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Feds Going Green

BayPointArchitect said:
Where has higher taxes and regulation worked so far? Germany?
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I'd probably say yes for Germany, but I'm not an economist, so I don't have a board picture of the German vs the US economy, standard of living, welfare of the citizens, etc.

There are certainly plenty of examples of successful regulation. Overfishing is an easy example--the unfettered free market incentivizes everyone to fish as much as possible, which leads to declining yields year after year. While imposing reasonable fishing quotas generally leads to sustainable fish stocks that end up allowing more fish to be harvested in the long run. See the literature on "tragedy of the commons."

On the other hand, overregulation can be a real problem. Zoning is a good example--overly restrictive zoning requirements are a significant factor in the inflated real estate prices in California.

As to higher taxes, yes higher taxes on carbon is one good approach to carbon pollution, but that doesn't have to mean higher taxes overall. The tax program can be structured to be revenue neutral, coupling it with, e.g., an expansion of the 0% income tax bracket.

Getting back to the OP, I would say that the reason the US has programs like that is because there is such a strong political ethos against taxes. A tax is the economically simplest and most efficient intervention: internalize the externalities and let the market sort it out. But if a carbon tax is off the table, then you are left with more complicated interventions like subsidies and regulations.

Cheers, Wayne
 
wwhitney said:
I suggest that you look at, e.g., the "Summary of global surface temperature datasets" listed here: https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu/c...mperature-data-sets-overview-comparison-table

There are multiple different global temperature data sets available going back up to a couple centuries. Those data sets are not going to exactly agree on the global average temperature at any given point in time--you can only measure temperature in finitely many places, and if you pick a different set of places, say with more or less spatial resolution, you're going to get a slightly different final answer.

But they all show the same trend--about 2 deg F warming since preindustrial times. And that's why the graph I first posted uses the term "temperature anomaly"--it's a reference to the change in temperature within each data set, as the slight absolute difference in temperature between data sets is not significant.

That's the reality, it is established beyond a reasonable doubt. If you're skeptical, that's fine, good scientists are skeptical, and you can dive into the details of each data set, inspect their methodologies, and try to figure out if there's some error or source of statistical bias that thousands of other people have missed. It happens--that how science advances. But it is rare.

Absent that level of examination, we should all accept what the data shows as fact. To do otherwise is literally delusional.

Cheers, Wayne
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I must say Wayne, you sound Uber intelligent. You can reference material upon material. The downfall is your reluctance to question the validity of any of it along with a willingness to accept the most specious result. Keep in mind that the whole argument is that the Earth's average temperature is rising 0.02° per year. Are they using satellites for that too? Come August I'll blame the temperature on summer.

Simply identifying a trend in no way identifies a cause. What if the Earth's core is getting hotter. Could the Sun be putting out more energy? Could orbits have been altered? Could it be a natural cycle that the Earth has experienced previously? Why does it have to be fossil fuels? Oh I know, here comes another study.
 
ICE said:
Keep in mind that the whole argument is that the Earth's average temperature is rising 0.02° per year. Are they using satellites for that too?
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Well, the temperature rise has not been constant over the industrial period--it has been faster in recent decades. So the recent (last couple decades) rate of rise is 0.03 F per year or more. Obviously you can't detect such a trend with data from just a year or two. But with decades of data, absolutely detectable.

And yes, they use satellites for that too. Satellites can see all of the Earth's surface, and so you can get a truly global data set. IIRC, the satellites don't directly read temperature, but they give a reading that increases with increasing temperature. So again they tell you the temperature trend.

ICE said:
Simply identifying a trend in no way identifies a cause.
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Absolutely true.

But we don't have just temperature trend data. We also have a scientific model that predicts, from established physics principles, that rising atmospheric CO2 will yield rising surface temperatures. So we have a theory, a prediction it makes, and an observation corroborating that prediction.

