[Lex Computer & Tech Group/LCTG] : rare common sense in mitigating global warming..please see opinion piece from wsj.

Wed Jul 27 07:35:17 PDT 2022

Do you believe the world's economy will still be powered by oil and natural gas in 100 years? 200? 500? 

By even 30 years from now we will have entirely new ideas and technologies for powering our world and our economic activities. What we need to do is make the "bridge period" -- the interim years or decades -- as livable as possible for ourselves and for other life on this planet. That means controlling or reducing our carbon impact on the atmosphere. Let nature do whatever nature does -- we do not need to add to those processes the emissions over which we can exercise some restraint or perhaps even reversal.
That is why research needs to be focused on "Green alternatives". Not that these will power our entire economy, but that we can use these technologies to reduce our additions to the ongoing process of climate change. Thus allowing nature to run its course without so much interference from our own vast, uncontrolled "experiments". 
Meanwhile, long-term, more complete solutions (like thermonuclear reactors) can be developed at a pace which makes practical sense. And still we can keep our planet livable. Maybe. 
-- Bob Primak
    On Wednesday, July 27, 2022 at 09:50:30 AM EDT, Jerry Harris <jerryharri at gmail.com> wrote:  

[e.g. Peak Oil] 

It's interesting you reference the ongoing question of "When will we run out of oil?" Combating climate change also prepares the world for the day when (not if) we run out of oil. Do you believe the world's economy will still be powered by oil and natural gas in 100 years? 200? 500? If not, why are you so resistant to making changes now to cut emissions and prepare alternative energy sources? Perhaps I've misunderstood what you object to regarding combating climate change. Is it the extremity (eg, "banning all fossil fueled cars", "psychological terror", etc) to which you object? 
Jerry
On Tue, Jul 26, 2022 at 12:43 PM Ted Kochanski <tedpkphd at gmail.com> wrote:

Jerry, et al
No one says that you have a "Renaissance-style" grasp of the entire natural and human-created world -- even in the days of the great encyclopedists that was impossibleHowever if you put yourself forward as a person advocating nothing less than the banning of all fossil fueled cars in the next decade Plus -- you need to have some fairly solid [based on reality] not some pipe dream
Even quite eminent scholars have been hung on their own petards by making statements of imminent collapse of society based on incomplete information, an inadequate understanding of how much they didn't understand and well human ingenuity [e.g. Peak Oil] by eminent petroleum geologists, etc.
I enjoy the program on the Discovery family of channels about unexplained observations -- yesterday I saw a snippet about the migration of the Northern end of our rotational axis [aka the North Pole] which has been observed by gravitational satellites and is now considered to be quite likely associated with the withdrawing of ground water by the 12 million pumps in India [changing the mass distribution of the surface layer of the earth in the critical 45ish latitude].  While much of this program is baseless speculation about phenomena observed by satellites [some of which could be checked by a visit on the ground] much of it is intriguing -- about how little we really know about the surface of the earth and what lies directly beneath.
The reason I called-out the Government - university - corporate influence is that  "group-think"  is fed by the powerful effects of money [e.g. you only get government grants if you agree with the sponsoring agency, if you get a grant you can become a member of the body that decides who gets grants -- and then tenure, awards, notoriety, etc.] -- yet when the topic not of great "political interest" -- true scholarship does still exist 
That's why we need a prize system where everyone can apply for a small seed grant -- a few get additional support and then based on performance -- a major award -- free of government contracts, etc.
Ted

On Tue, Jul 26, 2022 at 12:16 PM Jerry Harris <jerryharri at gmail.com> wrote:

