Maybe a good way to proactively begin mastery of higher sea levels is for the government to stop subsidizing peoples' choice to move into dangerous hurricane prone areas through federal insurance.
Somehow I think the catastrophists wouldn't like this suggestion.
Bryan, what is your theory of why someone as intelligent as a Paul Krugman makes these statements? I think that you don't like to speculate about motives but it is hard to avoid the conclusion that this is a case of "don't let a crisis go to waste" thinking, even if you have to invent the crisis. What do you think?
Given that Krugman is intelligent, I have long ago come to the conclusion that what explains his hyperbole is brand management. He's built a brand that has a big clientele. His utterances always serve to reinforce the brand, which maintains and for a while grew his audience. Since so much of what he says is patently wrong, often to the point of fantasy, I can think of no other explanation that fits the pattern. After all, he regularly and blithely contradicts ideas and principles he himself has laid out in his own textbooks and past articles.
I think the obvious answer is the correct one in this case. When it comes to explaining patterns of international trade, he is second to none. When it comes to his role as a public intellectual, he is incapable of escaping his politics.
Looking at what Krugman actually says it seems fully consistent with a position holding that, while climate change is unlikely to destroy human life or civilization,. the economic and social harms from continued carbon emission far exceed the costs of limiting such emissions.
The rhetoric is then just a result of seeing that people aren't taking action and wanting to push them to act. It's the standard way almost all political rhetoric ratchets up.
Some people love Big Government. They feel "realized" with the government having a bigger role in "ruling" the economy.
Everybody suffers from confirmation bias and so, everybody loves the beliefs that support they favorite idea about government intervention. All of us are eager to jump to our favorite conclusions even if weakly supported by the facts.
This mechanism affects idiots and genius alike.
Krugman is human ... and he does love big government. At least big enough to impose on all of us Krugman's infinite wisdom.
I just think environmentalism has become a surrogate religion for many. So something that while super regrettable (extinction of polar bears (which isn't very likely anyway)), goes from super regrettable > apocalypse to the environmental acolyte. Ignoring that the actual impact on humans is pretty mute beyond "no polar bears".
In the case of Krugman, we have intersecting phenomena of typical climate apocalypticism and Krugman being wrong about just about everything. The former is hard to measure in light of the latter.
Likely Motive: Because he doesn’t want to get called a “climate denier” by all the people in his tribe of catastrophists who are convinced the sky is falling. Looking at a dataset and coming to a conclusion that disagrees with the shibboleths of your team is EXTREMELY difficult. This creates an enormous incentive to just keep well on side.
Plus, Krugman thinks he is a genius about everything even though the whole climate issue is much more of a topic about the energy system of the world, and that is actually fiendishly complex area of study with many pitfalls and unscalable dead ends. “I have Nobel, receive my learned wisdom!”
I agree - as I have said repeatedly - that he is frequently wrong. But the reason that he is frequently wrong isn't that he is stupid. It's that his wrong statements are motivated by his political objectives.
But I think we have taken this discussion as far as it can go. Bye now.
So 'climate mastery' is mastery of the potentially harmful effects of the weather rather than mastery of--control over--the weather itself. I agree that 'adaptation' is too weak a term for this, but 'climate mastery' is hardly perfect, either.
If we are concerned about the animals almost certainly what we should do is control our land use, not carbon emissions. The land use is a hugely bigger problem for them.
You have to be careful about comparing the impact of the co2 abundance far in Earth’s history. While the Sun is on the mainsequence, the solar luminosity is inching up. It is about 50% more luminous today than it was when it landed on the main sequence. All other things being equal, a much higher CO2 abundance in the Earth’s atmosphere a few 100million years ago would have resulted in a much hotter surface on Earth. But if the Sun was a few percent less luminous, that would offset things a bit. In a billion years, the Sun will be too luminous for liquid water to survive on the Earth. 500Myr ago CO2 may have been 4x what it is today. If the forcing is 2.5K/doubling then the earth would be about 5K warmer. But since the equilibrium temp of the Earth was 3K cooler due to the Sun being less luminous, the net effect is more subtle.
Of course reality is a lot more complicated, but my point is that you can’t simply compare CO2 levels way in the past as a guide to present day impact.
The other issue is the speed of the change. Warming (or cooling) the globe a few degrees over a 100Myr is much easier for biosystems to adapt to than changing the temp of the globe a few degrees in 100 yrs. Like a lot of things, it isn’t just the delta that matters - delta/dt matters too.
This isn’t to say that the hysteria over climate change isn’t overblown or the anti fossil fuels fanatics aren’t irresponsible (it is and they are), but bad arguments (or at least sloppy) undermine the case.