Now that by itself is still not enough. There could be some confounding phenomenon that also happens to be causing rising temperature. Exactly along the lines of all the questions you asked. Atmospheric scientists have asked all those same questions, and looked at all those possible confounders, and adjusted for all those effects.

There's still an otherwise unexplained temperature trend that fits what the atmospheric model predicts. Plus we have the direct IR satellite measurements confirming the underlying physics of our scientific model.

So we have a trend in the data, a scientific model predicting that trend, and no other plausible mechanism that would cause the trend. Since we can't run an experiment and compare our global temperatures to those on an alternate Earth in which we stopped burning fossil fuels in 1950, that's as good as it gets. And plenty strong enough to conclude that if we keep burning fossil fuels like we have, we are going to see a lot more than 2 deg F warming this century.

Cheers, Wayne
 
Obviously I am ill prepared to hold up my end of the discussion. I only see the immediate results. I am curious to know if any modeling has been done to predict the economic ramifications of the trajectory we are on in the fight against climate change?

The government has declared war on the fossil fuel industry and the death knell is sounding. There will be unanticipated consequences as there always are. What do the models say about that?

Having witnessed first hand the air pollution in Chinese cities and trust me, pictures do not come close to the reality, I am certainly not enamored with fossil fuel. It is not even a question in my mind that pouring smoke into the atmosphere is counterintuitive. (Up until now Fatboy understood at least one side of the discussion.)
What is a bother is the wholesale destruction of the US economy in a misguided effort to rid the planet of fossil fuel. The extraordinary number of uses for oil will suffer with the decline of fuels. Many of which are the byproducts of refining gasoline, diesel and kerosene.

The real culprit is consumerism. We make everything in China because we have no regard for Chinese people. We are willing to destroy a land not our own for the pleasure of being able to consume.

This morning I went to Amazon in search of a body brush for the shower. There were hundreds of choices…seven pages with seventy per page. Look at the cereal aisle at Piggly Wiggly. The toothpaste aisle at CVS. Fossil fuel and oil is behind all of it.

Oil is not the villain…we are using it in a way that hurts us.
As many models and studies that you point to there are dissenting views by learned individuals who are staying quiet in fear of being cancelled. To speak out against the Green crowd brings derision and contempt.

I learned early that a sled on a snow covered hill has no brake. We are ready to head down a snow covered hill with Greta Thunberg steering the sled.

We are at opposite ends and can agree to disagree.
 
ICE said:
Obviously I am ill prepared to hold up my end of the discussion. I only see the immediate results. I am curious to know if any modeling has been done to predict the economic ramifications of the trajectory we are on in the fight against climate change?
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I believe most of the economists who have looked at this question without a preconceived agenda have concluded that the costs of action now are much less than the future costs of inaction (like a factor of 10). But I don't have a reference for you on that.

ICE said:
What is a bother is the wholesale destruction of the US economy in a misguided effort to rid the planet of fossil fuel.
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I'm not sure why you see an energy transition occurring over the next 20-30 years as the "wholesale destruction" of the US economy. The American Petroleum Institute say that 8% of the US GDP is attributable to fossil fuels. https://www.api.org/news-policy-and...ral-gas-contribution-to-us-economy-fact-sheet

We can trust that is not an underestimate; I suspect they could be using an expansive definition to inflate their numbers, but I haven't looked into that. So we are talking about changing 8% of the economy over 20-30 years. If the change is linear, that's less than 1/2% a year. [Of course other industries like cement will be affected, so that figure is not all inclusive.]

Obviously 1/2% of $20 trillion dollars is still a big number ($100 billion), but it's not the wholesale destruction of the economy.

Speaking of API and the fossil fuel industry, they are surely one of the largest driving forces behind the misinformation propagated on this topic, as they are obviously invested in the status quo. Just like the cigarette industry sowed doubt about the link between cigarettes and cancer in decades past.

