How to Become a Conservative in Four Embarrassing Steps

piezoe said:
Sadly, it seems you may be correct. It is a terrible error of course that could cost us billions of unnecessary expense for no gain.. If the science isn't there the right thing to do is to admit it and not do anything until the science is there.. But it is much worse than that. The science in this case is telling us we are wrong. Anthropomorphic CO2 is having a, so far, undetectable affect on temperature. (I trust the satellite data as being self-consistent, but still subject to systematic error.. I have no faith in temperature data obtained by direct measurement prior to the mid 1990s. There were simply not enough reliable monitoring stations, leaving millions of square miles of the Earths surface unmonitored. Naturally the proxy temperature readings (tree rings,etc.) are subject to large systematic error -- very large, ridiculously large!
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Sadly, I think your view is incorrect. Professional risk managers (I am not a risk manager, but I did sleep at a Holiday Inn Express last night) state that the more uncertainty there is in the probability of a significantly negative outcome, the more prudence must be weighted over analysis. That's not to say research and analysis are to be abandoned, only that caution has to come first, while that study continues and until more is known. I have linked to an essay on this quite a while back.
 
Ricter said:
Sadly, I think your view is incorrect. Professional risk managers (I am not a risk manager, but I did sleep at a Holiday Inn Express last night) state that the more uncertainty there is in the probability of a significantly negative outcome, the more prudence must be weighted over analysis. That's not to say research and analysis are to be abandoned, only that caution has to come first, while that study continues and until more is known. I have linked to an essay on this quite a while back.
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Each year there is growing scientific evidence that AGW does not exist. The primary risk here is political and regulatory, company risk management departments are focused on handling the regulatory and tax risk of "climate change"; their thoughts and actions have nothing to do with the "science" (which is rapidly faltering).
 
Ricter said:
Sadly, I think your view is incorrect. Professional risk managers (I am not a risk manager, but I did sleep at a Holiday Inn Express last night) state that the more uncertainty there is in the probability of a significantly negative outcome, the more prudence must be weighted over analysis. That's not to say research and analysis are to be abandoned, only that caution has to come first, while that study continues and until more is known. I have linked to an essay on this quite a while back.
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I can appreciate your viewpoint and your welcome humor as well. And I would quite agree with you were the probability some significant positive number. The science is telling me that the probability of ignoring, at present, anthro CO2 emissions resulting in a significantly negative outcome is virtually zero. If correct, that would negate your otherwise cogent argument.

The science is telling me that current anthro CO2 emissions have a negligible affect on warming. We can't even be certain there is warming because of the poor quality and paucity of the temperature data up until the mid 1990s. (Apparent warming at the poles seems to be caused by undersea volcanic activity and be compensated by cooling elsewhere. ) And we have the problem of the satellite data not confirming the land-based monitoring station data. The remainder of the science doesn't suggest, it convincingly tells us, that our low concentration of CO2 is far too weak in it's net effect, which is due to a combination of weak greenhouse effect negating its shielding function, to result in a significant effect from man's contribution alone. We are certain the natural sinking and sourcing of CO2 completely swamp any net contribution of anthro CO2. What we know is that water is the major moderator of the Earths surface temperature. The Sun and the Earths core drive temperature, though direct thermal contribution from man can't be ruled out as insignificant at this point. We must remain alert to the possibility that man, through mechanisms perhaps yet to be identified, could conceivably affect the global climate. We already have pretty strong evidence that man's activities have local effects. (for example, the urban island effect, Phoenix is now humid in the summer, etc.) What we are in the dark about is how well the biosphere's buffer capacity compensates for these local effects. We only know that that buffer capacity is huge. We have no evidence whatsoever to support the concept of positive feedback from rising CO2 levels as Hansen originally hypothesized.

Much of this science was unknown or we were incapable of attaching numbers to it in the Mid 1980s when the possibility of man affecting climate through his activities became front page news.
 
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Ricter said:
Don't back up to "AGW", you just stated there is no warming for 19 years.
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Why don't you print out a chart of raw global temperatures over the past two decades. If there has been a temperature increase over the past 19 years then why does the IPCC spend so much time and effort trying to define the reasons for the "pause". "The heat is hiding in the ocean", etc. etc.
 
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