I wonder if this drought gets reported as a climate/ weather disaster.
Probably close to $50 million is sitting here,” said Jeff Worsham, the port’s manager, as he stood high on a loading dock, looking out over the roughly 75 barges stranded in this small offshoot of the Mississippi.
Yes, with satellites made of materials refined with coal launched into space by oil, and supercomputers powered by electricity powered by a significant amount of coal, oil and natural gas.
Good that you have started to scratch the surface. Now dig deeper and learn something.
I thought that nelson's last comment indicated that they weren't fully engaging with others' views. After all, nobody was suggesting that the mechanism by which fossil fuels lead to fewer climate deaths was by dumping oil on top of potential climate victims, or something.
However, if someone isn't engaging with someone's views, snottily telling them to start thinking so they may learn something isn't likely to change their views. If anything, it encourages knee-jerk opposition.
Just curious: do you think linking an article from the Guardian (one of the most hyperbolic catastrophist publications out there) is really going to convince a bunch of folks who read the blog of a free market libertarian?
To clarify, a low quality publication can nevertheless make legitimate points, but one would need to cite those points. Not just handwave an argument from authority.
Even a stopped clock can be right twice a day. By the time any primary information is filtered from scientist to publication to designated expert to the Guardian, it is totally devoid of its original context or meaning. Epstein makes this general point pretty clearly in the book and it is pretty tough to refute. This isn’t just for climate, but also nutrition, medical studies, chemistry, physics, biology and just about any other scientific topic that actually requires nuanced understanding.
It isn’t just a guardian problem for sure, but they are one of the worst offenders on climate.
I'm a bit confused about the point here. If it's just that the people predicting climate change is likely to be some kind of civilization ending apocalypse then of course that's true. Indeed, we can just look to the IPCC reports themselves to see that and I suspect doing so w/o citing this book about climate mastery would be more persuasive to the ppl who believe that. Tho, of course, unlikely extreme outcomes can contribute substantially to expectation.
OTOH if it's a question about the most important question: is the cost of averting climate change much greater than the cost of not doing so then this post (but maybe not the book) doesn't really address that issue.
I certainly agree that there is a problematic bait and switch (or motte-bailey if u prefer internet rationalist slang) going on in the rhetoric warning of climate change. Rhetorically we are given the impression of an existential threat but when pressed for specific details there is a fall back to a less extreme position.
But I fear the danger of making the same mistake the other way. For instance, the strictly factual claims in this post seem quite modest yet the rhetoric seems suggestive of: all that climate change worry is overblown nonsense. I understand the impulse but isn't the issue of ppl responding in this way what got us into the current rhetorical mess in the first place?
See, this is an important discussion. A very useful addition to the dialog. Why you spend so much more time whining about "wokeness" and straw-manning feminism is simply beyond me.
Just a bit of advice: your bio says you are the cofounder of an organization. I checked out the organization and it seems really nice, useful, and important.
Comments like this one that seem unnecessarily antagonistic are less likely to draw others towards your message and work.
Actually understanding others' perspectives on their own terms is not easy, but it opens the door towards productive engagement. Lashing out at others over their perceived motivation or character is more likely to alienate them than to change their minds about the topic at hand, let alone endear you to them personally to open them up to be receptive to your message.
To quote a wise man: "I wanted to “win an argument with a meat eater.” I wanted to ridicule meat eaters. I wasn’t focused on actually changing the world...I wanted to fight with meat eaters – attack and mock them...Now, however, knowing what suffering really is, and knowing how much there is in the world, all my previous concerns seem – well, to put it kindly, silly."
How many high rise condos were there on Miami Beach 50 years ago? Roger Pielke Jr. has explained all this ad nauseam on his Substack.
Incentives: The WMOs main goal is to guarantee the sinecures of weathermen for ages to come. So best to stay scared and keep funding them to get bigger supercomputers from governments in perpetuity.
Losing money to save lives looks like mastery, yes. After all, a typical feature of the modernization of society is that more money is spent and more lives are saved. And of course, the more developed a society is, the greater its total value will be, and the more it will be theoretically able to lose in a natural disaster.
The cost of a natural disaster is a function of how economically developed the affected region is. And the more economically developed it is, the fewer lives will be lost. I don't think its worthwhile for me to further repeat myself. Have a great day!
“we don't need fossil fuels for future economic development.” This statement requires significant proof and you have provided none. I dare you to try and find a windmill or solar panel manufactured without coal, oil or natural gas.
Oh, and the strongest hurricane to ever hit the US happened in 1900 in Galveston. The most costly happened in 1926 in Miami normalized to today. Human carbon emissions were deminimis by that point.