Cheers, Wayne
 
ICE said:
The downfall is your reluctance to question the validity of any of it along with a willingness to accept the most specious result.
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On the contrary, I have looked into many of the details behind the headlines, which is why I am often able to give you references for the information I'm providing. On close examination, none of the major conclusions of the atmospheric science community on climate change are specious.

ICE said:
We are at opposite ends and can agree to disagree.
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I hope that my responses have been reasoned and fairly free of dogma. I also hope that you may consider whether some of your conclusions have been unknowingly based on misinformation that has been presented to you.

Cheers, Wayne
 
ICE said:
The melting ice shelf, apparent worsening weather, drought and monsoons
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Regardless of what or who caused these things, it's clearly a big problem for humankind. Because you don't agree with a proposed cause, does not mean it's not happening, and does not mean there won't be serious consequences.
 
JMarsh said:
Your graph uses 1951 to 1980 as the baseline against which pre 1951 and post 1980 temperatures are averaged - not 1910-1940.
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That's correct.

But to switch to a 1910-1940 baseline, as you requested, all you have to do is look at the graph I posted, see what average temperature it shows from 1910-1940, subtract that temperature from every data point on the graph, and now the baseline is 1910-1940. From post #38, but spelled out in more detail:

The posted graph shows:

A) 1910-1940 average of -0.25C
B) 1951-1980 average of 0C (this is expected as that is the baseline chosen)
C) 2001-2021 average of 0.75C

OK, so let's subtract (A) the 1910-1940 average from all the temperatures in the graph. It will now show (remember that subtracting a negative number yields an increase):

A') 1910-1940 average of 0C (this shows 1910-1940 is the new baseline).
B') 1951-1980 average of 0.25C
C') 2001-2021 average of 1.0C

And there you have it, the new graph is again showing 1.0C temperature rise this century, using 1910-1940 as the baseline.

When looking at changes in the data, the choice of baseline is arbitrary and drops out of the final result.

Cheers, Wayne
 
JMarsh said:
That's not how averaging a time series works.
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That is, in fact, how averaging works. For a visual interpretation, the procedure I described is equivalent to moving the x-axis up or down as required, so that the desired baseline ends up at a 0-value.

Perhaps a simple example will help. Say the raw data we have is the series: 2, 8, 6, 8, 8, 10 for years 1-6. If we look at consecutive year periods, the consecutive averages are 5, 7, and 9, for years 1-2, 3-4, and 5-6, respectively.

Let's say we make years 3-4 our baseline; to do that we need to subtract 7 from each our data points. The time series becomes -5, 1, -1, 1, 1, 3. The 2 year averages are now -2, 0, 2. The 2 year average for the baseline period is 0 because we made that choice.

Now you ask, what happens if we make year 1-2 our baseline, then what will the average be for years 5-6? We can just look at our last 3 averages and computer 2 [the period of interest] - (-2) [the new baseline] = 4.

Or if you like we can go back to our original raw data. To make year 1-2 the baseline, we need to subtract 5 (the raw year 1-2 average) from the raw data. The time series is now -3, 3, 1, 3, 3, 5. The 2 year averages are now 0, 2, 4. As expected, the average value for year 5-6, when years 1-2 is the baseline, is 4.

Cheers, Wayne
 
JMarsh said:
Why was 1951-1980 chosen?
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I don't know, but does it matter? Whatever the baseline, if you want to know the temperature change from time A to time B, just subtract the temperature at time A from the temperature at time B.

I mean, if someone said something like "since 1963, we've had X amount of warming," then looking at the graph I posted, that would be some small scale cherry picking, in that 1963 (if I'm reading the x-axis correctly) was noticeably colder than nearby years, so you'd be inflating X by maybe 0.2 F. But when you're baseline is an average of 30 years, nothing like that is possible.

Basically the baseline is arbitrary.