Ted, 
> None of the models are subjected to even a rudimentary test against actual data sets
I find this hard to believe. Why would you believe scientists who've developed these models wouldn't follow basic best practices of testing? I've worked with data scientists who train an ML model on a portion of the dataset explicitly so they can test the predictive accuracy against the rest of the data. This is a bold accusation that isn't true. For example, here's a site that looks at James Hanson's early models against the real world.     https://redgreenandblue.org/2020/02/14/james-hanson-climate-models-vs-real-world/
> Unless we break the "Government--University--Industrial Complex which is filling and feeding at the trough of Global Catastrophism -- we will be condemned to destroying the engine which has lifted at least 1/2 the planet's population out of 19th C life and rescued more than 1B from Medieval abject subsistence life
What's left after you remove the government, universities, and corporations? No one is saying take us back to Medieval days. I think you've either misunderstood the intention or listened to wrong interpretations. 
> As for Catastrophism -- I use it mostly in Rhetorical sense to describe the "Chicken Littles" of the world such as Gretta and Al Gore neither of whom would know a Hadley Cell from an Onion Skin nor a Geological Trap from a Mouse Trap
Well, this is embarrassing. I don't know what those terms mean either. I also don't fully understand how a fractal antenna works, but I trust the experts who design my mobile phone do. Division of labor is a hallmark of capitalism and frees us from having to spend our days learning minute details of everything around us. I do spend my time trying to assess the integrity and honesty of the sources of information I consult, to try to differentiate between conspiracy theories and disinformation. I use the ladder of inference to help me decide if the source has applied inductive or deductive reasoning in a truthful and honest manner. 
Regards, Jerry

On Tue, Jul 26, 2022 at 11:28 AM Ted Kochanski <tedpkphd at gmail.com> wrote:

Jerry, et al
The problem of creating models and testing them against models is the essence of the issue 
None of the models are subjected to even a rudimentary test against actual data sets
As I proposed more than a decade ago -- spend some time [say 5 years] developing a model using a base data set [say 5 years]-- then let the model predict  data into the future [say 5 to 10 years] using [already measured data sets]Give the "winner" and a couple of runners-up huge prizes to isolate them from any "Dirty influences" including: {corporate, government and even NGO's and their dependencies such as universities who have sold-out to any of the preceding list} and to allow the winners to continue to refine the modelsI also proposed similar prizes for the development of instrumentation and necessary processing to collect the data and make it available to everyone on the planet who might want in on a future version of the model prize or even an "Einstein" sitting in some tropical rainforest and pondering
Unless we break the "Government--University--Industrial Complex which is filling and feeding at the trough of Global Catastrophism -- we will be condemned to destroying the engine which has lifted at least 1/2 the planet's population out of 19th C life and rescued more than 1B from Medieval abject subsistence life
Meanwhile we need to incentivize Nuclear and Thermonuclear energy as we can not build a modern western-level of lifestyle around wind and solar even with a lot of expensive storage
As for Catastrophism -- I use it mostly in Rhetorical sense to describe the "Chicken Littles" of the world such as Gretta and Al Gore neither of whom would know a Hadley Cell from an Onion Skin nor a Geological Trap from a Mouse Trap
Ted

On Tue, Jul 26, 2022 at 10:23 AM Jerry Harris <jerryharri at gmail.com> wrote:

Ted, That's quite the extensive list of everything that affects global climate - from cosmic rays to meteors. Yet, inexplicably, man-made impacts are definitively only regional. 
As for the complexity of replicating on computers something as complex as the Earth's atmospheric, oceanic, and land mass systems, that's the point of creating models and testing their predictability against historic and ongoing data sets. 
Were you using "catastrophism" in the geological sense: "The doctrine that major changes in the earth's crust result from sudden catastrophes, such as the impact of a large meteor, rather than from gradual evolutionary processes"? If so, then I think the Earth's historical record shows that both catastrophism and evolution are legitimate. Hence, climate change could indeed be caused by a relatively "sudden" increase in the CO2 output into the atmosphere by humans. Perhaps I've misinterpreted your use of that word.
Jerry

On Mon, Jul 25, 2022 at 4:02 PM Ted Kochanski <tedpkphd at gmail.com> wrote:

Jerry,
Lonborg is a true believer in environmentalism as opposed to Catastrophism
Even the IPCC says that going "cold=turkey" on CO2 would have at best marginal effects on the predictions for 2100
The whole issue of why the climate varies is still a most open question -- there are known naturally occuring aspects:
long-term orbital changes [mostly periodic]long-term plate tectonic changes of the layout of the continents and oceanslong-term, large scale volcanism [e.g. Deccan Traps in India, similar flows in Siberia ]meteoric impactssmall-scale short-lived volcanic events [e.gh. Mt. Pinatubo]