Hurricanes happen. They aren’t caused by climate change, although model predictions show that they might get less frequent and slightly stronger with increased radiative forcing but that has not been detectable yet.
Let me suggest it's protection from the weather as much as anything. And there's no reason why we won't continue to have that protection after fossil fuels. Minus the air pollution and excess drought. Being outdoors will be less and less pleasant with elevating temps.
Just for a short reminder, many people also live (and many more could live) in cold places, where being outdoors gets more and more pleasant each decade... We still haven't reached the medieval temperature optimum, though.
The paradox, as far as I've read, has so far been explained by the cold places being really well prepared for cold and vice versa. There was another study finding the most serious excess cold season deaths in some African countries and really bad excess hot weather deaths in Greenland. Cannot find the link, sorry.
Maybe a good way to proactively begin mastery of higher sea levels is for the government to stop subsidizing peoples' choice to move into dangerous hurricane prone areas through federal insurance.
Somehow I think the catastrophists wouldn't like this suggestion.
https://reason.com/2022/09/29/government-subsidies-encouraged-millions-to-move-into-hurricane-ians-destructive-path/.
In a similar vein: https://reason.com/2009/09/02/the-unintended-consequences-of/.
Bingo
Bryan, what is your theory of why someone as intelligent as a Paul Krugman makes these statements? I think that you don't like to speculate about motives but it is hard to avoid the conclusion that this is a case of "don't let a crisis go to waste" thinking, even if you have to invent the crisis. What do you think?
Given that Krugman is intelligent, I have long ago come to the conclusion that what explains his hyperbole is brand management. He's built a brand that has a big clientele. His utterances always serve to reinforce the brand, which maintains and for a while grew his audience. Since so much of what he says is patently wrong, often to the point of fantasy, I can think of no other explanation that fits the pattern. After all, he regularly and blithely contradicts ideas and principles he himself has laid out in his own textbooks and past articles.
I think the obvious answer is the correct one in this case. When it comes to explaining patterns of international trade, he is second to none. When it comes to his role as a public intellectual, he is incapable of escaping his politics.
Looking at what Krugman actually says it seems fully consistent with a position holding that, while climate change is unlikely to destroy human life or civilization,. the economic and social harms from continued carbon emission far exceed the costs of limiting such emissions.
The rhetoric is then just a result of seeing that people aren't taking action and wanting to push them to act. It's the standard way almost all political rhetoric ratchets up.
Maybe, but his rhetoric is so overblown that it is hard to believe that there isn't a deeper motivation here. Remember this statement from AOC's chief of staff: https://www.yahoo.com/video/aoc-chief-staff-admits-green-124408358.html
Some people love Big Government. They feel "realized" with the government having a bigger role in "ruling" the economy.
Everybody suffers from confirmation bias and so, everybody loves the beliefs that support they favorite idea about government intervention. All of us are eager to jump to our favorite conclusions even if weakly supported by the facts.
This mechanism affects idiots and genius alike.
Krugman is human ... and he does love big government. At least big enough to impose on all of us Krugman's infinite wisdom.
I just think environmentalism has become a surrogate religion for many. So something that while super regrettable (extinction of polar bears (which isn't very likely anyway)), goes from super regrettable > apocalypse to the environmental acolyte. Ignoring that the actual impact on humans is pretty mute beyond "no polar bears".
In the case of Krugman, we have intersecting phenomena of typical climate apocalypticism and Krugman being wrong about just about everything. The former is hard to measure in light of the latter.
I agree with you that Krugman is frequently wrong. I wrote this blog post on this subject a long time ago: http://www.economicmanblog.com/wrong-way-krugman/
However, Krugman is almost never wrong without a motive. And it is that motive that I am specifically asking about.
Likely Motive: Because he doesn’t want to get called a “climate denier” by all the people in his tribe of catastrophists who are convinced the sky is falling. Looking at a dataset and coming to a conclusion that disagrees with the shibboleths of your team is EXTREMELY difficult. This creates an enormous incentive to just keep well on side.
Plus, Krugman thinks he is a genius about everything even though the whole climate issue is much more of a topic about the energy system of the world, and that is actually fiendishly complex area of study with many pitfalls and unscalable dead ends. “I have Nobel, receive my learned wisdom!”
Come on. One wrong prediction proves he isn't intelligent?
Like I said, he is intelligent. He just has an agenda.
I agree - as I have said repeatedly - that he is frequently wrong. But the reason that he is frequently wrong isn't that he is stupid. It's that his wrong statements are motivated by his political objectives.
But I think we have taken this discussion as far as it can go. Bye now.