Cheers, Wayne
 
JMarsh said:
What happens every 30 years? Every 60 years?
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A reasonable if perhaps arbitrary question. The graph I posted doesn't show any particular 30 year or 60 year cyclic behavior to my eye. A discrete Fourier transform might tell us something not otherwise obvious. But it is clear that the overall increasing trend is of greater magnitude than any cyclic behavior on time scales that would show up in that graph.

Now it is a reasonable question, if all you are aware of is that graph, whether there might be some other natural 200 year or longer temperature cycle that we happen to be observing in the industrial era. That's why there's been a lot of research in reconstructing global temperature information from earlier eras. And none of that work shows any sign of such cycles relevant to human time scales. For a nice visual representation of the data going back 22,000 years (although I haven't tracked down the sourcing), see: https://xkcd.com/1732/

JMarsh said:
What happened in 1998? What happened in 2010?
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As far as the graph goes, nothing unusual.

Cheers, Wayne
 
wwhitney said:
And none of that work shows any sign of such cycles relevant to human time scales.
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I should say significant cycle, as in of a magnitude that would affect what's going to happen this century. I actually have no idea if there's, say, some detectable 1,000 year oscillation of a magnitude of 0.2 deg F.

Cheers, Wayne
 
JMarsh said:
Do you know what PDO, AMO and ENSO mean?
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In this context, they probably mean that you are taking a scattershot approach to make an ill-informed argument against scientific conclusions you don't like.

They also mean that I should refer you to e.g.:

skepticalscience.com

Global warming and the El Niño Southern Oscillation

The El Nino Southern Oscillation shows close correlation to global temperatures over the short term. However, it is unable to explain the long term warming trend over the past few decades.
skepticalscience.com
skepticalscience.com

The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) is not causing global warming

<p>PDO as an oscillation between positive and negative values shows no long term trend, while temperature shows a long term warming trend. When the PDO last switched to a cool phase, global temperatures were about 0.4C cooler than currently. The long term warming trend indicates the total energy...
skepticalscience.com
skepticalscience.com

How curve-fitting can ignore physics

Examines the science and arguments of global warming skepticism. Common objections like 'global warming is caused by the sun', 'temperature has changed naturally in the past' or 'other planets are warming too' are examined to see what the science really says.
skepticalscience.com

I hope our discussion on how to read graphs and how averages work has been informative. If you're interested in further examining some of the misinformation that you seem to have been exposed to, please refer to the website above.

Cheers, Wayne
 
Let's recount the number of of errors Wayne has made (for those not well versed in global warming rhetoric). And I truly didn't join this forum to rehash all this nonsense.
  1. The average temperature, since early last century, has risen by 1 deg C. This is false.
  2. Temperature change is measured against a baseline. Something he deliberately failed to state. A subtle but important difference. The intent of the graph he posted is to make it look like there has been a constant, linear rise in temperature since the start of the last Century, and that the three-ish decades prior to 1951 were cooler than the three-ish decades following 1980. This is partially true and partially false.
  3. Global warming is happening. This is true. Just not at the rate pushed by the alarmist.
  4. Baselines don't affect time series. This is false.
  5. When and were you start and stop a baseline in a time series is arbitrary. This is false. If this were true, why use a baseline at all? Why not just a linear graph?
  6. The duration of a baseline (30 years in this case) was arbitrarily chosen. This is false.
  7. It's inconvenient truth to Wayne that there is a (roughly) 60 year cycle of warming and cooling. 30 years warming: 1910-1940/45 and 1975/80-2000. And the baseline period that he completely and utterly arbitrarily chose (1951-1980) was a period of cooling.
  8. This 60 year trend is not well understood, but it is most probably dominated by PDO and AMO (ocean currents).
  9. Strong ENSO events, such as occurred in 1998, 2010 and 2015 - when averaged in a time series - can affect the time series and make it appear that the "average" temperature rose dramatically, when, in fact, it was one or two (completely natural) warm years due to a confluence of natural events.
Wayne, I hope our discussion on how to read graphs and how averages work has been informative and will explain the misinformation that you have been exposed to.

Cheers
 
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