Oceanic Circulation changes:

Pacific Decadal Oscillation [PDO]El Niño–Southern Oscillation [ENSO]

Oceanic Atmospheric Circulation changes:

North Atlantic Oscillation [NAO]
Arctic oscillation [AO] aka Northern Annular Mode/Northern Hemisphere Annular Mode [NAM] Antarctic oscillation aka Southern Annular Mode [SAM]

Solar Activity changes

Solar brightness

Solar Magnetic Field extent -- influencing penetration of galactic cosmic rays into the earth's atmosphere

Solar spectral changes

Humans have more or less local/regional impacts mostly due to "urban heat islands" and land-use pattern changes

Finally we have the highly contentious matter of impacts directly caused by human emissions of CO2, CH4, and other lesser "greenhouse gases"
The effects of these themselves are then "multiplied" by changes in atmospheric water vapor [by far the most prevalent and impactful "greenhouse gas"] -- but this is poorly understood as it is a very complex 3D circulation between ocean water, vertical conveyance by tropical thunderstorms and conveyance poleward by the prevailing westerlies in temperate latitudes with some less well understood interaction with polar ice and snow

Even the most capable computers can not handle the complete system of processes which we think we understand and apply it to a non-spherical earth [we only include a generic friction parameter to account for things such as small as the Appalachian Mountains] -- and then there are the unknown processes which we have no way of accounting for in the models

That's predominantly why the modelers compare themselves to each other rather than the "ground truth" -- just look at the "spaghetti plots" produced for tropical storms/hurricanes [some of them have predicted trajectories perpendicular to some of the others]

Ted

PS: As someone pointed out all of the carbon buried under Pennsylvania, etc., in the form of Coal, Oil, Natural Gas was once in the atmosphere -- plants don't get the carbon for photosynthesis from the limestone rocks [another amazingly large repository of carbon once in the atmosphere]

On Mon, Jul 25, 2022 at 2:11 PM Jerry Harris <jerryharri at gmail.com> wrote:

Marvin, I think you've proven my point with Lomborg. It's not just the media that has called out his shifting and inaccurate claims, but real climate scientists have as well. He has long discounted the cost and severity of climate change, striving to spin a silver lining whenever possible:- his claims that rising CO2 levels will increase crop yields- his statement that since more people die in winter months, a warming planet will be good - ignoring that the data includes indirect influenza deaths and that a warming planet will increase malaria deaths- illogically claiming that the elites' "obsession" with climate change lead Germany to become solely reliant on Russian gas pipeline 
I think Lomborg is the human version of the young woman/old woman optical illusion. Some of what he says is sensible and reasonable, and some of what he says is selective and contradictory. With his constant shifts he can always cherry-pick those claims that turn out "right". 
Jerry

On Sat, Jul 23, 2022 at 8:40 PM Marvin Menzin <mmenzin at icloud.com> wrote:

Fyi.. more on the remedies for warming..Lomberg does not deny warming.. but he advocates a serious cost benefit analysis on remedies before going whole hog He favors nuclear power, and also believes it is a mistake to   push green power  so fast that it disrupts poorer nations  from  getting richer. 
he is one of the few  who challenges rapid disruptive  approaches that harm the prospects for a better life for the worlds poor nations in the name of  rapidly saving the planet..no matter what the bad side effects .  
Lomberg has written lots of articles on this theme and is considered controversial in most media.  

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Date: July 23, 2022 at 9:52:33 AM EDT
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Subject: rare common sense in mitigating global warming..

A sidewalk in London, July 20.
By 
Bjorn Lomborg 
July 21, 2022 6:36 pm ETPhoto: andy rain/Shutterstock
Such arguments are misleading. It’s true that as temperatures rise the world will experience more heat waves, but humans also adapt to such things. In Spain, for example, rising temperatures have actually led to fewer heat deaths, because people have adapted faster than temperatures have gone up. It simply took air conditioning, public cooling centers and better treatment of maladies that are caused or aggravated by heat, such as heatstroke and heart disease.