So 'climate mastery' is mastery of the potentially harmful effects of the weather rather than mastery of--control over--the weather itself. I agree that 'adaptation' is too weak a term for this, but 'climate mastery' is hardly perfect, either.
We might be better of, but the animals surely aren't.
If we are concerned about the animals almost certainly what we should do is control our land use, not carbon emissions. The land use is a hugely bigger problem for them.
You have to be careful about comparing the impact of the co2 abundance far in Earth’s history. While the Sun is on the mainsequence, the solar luminosity is inching up. It is about 50% more luminous today than it was when it landed on the main sequence. All other things being equal, a much higher CO2 abundance in the Earth’s atmosphere a few 100million years ago would have resulted in a much hotter surface on Earth. But if the Sun was a few percent less luminous, that would offset things a bit. In a billion years, the Sun will be too luminous for liquid water to survive on the Earth. 500Myr ago CO2 may have been 4x what it is today. If the forcing is 2.5K/doubling then the earth would be about 5K warmer. But since the equilibrium temp of the Earth was 3K cooler due to the Sun being less luminous, the net effect is more subtle.
Of course reality is a lot more complicated, but my point is that you can’t simply compare CO2 levels way in the past as a guide to present day impact.
The other issue is the speed of the change. Warming (or cooling) the globe a few degrees over a 100Myr is much easier for biosystems to adapt to than changing the temp of the globe a few degrees in 100 yrs. Like a lot of things, it isn’t just the delta that matters - delta/dt matters too.
This isn’t to say that the hysteria over climate change isn’t overblown or the anti fossil fuels fanatics aren’t irresponsible (it is and they are), but bad arguments (or at least sloppy) undermine the case.
A 99.6% recovery rate is to Covid19 what Smog Warnings in North America being rare for almost 40 years is to climate change. @Cleanburningtechnology
I wonder if this drought gets reported as a climate/ weather disaster.
Probably close to $50 million is sitting here,” said Jeff Worsham, the port’s manager, as he stood high on a loading dock, looking out over the roughly 75 barges stranded in this small offshoot of the Mississippi.
What saved lives? Not oil but early warning. More on that report.
https://www.climatecentre.org/6129/wmo-climate-change-leads-to-more-extreme-weather-but-early-warnings-save-lives/
Yes, with satellites made of materials refined with coal launched into space by oil, and supercomputers powered by electricity powered by a significant amount of coal, oil and natural gas.
Good that you have started to scratch the surface. Now dig deeper and learn something.
I thought that nelson's last comment indicated that they weren't fully engaging with others' views. After all, nobody was suggesting that the mechanism by which fossil fuels lead to fewer climate deaths was by dumping oil on top of potential climate victims, or something.
However, if someone isn't engaging with someone's views, snottily telling them to start thinking so they may learn something isn't likely to change their views. If anything, it encourages knee-jerk opposition.
Just my 2 cents.
Have a great day!
These guys who might know something don't seem to thing we're at the "mastery" stage.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/03/big-agriculture-climate-crisis-cop27
Just curious: do you think linking an article from the Guardian (one of the most hyperbolic catastrophist publications out there) is really going to convince a bunch of folks who read the blog of a free market libertarian?
To clarify, a low quality publication can nevertheless make legitimate points, but one would need to cite those points. Not just handwave an argument from authority.
Even a stopped clock can be right twice a day. By the time any primary information is filtered from scientist to publication to designated expert to the Guardian, it is totally devoid of its original context or meaning. Epstein makes this general point pretty clearly in the book and it is pretty tough to refute. This isn’t just for climate, but also nutrition, medical studies, chemistry, physics, biology and just about any other scientific topic that actually requires nuanced understanding.
It isn’t just a guardian problem for sure, but they are one of the worst offenders on climate.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/feb/07/climatehysteria
This was before they threw a pie in his face in Copenhagen. Imagine them publishing that article today!
Indeed! I thought you might find the article quaint. [And the addendum they appended amusing.]
I'm a bit confused about the point here. If it's just that the people predicting climate change is likely to be some kind of civilization ending apocalypse then of course that's true. Indeed, we can just look to the IPCC reports themselves to see that and I suspect doing so w/o citing this book about climate mastery would be more persuasive to the ppl who believe that. Tho, of course, unlikely extreme outcomes can contribute substantially to expectation.
OTOH if it's a question about the most important question: is the cost of averting climate change much greater than the cost of not doing so then this post (but maybe not the book) doesn't really address that issue.
I certainly agree that there is a problematic bait and switch (or motte-bailey if u prefer internet rationalist slang) going on in the rhetoric warning of climate change. Rhetorically we are given the impression of an existential threat but when pressed for specific details there is a fall back to a less extreme position.
