On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 10:35:48PM +0100, Telmo Menezes wrote: > > There is overwhelming evidence in favour of the theory of evolution > because of the number of predictions it got right, not because of the > amount of papers that say that it is a spiffy theory. The theory of > anthropogenic global warming does not look so stellar because it > failed to predict the current cooling period.
Actually, I remember it did - around 10 years ago there was a concensus opinion of a decade or two statis in the warming trend - but it might have been the sunspot guys rather than the climate modellers. This is not expected to last, though, so we'll soon see it being put to the test. > > Given the tremendous human cost of reducing CO2 emissions, the > rational thing to do is to weigh the probability of the theory being > correct against this cost. I don't have an answer here, nor am I > qualified to give it. I know a bit about complex systems modelling and > this makes me very skeptical of "overwhelming evidences", especially > in the face of surprising observables against the models. > As Liz pointed out, that "tremendous cost" for decarbonising the economy will need to be paid sooner or later anyway. With a bit of political will we can do it sooner, and the cost will be less as a result. The good news is that the figures I've seen is that its not such a tremendous cost after all. > > Obviously fossil fuel will run out anyway, so even without climate change > > we'd have to do something. > > Yes, but that something we have to do is very different depending on > whether or not we have to cut CO2 emissions and, more importantly, one > of the path leads to immense human suffering. > The point is whether we do something, or do nothing, energy costs _will_ rise. Yes this _will_ lead to human suffering, either way. We can either choose to pay a bit more now, and have less costs later, or pay less now, and have steeper rises later. A 10 or 20% energy cost increase to hasten decarbonisation by a decade will save many billions of dollars of geo-engineering, or evironmental restoration down the track. Seems like quite an astute investment to me. Our current conservative government, alas, doesn't seem to think so. > Then there are the geo-engineering ideas that John mentioned. They > appear to be ignored. This makes the entire thing start to smell a bit > of religious moralism. > > Telmo. > They're not being ignored. But they do require a lot more small-scale research to understand their risk-benefit tradeoff. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics [email protected] University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
