climate in significant ways. This in the context of a post that is mostly about slamming the IPCC. The guy is very well informed, and is firmly in the anti-alarmist camp, having written a book arguing against the Kyoto protocol, among other things.

His critique of the IPCC is relatively sober and honest, though I think he exaggerates the importance of the current scandal. This is in stark contrast to the wingnut strain of global-warming denialism, which refuses to acknowledge the aspects of climate research which are not at all politically driven and which rely on the most well established science - specifically, that given current trends, man-made CO2 will most likely raise temperatures by 3C by 2100. This is not a very spectacular claim, and of course, a lot can happen in the next 90 years which could render this projection wrong or irrelevant. But to deny its premises is either ignorant or dishonest.

He's harder on the IPCC report than I think is necessary - I am certainly disappointed by its flaws, but I think most of it is still on the mark. Is "95% right" good enough? I don't know. Nevertheless, he has done what few critics will do, which is to avoid paranoid, black-and-white, us-versus-them thinking, and establishes a middle ground on which, I hope, most reasonable people can agree.

Comments

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

this is OT sorry but I though if you hadn't read it you would find it interesting - horizontal evolution / gene transfer

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527441.500-horizontal-and-vertical-the-evolution-of-evolution.html?full=true

(via retrofire)

[snousle.livejournal.com]

I think it's on the mark as far as the pre-Eukaryotic era is concerned, but it bugs me when I read quotes like "The process of evolution just isn't what most evolutionary biologists think it is." It is true that the modern synthesis really only addresses life in the past 500M years, but that doesn't mean that modern biology has gone "badly off track". That's sort of like saying that English literature is "off track" because it fails to account for Neanderthal culture.

Trouble is that creationists seize upon this language and use it for political advantage. While it represents a useful critique of the "traditional" Darwinian perspective, it could benefit from more temperate language!

[fingertrouble.livejournal.com]

interesting reading about thia subject in a newspaper and it boldly stated why the whole IPCC thing was a total storm in a teacup - that there were other independent data sets (2?3?) which also proved the warming theory. So disproving or having doubts about one (which were just refusing FOI requests and stonewalling them, rather than faking whole data which hasn't I think been proved, although they didn't keep the datasets stupidly) doesn't mean they are all dodgy or wrong?

But I'm suspecting that ol' distraction/guilt by association/don't look at my hands gimmick the right-wing love so well. But climate deniers seem spookily close to conspiracy people in the 'don't want to believe! don't want to believe' mindset...debating the science is good, just doing ad hominem and sideways/personal attacks is a totally different thing.

[fingertrouble.livejournal.com]

And anyway, reducing pollution is a good thing, right? Pumping CO2 and other gases in the air where they either don't exists or increase their quantity can't be a wonderful thing; it's something to avoid anyway?

A lot of the climate deniers seem to have the elephant in the room whether they think pollution is bad or not...they hedge those questions.

[furr-a-bruin.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

Even if you leave climate change entirely aside, as far as I'm concerned there's HIGH value in cutting the other more "traditional" forms of pollution - CO, particulates, the compounds that contribute to acid rain, the mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants, etc.

[snousle.livejournal.com]

Well, except that while most pollutants can be scrubbed from emissions, C02 is much harder to deal with.

Despite all this noise I don't actually support emissions controls all that much. As the author suggests, a steep carbon tax is not all that bad and would extend the availability of fossil fuels without undue pain. I would suggest, instead of an additional tax, use it to replace a portion of existing taxes in a revenue-neutral way. Because a dollar of tax on carbon is probably more efficient than a dollar of tax on income.

But as far as climate change is concerned it's rather too late to be doing much about total CO2 emissions. Even granting that it's technologically possible, it is still politically doomed. I think Western civilization could run on about 50% of current fossil fuel use without much effort if the motivation was there. Unfortunately, it's not.