But I fear the danger of making the same mistake the other way. For instance, the strictly factual claims in this post seem quite modest yet the rhetoric seems suggestive of: all that climate change worry is overblown nonsense. I understand the impulse but isn't the issue of ppl responding in this way what got us into the current rhetorical mess in the first place?
I'm not sure your motte people and your bailey people are the same people. I see scientists putting the risk of various scenarios.
See, this is an important discussion. A very useful addition to the dialog. Why you spend so much more time whining about "wokeness" and straw-manning feminism is simply beyond me.
https://www.losingmyreligions.net/
Just a bit of advice: your bio says you are the cofounder of an organization. I checked out the organization and it seems really nice, useful, and important.
Comments like this one that seem unnecessarily antagonistic are less likely to draw others towards your message and work.
The same goes for this comment: https://betonit.substack.com/p/the-function-of-privilege/comment/9961204.
You also don't seem to do a great job passing the ideological Turing test, e.g. here: https://betonit.substack.com/p/aaronson-on-feminism-my-reply/comment/9534668.
And here: https://betonit.substack.com/p/tyler-on-feminism-my-reply/comment/9211819.
Actually understanding others' perspectives on their own terms is not easy, but it opens the door towards productive engagement. Lashing out at others over their perceived motivation or character is more likely to alienate them than to change their minds about the topic at hand, let alone endear you to them personally to open them up to be receptive to your message.
To quote a wise man: "I wanted to “win an argument with a meat eater.” I wanted to ridicule meat eaters. I wasn’t focused on actually changing the world...I wanted to fight with meat eaters – attack and mock them...Now, however, knowing what suffering really is, and knowing how much there is in the world, all my previous concerns seem – well, to put it kindly, silly."
And that man's name...Matt Ball: https://www.mattball.org/2016/06/can-our-choices-make-difference.html.
Best of luck with your organization!
Or bad dating advice.
This is supposed to be something we should call "mastery"?
https://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/weather-related-disasters-increase-over-past-50-years-causing-more-damage-fewer
Measuring damage in dollars but not adjusting for inflation? Yikes.
How many high rise condos were there on Miami Beach 50 years ago? Roger Pielke Jr. has explained all this ad nauseam on his Substack.
Incentives: The WMOs main goal is to guarantee the sinecures of weathermen for ages to come. So best to stay scared and keep funding them to get bigger supercomputers from governments in perpetuity.
Losing money to save lives looks like mastery, yes. After all, a typical feature of the modernization of society is that more money is spent and more lives are saved. And of course, the more developed a society is, the greater its total value will be, and the more it will be theoretically able to lose in a natural disaster.
The billions of dollars in damage from Hurricane Ian saved zero lives. Had it been more destructive would more lives have been saved?
The cost of a natural disaster is a function of how economically developed the affected region is. And the more economically developed it is, the fewer lives will be lost. I don't think its worthwhile for me to further repeat myself. Have a great day!
That's fine but we don't need fossil fuels for future economic development.
“we don't need fossil fuels for future economic development.” This statement requires significant proof and you have provided none. I dare you to try and find a windmill or solar panel manufactured without coal, oil or natural gas.
Oh, and the strongest hurricane to ever hit the US happened in 1900 in Galveston. The most costly happened in 1926 in Miami normalized to today. Human carbon emissions were deminimis by that point.
Hurricanes happen. They aren’t caused by climate change, although model predictions show that they might get less frequent and slightly stronger with increased radiative forcing but that has not been detectable yet.
Let me suggest it's protection from the weather as much as anything. And there's no reason why we won't continue to have that protection after fossil fuels. Minus the air pollution and excess drought. Being outdoors will be less and less pleasant with elevating temps.
Just for a short reminder, many people also live (and many more could live) in cold places, where being outdoors gets more and more pleasant each decade... We still haven't reached the medieval temperature optimum, though.
Indeed. Europe, where the largest warming is happening, experiences significant excess mortality in the winter: https://academic.oup.com/jpubhealth/article/38/4/806/2966950.
Quite interesting. It looks like the countries in Europe with the mildest winters have highest excess winter mortality. They refer to it as a paradox.
The paradox, as far as I've read, has so far been explained by the cold places being really well prepared for cold and vice versa. There was another study finding the most serious excess cold season deaths in some African countries and really bad excess hot weather deaths in Greenland. Cannot find the link, sorry.
Europe is the fastest warming continent. Guess they could move to The North of Scandinavia where the soils really aren't that great.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_European_heat_waves#:~:text=From%20June%20to%20August%202022,%2C%20Portugal%2C%20on%2014%20July.