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Okay, I'll bite: people think that the temperature as it is today is the best one for the people. It's not playing God -- it's just maintaining our race. Grante

Okay, I'll bite: people think that the temperature as it is today is the best one for the people. It's not playing God -- it's just maintaining our race. Granted, at the disadvantage of other races but that's just how nature works, isn't it? "Looking after yourself means everyone is looked after." Now beat me.

DanielBMarkham 18y ago
I was just bringing up another argument, but let's play it out a bit. Why would the temperature today be the best for the people? Is there something about the current temperature, or is it just any kind of change from the current temp would cause so much chaos as to outweigh any benefits? I guess if you wanted what was best for people, you'd want the temp that had the most arable land, right?
- emmett 18y ago
  The main point about global warming is that it is rapid. Rapid climate change (in either direction) is bad for the obvious reason that we don't have much time to adjust. In general, a warmer climate is good for us. We're at a geological-historical climate high right now, and it comes with lots of available farm land and pleasant temperatures. Raising it yet further, beyond anything human beings have experienced previously, is projected to bring some good things (Canada will be a huge farm!) and some bad things (malaria will spread its range massively, large increase in hurricanes). Raising it rapidly, however, gets us lots of the latter immediately, and the benefits if any emerge much more slowly. So should we really be afraid of global warming? On the balance, I think a controlled, intentional warming might be a good idea, although I have no idea who would have the authority to say so or execute on it. Is the current out-of-control, unintended warming dangerous? Almost certainly.
  - DanielBMarkham 18y ago
    I understand the gist of what you are saying but I'm getting a little lost in the details. So there is this number, concept, or metric, called "climate". What is it? Debatable. Let's say it's average overall global temperature -- just for simplicity's sake. It's okay now, and it's always changing and that's okay too. We just need it to change at a slower rate than it is now. How can we measure the change in an unknown/non-standard metric? Sure -- anecdotally, we can observe things like less sea ice in the Arctic, or the decrease in ice coverage around Antarctica, but correlation and causality are completely different things. We just kind of "connect the dots" to join up global climate change and observations. So there's a number out there, in the void, and it's bad enough now, but at the current rate it is changing it's going to be awful soon unless we act now. Ignoring the details (which are murky, at least to me), we're still left with a version of the argument which says that "who are we to determine (or heck, measure for that matter) how fast the climate should change?" People in Canada and Russia have a lot of new farmland that could be put to use, the sooner the better. I'm still not sure global warming beats the coming ice age. I am sure that the global climate is not something that we have anywhere near understanding or mastery over. But its an interesting discussion anyway.
    - emmett 18y ago
      Forgive me if I'm wrong, but your argument seems to be: - I don't really understand this whole "global warming" thing. - Even climatologists, who do claim to at least understand global warming, don't have complete understanding of or mastery over the global environment. - So despite the fact we are probably causing extremely rapid, geologically exceptional warming to levels not seen since before the dawn of mankind, we should do nothing. Climatologists who believe this warming will have large negative effects far outweighing the positive are wrong, or at least not certain enough to be right that we should act. Implicitly this seems to be saying "One should only act with complete mastery, after achieving total understanding of the situation". That seems like it an overly heavy burden of proof to me, much heavier than you'd normally require of a claim. In fact, it would be completely paralyzing to require this level of proof in the general case, because almost never do we achieve either mastery or true understanding.
      - DanielBMarkham 18y ago
        Yep -- I confused you. Sorry about that. I should have stuck to the initial argument instead of providing commentary. The argument I was examining was "who are we to decide?" I think it was answered nicely. To respond: Science is not about "a good feeling" about something. It is about mastery. Constructing a model that can be tested. I mean, just think about it -- when I drop a hammer, I can tell you each second how far away it is going to be, its velocity, and its momentum. It's complete mastery to our degree to measure. That's science. I object to scientists becoming social activists, no matter what the cause. Social activism involves fear mongering, public opinion manipulation, politics, and "messages" instead of information. Science involves none of this, and if scientists continue to confuse their jobs and their art with others, then science will become cheap and politicized even more than it is today. We'll have "conservative" scientists and "liberal" scientists and each group will have the usual internet echo chambers to talk into. It's already heading that way. As far as the chicken little, "why risk it?" argument, I'd refer you to Occam. We can either believe that the climate will continue along some course and the associated ecosystems will adapt as they always have or we can start adding all of these variable like sea level or ice cover and then draw some alarming conclusions. I like to KISS.