The exclusive focus on heat deaths is also misleading. Across the world, low temperatures are much more dangerous than high ones: Half a million people die each year from heat, but more than 4.5 million die from cold. While rising temperatures will increase heat deaths, they will also decrease cold deaths. A recent Lancet study found that rising temperatures since 2000 have on net reduced the number of temperature-related deaths. Researchers concluded that by the end of the 2010s, rising temperatures globally were causing 116,000 more heat deaths annually, but also leading to 283,000 fewer cold deaths a year. 

Moreover, politicians’ singular focus on climate change ignores that people are much more worried about rampant inflation, especially rising food and energy prices. And climate policies are making those problems worse. 
Opinion
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All the day's Opinion headlines.

Much of the extreme energy-price increase that normal people are dealing with is caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine. But things wouldn’t be nearly as bad if the West hadn’t thrown up green roadblocks to its own energy security, such as President Biden’s moratorium on gas leases or Europe’s refusal to dig into its substantial shale gas reserves. Climate policies also increase energy prices by subsidizing renewables like solar and wind. That makes it even harder to adapt to the extreme temperatures climate activists bemoan. You need cheap and reliable energy to afford air conditioning in the summer and heating in the winter.

Rising fuel prices are also making food more expensive. Low-cost synthetic fertilizer is one of the greatest technologies humanity has invented for feeding the world, but it’s mostly made with natural gas. Even with almost a billion people at risk of starvation, climate-obsessed bureaucrats still object to producing more fertilizer because of the fossil fuels required. 

The cost of green policies will become even harder to bear if politicians make good on their promises to hit net-zero emissions. Achieving this globally by 2050 would cost more than $5 trillion a year for the next three decades, according to McKinsey. That would be one-third of total global tax revenue. If every American were to shell out more than $5,000 a year, it would only get the U.S. 80% of the way there by midcentury. Hitting 100% would likely cost more than twice that. The European Union already pays €69 billion a year in subsidies to support its renewables. But if the EU persists with its even stauncher promises of net-zero, that annual climate policy cost is likely to exceed $1 trillion.

No wonder there’s political pushback to environmental grandstanding. The Netherlands has been roiled by protests since the government mandated in June that nitrogen-oxide and ammonia emissions, which are produced by livestock, must be slashed by 70% to 80% in some parts of the country. As many as 40,000 farmers demonstrated against the measure last month. Holland is among the world’s 10 largest food exporters, and these policies would decimate the country’s agriculture industry while global hunger is rising. 

Sri Lanka is the epitome of elite environmentalism gone wrong. Pushed to go organic by activists and the World Economic Forum, the government banned synthetic fertilizers in April 2021. Food production collapsed and the currency defaulted. Hungry and outraged citizens launched protests, overran the presidential palace, and forced the government to resign en masse and the president to flee the country.

It’s entirely possible to help the climate and working families at the same time. The policies to do so are innovation-focused. Policy makers need to recognize that they simply can’t eliminate fossil fuels with current technologies. The world gets almost 80% of its energy from fossil fuels, and even if all current climate policies were fully implemented, by midcentury fossil fuels would still provide more than half of all energy used world-wide, according to the International Energy Agency. Instead of sending energy prices sky-high by trying to force a transition to renewables prematurely, policy makers should focus on funding research to develop clean energy sources that are actually affordable and reliable. And instead of badgering farmers to go organic, governments should invest in research to develop varieties of crops and agricultural practices that deliver higher yields with a smaller environmental footprint. 

Some of these technologies are already in development. Greater funding could bring them to fruition more quickly and do a lot more to help limit emissions than the policies activists now hawk. These sorts of sensible measures would cost much less than policies like net-zero, leaving more money to meet the world’s many other challenges.

It’s starting to dawn on some elites that their policies are creating political dangers. Frans Timmermans, the European Commission’s vice president, has said that many millions of Europeans may not be able to heat their homes this winter. This, he concludes, could lead to “very, very strong conflict and strife.”

He’s right. When people are cold, hungry and broke, they rebel. If the elites continue pushing incredibly expensive policies that are disconnected from the urgent challenges facing most people, we need to brace for chaos.

Mr. Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus and visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. His latest book is “False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet.”

WSJ Opinion: Executive Beast Mode and the Democrats’ Apocalyptic Politics

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