DanielBMarkham 18y ago

I was just bringing up another argument, but let's play it out a bit. Why would the temperature today be the best for the people? Is there something about the current temperature, or is it just any kind of change from the current temp would cause so much chaos as to outweigh any benefits? I guess if you wanted what was best for people, you'd want the temp that had the most arable land, right?

emmett 18y ago
The main point about global warming is that it is rapid. Rapid climate change (in either direction) is bad for the obvious reason that we don't have much time to adjust. In general, a warmer climate is good for us. We're at a geological-historical climate high right now, and it comes with lots of available farm land and pleasant temperatures. Raising it yet further, beyond anything human beings have experienced previously, is projected to bring some good things (Canada will be a huge farm!) and some bad things (malaria will spread its range massively, large increase in hurricanes). Raising it rapidly, however, gets us lots of the latter immediately, and the benefits if any emerge much more slowly. So should we really be afraid of global warming? On the balance, I think a controlled, intentional warming might be a good idea, although I have no idea who would have the authority to say so or execute on it. Is the current out-of-control, unintended warming dangerous? Almost certainly.
- DanielBMarkham 18y ago
  I understand the gist of what you are saying but I'm getting a little lost in the details. So there is this number, concept, or metric, called "climate". What is it? Debatable. Let's say it's average overall global temperature -- just for simplicity's sake. It's okay now, and it's always changing and that's okay too. We just need it to change at a slower rate than it is now. How can we measure the change in an unknown/non-standard metric? Sure -- anecdotally, we can observe things like less sea ice in the Arctic, or the decrease in ice coverage around Antarctica, but correlation and causality are completely different things. We just kind of "connect the dots" to join up global climate change and observations. So there's a number out there, in the void, and it's bad enough now, but at the current rate it is changing it's going to be awful soon unless we act now. Ignoring the details (which are murky, at least to me), we're still left with a version of the argument which says that "who are we to determine (or heck, measure for that matter) how fast the climate should change?" People in Canada and Russia have a lot of new farmland that could be put to use, the sooner the better. I'm still not sure global warming beats the coming ice age. I am sure that the global climate is not something that we have anywhere near understanding or mastery over. But its an interesting discussion anyway.
  - emmett 18y ago
    Forgive me if I'm wrong, but your argument seems to be: - I don't really understand this whole "global warming" thing. - Even climatologists, who do claim to at least understand global warming, don't have complete understanding of or mastery over the global environment. - So despite the fact we are probably causing extremely rapid, geologically exceptional warming to levels not seen since before the dawn of mankind, we should do nothing. Climatologists who believe this warming will have large negative effects far outweighing the positive are wrong, or at least not certain enough to be right that we should act. Implicitly this seems to be saying "One should only act with complete mastery, after achieving total understanding of the situation". That seems like it an overly heavy burden of proof to me, much heavier than you'd normally require of a claim. In fact, it would be completely paralyzing to require this level of proof in the general case, because almost never do we achieve either mastery or true understanding.
    - DanielBMarkham 18y ago
      Yep -- I confused you. Sorry about that. I should have stuck to the initial argument instead of providing commentary. The argument I was examining was "who are we to decide?" I think it was answered nicely. To respond: Science is not about "a good feeling" about something. It is about mastery. Constructing a model that can be tested. I mean, just think about it -- when I drop a hammer, I can tell you each second how far away it is going to be, its velocity, and its momentum. It's complete mastery to our degree to measure. That's science. I object to scientists becoming social activists, no matter what the cause. Social activism involves fear mongering, public opinion manipulation, politics, and "messages" instead of information. Science involves none of this, and if scientists continue to confuse their jobs and their art with others, then science will become cheap and politicized even more than it is today. We'll have "conservative" scientists and "liberal" scientists and each group will have the usual internet echo chambers to talk into. It's already heading that way. As far as the chicken little, "why risk it?" argument, I'd refer you to Occam. We can either believe that the climate will continue along some course and the associated ecosystems will adapt as they always have or we can start adding all of these variable like sea level or ice cover and then draw some alarming conclusions. I like to KISS.